Chapter 3:
The Problem
with using “5 Points”
When Calvinism is mentioned by someone, immediately, one who is not grounded in an accurate understanding of what the reformers (Calvin, Augustine, Luther, Edwards, and others) actually taught conjures up thoughts of fatalism, of every step being forced on us by a malevolent monster in the sky. As Packer has said, the very word “Calvinism” seems odious to the mind of natural man. The other thing that one who is vaguely familiar with Calvinism thinks of is the classical “Five Points of Calvinism.” The five points of Calvinism actually spell out the easy to remember acrostic, TULIP. The five doctrines of the TULIP are:
T- Total Depravity
U- Unconditional Election
L- Limited Atonement
I- Irresistible Grace
P- Perseverance of the Saints
Throughout the course of this book, I will be covering each of these doctrines as well as the underlying scriptural and logical reasons for such views. In addition, I will be restating the reasonableness of these doctrines. I will, however, be referring to these doctrines by different names since I strongly believe these names (although they match the TULIP very nicely) are misleading and obscenely negative, casting not only a cruel shadow upon Reformed theology, but causing misinterpretation these doctrines in the mind of the reader.
Total Depravity- Radical Corruption; Moral Inability (The whole man is affected by sin. Sin is not just a cancer to be removed, but at the very center of man’s being.)
Unconditional Election- Sovereign Election (God is Sovereign in salvation)
Limited Atonement- Definite Atonement (Christ saves sinners!)
Irresistible Grace- Effectual Grace (Grace that Works!)
Perseverance of the Saints- Preservation of the Saints (“He that began a good work will carry it on to completion”)
J.I. Packer, one of my great theological heroes, once wrote a book entitled “A Quest for Godliness.” In this book, Packer[1] examines the Puritans, their ways of worship, government, and theology. One of his chapters is an introduction to John Owens’ The Death of Death in the Death of Christ. Packer begins the chapter by saying that Owens’ book is not simply a defense of Limited Atonement, but that it is actually a recovery of the true gospel. He then goes on to spend a brief amount of time making five observations of the problem with labeling Calvinism according to the “five points”. I will outline those points here because I have found them to be particularly informative and helpful in putting away my own personal prejudices which I once approached the doctrines of grace with.
1.
“Calvinism is something much broader than the ‘five points’ indicate.”
Calvinism is an entire world-view, encompassing not only the five points listed above, but stemming from the understanding that all the world and everything in it are under the unmatched, incomparable, glorious, upholding hand of God’s providence.
God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.[2]
Packer also desires to make it abundantly clear that “Calvinism is a unified philosophy of history which sees the whole diversity of processes and events that take place in God’s world as no more, and no less, than the outworking of his great preordained plan for his creatures and his church. The five points assert no more than that God is sovereign in saving the individual, but Calvinism, as such, is concerned with the much broader assertion that he is sovereign everywhere.”[3]
2.
“The five points present Calvinistic soteriology in a negative and
polemical form, whereas Calvinism in itself is essentially expository, pastoral
and constructive.”
The origin of the ‘five points’ is actually found in the Remonstrance when the Arminians rebelled against the classical doctrines of grace by formulating their own responses to what they called Calvinism’s ‘five points.’ The Synod of Dort easily organized these into the TULIP we have become all too familiar with. When one reads the ‘five points,’ it becomes immediately apparent that these five names for the doctrines of grace are written in a negative form, seeming to require the Calvinist to immediately go on the defensive explaining why he would believe such outrageous doctrines as a “Limited Atonement” (which makes it sound as though the sacrifice of Christ were worth nothing!). In all actuality, it is “Arminianism, which denies that election, redemption and calling are saving acts of God.” that is negative since it is a response to the Reformed view that “Christ is a redeemer who really does redeem.”[4] Packer wants to make it clear that it is Calvinism that refutes these negations “in order to assert the positive content of the gospel, for the positive purpose of strengthening faith and building up the church.”[5]
3. “The very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on the subject.”
There is immediate error in even stating the five points on their own since they are completely inseperable. Without ‘Total Depravity,’ ‘Irresistible Grace’ is not necessary. Each point rests upon the next. You cannot have one doctrine without the next. Calvinism is once more summed up in the simple statement that God saves sinners.
“There is one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the ‘five points’ are concerned to establish and Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present, and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen!”[6]
4. “The five point formula obscures the depth of the difference between Calvinistic and Arminian soteriology.”
The nature of the five points makes it appear that the only difference between the two theologies is limited to the five points. There are vast differences between the two theologies. Let us examine briefly, three aspects of theologies on which Arminians and Calvinists carry vastly different opinions on.
I. God’s act of election was defined by Arminians as a resolve to receive to sonship and glory a duly qualified class of people-believers in Christ. Calvinists, however, define election as a choice of particular undeserving people to be saved from sin and brought to glory, and to that end to be redeemed by the death of Christ and given faith by the Spirit’s effectual calling.
Arminian: “I owe my election to my faith.”
Calvinist: “I owe my faith to my election.”
II. Christ’s work of redemption was defined by Arminians as the removing of an obstacle (the unsatisfied claims of justice) which stood in the way of God’s offering pardon to sinners, as He desired to do on condition that they believe. “Christ’s death created an opportunity for the exercise of saving faith, but that is all it did.”[7] Calvinists, however, define redemption as “Christ’s substitutionary endurance of the penalty of sin in the place of certain specified sinners, through which God was reconciled to them, their liability to punishment was for ever destroyed, and a title to eternal life was secured for them.”[8]
Arminian: “I could not have gained my salvation without Calvary.”
Calvinist: “Christ gained my salvation for me at Calvary.”
