History of Calvinism

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Welcome to the Rep Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rapoport. And on this edition, what we're going to be doing is my sermon that I gave at the
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Open Air Theology Conference on why Calvinism. My topic was a history of Calvinism.
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Whether you agree with Calvinism or not, we can still look at the history of it and give an honest evaluation of the history of Calvinism.
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That's what I attempted to do. Hopefully I did that well. So the audio quality may not be the best because it was in an auditorium where the folks from Open Air Theology didn't have complete control over the sound.
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But I do think that this is something that will be helpful. If you want to read the notes, my sermon notes are all in the link that's in the show notes on strivingforeturning .org
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under History of Calvinism. So, hope you enjoy this.
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And now on to the podcast. Welcome to the Rep Report with your host,
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Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the
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Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.
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I was glad when I looked at the lineup and realized, you guys have your outline? I looked at this and the first thing
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I looked for, I said, oh good, I'm before Claude Ramsey. I do not want to follow Claude Ramsey.
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If you have not heard him preach, get ready. It's a pretty good day.
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You know, I know that Brother Keith Fauci, he already told me he's going to be paying attention to my message only because I'm going to cover the
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Calvinism of Lutheran. So he wants to know what I've stole from him. But let's just start with a word of prayer.
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Heavenly Father, we come before You. And we are... The psalmist asks the question that we all ask.
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What is man? Lord, I probably speak for everyone. I feel inadequate. I present to them. For those who are coming from...
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I feel that we could speak. Lord, I ask that You would give a boldness to communicate Your Word, Your people, so that every one of us would be amazed what
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You have... Amen. Well, I have been tasked with the topic of the history of Calvinism.
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Let me start by saying a little bit of a story. I was doing a message addressing the issue of sinless perfectionism.
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And as I like to do, I don't want to misrepresent anyone's position. I reached out to a very well -known sinless perfectionist.
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And I had asked him if I would be able to run my notes by him so that I know that I'm not misrepresenting the position he holds.
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He ended up before agreeing to talk to me. We were texting back and forth.
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He went to our website. And he concluded from our website that I was a
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Calvinist and stated that I, as a Calvinist, would not call him a brother in Christ.
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I informed him I have never actually spoken to him before and I've never heard his testimony and don't actually know specifically what he believes to say whether he is or isn't a brother in Christ.
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And I also kind of informed him I don't know if he knows this, but I'm not the Holy Spirit and I don't actually know who is and isn't.
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I just have to look at people's testimony and time. Look for fruit. And so we started a dialogue.
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And that dialogue never got to the issue of sinless perfectionism because he was too hung up on attacking
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Calvinism. It was hard for him to discuss a topic he's an expert in where I'm contacting him to specifically discuss because he had a stumbling block called
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Calvinism. He couldn't discuss this topic. So in an attempt to move the conversation forward,
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I asked him why he thinks that I'm a Calvinist since I don't state that anywhere in our doctrinal statement and many know that I actually don't typically use that label because I don't know what you mean by a
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Calvinist. I may agree that I'm a Calvinist by your definition. I may not. Matt Slick, the first time he had me on his radio program, he asked me, he says,
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So are you a Calvinist? I said, Well, all I know is that many people have told me I'm a heretic because I'm a
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Calvinist. Many people have told me I'm a heretic because I'm not a Calvinist. The only thing everyone agrees on is
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I'm a heretic. You invited me to preach, brother. You may not want to amend that.
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So let me get back to our friend with sinless perfection a little bit later. The issue with Calvinism is if I get ten different people from ten different backgrounds and churches to discuss what
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Calvinism is, I will probably come up with twelve different definitions. So the first thing we need to discuss is what is
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Calvinism? It's a topic that is most difficult for many because they are too busy addressing something that Calvinism is not.
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I find that Calvinism is under attack most often based on something that is not the proper definition.
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So if we're going to discuss why Calvinism, the first thing we need to do in looking at a history of it is discuss what it is.
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It's far easier for people to attack a strawman argument. A strawman argument is where you give a different definition than the proper one because it's easy to knock over.
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And that's what we end up seeing in the online debates of Calvinism today.
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There's a very well -known evangelist who told me that I am not saved because I'm a
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Calvinist. Now, he defined me being a Calvinist as I preach on stage with other
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Calvinists. And I had to remind him, you have been on stage with men like Paul Washer.
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Every chapter of your book starts with a quote from Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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But he studied this topic for a whopping three months, only reading the works of Dave Hunt.
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And concluded he did not need to read anything from any Calvinist because he knew it was heresy. And he continues to write books, being a watchman against the heresy of Calvinism.
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And in a phone conversation I had with him, what I did was I decided to ask him just five questions.
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I didn't use the labels people usually use. I discovered to his demise that he's actually a
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Calvinist. If you want to see this in action, you can go to our
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YouTube channel, Striving for Mary's YouTube channel. You can watch a debate I had with R .A. Fuentes. The topic that he wanted to debate me, he's a man from the
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Philippines, was Calvinism is useless and dangerous. I was interested to see what he was going to say.
