WHAT IS CALVINISM
By B.B. Warfield
It is very odd how difficult it seems for some persons to
understand just what Calvinism is. And yet the matter itself presents no
difficulty whatever. It is capable of being put into a single sentence;
and that, one level to every religious man's comprehension. For Calvinism
is just religion in its purity. We have only, therefore, to conceive of
religion in its purity, and that is Calvinism.
In what attitude of mind and heart does religion come most
fully to its rights? Is it not in the attitude of prayer? When we kneel
before God, not with the body merely, but with the mind and heart, we have
assumed the attitude which above all others deserves the name of religious.
And this religious attitude by way of eminence is obviously just the attitude
of utter dependence and humble trust. He who comes to God in prayer, comes
not in a spirit of self-assertion, but in a spirit of trustful dependence.
No one ever addressed God in prayer thus: "O God, thou knowest that I am
the architect of my own fortunes and the determiner of my own destiny.
Thou mayest indeed do something to help me in the securing of my purposes
after I have determined upon them. But my heart is my own, and thou canst
not intrude into it; my will is my own, and thou canst not bend it. When
I wish thy aid, I will call on thee for it. Meanwhile, thou must await
my pleasure." Men may reason somewhat like this; but that is not the way
they pray. There did, indeed, once two men go up into the temple to pray.
And one stood and prayed thus to himself (can it be that this "to himself"
has a deeper significance than appears on the surface?), "God, I thank
thee that I am not as the rest of men." While the other smote his breast,
and said, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Even the former acknowledged
a certain dependence on God; for he thanked God for his virtues. But we
are not left in doubt in which one the religious mood was most purely exhibited.
There is One who has told us that with clearness and emphasis.
All men assume the religious attitude, then, when they pray.
But many men box up, as it were, this attitude in their prayer, and shutting
it off from their lives with the Amen, rise from their knees to assume
a totally different attitude, if not of heart, then at least of mind. They
pray as if they were dependent on God's mercy alone; they reason -- perhaps
they even live -- as if God, in some of his activities at least, were dependent
on them. The Calvinist is the man who is determined to preserve the attitude
he takes in prayer in all his thinking, in all his feeling, in all his
doing. That is to say, he is the man who is determined that religion in
its purity shall come to its full rights in his thinking, and feeling,
and living. This is the ground of his special mode of thought, by reason
of which he is called a Calvinist; and as well of his special mode of acting
in the world, by reason of which he has become the greatest regenerating
force in the world. Other men are Calvinists on their knees; the Calvinist
is the man who is determined that his intellect, and heart, and will shall
remain on their knees continually, and only from this attitude think, and
feel, and act. Calvinism is, therefore, that type of thought in which there
comes to its rights the truly religious attitude of utter dependence on
God and humble trust in his mercy alone for salvation.
There are at bottom but two types of religious thought in
the world -- if we may improperly use the term "religious" for both of
them. There is the religion of faith; there is the "religion" of works.
Calvinism is the pure embodiment of the former of these; what is known
in Church History as Pelagianism is the pure embodiment of the latter of
them. All other forms of "religious" teaching which have been known in
Christendom are but unstable attempts at compromise between the two. At
the opening of the fifth century, the two fundamental types came into direct
conflict in remarkably pure form as embodied in the two persons of Augustine
and Pelagius. Both were expending themselves in seeking to better the lives
of men. But Pelagius in his exhortations threw men back on themselves;
they were able, he declared, to do all that God demanded of them -- otherwise
God would not have demanded it. Augustine on the contrary pointed them
in their weakness to God; "He himself," he said, in his pregnant speech,
"He himself is our power." The one is the "religion" of proud self-dependence;
the other is the religion of dependence on God. The one is the "religion"
of works; the other is the religion of faith. The one is not "religion"
at all -- it is mere moralism; the other is all that is in the world that
deserves to be called religion. Just in proportion as this attitude of
faith is present in our thought, feeling, life, are we religious. When
it becomes regnant in our thought, feeling, life, then are we truly religious.
Calvinism is that type of thinking in which it has become regnant.
"There is a state of mind," says Professor William James
in his lectures on "The Varieties of Religious Experience," "known to religious
men, but to no others, in which the will to assert ourselves and hold our
own has been displaced by a willingness to close our mouths and be as nothing
in the floods and waterspouts of God." He is describing what he looks upon
as the truly religious mood as over against what he calls "mere moralism."
"The moralist," he tells us, "must hold his breath and keep his muscles
tense"; and things go well with him only when he can do so. The religious
man, on the contrary, finds his consolation in his very powerlessness;
his trust is not in himself, but in his God; and "the hour of his moral
death turns into his spiritual birthday." The psychological analyst has
caught the exact distinction between moralism and religion. It is the distinction
between trust in ourselves and trust in God. And when trust in ourselves
is driven entirely out, and trust in God comes in, in its purity, we have
Calvinism. Under the name of religion at its height, what Professor James
has really described is therefore just Calvinism.
We may take Professor James' testimony, therefore, as
testimony that religion at its height is just Calvinism. There are many
forms of religious teaching in the world which are not Calvinism. Because,
teaching even in religion often (ordinarily even) offers us only "broken
lights." There is no true religion in the world, however, which is not
Calvinistic Calvinistic in its essence, Calvinistic in its implications.
When these implications are soundly drawn out and stated, and the essence
thus comes to its rights, we obtain just Calvinism. In proportion as we
are religious, in that proportion, then, are we Calvinistic; and when religion
comes fully to its rights in our thinking, and feeling, and doing, then
shall we be truly Calvinistic. This is why those who have caught a glimpse
of these things, love with passion what men call "Calvinism," sometimes
with an air of contempt; and why they cling to it with enthusiasm. It is
not merely the hope of true religion in the world: it is true religion
in the world -- as far as true religion is in the world at all.
Originally printed in The Presbyterian, 1904,
pp. 6-7
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