The Widespread Influence of Calvinism – Part one

Calvinism is a system of theology. It is also a religious outlook. It was developed in the 16th century by John Calvin and other Swiss and British church leaders as a reaction to Roman Catholicism. It was intended to effect a more thorough and more Bible-based “reformation” of Christianity than the Protestantism of the Lutherans. In this it was highly successful.

The enormous impact of Calvinism has been masked by the fact that it is a religious philosophy or system, not a denomination. Calvinism has been a subtle theological leaven infiltrating and working within, literally, hundreds of different religious bodies, including the Christadelphians.

Historically, Calvinism quickly spread from Calvin’s home city of Geneva to form the doctrinal and philosophical base of the Protestant Reformed churches of Europe, the Puritans, the Church of Scotland, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Huguenots, and the Reformed churches of Eastern Europe. Between the early 17th and mid-19th centuries it had significantly influenced the Baptists and generated hundreds of smaller churches, including most of those in the so-called Bible Belt of the U.S.A. In the present century, Calvinism has been a potent religious force, branding with its searing mark many Pentecostal sects and “Brethren” churches, and influencing biblical theology worldwide in both healthy and unhealthy ways. In Korea, almost all churches are strongly Calvinist. Apart from the Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and the cults, Calvinism, rather than the teaching of Jesus Christ, is the underpinning philosophy of most Christian denominations in the world.

We are convinced that Jesus Christ does not recognize Calvinism as Chris­tian truth, but rather as a misguided parody of the truth, a dangerously distorted mirror image of his teaching.

Calvinism has “an appearance of wisdom” with its “false humility.”¹  But it has “lost connection with the Head,” Jesus Christ.²In a figure, it takes the form of a spiritual virus to which sincere religious people are particularly vulnerable. The scriptures warn us repeatedly that, untreated, it is a fatal disease.

How Calvinism came to influence the Christadelphians

The Christadelphian brotherhood was nurtured as an infant in a Calvinist home. Brother John Thomas’ family were avowed Calvinists. And the whole religious milieu in which brother Thomas moved and taught was a thoroughly Calvinistic one. All the Campbellite leaders, including Campbell and Scott, were of Scots-Irish Calvinist background, and they believed that they represented a new “Reformation,” modeled after Calvin’s in Geneva. A clash between brother Thomas’ radical biblical faith and the hidebound theology of his Calvinist friends (and later enemies) was inevitable.

For the first fifty years of the formally organized Christadelphian brotherhood, a substantial majority of converts was drawn from religious bodies which were, overtly or covertly, Calvinistic in outlook and philosophy. Nearly half the baptisms recorded in the worldwide brotherhood in the forty-year period between 1848 and 1888 were of converts from Calvinist churches in Scotland. The rea­sons for this situation are complex, and an interesting study in themselves beyond the scope of this series, but an analysis of Christadelphian periodicals and ecclesial archives in both Britain and North America makes this conclusion virtually unassailable.

Many of these converts brought their Calvinism as baggage with them, in many cases without fully realizing it. These Christadelphians had the kind of domineering personality which Calvinism often produces, and some were determined to impose their Calvinism in their new environment. The documentary record is very clear: in his later life Bro. John Thomas was very distressed at the deep inroads Calvinism was making within the heart of the Christadelphian brotherhood. This is evident in letters written in the 1860’s, so much so that he almost despaired that “the truth” would survive this subtle and insidious corruption of the body from within — the body that he had striven so long and hard to build. He wrote some very strong and poignant things about the ecclesias in Scotland, Virginia, Washington, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago and elsewhere, sadly lamenting the hardening attitudes which he saw manifested amongst the brethren. From one such letter, perhaps, we may savor the rest: “We have a great many speculators in the faith, mere theorists, who are a sort of amalgam made up of.. .a hodgepodge of traditions…But there are very few in whom the word of Christ dwells richly in all wisdom and in whom the word rules. Christ Jesus is the truth, and dwells with those with whom the truth is. Where this is, I desire to be.”³

A perceptive study of Christadelphian archives from 1850 onwards would indicate that by the turn of the century the Christadelphian brotherhood had been significantly impacted by Calvinist type thinking. When the Christadelphians needed a hymn book, they used a modified version of the Scots Calvinist hymnal, a flavor which, despite changes, our present “official” hymn book still has.

Calvinism not all bad

We must stress that Calvinism is not all bad. It is the subtle blend of godliness and humanism which makes it so dangerous a heresy. Calvinist scholarship is very biblical, accepting the Bible as the holy inspired word of God. Many of the enormous output of Calvinist publications are thoroughly Scriptural: most of us depend heavily on the splendid books published by Zondervan. The NIV Study Bible is widely respected by Christadelphians — with good reason. Virtually all the expository commentaries (those by the Tyndale Press, for example) are invaluable as aids, and include sound, conservative scholarship. The words of Jesus are relevant here: “Do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.”⁴

Teaching by “proof” texts or the general tenor of scripture?

