Calvinism

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John Calvin

Background Christianity St. Augustine The Reformation Five Solas Synod of Dort

Distinctives Five Points (TULIP) Covenant Theology Regulative principle

Documents Calvin's Institutes Confessions of faith Geneva Bible

Influences Theodore Beza John Knox Huldrych Zwingli Jonathan Edwards Princeton theologians

Churches Reformed Presbyterian Congregationalist Reformed Baptist

Peoples Afrikaner Calvinists Huguenots Pilgrims Puritans Scots This box: view • talk • edit

Calvinism is a theological system and an approach to the Christian life that emphasizes the rule of God over all things.^[1] Named after French reformer John Calvin, this variety of Protestant Christianity is sometimes called the Reformed tradition, the Reformed faith, or Reformed theology.^[2]

The Reformed tradition was advanced by theologians such as Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Huldrych Zwingli and also influenced English reformers such as Thomas Cranmer and John Jewel. Yet due to John Calvin's great influence and role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 17th century, the tradition generally became known as Calvinism. Today, this term also refers to the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches, of which Calvin was an early leader, and the system is best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.

[edit] Historical background

Main article: History of Calvinism

John Calvin

John Calvin's international influence on the development of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation began at the age of 25, when he started work on his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1534 (published 1536). This work underwent a number of revisions in his lifetime, including an impressive French vernacular translation. The Institutes together with Calvin's polemical and pastoral works, his contributions to confessional documents for use in churches, and his massive out-pouring of commentary on the Bible, Calvin had a direct personal influence on Protestantism. He is only one of many to influence the doctrines of the Reformed churches, though he eventually became the most prominent.

The rising importance of the Reformed churches, and of Calvin, belongs to the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form after Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Calvin was a French exile in Geneva. He had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession as it was revised by Melancthon in 1540, but his influence was first felt in the Swiss Reformation, which was not Lutheran, but rather followed Huldrych Zwingli. It became evident early on that doctrine in the Reformed churches was developing in a direction independent of Luther's, under the influence of numerous writers and reformers, among whom Calvin eventually became pre-eminent. Much later, when his fame was attached to the Reformed churches, their whole body of doctrine came to be called "Calvinism".

[edit] Spread

Although much of Calvin's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a correctly reformed church to many parts of Europe. Calvinism became the theological system of the majority in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany (especially those adjacent to the Netherlands) and was influential in France, Hungary, then-independent Transylvania, and Poland. Calvinism gained some popularity in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but was rejected in favor of Lutheranism after the synod of Uppsala in 1593.

Most settlers in the American Mid-Atlantic and New England were Calvinists, including the Puritans and French Huguenot and Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York). Dutch Calvinist settlers were also the first successful European colonizers of South Africa, beginning in the 17th century, who became known as Boers or Afrikaners.

Sierra Leone was largely colonized by Calvinist settlers from Nova Scotia, who were largely Black Loyalists, blacks who had fought for the British during the American War of Independence. John Marrant had organized a congregation there under the auspices of the Huntingdon Connection.

Some of the largest Calvinist communions were started by 19th and 20th century missionaries; especially large are those in Indonesia, Korea and Nigeria.

Traditional Anglicanism (as expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles) is Calvinistic in doctrine but eschews the Regulative Principle.

[edit] General description

Calvinism has been known at times for its simple, unadorned churches and lifestyles, as depicted in this painting by Emmanuel de Witte where the 17th century congregation stands to hear a sermon.

Given that its present form has multiple main tributaries, the name "Calvinism" is somewhat misleading if taken to imply that every major feature of the doctrine of the "Calvinist churches", or of all Calvinist movements, can be found in the writings of Calvin. Others are often credited with as much of a final formative influence on what is now called "Calvinism" as Calvin himself is – for example Calvin's successor Theodore Beza, the Dutch theologian Franciscus Gomarus, the founder of the Presbyterian church, John Knox, and any number of later figures such as the English Baptist John Bunyan and the American preacher Jonathan Edwards.

Despite the various contributing streams of thought, a distinctive issue in Calvinist theology that is often used to represent the whole is the system's particular soteriology (doctrine of salvation), which emphasizes that humans are incapable of adding anything to obtain salvation and that God alone is the initiator at every stage of salvation, including the formation of faith and every decision to follow Christ. This doctrine was definitively formulated and codified during the Synod of Dort (1618-1619), which rejected an alternative system known as Arminianism.

Calvinism is sometimes identified with "Augustinianism" because the central issues of Calvinistic soteriology were articulated by St. Augustine in his dispute with the British monk Pelagius. In contrast to the free-will position advocated by Charles Finney and other dissenters (often labeled Pelagians or Semipelagians), Calvinism places strong emphasis, not only on the abiding goodness of the original creation, but also on the total ruin of human accomplishments and the frustration of the whole creation caused by sin, and it therefore views salvation as a new work of creation by God rather than an achievement of those who are saved from sin and death.

More broadly, "Calvinism" is virtually synonymous with "Reformed Protestantism", encompassing the whole body of doctrine taught by Reformed churches. The Reformers did not dwell on predestination as if it were a central dogma, but advocated the preaching of "the whole counsel of the Word of God." In addition to maintaining a Calvinist soteriology, covenant theology is the architectural structure of the whole system incorporating all loci of doctrine. In piety and practice, a primary distinction is the regulative principle of worship, which rejects any form of worship not instituted for the church in the Bible and which sets Reformed theology apart from Lutheranism, which holds to the normative principle of worship.

[edit] Distinctives