Rescuing the Bible From Calvinism Part 2
What is Calvinism & From Where Did it Come?
Calvinism's roots go far back to the fourth century. All the elements were present in Augustine of Hippo's scrolls. You will be shocked by what Calvin drew from his writings. I will reveal those elements in this post.
But first.
I’d love to start parsing Scripture now and begin exploring Calvinism's flaws; it’s best that we first get an idea of what Calvinism is and where it came from. When I began seriously tugging on this thread almost a year ago, I had a very simplistic view of Calvinism. I thought it was a battle between Team Predestination and Team Free Will. I believed free will, human choice, was far more present than predestination in Scripture. Because the free will verses outnumbered the predestination verses, then free will wins. That’s it.
How wrong I was!
I don’t believe the Bible contradicts itself. But I know places where Scripture seems to contradict itself, but the “contradictions” vanish upon a deeper look. I wrote off Calvinism’s deterministic view of God and my free will of man as one of those things that seemed to contradict in Scripture—but really didn’t. Even though I had not done the work to see if my thesis was true, I was confident that a deeper look would prove it. I did not care about the debate because the Bible records people's choices. However, as elaborated in the previous post, I gradually noticed many people around me possessed Calvinistic beliefs. This was disturbing. It seemed clear to me that if predestination is true, if God preordains all things, as Calvin says,
then sin and all its manifestations are preordained by God. It seemed to me that my friends, acquaintances, and many preachers I respected were living examples of cognitive dissonance. How could Christians believe this?
I clearly did not understand Calvinism’s allure and power. I did not know what it really was or where it came from.
So, let's try to understand how Calvinism's view of God as the creator of sin—and many other false doctrines—got started.
Calvinism is a theological system associated with French theologian John Calvin, who lived from 1509 to 1564. His most famous and influential work is The Institutes of the Christian Religion, commonly referred to as The Institutes, which he wrote only two years after leaving Catholicism at the age of 27.
His theology may be boiled down to the acronym TULIP. Calvin did not invent this term. Nearly 400 years later, Loraine Boettner invented it in his book The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, published in 1932, as a way to remember Calvinism's core teachings. The TULIP by no means captures the full teaching. There’s more, of course, but I’ll get to that later in the post.
For now, I’ve selected all definitions of the TULIP from Wikipedia pages dedicated to each of the five points of doctrine. For a leading and popular Calvinist view, see John Piper’s article What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism.
T = Total Inability (Sometimes listed as Total Depravity): Derived from the concept of original sin. It teaches that, as a consequence of the Fall, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin as a result of their fallen nature and, apart from the efficacious (irresistible) or prevenient (enabling) grace of God, is completely unable to choose by themselves to follow God, refrain from evil, or accept the gift of salvation as it is offered.
U = Unconditional Election: Relating to predestination that describes the actions and motives of God prior to his creation of the world, when he predestined some people to receive salvation, the elect, and the rest he left to continue in their sins and receive the just punishment, eternal damnation, for their transgressions of God's law as outlined in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.
L = Limited Atonement (Sometimes listed as Definite/Particular Atonement): The doctrine states that though the death of Jesus Christ is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, it was the intention of God the Father that the atonement of Christ's death would work itself out in only the elect, thereby leading them without fail to salvation.
I = Irresistible Grace: The saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save and, in God's timing, overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to faith in Christ.
P = Perseverance of the Saints: True believers in Jesus Christ's substitutionary atonement on the cross (the "saints") cannot relapse and are predestined to salvation.
Before we continue, please understand that I’m not an Arminian. This is just history.
Calvinism’s five points originated from a theological, legal controversy addressed during the Synod of Dort in the 1600s. The court was packed with Calvinists. It convened to address Jacob Arminius’s five grievances with Calvinism. The grievances were overruled. Calvinism was reaffirmed. The Calvinists' five responses to the five grievances of the Arminians became the 5-Points/TULIP that Beottner summarized in his book.
Did the Calvinists shake hands with the Arminians and let them go their merry way? Here’s a snippet of what happened to Grotius and Oldenbarnevelt, two prominent Arminians.
"[The Arminians] now officially condemned as heretics and therefore under the severe judgment of both church and state… All Arminian pastors—some 200 of them—were deprived of office; any who would not agree to be silent were banished from the country. Spies were paid to hunt down those suspected of returning to their homeland. Some were imprisoned, among them Grotius; but he escaped and fled the country. Five days after the synod was over, Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded. - Wikipedia
The Calvinists treated those with opposing views like John Calvin did in Geneva in the mid-1500s.
Where did the tenets of Calvinism so overwhelmingly defended by the Synod of Dort come from? Why these murderous actions? These beliefs, actions, and many other terrible beliefs can be traced back through Calvin to Augustine. As a theologian, you would think Calvin endeavored to build his system and actions on the Bible. He didn’t. Compared to the Bible, Cavlin’s reverence for Augustine seems idolatrous when you read quotes such as this:
Augustine is so wholly within me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I could do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings.
In The Institutes, Calvin quoted Augustine 1708 times or every four pages. Calvin would have considered himself an Augustinian. According to S. J. Han’s article, “An Investigation Into Calvin’s Use of Augustine,” Calvin relied on Augustine for his doctrines.
Calvin bowed to Augustine to the detriment of sound Biblical understanding. But what’s wrong with relying on such a towering and influential theologian as Augustine?
Here’s why.
Before converting to Catholicism, Augustine followed Manichaean Gnosticism. Ambrose, who interpreted the Bible allegorically, played a significant role in Augustine’s conversion. Manichaeism originated from Persia and included beliefs in the division between the elect and hearers. Manichaeanism had a dualistic view of the material world, a lack of free will, and the predestination of all things.
In 411 AD, Augustine found himself caught in the Pelagian controversy. To refute Pelagius, he returned to the ideas he had embraced in his Manichaean gnosticism, which he retrofitted to the Christian narrative. Later, all the distinctions of Calvinistic doctrine were traced back to their original form in Augustine's Manichaean gnosticism. Even today, when most Christians, including non-Calvinists, hear the term predestination, they assume it means Augustinian predestination and not the predestination found in scripture. This error has led many people to unwittingly embrace Calvinism’s doctrines.
Calvin basically took Augustine's gnostic views and back-engineered them into the Bible verses where the views could cloak themselves.
And, Calvin embraced Augustine’s views on the punishment of heretics. While Calvin was the “Pope” of Geneva, he presided over the execution of at least 36 people. Some sources say it was 58 people.
Jacques Gruit opposed Calvin. He was arrested and tortured twice a day for a month to get him to confess his heresy. When he refused, he was tied to a stake, his feet were nailed to it, and then he was beheaded.
Michael Servetus, a scientist, theologian, and doctor, angered Calvin by returning a copy of Calvin’s writings with critical notes in the margins. When Servetus was arrested, he was burned at the stake.
Men and women alike endured Calvin’s vengeance for opposing such things as infant baptism. People were imprisoned, tortured, and burned at the stake. There are other stories as well. Calvin never felt remorse over these murders and repented of none of it.
Calvin’s theology was derived from Augustine’s Manichaean gnosticism, which was written by a man who had people executed for opposing his theology.
In the next post, I’ll begin exploring Calvinism's doctrine by starting with the keywords, phrases, and “proof text” Calvinists use. I’m not certain of the order yet. I guess it’s not predestinated.
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It is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to search it out. Proverbs 25: 2.