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It was a very interesting thing because as this man debates Calvinism, what
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I ended up arguing is that not only is Calvinism necessary, I actually argued it's necessary for the gospel, but, oh thanks,
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I had one hidden underneath, but I appreciate it. That's a master of ceremonies. What I ended up doing was discovering in this debate, in my first round of cross -examination, what
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I did was I just sat there and asked him five questions that I'm going to get to in a moment. I just asked him basically the definition of Calvinism at a very quick level, and do you know that this man who wants to debate
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Calvinism is a Calvinist. I knew that all the Calvinists that were watching in chat were getting it because as I'm getting to point number five, they're going, checkmate, boom, gotcha, and he's not getting it.
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Second round of cross -examination, I asked him, I said, can you define these five terms one after another?
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Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints.
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He managed to misdefine every one of those. Some of you already know what those are referenced to. That is the acronym
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TULIP. Some of you, maybe this is the first time that you're hearing that. Maybe you came here because you don't actually know what
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Calvinism is. Good, you're the people that should be here. If you're not a Calvinist here, first off,
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I reward you or commend you for coming into the lines then. No, to coming to where you're going to hear.
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Maybe it's going to challenge you. It's good that we're challenged, but in short, what I asked in the first round of cross -examination,
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I asked Mr. Fuentes, I said, do you believe that the curse of sin affected not only our thinking and emotion, but also our will?
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He said, yes. That's total depravity. I said, do you believe that God's choosing of us, that he saved us, had anything to do with us, or was it all from what
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God chose to do? And he said, well, the God. Hmm, okay, that's election, unconditional election.
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I said, okay, do you believe that, actually, I just asked, do you believe anyone's in hell? He said, yes. Okay, so he right there off the bat believes that the atonement's limited in some way.
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Now we can discuss how much, but the atonement of Christ's death is limited to that of believers.
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He agreed to that. I said, do you believe that the grace of God is completely a work of God and not of man's acceptance of it?
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He said, yes. Okay, that's irresistible grace. Do you believe that the nature of salvation is such that once God saves a person, they can't lose it?
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He said, yes. He's a Calvinist. But so many people don't know that because they don't look at the proper definitions.
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And so let us start with the common argument that we get accused of.
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As Calvinists, we worship who? Help me out. How many of you have ever worshipped Calvin as Calvinists?
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What is the origin of Calvinism? Well, remember that conversation I had with the Sinless Perfectionist?
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How did he conclude I was a Calvinist? Well, he told me that he saw this in my doctrinal statement.
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You ready for it? This is what proves I'm a Calvinist. He said that I cited Ephesians 4 .1 .4,
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which says, just as He chose us from before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love.
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Excuse me, wait. Just the citation of that verse which says we've been elected before the foundation of the world means
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I'm a Calvinist? He said, yes. I said, I hate to inform you, but do you know that Paul wrote that under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit? I guess Paul, and even more so, God is a Calvinist then. We never did get to the
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Sinless Perfection discussion. Why do we call this Calvinism then? If we can find it rooted in the Bible, why call it
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Calvin? Calvinism. Well, it's really due, and we'll get to this, to the great work that John Calvin did in systematizing a lot of doctrines that went before him.
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The doctrines were not original with him. However, actually, though he did a lot of the systematizing, it may surprise you that the five points of Calvin didn't come from Calvin.
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We will get to that. The five points of Calvin, though, Calvinism are founded and rooted deeply within Scripture.
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We already saw that election that we were elected before the foundation of the world. That's God's way of stating as clearly as possible that you and I had absolutely nothing to do with our salvation.
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It's not saying that God somehow is working in time. He's eternal. When you start trying to do as many who hate
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Calvinism do with this passage, they start to try to explain this somehow, and they make a mistake of changing the character of God.
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Because all of a sudden, they start saying God is a creature bound by time. God is saying this not because He is bound by time, but because we are bound by time.
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There is no clearer way to say that you had nothing to do with your salvation than the fact that God selected you not just before you were born, but before the world was in existence.
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Many want to deny the clear reading of that text. Now, the people who want to attack this fall into two camps.
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One camp is the corporal camp. They ignore the individual language that's spoken of, of election, and they say it's just a corporate body.
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So Israel was elect. The church was elect. This is a way to avoid the clear reading of Scripture.
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The other ditch that people get into, and I actually think the more serious one, is the one where they say, well, see, what
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God did was, because humans have this free will, God looked down the tunnels of time, He saw who was going to choose
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Him, and then based on their choice, He elected them. You have a different God than the
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God of the Bible, because you no longer have a God that's omniscient. You have a God that doesn't know everything, and He's bound by time.
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The God of the Bible knows everything. He doesn't learn anything. He doesn't need to see what choices you're going to make to know what choices you're going to make.
