It will be helpful to summarize the cardinal principles of Calvinism before examining each of them in turn and assessing the degree to which they have influenced the Christadelphian brotherhood.
- The starting point of all Calvinist dogma is that as human beings we are all hopelessly corrupted by the Fall, and inherit from Adam a genetically diseased nature which makes any goodness impossible of achievement unless God chooses to reveal His truth to us. We are incurable lepers. This is known as the concept of total depravity
- God has, before the creation of the world, selected a portion of fallen humanity to be saved. This election is irrespective of any foreseen merits or faith. It is only according to the good pleasure of His will. This is the principle of unconditional election.
- Predestination is an “eternal decree” of God, and is the basis of faith. Faith is assent to a body of theological propositions, especially the doctrine of predestination.
- Regeneration is an act of God’s grace. Faith is not meritorious, but is a divine gift imparted to the sinner. This is the principle of efficacious grace.
- Jesus on Calvary bore the full punishment due his elect, ensuring their final salvation. Those he died for can never fall away. Their salvation is absolutely assured. This is the principle of blessed assurance.
- Our mission is not to call others to the truth. God does that without our help. The commission to go into all the world and make disciples from among all nations was for the apostles alone. They finished their task in their day; we have no such duty today.
- Smallness of community itself is virtuous and also a proof of election.
- God has no interest in mankind in the aggregate, in the mass of heathen. Jesus did not die for the ungodly, that is for the non-elect. In fact, God is quite unconcerned about them. The non-elect are merely “the objects of God’s wrath.”
- By watching and judging the lives of the members, wise church elders can easily pick out those in whom grace is efficacious, and so be able to identify the elect. Of course, they usually include themselves.
- An upright and holy life is a sign of genuine election. The elect must therefore be concerned for, and directly involved in, other people’s morals. The elect are the salt of the earth and have a responsibility to protect society from its own folly.
- The primary task of the elect is to keep the church pure at all costs and make sure it is not contaminated by unsuitable people. This is the principle of first pure, then peaceable.
- The Lord’s supper is a special sacrament for the righteous elect, and for them only. Table fellowship is the way God’s holy people protect themselves from contamination by the unrighteous. Strict Calvinists believe that even the presence of the unbaptized at holy communion is defiling, even if only present as observers.
- There is nothing wrong in schism and division in the church: it is the way that the truth is preserved.
- Aliens, that is the non-elect, cannot offer acceptable worship. It is the exclusive privilege of the saints to praise in song and to offer Him acceptable prayer.
- The Pope is the Antichrist. All papists are infidels.
- If the elect wander off course, God chastises them. Trial and affliction are normally, if not always, punitive.
- Ordinary members of the church must obey the elders implicitly. To challenge or dispute with them in any way is immoral. This is the principle of exclusion for disorderly walk.
We must stress that this is not a caricature. The principles stated above are expressed either in the exact words and clichés of Calvinists themselves, or in a form that they would certainly approve of. Many of these principles have been asserted by Christadelphians, so it is vitally important that we carefully examine each principle by the measure of the “general tenor of Scripture” and eliminate those that have no place in our biblical faith. Let us begin with the theory of total depravity.
The principle of total depravity
The term “the Fall” originated with Calvinism; it does not occur in the Bible. Genesis, in describing the punishment meted out for disobedience upon the first human pair, simply uses the phrases “surely die,” “return to the ground,” and “return to dust.” Genesis also succinctly expresses the consequences:
“So the LORD God banished him [Adam] from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed in front of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of lift” (Gen. 3:23-24 NIV).
In chapter 6 we read what the situation was like many centuries later:
“The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the while. Now the earth was corrupt in God ‘s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways… but Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:5 NIV).