A major problem, however, concerns the Calvinist attitude to Scripture. It is from this point that many of us begin subtly to absorb a Calvinist like spirit. Let a former Calvinist, now converted to the Truth, express it for us:

“For many years, Calvinism was at the heart of my belief system. My spiritual pedigree contained some of the brightest lights [Christianity] has ever known: Bunyan, Spurgeon, Edwards, Whitefield, and the Puritans. I was in good company. Years later, however, my interest in Anabaptism and Unitarianism took me to writings that were anything but sympathetic toward Calvinism…I owe a great debt to [them] for challenging my thinking on salvation and the nature of man. They helped me see through the bigotry and the intellectual intimidation that long kept me from even peering outside the theological Geneva I was in…Calvinism illustrates the futility of systematic theology. God’s truths, particularly relating to soteriology [the doctrine of salvation through Christ], are too lofty to be put into concise for­mulae. The [doctrines] of Calvinism oversimplify the profound truths of God. They derive their force from proof-texts rather than the general tenor of Scripture. More than that, the doctrines frequently create a spirit of division, elitism and theological snobbery. The system erects walls between believers. It creates a class of Christians within the church who are supposedly part of a worthy inner circle.”

When I myself left the Episcopalian church and was being instructed as a young teen in “the truth,” every week I was given a statement (in human words), and I had to supply a Bible “proof.” I generally got full marks. But when, in my early twenties, I began preaching the same truth in the Caribbean, I found people there who had their solid “proofs” too: Luke 16:22 [rich man and Lazarus], Luke 23:43 [thief on the cross] and John 11:26 to “prove” heaven going at death; I Samuel 28, Mark 6:49, Mark 5:2 and Luke 24:37 to “prove” the reality of ghosts and demons. I well remember the Calvinist debater who ridiculed me by demanding that I read Luke 16:22-24 and 20:37-38 and then publicly give a straightforward “Yes” or “No” to the question: “Is Abraham alive?” My “proofs” didn’t cut much ice with my opponent. I had to turn instead to “the general tenor of Scripture,” which greatly impressed some of the more open-minded in our audience. It is my experience with Calvinists that they pin their certainties upon one or two favorite passages of Scripture and either ignore or wrest everything else to fit.⁵The topic can be divorce, fellowship, the atonement, you name it. [Editor’s note: Any first principle teaching will be clearly stated several places in scripture. These clear statements are what we use to “prove” our basic beliefs. As we are all aware, however, we find other verses which seem to contradict our “proof’ texts. We call these “wrested scriptures” which they truly are because they must be wrested out of their immediate or broader context to “prove” a wrong idea The real truth will be found not only in proof texts but in the general tenor of scripture as well]

Balthasar Hubmaier of the 16th century Brethren in Christ beautifully expressed a humbler and much more spiritual attitude to the word of God “If we put beside obscure or difficult passages other passages on the same subject, and bind them all together like wax candles, and light them all at once, then the clear and pure splendor of the scriptures must shine forth”

If a doctrine depends only upon one or two passages it is surely unlikely to be a fundamental for salvation We prove our Christadelphian faith is Scriptural, not by hurling “proof’ texts at people like missiles, but by “balancing the book,” to cite the title of Bro Len Richardson’s eminently sensible and helpful book

Intellectualism

Most of the early Calvinist theologians, who set the pattern, were educated at Europe’s leading universities They treated, and taught, the Bible as a text book, almost like an academic work of reference This academic training led them to look in the Bible for “proofs” for or against various theological propositions This is the outlook of western philosophy We do not find it in the Bible

The favorite cliche of Calvinists today is that their theology is “systematic ” The truth is that the oracles of God are not “systematic” at all They are a divinely inspired record of God’s mighty acts, of His mercy in giving His Son, of men of faith, and men full of hate, of spiritual struggles, of temptations succumbed to or overcome, of great divine plans couched in picture language, of exciting insights into God’s vast and profoundly puzzling universe, and above all of vistas of hope for sinning mortals It is definitely not a text book of theology It does not give us a consistent picture of the day of judgment, the anatomy and physiology of angels are not explained, nor are we told the mechanism of resurrection, past or future Nor does it give clear answers to all our questions

We must be humble when reading the Bible,⁶  and about our faith⁷ We are told this over and over by God Himself As we shall see, Calvinists routinely dismiss any who do not ac­cept their short list of “proof texts” as blind, ignorant, “beyond the pale” and unconvertable Rather let us be like David after God’s word through Nathan had converted him “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you “⁸ Personally, in preaching the truth, from Arnhem Land to Arlington, VA, from Cuiaba to Cayman, this way has proved to be wonderfully effective, for it is God’s way

1. Col 2:23
2. Col 2:19
3. To save space, and avoid the implication that this is merely an academic thesis, the many non biblical citations and references have not been included They can, how ever, be provided if necessary
4. Matt 23:3
5. The impasse in Northern Ireland is impossible to re solve because the Calvinists can “prove” from the Bible that the Pope is the Antichrist, while they are God’s elect That being so, how can light fellowship with darkness? The idea that the elect could become a minority ruled by the Anti Christ is not just abhorrent, it is unthinkable One of the “proof texts” of the “Rev ” Ian Paisley and his ‘ loyalist ‘ followers is “Who will bring any charge against God s elect?” So then, runs the argument whereas the IRA terrorists are unspeakably wicked the unionist terrorists are saints This is the typical Calvinist approach to any problem
6. Isa 66:2
7. 2 Tim 2:25
8. Psa 51:12,13