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He knows every choice you're going to make tomorrow. You don't. I don't. And He knows it absolutely.
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God of the Bible is also eternal. He's not bound by time. It's all the same now to Him, in a sense.
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But one of the biggest struggles for non -Calvinists, for people who are, let me rephrase and say,
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I don't call them Arminian, but I'm going to call them non -Calvinists or anti -Calvinists, because that's really what they are.
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They're against Calvinism, or what they think is Calvinism. And the reason is because experientially, they chose
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God. They just got to get past that to the theologically God chose them. I mean, they think about what they experienced.
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And I used to debate this with a friend of mine, and then I was preaching through Philippians 1, and I got to Philippians 1 .29.
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Now, I know some of you like to argue, you know, Ephesians 2 .8 and 9. Ditch that one and come to this, because there's no way around this one.
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For it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe, but also to suffer for His sake.
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So your suffering has been granted by God, just like your belief was. So Calvinism didn't start with Calvin.
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It originated in the Scriptures. However, the teachings of Calvinism we see throughout
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Scripture and throughout history. Let's start with the early church. And I know that being first,
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I get to steal all of the material from the other speakers. That's finally the advantage of going first.
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I don't have to steal from Braden like I did last year, even though he preached before me, and I just claimed I had it before him.
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But fortunately, I haven't seen anyone else's notes, so if I do steal anything, it was just good material, and we both thought the same thing.
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But as we look into the Calvinism of Augustine, or Augustine, however you want to pronounce it.
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I want to make sure James White doesn't correct me on it, so I'll use both. The one thing you don't want to be doing is being corrected by James White, right?
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So we look at the five points. Let's just look quickly. I'm going to try to look at this. We look at total depravity.
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In his seminal work of Confessions, Augustine reflected on the inherent fallen nature of humanity, asserting that all individuals had an inherited sinful disposition since Adam.
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He says this, "...for in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even the infant who has lived, but a day upon the earth."
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This echoes the idea of total depravity, that we are utterly depraved, meaning not just our thinking and our emotions, but our will.
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And he includes even an infant. When it comes to unconditional election, Augustine emphasizes God's sovereignty and the role of salvation in his work on the grace and free will.
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He contends that humans are assisted by God's grace, that they become willing if they're unwilling.
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And he's basing this on the selection that God has done. So we end up seeing that Augustine would have a view that we would hold to today of unconditional election.
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When it comes to limited atonement, Augustine did not specifically address the issue of limited atonement the way that Calvinists would understand it today.
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However, he did believe very clearly in his writings in the efficiency of Christ's atonement for the elect.
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And though he expresses it, and you can see this in his work on the predestination of the saint.
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We see the idea of irresistible grace from Augustine in his works where he talks about the fact that emphasizing
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God's grace works in individuals on the will and the act of faith.
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He reasons that the way we would understand the irresistibility, that he would refer to efficacy, but that it is for election that God does the first work.
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Clearly, I think the easiest one that is attacked the least is perseverance of the saints. But again, in predestination of the saints,
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Augustine asserts that those predestined by God's will preserved in righteousness and God's work to ensure them to the ultimate glorification.
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And so the issue is that he would hold to these things, but they weren't really defined. But why do we look to Augustine when it comes to an understanding of Calvinism?
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It is because of another man. Some of you know his name. You use it as a derogatory term maybe in your home.
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Pelagius. Augustine's teachings led to a conflict with a man by the name of Pelagian.
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Pelagius. And Pelagius was very upset because he heard Augustine like in prayer just asking
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God to help him with something he's incapable of doing. And Pelagian came to the conclusion that if God commanded us to do something like be holy, then we must have the ability to do that.
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So that hearing from Augustine just rubbed him. And he said, no, God must give us this ability.
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And therefore he felt that Augustus was wrong there. And so that created this conflict.
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So in case you're new to the teachings of Calvinism, maybe you don't know who these people are. So let me give you a quick, quick background because I don't know why
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I'm the one teaching the history lesson. Yeah, okay. Talk about being nervous. You got, you know, if I say something wrong, he's going to correct me.
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Augustine died in 430. He was a North African bishop profoundly affected
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Western thing. And if you're not familiar with Pelagian, he was a British monk who emphasized the free will and human responsibility.
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He rejected the notion of original sin and argued for the capacity of humans to choose good without an absolute necessity of divine grace.
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Now, this created three areas of contention. First, original sin, where Augustine asserted that the doctrine of original sin contended that all humans were inherently sinful and had a guilt and corrupt nature resulting from Adam and Eve's disobedience.
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Humanity, according to Augustine, is morally and spiritually damaged and individuals cannot choose good without God's grace.
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Where Pelagius argued that he denied the notion of original sin and argued that he believed humans were born morally neutral.
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Having an ability to choose good or evil without having any kind of predisposition to sin.
