John Calvin, the famous theologian and pastor of Geneva, died in 1564. Along with Martin Luther in Germany, he was the most influential force of the Protestant Reformation. His commentaries and Institutes of the Christian Religion are still exerting tremendous influence on the Christian church worldwide. The churches which have inherited the teachings of Calvin are usually called Reformed as opposed to the Lutheran or Anglican/Episcopalian branches of the Reformation. While not all Baptist churches hold to a Reformed theology, there is a significant Baptist tradition which flowed out of that stream and still cherishes the central doctrines inherited from the Reformed branch of the Reformation.
Arminius and the Remonstrants
The controversy between Arminianism and Calvinism arose in Holland in the early 1600s. The founder of the Arminian party was Jacob Arminius (1560–1609). He studied in Geneva under Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, and became a professor of theology at the University of Leyden in 1603.
Gradually Arminius came to reject certain Calvinist teachings. The controversy spread all over Holland, where the Reformed Church was the overwhelming majority. The Arminians drew up their creed in Five Articles, and laid them before the state authorities of Holland in 1610 under the name Remonstrance, signed by forty-six ministers.
The official Calvinistic response came from the Synod of Dort which was held November 13, 1618, to May 9, 1619, to consider the Five Articles. There were eighty-four members and eighteen secular commissioners. The Synod wrote what has come to be known as the Canons of Dort. These are still part of the church confession of the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church. They state the Five Points of Calvinism in response to the Five Articles of the Arminian Remonstrants. So the so-called Five Points were not chosen by the Calvinists as a summary of their teaching. They emerged as a response to the Arminians who chose these five points to disagree with. At the Heart of Biblical Theology It is more important to give a positive biblical position on the five points than to know the exact form of the original controversy. These five points are still at the heart of biblical theology. They are not unimportant. Where we stand on these things deeply affects our view of God, man, salvation, the atonement, regeneration, assurance, worship, and missions. Somewhere along the way (nobody knows for sure when or how), the five points came to be summarized in English under the acronym TULIP.
T – Total depravity
U – Unconditional election
L – Limited atonement
I – Irresistible grace
P – Perseverance of the saints
I make no claim that these five points exhaust the riches of Reformed theology. Numerous writers, especially those with a more Presbyterian orientation, make that point today because so many people (like me, a Baptist) are called Calvinists while not embracing all aspects of the Reformed tradition. For example, Richard Muller in his book, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition,1 and Kenneth J. Stewart in Ten Myths About Calvinisme make clear that Calvin and the system of rivers that flowed from his labors are wider and deeper and more multi-faceted than the five streams I am focusing on here. These five points are focused on the central act of God’s saving sinners. Nor do I make the claim that these titles for the five doctrines of grace are the best titles. Like any shorthand version of a doctrine, they are all liable to misunderstanding. Justin Taylor gives a helpful summary of various attempts to restate these truths.
For example, Timothy George prefers R O S E S over T U L I P: Radical depravity, Overcoming grace, Sovereign election, Eternal life, Singular redemption. Roger Nicole prefers the acronym G O S P E L (which makes six points): Grace, Obligatory grace, Sovereign grace, Provision-making grace, Effectual grace, Lasting grace.
Others abandon the effort to make an acronym altogether. For example, James Montgomery Boice suggests: Radical depravity, Unconditional election, Particular redemption, Efficacious grace, Persevering grace. Greg Forster proposes:
• State of man before salvation: wholly defiled
• Work of the Father in salvation: unconditional choice
• Work of the Son in salvation: personal salvation
• Work of the Spirit in salvation: supernatural transformation
• State of man after salvation: in faith, perseverance.
Nor do I claim that this ordering of the doctrines (T U L I P) is necessarily the most helpful when teaching what they mean. To be sure, there is a good rationale for this traditional order. It starts with man in need of salvation (Total depravity) and then gives, in the order of their occurrence, the steps God takes to save his people. He elects (Unconditional election), then he sends Jesus to atone for the sins of the elect (Limited atonement), then he irresistibly draws his people to faith (Irresistible grace), and finally works to cause them to persevere to the end (Perseverance of the saints).
I have found, however, that people grasp these points more easily if we go in the order in which we ourselves often experience them when we become Christians.
1. We experience first our depravity and need of salvation.
2. Then we experience the irresistible grace of God leading us toward faith.
3. Then we trust the sufficiency of the atoning death of Christ for our sins.
4. Then we discover that behind the work of God to atone for our sins and bring us to faith was the unconditional election of God.
5. And finally we rest in his electing grace to give us the strength and will to persevere to the end in faith.
This is the order we follow in the pages ahead. I will try to lay out what I believe the Scriptures teach on these five points. My great desire is to deepen your experience of God’s grace and to honor him by understanding and believing his truth revealed in Scripture.
I pray that I am open to changing any of my ideas which can be shown to contradict the truth of Scripture. I do not have any vested interest in John Calvin himself, and find some of what he taught to be wrong. But in general I am willing to be called a Calvinist on the five points because this name has been attached to these points for centuries and because I find this Calvinist position to be faithful to Scripture. The Bible is our final authority.
I share the sentiments of Jonathan Edwards who said in the preface to his great book The Freedom of the Will, “I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction’s sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in every thing just as he taught.”
It might be helpful for some readers to summarize the meaning of each of the five points briefly before we go into more biblical detail. Perhaps this foretaste will awaken some sense of why I believe these truths magnify God’s precious grace and give unspeakable joy to sinners who have despaired of saving themselves.
Total Depravity
Our sinful corruption is so deep and so strong as to make us slaves of sin and morally unable to overcome our own rebellion and blindness. This inability to save ourselves from ourselves is total. We are utterly dependent on God’s grace to overcome our rebellion, give us eyes to see, and effectively draw us to the Savior.
Unconditional Election
God’s election is an unconditional act of free grace that was given through his Son Jesus before the world began. By this act, God chose, before the foundation of the world, those who would be delivered from bondage to sin and brought to repentance and saving faith in Jesus.
Limited Atonement
The atonement of Christ is sufficient for all humans and effective for those who trust him. It is not limited in its worth or sufficiency to save all who believe. But the full, saving effectiveness of the atonement that Jesus accomplished is limited to those for whom that saving effect was prepared. The availability of the total sufficiency of the atonement is for all people. Whosoever will— whoever believes—will be covered by the blood of Christ. And there is a divine design in the death of Christ to accomplish the promises of the new covenant for the chosen bride of Christ. Thus Christ died for all people, but not for all in the same way.
Irresistible Grace
This means that the resistance that all human beings exert against God every day (Rom. 3:10-12; Acts 7:51) is wonderfully overcome at the proper time by God’s saving grace for undeserving rebels whom he chooses freely to save.
Perseverance of the Saints
We believe that all who are justified will win the fight of faith. They will persevere in faith and will not surrender finally to the enemy of their souls. This perseverance is the promise of the new covenant, obtained by the blood of Christ, and worked in us by God himself, yet not so as to diminish, but only to empower and encourage, our vigilance; so that we may say in the end, I have fought the good fight, but it was not I, but the grace of God which was with me (2 Tim. 4:7; 1 Cor. 15:10).
We turn now to give a biblical explanation and justification for each of the five points. I pray not that I will be proved right, but that the word of God will be truly explained and our minds would be softened to receive what is really there.
Knowing 