This is in reply to a article with a critical critique on Calvin’s legacy. Found the link to the writer on twitter. I’ve written a response on my site if anyone is interested.
It would be more rightly to say that the abuses are a rejection of Calvinism or a misunderstanding of how they work out. Particularly the rise of Armenianism and its stepchildren is a out right rejection of the Doctrine of Grace as Calvin taught it. It rejected the focus of the objectivity of God’s unmerited grace and turned subjective. If anything I believe this proves the validity of Calvin’s teaching on total depravity. If we are going to judge parents by their children then we as St. Paul said “as God’s offspring” could give a bad name to the Father God. God forbid!
I am not btw a Calvinist who does not think there are limitation to Calvin’s teaching. It can easily lead to obsessive tendency. Yet for that matter so can the gospel! I don’t believe that when Jesus said turn the other cheek that he meant that governments should not punish evil. Yet, surely some in our time are taking the teaching of Jesus and trying to teach that very idea as Christ point. So we can’t necessarily blame the teacher for those that abuse the teaching!
Calvin certainly wasn’t perfect. He was a sinner saved by grace, simultaneous just while a sinner. He was not Jesus the Christ. I appreciate John Calvin but he isn’t the JC that I worship. The Puritan pension for over self evaluation can easily lead into sin. Ultimately we either trust in the goodness and greatness of a Sovereign God or we trust in our following and works for God. The later can easily lead to a work based salvation and is not Calvin’s teaching, the prior is trusting in God’s grace which was Calvin’s teaching.
As for the Sacraments, Calvin taught that the focus is to be Jesus! When we focus on the elements we as fleshly sinners are to easily drawn into the corporeal aspect of the event that we miss the ascended Jesus! We begin to worship the event (the thing signed) instead of what the event is meant to draw us to (the thing itself).
Calvin believed that it is God the HS that draws us to God the Son and it is not the symbols/seal of the elements as the focus but they are only a means to the end. It may be argued that Calvin here is being a mystic with an intentional dualism between the physical objects and the metaphysical spirit. He sides more on the Spirit’s work than man’s part in it the thing signified to avoid turning the elements in to idols. At the end of the day baptism is just the washing with water and communion is just drinking wine and eating bread. The significance is what the HS does. The HS transforms it into something spiritual and through him alone is grace imparted.
When someone goes searching for God in the Sacraments they have totally missed the point of what Calvin (and I believe Jesus and the apostles) taught. From a Calvinistic perspective, Lutherans to a degree and Catholics by conviction focus too much on the corporeal act and not nearly enough on God in the administration of the sacraments. Lutherans and Catholics will argue (via different means) that they see the sacraments in an incarnational aspect much like some writers have recently purposed about the written word of God. Calvinist would say there is one incarnation and that is the God-man Jesus. The written word and the sacraments are signs/symbols made alive by God. They are his works therefore they are good and to be used. They are divine in that they come from God. Yet there purpose is always to bring us to God and never to stop when we get to them. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “you search the Scriptures (and he could have said sacraments in our day) because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”
Faith and Religion (I separate them as 2 dif. things) in general is in a sad state in America and worldwide. Some of this is due to those that rejected Calvin’s teaching on God. Some of it is due to those who embraced Calvin’s teaching but not Calvin’s God. Still other failures are due to a profound misunderstanding of what Calvin taught. We live in a day of such ease that the majority of us worship ourselves all day long and call it worship and service to God. We are indeed great sinners unworthy of the gospel. Yet I believe that proves Total Depravity validating Calvin’s teaching on all of us mere mortals. It also makes me humble before the unmerited grace of God that He would save anyone much less a great sinner like me. The U to P of the Calvinist TULIP point to the awesomeness of God as articulated by fallible men.
Again thanks for the article over at Extra Nos, on Calvin’s behalf don’t shoot the message because people failed to listen and follow the message as prescribed. Jesus preached one sermon and people haven’t gotten that one figured out and applied yet after 2000 years. Calvin’s teaching, rightly or wrongly, are meant to draw a person outside of themselves to look at their own failure and say of Jesus you are “my Lord and my God” who is “my strong rock” and yes even a “bulwark never failing.” Calvinism is intended to be radical abandonment of self in to the hands of a gracious encompassing God.
As Charles Spurgeon once said “Calvinism is the gospel.” I would say it like this, “In Calvinism one sees the beauty of the gospel.” Calvinism draws us to sees the beauty of the gospel because it draws us outside of us and to Christ.