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He argued that Adam's sin only set a bad example and did not transmit guilt to subsequent generations.
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This actually is a view that's very common amongst all man -made religions. In my background Judaism, we would refer to this as a evil impulse.
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You don't have a sin nature, you just have an evil impulse. By the way, complete side note, but it's one of my favorite passages in the
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Talmud. In the Talmud talking about the evil impulse, it says, if you're going to give yourself over to the evil impulse, go to a different country where no one knows who you are so you don't bring...
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I wonder if the writers of the Talmud realize that God is omniscient and everywhere present. Just saying.
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The second area is grace and free will. Augustine clearly argued for divine grace for salvation.
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Where Pelagian felt that the human free will could choose God on their own. Pelagius downplayed the idea of an irresistible, what we would think of as an irresistible grace, and asserted that God gives commandments to humans because they have the ability to fulfill them.
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Therefore, he would argue that if God commands us to repent, we actually have naturally an ability to do just that without God doing any work.
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The third area of contention that they had was predestination. Where Augustine clearly held to a view of predestination, wrote a whole book on it, he argues that God sovereignly chose individuals for salvation and Pelagian rejected this concept and he believed that God's foreknowledge is based on foreseeing individual choices and actions that they would choose and then he decreed based upon that.
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Not based on some unilateral divine decree. That's not the God of the Bible. That led to several councils that we have the
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Council of Corinth back in 1416, 1418 where what ended up happening was is that they condemned
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Pelagianism as heresy. And so the legacy that we have from Augustine is the fact that his writings, this controversy, it was one of the most significant controversies to shape the trajectory of Western Christianity.
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The thought, and it continues to influence even today in the areas specifically with the nature of humanity, sin, grace.
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So what is the fruit of Pelagianism? Orthodox doctrine has always been born out of tend to want to just like avoid all heresy.
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Heresy does have its purpose in God's plan. Pelagian served a purpose. There was fruit of Pelagianism.
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The fruit of Pelagianism is that we have the works of Augustine that so defines the necessity to combat this heresy with clarity and truth that he basically gave a death knell to Pelagianism.
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When they had the councils, it ended this for some time.
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Pelagianism caused men to stand up and define the truth clearer. We're going to see that pattern throughout history.
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The result was that Pelagianism was pretty much dead. How do we know that? Because people came up with a way of trying to still hold to their
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Pelagianism but realizing there's no way they can so they came up with this thing called Semi -Pelagianism.
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Something kind of in between Augustus and Pelagian. Because they knew they couldn't say they're Pelagian anymore but they didn't want to hold to what
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Augustine believed. So what do you do? You come up with a middle ground. That's kind of like standing on a fence. Pick a side. And so Augustine provided a death blow to the heretical doctrines of Pelagianism.
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So let's talk about the Calvinism of Luther. But it is fitting with it. Now we will hear a further discussion on this after lunch.
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So you'll definitely want to make sure that you don't overpay attention. I know he's paying attention. But we cannot talk about the impact of Martin Luther without talking about one of the most important inventions.
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The printing press is something that allowed for widespread information at a rapid pace all over the world.
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It prevented and hindered the Roman Catholic Church's ability to censor the truth which they had a good handle on for years.
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You don't agree with them, they just kill you. That's a pretty good sentence. But the printing press allowed for theological discussions to be had with the common people, not just in the ivory towers.
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You see this most clearly with the 95 Theses which was one of the first things that was printed on the printing press.
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And it spread like wildfire which is what many people credit with the Reformation. And so because of the printing press, the works of Martin Luther started to spread far and wide.
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And when it comes to the teaching of Calvinism, we have to understand that Luther had a pivotal role.
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Because just like Augustine had a man, Pelagius, Martin Luther had someone,
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Erasmus. We have to understand the debate between Luther and Erasmus, especially with their books,
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The Bondage of the Will and The Freedom of the Will respectively. Now if you have read, how many folks here have read
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Bondage of the Will? How many people have read Freedom of the Will? Yeah, two hands are up. Okay, three, I'll put mine up.
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So many people say, Luther decimated Erasmus in Bondage of the Will. You cannot say that if you have not read
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Erasmus. You know why? Erasmus spends about the first 75 pages going, I don't know what the big deal is with this subject.
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All my friends want me to address this guy Luther and I don't see what the big deal is. You know who destroyed
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Erasmus? Erasmus. He basically just right from the get -go goes, I really don't know what to say about this.
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I don't see what the big deal is. And he served himself up on a platter for Luther to just tear down.
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So it was very easy for him. But there was fruit from Luther and Erasmus.
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There's a lot more that we could talk about and you're going to hear that after lunch. But the fruit of Erasmus was the clear biblical doctrines of predestination and the bondage of the human will.
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Luther's work was essential to understand. Had we not had
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Erasmus' weak arguments on the freedom of the will, we might never have had the clear and definitive teaching from Luther on the bondage of the will.
