Are you Reformed? (Part 2)

A Brief, Selective History of the Five Points of Calvinism, with respect to TULIP.

As I previously mentioned, in my limited experience the T.U.L.I.P. acronym has taken on a role of huge significance in identifying those who self-describe themselves as Reformed.  While it is something of an historical novelty, these New Calvinists have in mind not necessarily a confessional or ecclesiological definition of being Reformed, but merely a soteriological understanding.  To them, being a Calvinist is to embrace the 5 points of Calvinism, which they readily know by the TULIP acronym.

Historical awareness often has the effect of refining our theological idiosyncrasies, which is surely the case for Calvinists who are still in what I’ve heard affectionately referred to as the “cage stage” (that is the initial period of Calvinistic adherence in which this new zealous proponent is so obnoxious to everyone around him that he has to be locked up in a cage for aboredoMagut 5 years!).

One of the ways that a better knowledge of historical development curbs some of our misplaced enthusiasm is by debunking some misconceptions we had assumed.  I offer three correctives below to some common misconceptions I’ve run into among many in the New Calvinist movement.

1) Calvin Never Debated Arminius and He Did Not Author the Five Points of Calvinism.

 

This first misconception is not propagated in print as far as I know, but I have run into it more than once in more popular circles.  Unless Jacob Arminius was an extremely advanced pre-schooler, then he most likely did not directly enter into theological debate with John Calvin personally.  Calvin died in 1564, before Arminius had even had his fourth birthday.  Not only that, but neither Calvin, nor Arminius knew of the Five Points of Calvinism in any formal sense of the term.  Arminius died in 1609, and it was not until several months after his death that his followers drafted The Five Articles of Remonstrance in 1610, which marked the beginning of the Quinquarticular Controversy (i.e. “having to do with five points”) in the Dutch Reformed Church.  Continue at CredoMag

Are You Reformed (Part 1)