What are the five points of Calvinism?

Question 13005.

The five points of Calvinism are usually met for the first time as an acrostic, TULIP, and I have watched more than one young believer fall in love with the tidiness of it before ever testing it against a Bible. That is the danger of a good system. It answers questions so neatly that you stop asking whether the answers are right.

I want to set out the points of Calvinism fairly, because caricature helps nobody, and then tell you honestly where I part company and why. I am not Reformed and I am not Arminian, and I hope by the end you will see that those are not the only two rooms in the house.

Where the points of Calvinism came from

Here is the first thing worth knowing. John Calvin never wrote the five points. They emerged in 1619 at the Synod of Dort, more than fifty years after his death, as a Dutch response to five articles of protest drawn up by the followers of Jacobus Arminius. The points of Calvinism are therefore a reply to a specific document, not a summary of the whole faith.

That matters, because a reply takes its shape from what it is replying to. The Remonstrants raised five objections, and Dort answered in five corresponding heads of doctrine. The famous acrostic itself is a twentieth century teaching device, English and much later.

So when someone tells me the points of Calvinism are simply the gospel, I want to gently point out that the gospel was preached for fifteen centuries before anyone arranged it in that order. I say more about the wider system in what Calvinism is.

Total depravity, and what I do affirm

The first of the points of Calvinism holds that sin has affected every part of human nature, so that no faculty is untouched. Intellect, affections, will and conscience are all bent. On that much I agree entirely, and I will not soften it.

What I do not accept is the further step, usually called total inability, which says the unregenerate person is so dead that he cannot respond to the gospel at all until God first regenerates him. That conclusion is drawn from the metaphor of death in Ephesians 2:1, but a metaphor must not be pressed beyond its point. The prodigal son was described by his father as dead, and he came home.

Scripture consistently addresses the unconverted as people capable of hearing and answering. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they were not willing, not because they were incapable. The Spirit convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement, John 16:8, and that convicting work is what makes a real response possible without making it automatic.

Unconditional election

The second of the points of Calvinism teaches that God chose particular individuals for salvation before the foundation of the world, without reference to anything in them, including foreseen faith. Election is therefore an unconditional decree, and those not chosen are passed over.

I hold that Scripture teaches election, and I refuse to explain the word away. What I question is the assumption that election is always individual and always to personal salvation. The Greek eklegomai is used of Israel corporately, of the twelve, of the Servant, and of the church as a body in Christ. Ephesians 1 says He chose us in Him, which reads to me as election of a people located in the Beloved, entered by faith.

The pastoral cost of the alternative is not small. If God has secretly determined that some of the people in front of me cannot be saved, my invitation to them is theatre. I cannot preach that, because the apostles did not preach that. They said whoever will may come, and they meant it.

Limited atonement, and why I cannot hold it

The third of the points of Calvinism, sometimes softened into particular redemption, says Jesus died only for the elect. This is the point at which I part company most sharply, and it is worth saying that many Calvinists have quietly done the same over the centuries.

The texts seem to me decisive. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world, 1 John 2:2. He tasted death for everyone, Hebrews 2:9. Peter can even speak of false teachers denying the Master who bought them, which makes no sense if the purchase was restricted to the finally saved.

I hold penal substitution without reservation. Jesus bore the penalty my sin deserved. But the sufficiency and the intent of that death extend to all, while its application is to those who believe. An unlimited atonement, limited in application by faith, does justice to both the achievement of the cross and the universality of the offer.

Irresistible grace

The fourth of the points of Calvinism holds that when God effectually calls a person, that call cannot finally be resisted. Grace overcomes the will rather than persuading it, and regeneration precedes faith.

Stephen’s speech ends with the charge that his hearers always resist the Holy Spirit, Acts 7:51. If grace were by definition irresistible, that sentence could not be spoken. The Greek antipipto there means to fall against, to strive in opposition, and Stephen uses it of a whole national history.

I want to be careful here. I am not saying anybody generates faith from his own resources. Salvation is entirely of God, initiated by God, drawn out by God’s Spirit through the Word. What I am saying is that God’s drawing does not bypass the person. Faith precedes regeneration, which is the plain order of John 1:12, where those who received Him were given the right to become children of God.

Perseverance of the saints

The fifth of the points of Calvinism says the truly elect will persevere to the end. I agree that the believer is eternally secure, but I want to move the emphasis. Within the Reformed system perseverance can quietly become a test, so that assurance depends on the quality of your continuing performance.

I ground eternal security in God’s faithfulness rather than in mine. He who began a good work will bring it to completion, and no one is able to snatch us out of the Father’s hand. The Greek word for the pledge of the Spirit, arrabon, is a deposit that guarantees the rest of the payment. God does not default.

That difference is more than semantic. If security rests on my perseverance, every bad month becomes evidence against me. If it rests on His faithfulness, a bad month is exactly when I run to Him rather than away.

Is there a middle way that is not Arminianism?

Whenever I set out my disagreement with the points of Calvinism, someone assumes I must be Arminian. I am not. I do not hold that a believer can lose salvation, I do not hold that grace is resistible in a way that makes salvation ultimately my achievement, and I have no interest in swapping one system for another.

I would rather be called a Biblicist, which sounds grander than it is. It simply means I try to let each passage say what it says, and I am willing to live with tension where Scripture leaves tension. God’s initiative and human responsibility are both taught, and I am not obliged to dissolve either into the other for the sake of a tidy scheme.

For the historical shape of the argument between the two camps, see the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, and for the wider Reformation setting, what happened at the Reformation.