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This leads us to another formidable teaching that would influence following generations to those who would eventually call themselves
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Calvinists. You've got to remember, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Those who have gone before us, whether you have those who are taking,
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Luther is taking the works of Augustine, which is taking it from Paul, taking it from Scripture, and making the arguments and just having to clarify the arguments because the heretics are continuing in their false attacks of it.
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So as they continue with that, what happens? The truth has to be more clarified. And that's what Luther ends up doing.
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We stand on the shoulders of those who go before us. That is why we would say, reformed and keep reforming.
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We learn from those who came before us and take what they taught and refine it and improve it.
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So let us get to the main appetite of our discussion for this history lesson. And that is the
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Calvinism of John Calvin. John Calvin, who by the way died in 1564, that's going to be important, but he died in 1564, is considered to be one of the most important theologians in church history.
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He was a prominent French theologian of the second generation of reformers. We wouldn't have the teachings of Luther without Hus.
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Well, where did we get Hus from? Well, Hus was paid to translate. He was translating another man,
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John Wycliffe. You can't, like the mistake of history is you can't just take history and say, let me take this one sliver.
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History doesn't work this way. It works as it should because all of our doctrine is built in history. I remember
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I had a seminary professor, I asked him to preach at a conference that I was organizing, and he's great in theology, great in history.
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I said, can you do a history of theology? Because he always, in his history classes, theology classes, he always showed how they intertwine.
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It actually intrigued him so much he actually wrote an entire class that was a full 14 -week class on that, which
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I took. But you can't divide your theology from understanding how it developed in history.
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Don't think because the early church fathers said something that they have it right. Let me quote Matt Slick. I know he couldn't make it here because of the situation with his wife, but he'll always say, my church father can beat up your church father.
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The church fathers can get used for everything. I'll get myself in trouble. I'm sure it's going to come up in the Q &A anyway.
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I'm a premillennialist, and I can show that I can root it in Augustine.
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And millennials are going, no, we have Augustine. You see, Augustine wasn't so clear. He believed in a literal 1 ,000 years.
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He just thought he was in it. So we both can claim it. Because he didn't have to clarify those doctrines yet.
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They came over time. What was the first doctrine historically had to be clarified? Deity of Christ. That's important.
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In times, that could wait down the road. That didn't need to be clarified. The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology states this, quote,
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Although Calvin was the systematizer of Reformed theology, since his day, those who have accepted his structure of theology have continued to develop many of his ideas.
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During his own lifetime, he himself developed his thought in the successive editions of the
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Institutes of Christian Religion. With the writing on various Christian confessions, such as the
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Heidelberg Catechism, the canons of the Senate of Dort, the Westminster Confession, and catechisms, additions to further developments in theology thought have appeared.
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Various theologians during the successive years have also elaborated various points which
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Calvin had raised but had not fully examined, end quote. Calvin died before Calvinism was born.
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How could we worship Calvin? Is it original with him? Actually, no. Depending how you define
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Calvinism. If you define it by its teachings, it's original with scripture. If you define it by the acronym
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TULIP, it didn't exist yet. By the way, it wouldn't have existed because Calvin wouldn't have spoken. People forget that.
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TULIP is an English acronym. Just like we had
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Augustine and Pelagius, we had Luther and Erasmus, many people argue we had
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Calvin and Arminius. That's actually not the case. There's really more Calvin's followers than Arminius.
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We cannot say Calvin versus Arminian because at the time of Calvin's death,
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Arminius was only four years old. I don't think Arminius was that good of a theologian that at four years old he was giving it to Calvin.
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No. Let's look at the Calvinism of Jacob Arminius.
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Yes, I said that right. The Calvinism of Jacob Arminius. The other speaker saw my outline and they were like, oh,
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I want to see what he's going to say on this. Let me start with giving you a little background on Jacob Arminius. Jacob Arminius studied at the
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University of Geneva where he studied under Calvin's successor, Theodore Biza.
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He served as a pastor in Amsterdam until 1603 and was a professor of theology at the same school in Geneva where he remained until his death.
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He had an issue that he saw that he saw Biza teaching, which some would argue they call it high
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Calvinism. I think we have a different definition of that today. He argued that he had issues with what
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Biza and others were teaching. We have to remember that the idea of what we define as Calvinism hadn't been fully developed yet.
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What we end up seeing, and much of this I'm going to give you that sparked me on this thought is a book from R .C.
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Sproul, Willing to Believe. In there, Sproul makes the case and others that it may well be the case that Jacob Arminius thought in his mind in the early years that he is saving
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Calvin's teachings from his followers. In other words, Arminius may have thought he was saving
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Calvinism from the Calvinists. After the life of John Calvin, his followers continued to expand on his teachings and his work and the teachings that we know of as Calvinism.
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Sproul says this, James Arminius was emphatic in his rejection of Pelagianism, particularly with respect to the fall of Adam.
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The fall leaves man in a ruined state under the dominion of sin.