Man had corrupted his way, deliberately. Scripture says nothing about a human nature so depraved that no man can possibly do anything right, or that, unaided by direct divine intervention, any level of morality is impossible to achieve. The concept of “sinful human nature” is nowhere found in Scripture. And the principle of total depravity of man’s nature should be ruled out for us, since we insist that Jesus came “in the flesh,” that is of our nature (Rom. 8:3 homoioma), not just an outward resemblance to humans; therefore since Jesus “in the days of his flesh” was holy and sinless, the doctrine of the hopeless, inherent sinfulness of human nature can have no place in our thinking.
Calvin’s extreme views
Calvin thought very differently. He did not believe in a human Jesus at all. Not satisfied with the Scriptural truth that “by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” (Rom. 5:12) he went much further in his “systematic theology:”
“Let it stand as indubitable truth, which no engines can shake, that man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God, that he cannot conceive, desire or design anything but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure and iniquitous…if some men do occasionally make a show of goodness, [it is] ever interwoven with hypocrisy and deceit.”
James Strong expresses the same idea more simply, though less colorfully: man’s total depravity “is natural, in the sense of being inborn — it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital.” But this is Calvinist dogma, not the general tenor of Scripture. The reasons for the centrality of this dogma in Calvinist philosophy will be seen by and by.
The Calvinist theological scheme of the total depravity and incurable, inherent corruption of human nature after the “Fall” has no place at all for a Pharaoh or a Philistine king who respected the marriage relationship (Gen. 12:16-19; 26:10); for another Philistine king whom Abraham — quite wrongly, it turned out — assumed had no fear of God (Gen. 20:4); or for a Rahab who believed the power and integrity of Israel’s God before Israel arrived (Jdg. 2:9).
These examples ring true to history and experience: the gentle, peaceable, friendly, devout indigenous Arawak’s of Jamaica were a stark contrast to the vicious, blood thirsty “Christians” who invaded their island and massacred them all, the Catholic priest Bartolomeo de las Casas being an unwilling and vivid literary witness.
Total emphasis on one proof text
The Calvinist lays inordinate emphasis on one verse: Romans 7:18 NIV: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature (lit., in my flesh).” The general tenor of Scripture would strongly suggest that this is a personal spiritual autobiography, not systematic theology. The same is true of emotional outbursts such as “in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psa. 51:5). Account has to be taken of poetic exaggeration which is a classic feature of Scripture, including Jesus’ teaching, but which is foreign to Western rationality.
A reasonable reading of Scripture would lead us to the conclusion that as human beings we are cursed by mortality; that we are capable of goodness but fall far short of the glory of God and earn only death by our own efforts. It would convince us that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to conquer sin completely in our own human nature, and through laying down his life, save himself and us, tasting death for every man, thus opening a way to life eternal for those who have faith in him and seek for immortality.
Unseemly scrimmages
The unseemly scrimmages over total depravity, legal condemnation, defiled nature, clean and unclean flesh, and a host of other Calvinist concepts unknown to the Scriptures of truth devastated Christadelphian history for decades, and the debris still remains to clutter up our thinking and mar our fellowship. When a long, almost incomprehensible article by brother David Brown (of our hymn 49 fame) on Hebrews 2:16 reached the Detroit ecclesia (of the 1860’s), a brother wryly observed that his Calvinist term “the nature that sinned” was not Scriptural and only darkened counsel by words.” Around the same time, a brother wrote to Bro. John Thomas, demanding “categorical answers” to complex questions about theories concerning man’s defiled nature, Jesus’ nature and details of the responsibility of the elect and non-elect to judgment. We read thus:
“Can a man be justified who believes the things implied in these questions concerning the nature of Jesus?”
Dr. Thomas: “The Lord will settle this question at the judgment.”
“Would you have any fellowship with those who believe and teach these things?”
Dr Thomas: “My fellowship is with the apostles; they had many brethren who were bewitched and disgraced the truth.”
The issue is not dead by any means. A young Jamaican sister listened with incredulity to two Bible School teachers battling it out over Calvinist concepts that have no part in the Gospel of salvation. Said she: “How can two intelligent brethren make a simple gospel so complicated?” (Tidings ’96, p. 257).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One