How to disagree without losing your temper

Some of the best Christians I have known have held the points of Calvinism with warmth and humility, and some of the worst arguments I have witnessed have been between people who agreed on ninety per cent of everything. The doctrine is serious. The manner in which we discuss it is also serious.

If you are studying this for the first time, read primary sources rather than social media summaries. Read the Canons of Dort themselves and the Remonstrance they answered. Read a careful Reformed writer and a careful non-Reformed writer side by side, with your Bible open and a pen in hand.

And test everything by Scripture rather than by which speaker you find most impressive. Systems are useful servants and terrible masters. The points of Calvinism are a system, and so is every alternative, mine included.

Reading Romans 9 without a system

Almost every conversation about the points of Calvinism ends up in Romans 9, usually at verse 13 and the sentence about Jacob and Esau. Read as a standalone paragraph it sounds like an announcement about two babies and their eternal destinies.

Read as part of an argument that runs from chapter 9 to chapter 11, it looks different. Paul begins in anguish over Israel and ends by saying that a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the nations comes in, and that all Israel will be saved. The subject is national and historical, God’s freedom to choose the line through which He works, and Jacob and Esau are cited as nations in the quotation from Malachi rather than as individuals in a courtroom.

That does not dissolve every difficulty, and I would not pretend otherwise. The potter and the clay in Romans 9:21 is a hard image by design. But it does mean that using Romans 9 as the foundation stone for the points of Calvinism requires lifting it out of the argument Paul is actually making, and that the chapter ends not with a decree but with a stumbling stone that people trip over by unbelief.

What the church believed before Augustine

Church history has a vote here, and it is worth counting. The writers of the first three centuries, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Clement, consistently affirm genuine human freedom to respond to the gospel and consistently deny that God has determined who will believe. That is not decisive, since antiquity is not authority, but it is telling.

The determinist strand enters seriously with Augustine, largely through his long struggle against Pelagius and partly through his earlier years in Manichaeism. He read Romans through that conflict, and the Western church read Romans through him for a thousand years. Calvin’s system is in significant part Augustine’s, recovered and sharpened.

So when I am told that the points of Calvinism are simply what the church has always believed, I want to put a date on always. The doctrine of grace is apostolic. The particular architecture of the points of Calvinism is late, and it is a system built to answer other systems.

Where the system does pastoral damage

I am a pastor before I am a theologian, and I watch what doctrine does to people in the third year of a hard illness. The points of Calvinism, held warmly, have sustained many believers. Held coldly, they do real harm, and I have sat with the wreckage.

The first casualty is assurance. If saving faith is proved by perseverance, and perseverance is measured by your present spiritual temperature, then every dry season becomes evidence that you were never chosen. I have met believers of thirty years standing paralysed by that thought.

The second casualty is the free offer. Preachers who genuinely hold to a restricted atonement have to work hard to keep saying whoever will may come, and some stop saying it. The Bible closes with the Spirit and the Bride saying come, and let the one who desires take the water of life without price, Revelation 22:17. I want a theology that lets me end a service with that verse and mean every word of it.

The texts that will not fit the system

Every theological position has passages it would rather not preach, and honesty requires naming your own. For my position the hard ground is Romans 9 and the language of appointment in Acts 13:48, and I have to work at those rather than wave them away.

For the points of Calvinism the hard ground is broader than its defenders usually admit. Paul tells Timothy that God our Saviour desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, 1 Timothy 2:4. Peter says the Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. Ezekiel has God swearing that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The usual reply is that all means all kinds, and sometimes it does, but the reply has to be produced so often that the pattern itself becomes an argument.

Then there is the matter of what God is said to feel. Jesus looks at Jerusalem and says He would have gathered her children and she was not willing, Matthew 23:37. Read within the points of Calvinism, that lament describes a God grieving over a refusal He Himself had determined. I cannot make that sentence mean anything, and I have stopped trying.

A word about labels

One last thing, because labels do a lot of unhelpful work in this discussion. I am regularly told that I must be either Reformed or Arminian, as though those two boxes exhaust the possibilities and every believer has to climb into one of them before he is allowed to speak.

Most of the Christians I have pastored have never heard of the points of Calvinism and are quietly, biblically right about the things that matter. They know they are sinners, they know Jesus died for them, they know they are kept by God rather than by their own grip. If your theology cannot be explained to that believer without a diagram, be careful. Paul managed the whole doctrine of salvation in a letter read aloud to slaves and shopkeepers in Rome.

So, now what?

Work through Romans 9 to 11 as a unit rather than lifting verses out of chapter 9. Paul’s argument is about Israel and the nations, and it ends in doxology rather than in a decree.

Then look hard at what you actually believe about the person sitting next to you in church who has not yet trusted Jesus. Can you tell that person, without crossing your fingers, that Jesus died for him? I can, and I would not be able to preach if I could not.

Whatever you conclude about the points of Calvinism, do not let the debate steal the assurance the gospel is meant to give you. Christ died for sinners. You qualify. Will you rest there?

He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

1 John 2:2, ESV

For Further Study

Charles Ryrie’s discussion of election and the extent of the atonement is the clearest short statement of the position I hold, and Lewis Sperry Chafer treats unlimited atonement at length in his systematic theology. Millard Erickson gives a careful and fair survey of both sides for readers who want the arguments laid out without partisanship. J. Dwight Pentecost and John Walvoord are worth reading on how soteriology fits within a dispensational framework, and Arnold Fruchtenbaum on the corporate dimension of election in Israel’s calling. On the other side of the question, the Canons of Dort themselves are short and repay direct reading, since they are considerably more pastoral in tone than many of their modern popularisers.