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Arminius declares, in this state, the free will of man towards the true
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God is not only wounded, maimed, infirmed, bent, and weakened, but it is also imprisoned, destroyed, and lost.
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And its powers are not only deliberated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such are excited by divine grace.
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Sproul further goes on to say this, As a Calvinist, I frequently hear criticisms of Calvinistic thought that I would heartily agree with if they indeed represented
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Calvinism. So I am sure that the disciples of Arminius suffered the same fate and became equally frustrated.
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Arminius himself came from a Calvinistic framework and embraced many tenets of historic
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Calvinism. He frequently complained with a mild spirit of manifold ways in which he was misrepresented.
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He loved the works of Augustine and in many respects, earnestly sought to champion
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Augustine's cause." So Sproul is arguing that it seems that Arminius is trying to restore
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Calvin's teachings. He ends up saying this. Sproul says this. He gives some citations of Arminius' works.
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These citations demonstrate how seriously he regards the depth of the fall.
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He is not satisfied to declare that man's will merely wounded or weakened.
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He insisted that imprisoned, destroyed, and lost, the language of Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin is scarcely stronger than that of Arminius."
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Arminius not only affirmed the bondage of the will, but insisted that man is spiritually dead in his sin in a state that is incapable of choosing
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God in a natural state. That sounds very Calvinistic of him. However, what ends up happening and Sproul addresses this is that over the years, had
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Arminius died at a young age, we probably would have referred to him as a Calvinist. But you know, nobody wakes up and goes, you know,
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I think today I'm going to become a false teacher. That's not how false teachers happen. It usually happens because they get something that either they quote -unquote discover or some teaching that rubs them the wrong way and they hyper -focus on that.
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They start seeing it everywhere. They start to look for it and find ways that Scripture will support what they're teaching.
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And they start twisting Scripture, not even recognizing it. It happens slowly. What you end up having is, as I think would happen with J .P.
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Arminius, as he's trying to rebut the followers of Calvin, he's having to try to distinguish himself and distinguish his teaching, but that leads him in a different way, going down a different path.
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And very slowly, as you have a seed planted in the ground and it starts to root and then bloom, we end up getting false teachers that bloom into full.
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As the flower blooms, they come into full heresy. That's what happened with J .P. Arminius.
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As he just went down this path, he ends up getting into a case where he may have wanted to initially save Calvinism from these dreaded followers of Calvin, but he ends up taking it a different path.
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And his followers, as we look at the fruit of Arminianism, there was fruit of Arminianism, and as we've seen throughout this talk, that history is replete with the person who's going to give the heresy and then it needs to be clarified.
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Where Calvin had his followers and what Arminius really didn't like is teachings such as double predestination and things like this, that's what started him on a path going against Biza, well then
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Arminius' followers take it too far as well. They start going on a different route. And though many people call this the
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Calvinism -Arminianism debate, both men were dead by the time of the beginning of what we would start to refer to today as Calvinism, the five points.
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Now, toward the end of Arminius' life, he's struggling, they're struggling with his teachings, they start to say we need to have a synod to clarify these things, it keeps getting pushed off, and then what ends up happening is in 1609,
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Arminius dies, never having the synod. And many thought and hoped that his later teachings would die with him.
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Unfortunately, that was not the case. His followers started to develop their thinking even more, and they came up with five points.
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They referred to themselves as remonstrants, and they came up with five articles of the amonstrants.
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They were, a conditional election, that is that election of the retrobate are founded on foreseen faith or unbelief, all men have fallen in Adam, election is based on God's foreknowledge of personal faith, the non -elect are left to condemnation of their own sins.
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Second point was unlimited atonement, that Christ's death is for all, but only believers enjoy this forgiveness.
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In Christ's pineal satisfaction, God desires the salvation of every person on the condition of personal faith and repentance.
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They did hold to a total depravity that all humanity is the offspring of Adam and that every child is born in total depravity.
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However, many of the anti -Calvinists today would end up denying this point today.
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They would say that the will was not affected. That's actually more based in Pelagian. They had a resistible grace number four.
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Grace is beginning, continuing, and end of all good, but is not irresistible.
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It can be and has been resisted many times. And then the possibility of apostasy, that grace can be preserved and faithful throughout every temptation, but Scripture does clearly teach that people may fall from grace and be lost.
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So those are the five points. Now those five points, if you heard me earlier give the five points of the acronym
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TULIP, they sound pretty familiar. And so there ended up being a, because of these five points, these five articles, they had a senate known as the
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Senate of Dort. Now the Senate of Dort is nine, ten years after Arminius' death. And so what you end up seeing at this is that by the way, some
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Calvinists like to say that they're so Calvinist that if there was a six point, they would be a six point Calvinist. Well, you may be in good company or you may just be shooting it too short because actually, in the response to the remonstrance was the counter -remonstrance and they had eight points.
