Home > Calvinism
In an unadorned church, the 17th century congregation stands to hear the sermon. Painting by Emmanuel de Witte Calvinism is a Protestant Christian doctrine named after John Calvin.Calvin had international influence on the development of the doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, beginning 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, which underwent a number of revisions in his lifetime, plus his polemical and pastoral works and a massive collection of commentaries on the Bible are the source of Calvin's ongoing personal influence on Protestantism.
Calvinism marks the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form following Luther's excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. In this sense, Calvinism was originally a Lutheran movement. Calvin himself signed the Lutheran Augsburg confession in 1540. On the other hand, Calvin's influence first began to be felt in the Swiss Reformation, which was not Lutheran but rather, followed Huldrych Zwingli. It became evident that doctrine in the Reformed churchesThe Reformed churches are a group of Protestant denominations historically related by a similar Zwinglian or Calvinist system of doctrine but organizationally independent. Each of the nations in which the Reformed movement was established had originally i was developing in a direction independent of Luther's, under the influence of numerous writers and reformers, among whom John Calvin was pre-eminent, and thus this form of doctrine came to be called Calvinism.
Given that it has multiple founders, 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. The name applies generally to the Protestant doctrines that were held in common among the non-Lutheran national churches of Protestant countries and various minority Protestant reform movements, known as the Reformed churchesThe Reformed churches are a group of Protestant denominations historically related by a similar Zwinglian or Calvinist system of doctrine but organizationally independent. Each of the nations in which the Reformed movement was established had originally i, which formed outside of the Catholic Church in the latter two thirds of the 16th century (and in England in the 17th century).
1 Calvinism - Life is religion
The theological system and practical theories of church, family, and political life, all ambiguously called "Calvinism", are the outgrowth of a fundamental religious consciousness centered upon "the sovereignty of God". The doctrine of God is, in principle, given a pre-eminent place in every category of theology, including the Calvinist understanding of how a person ought to live.
Calvinism presupposes that the goodness and power of God have a free, unlimited range of activity -- and, it works out as a conviction that God is at work in all realms of existence, including the spiritual, physical, intellectual realms, whether secular or sacred, public or private, in earth or in heaven. According to this viewpoint, the entire course of events is the outworking of the plan of God, who is the creator, preserver, and governor of all things without any exceptions, and whose will is consequently the ultimate cause of everything. This attitude of absolute dependence on God is not identified with temporary acts of piety, for example, such as prayer; rather, it is a sustained and all-encompassing pattern of life that in principle applies to digging ditches as well as taking communion. For the Calvinist Christian, all of life is the Christian religion.
2 Popular summations of Calvinist theology
Calvinim is often identified in the popular mind, with the "five points of the doctrines of grace", remembered by the English acronym: TULIP.
2.1 Total DepravityCalvinism Theological terms Total depravity is a theological term primarily associated with Calvinism, which interprets the Bible to teach that, as a consequence of the Fall of man, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin. In ot
- People in their natural, unregenerate state do not have the ability to turn to God. Rather it is the grace and will of God through the Spirit that causes men who are dead in sin to be reborn through the Word.
- Romans 3:10-11 "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God."
- John 6:44 "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day."
- 1 Corinthians 2:14 "But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them."