III. The Spirit’s gift of internal grace was defined by Arminians as ‘moral suasion,’ the bare bestowal of an understanding of God’s truth. “This they granted-indeed, insisted- does not ensure that anyone will ever make the response of faith.”[9] Calvinists define this gift as not merely an enlightening, but also a regenerating work of God in men, “taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by his almighty power determining them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace.”[10] “Grace proves irresistible just because it destroys the disposition to resist.”[11]
Arminian: “I decided for Christ.”
Calvinist: Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night:
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off: my heart was free:
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.[12]
5. “Its very form (a series of denials of Arminian assertions) lends colour to the impression that Calvinism is a modification of Arminianism; that Arminianism has a certain primacy in order of nature and developed Calvinism is an offshoot of it.”
Even when this idea is intellectually refuted, Packer points out, there is still a strong suspicion that it is the Arminians that are unbiased, suspecting that they were the ones finding their view as a result of scriptural study in a ‘natural’ way, unpolluted by their own personal theological presuppositions. He also says that this is similar to a more man-centered gospel he has observed within the last 20 years which places the Arminians in the place of Calvinists where Calvinists used to be viewed as the evangelicals, now he says that he observes a shift towards a gospel that is about man, the feelings God can give him, the peace that he can receive and the fulfillment that comes with ‘accepting Jesus’. The emphasis of the gospel, Packer implores, needs to be God again, His holy character, his righteous judgment, and most importantly, the divine initiative of God’s sovereignty, which has been de-emphasized for its unpopularity with the human spirit, which longs for autonomy. There is a desire to please men and our own natures. Packer’s whole point in observing these things is that the Arminians are very popularly viewed as the reasonable theologians who just read scripture in its simplicity and lets it say what is says without sophistry or unhallowed logic.
Whatever may have been true of individual Calvinists, as a generalization about Calvinism, nothing could be further from the truth than this. Certainly Arminianism is ‘natural’ in one sense, in that it represents a characteristic perversion of biblical teaching by the fallen mind of man, who even in salvation cannot bear to renounce the delusion of being master of his fate and captain of his soul. This perversion appeared before in the Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism of the patristic period and the later scholasticism, and has recurred since the seventeenth century both in Roman theology and, among Protestants, in various types of rationalistic liberalism and modern evangelical teaching; and no doubt it will always be with us.
At this point in Packer’s highly opinionated and well-thought-out analysis of Arminian rationalism vs. Calvinistic rationalism, allow me to remind readers who may be highly offended and ready to put this down that this is a highly representative view of Arminianism from the eyes of a true Calvinist. It is easy to only see things from your own perspective but forget that others have their own eyes. Surely, it could be charged, this is what Packer is doing, but his purpose is not objectivity and kindness but a sharp analysis of Arminian thought and whether it is the ‘true interpretation’ of God’s sovereignty.
As long as the fallen human mind is what it is, the Arminian way of thinking will continue to be a natural type of mistake. But it is not natural in any other sense. In fact, it is Calvinism that understands the Scriptures in their natural, one would have thought inescapable, meaning; Calvinism that keeps to what they actually say; Calvinism that insists on taking seriously the biblical assertions that God saves, and that he saves those whom he has chosen to save, and that he saves them by grace without works, so that no man may boast, and that Christ is given to them as a perfect Saviour, and that their whole Salvation flows to them from the cross, and that the work of redeeming them was finished on the cross. It is Calvinism that gives due honor to the cross.[13]
Packer’s Conclusion
Now, the Calvinist contends that the Arminian idea of election, redemption and calling as acts of God which do not save cuts at the very heart of their biblical meaning; that to say in the Arminian sense that God elects believers, and Christ died for all men, and the Spirit quickens those who receive the word, is really to say that in the biblical sense God elects nobody, and Christ died for nobody, and the Spirit quickens nobody.[14]
It is really most misleading to call this soteriology ‘Calvinism’ at all, for it is not a peculiarity of John Calvin and the divines of Dort, but a part of the revealed truth of God and the catholic Christian faith. ‘Calvinism’ is one of the ‘odious names’ by which down the centuries prejudice has been raised against it. But the thing itself is just the biblical gospel.[15]
What Packer is attempting to do is two things: First, he is demonstrating that Calvinists do not believe their doctrines because it is just fun to speculate about wild theology, but that these doctrines have been found out of:
1. A deep reverence for the sovereignty and immutability of God Almighty and
2. A thorough study of scripture, for if scripture did not teach the doctrines of sovereign election, the Calvinist would be rebelling against the very revealed truth of God which he claims to know and love!
Secondly, Packer has through all of this pointed out
to the reader that if you limit Calvinism to 5 points, you:
1. You limit Calvinism’s beliefs which expand far beyond even election
2. You put forth a negative form of Calvinistic thought which would not accord with orthodox Calvinism
3. You obscure the fact that the points cannot be separated from one another without destroying the underlying idea that it is God alone who saves,
4. You limit the appearance of difference between Calvinism and Arminianism
5. You deceive your reader into thinking that Calvinism is nothing more than an alteration of Arminianism.
You will notice in the expositions proceeding into the book that although I may refer to the doctrine of Moral Inability, I will also refer to Effectual Grace even though Moral Inability does not immediately necessitate an exposition of the doctrine of Effectual Grace. This is because the ‘5 points’ are so closely linked that you cannot have one without the other. You will have to forgive me for that, for I can only explain and defend one doctrine at a time, due to the constricted to the limited formats of a book (booklet, series of essays, novelette, or whatever you would like to call it).
Here is the irony of this entire first chapter. I am still going to use the acrostic TULIP in my personal exposition of Calvinistic thought. Why? Mainly because TULIP is such a very handy way of remembering the doctrines of grace, and I believe the readers to be intelligent enough to understand the previous points which I so painstakingly stole from J.I. Packer.