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So the first real Calvinists were eight point Calvinists. So you're missing three. Which three? Well, I hate to disappoint you
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Baptists. I don't know where Brother Greg is, but you know, there's one of these points. But the counter -remonstrance had maintained one.
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All human beings were totally depraved and incapable of saving themselves. Two. God predestines to both salvation and retribution.
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Three. Believers' children are to be considered as elect and even if they die in infancy to be saved.
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Number four. Election is not based on foreseen faith or deeds but solely on God's favor.
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Number five. Christ's atonement is sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect.
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Number six. Oh, now he walks in. I'll give number four again. Sorry, number three.
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Believers' children are to be considered elect and even if they die in infancy to be considered saved.
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One time I give a shout out to you. Number seven. That the elect will preserve because God preserves them.
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Or persevere because God preserves them. Number eight. These truths do not breed carelessness but virtue.
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So they ended up taking that and through the synod door came up with the five points that we know of as Calvinism today from the tulip.
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So what was the fruit of Arminianism? It really was tulip. The easy way to define what
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Calvinism that we'd hold to as Calvinism today. Now I don't have time. Let me just briefly mention
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I have notes and I can provide all the notes if anyone wants but we look at one person in history that really shaped what we think of as Calvinism today.
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And you say, wait a minute. It's not Calvin and his followers. Well, it's a follower much later, John Owen. Maybe you haven't read the works of John Owen.
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If you haven't read John Owen, you should. But his work on the death of death and the death of Christ which was published in 1647 was an essential understanding to the view that many hold to.
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He does a masterful job of providing, going through the scriptures and logically to give an understanding of a limited atonement that many hold to today.
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And really his work on the death of death and death of Christ is what many would turn to. But let me wrap up the time in looking at modern day
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Calvinism. Because history doesn't end with Calvin. It continued going. And we still have people today that we have to battle that give us the wrong views.
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And there's many wrong views of Calvinism today. And many of these wrong views of Calvinism today that were buds a century ago have flowered into what we hold to today.
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And much of it that they define is that of determinism. You have no choice. I remember my bride, her
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Sunday school teacher. And this is how you get into falling into falsehood. For folks that don't know, my bride is from Hong Kong.
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So she was in a Chinese church. Chinese churches are not known for their theology. And so they would have female pastors.
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If you think female pastors are biblical, come talk to me afterwards. Because if you have a female pastor, I have news for you.
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She's not a pastor and that's not a church. Okay? But he ended up going down a road because he started to go against female pastors which is biblical.
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But he went so far into teachings that taught determinism. And I remember asking him. His name was Andrew. I said,
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Andrew, so let me ask you a question. If I just pull back and cold cock you, did I do that? He goes, oh no. God moves all.
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But see, here's the problem. There are few that believe that. But those that hate Calvinism think that's what all
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Calvinists believe. I grabbed a random, and literally I decided I was going to grab the first anti -Calvinistic post that I saw on Facebook for this message.
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And so I grabbed one. Thanks to a guy named Jeff Curious. Don't know who he is. But I mean, I could choose any day and get the same thing every single day.
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But this is what he said. Quote, Calvinists are not responsible for their own actions. God is. So it is no wonder that many reject the
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God of Calvinism. If God is responsible for what they do, then God is blamed for much evil that He does not do, unquote.
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That is what we see as people defining Calvinism today. Determinism. They end up thinking that everything is just, we as Calvinists just say that God forces us to do everything and we have no choice in the matter.
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You know, I don't know, other than that Sunday school teacher and my wife, I have not met another person that claims to be a
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Calvinist that argues for determinism. That doesn't argue that humans do choose. Not in salvation.
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You're not saving yourself through your choice. But the reality is that you end up seeing that this is what they define.
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You have another extreme that you see is this high Calvinism. They'll argue that the other extreme is where people will say that you have to actually believe in Tulip to be saved.
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I've only met one person that argued that. But they will, but I've met thousands of people that would hold to a biblical
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Calvinist. I've met two on these extremes. And yet those who want to argue against Calvinism say, oh, all of you are determinists, or all of you believe that I have to believe
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Calvinism to be saved. My debate with R .A. Fuentes, that's what he argued. He argued that I believed that he had to be a
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Calvinist to be saved. I said, no, you have to believe in the teachings of Calvin because that's the gospel.
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That God saves you. If you don't believe God saves you, if you think you save yourself, that's not biblical.
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So yes, the teachings of Calvin, not Calvinism, but the teachings we find in Scripture.
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And so if you believe you have to believe in Tulip to be saved, you're wrong. But the thing is that this is what they make everybody.
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They claim everyone that's a Calvinist believes one of those two things. These attackers claim their arguments are biblical and strong.
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I mean, I deal with this every day. Since in preparation for this message, and maybe that's why I'm seeing more
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Calvinistic things on my Facebook, I keep challenging people because I'm going to deal with why Calvinism.
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I'm like, okay, let me start getting some of these antis to start giving me their best arguments. And I would challenge them.
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Would you come on Thursday night on my Apologetics Live show so we could discuss this, so I could learn your great arguments against Calvinism.
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I've only been doing it for six months. All they want to do is argue in their echo chamber where no one disagrees with them.
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And everyone can have the same false view. And I watch this over and over again. Watching people going, you're lying about what
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Calvinism is. You're not defining Calvinism right. You've got a straw man argument. And you sit there and say, why won't they come and discuss it?
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Probably because they know that they have a bad argument. And yet they will pridefully attack people.
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Some people create whole ministries attacking Calvinism, and they don't even know what Calvinism is.
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But I used to grow up Calvinist. You growing up anything. You tell me you grew up dispensational. You grew up Calvinist.
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I grew up Jewish. Let me tell you something. Growing up Jewish did not give me an understanding of what
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Judaism is. Studying the Talmud did. Because that's what modern Judaism is based on. Okay? It's not your upbringing that's going to give that to you.
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It's what you studied. Did you actually understand? And so what we see is all these people that are attacking this straw man of Calvinism because it's easy to knock over.
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And they say that they have these great arguments. And they'll say, but that's a logical conclusion.
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But if no Calvinist believes that, then it's not a logical conclusion. It's a straw man. These straw man attacks against Calvinism have led many to a logical conclusion that free will is the most important aspect even over God's sovereignty.
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This has led to an anti -biblical view that challenges the very nature of God called open theism.
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And open theism I think is the natural and logical outworking of raising human free will and suppressing
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God's sovereignty in salvation. Because God has to look who is going to be saved when
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He doesn't really know until you choose. So then they have a God that doesn't know everything. And they've gone to the extreme to start saying, well, no,
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He's just a really good guesser. This heresy is the result of trying to defend
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God's submission to human free will, but denies the God of the Bible. And the fertilizer of open theism flowers into heresy today.
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Some may call their anti -Calvinist views Soteriology 101, but misses the basics of the nature of God and salvation.
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And while some are still stuck in Soteriology 101, the rest of us have moved on to Soteriology 201, 301, 401, and 501.
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Let me conclude with this. Brother Anthony, where are you at with that shirt? If you wouldn't mind standing up.
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This shirt was great. His shirt says, Calvinism is what happens when Arminians read the
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Bible. That's a great shirt. Believing in Arminianism makes as much sense as believing in Bigfoot.
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Let's pray. Lord, we... ...
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Lord, we are grateful. We're grateful that humor is a good metaphor. We're grateful that we can, as men of God, stand up here and preach, and do it in a way with such love for one another, even though we are not all in agreement.
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We're grateful that we could gather here at a conference like this and discuss something on Calvinism. And maybe there are some that are not
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Calvinists here. And they're going to hear things that are going to rub them the wrong way. But Lord, may it be that we will accurately communicate what
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Your Word says throughout this conference. There will be good, deep, rich discussion, even with love, with charity.
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So that in everything that happens in this week, with this conference, You would be glorified.
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That we would exalt You on high. And that we'd edify and equip one another. We ask, Lord, that we would learn that we should be careful to rightly not only divide
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Your Word, but also write... Real quick, before Jeff comes up, I just want to give you guys things that are on the table. I have two books out there that were mentioned.
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What Do They Believe? What Do We Believe? This is on World Religions. Systematic Theology of World Religions. This is a Systematic Theology of Christianity.
47:31
Not too scary. It's not like most... The real thing about this is What Do They Believe? is going to tell you from their sources what they believe.
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What Do We Believe? There's a chapter in there on textual criticism that is meant for a lay level. So that everyone can understand the number one thing that is really attacking your doing of evangelism.
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We have a book called From Death to Life. This is by Alan Nelson. An excellent book.
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Especially if there's anybody here who is not a Calvinist. Like you're legitimately not a
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Calvinist. Don't just say this because you want a free book. Come up to me and I will give you a copy for free.
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If you are a Calvinist, then please pay for it and then you can pass it on. No, because we had to pay for it. But this is one of the best works
48:09
I've seen in describing what happens in regeneration. And then lastly, if you guys haven't figured out that America is against Christians, maybe in a hole somewhere, but what we've done at Striving Fraternity is we're taking a bunch of our, we have our podcasts and I can talk to you about all my podcasts.
48:26
If any of you are podcast listeners, take your phone out right now. Go search for Raph Report. That's Raph with two Ps. That's one to look up.
48:32
Apologetics Live is the second to look up. And the third would be Christian Podcast Community. But I warn you, Christian Podcast Community, we produce about 40 hours of content a week and it's all vetted.
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50 podcasts. But we took, I have classes that I do and we put them on flash drives so that when the oligarchs decide to turn off our website, you can still have some good content to study with your computer as long as...
48:54
This podcast is part of the Striving Fraternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingfraternity .org.
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