Position of the Providence Church Elders:

Calvinism

The study of salvation in theology is properly called Soteriology.  Assigned to John Calvin, Calvinism is the name of the system of theology that most accurately distils biblical thought on this great doctrine.  This can be confusing at times, leading people to assume those who hold this position follow a man or cling to his writings as the source of salvation.  To help alleviate this confusion we will refer to this system of thought by the title the Doctrines of Grace.

Preface

Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  To that end, He has condescended to impart spiritual life to people who were dead in trespasses and sins.  Those He made alive are now debtors to His Grace and we love Him and flee to Him for all their satisfaction. 

Now that we know Him, we desire to know Him more.  Because He first loved us, we love Him all the more.  That love drives us to an even deeper search of the Scripture to uncover His will for our lives and understand what He wrought in so great a salvation.  It is in response to His love and after diligent searches of Scripture the elders of Providence Church are firmly convinced of the doctrine of salvation that is presented in the paper.

We are firm believers in the sovereignty of God in all areas of our lives.  Therefore, we do not condemn others who do not see salvation as revealed in Scripture this way.  If anyone holds to the historic essentials of the faith, summarized in our statement of faith, we consider him a brother in Christ.  God gives grace to the hearers, and we are content in that.

The Historical Introduction section is taken from Bethlehem Baptist Church's position paper of the same name.  A complete explanation of this great doctrine can be found at the Desiring God Ministries website (www.desiringGOD.org).

Historical Introduction

John Calvin, the famous theologian and pastor of Geneva, died in 1564. Along with Martin Luther in Germany, he was the most influential force of the Protestant Reformation. His Commentaries and Institutes of the Christian Religion are still exerting tremendous influence on the Christian church worldwide.

The churches which have inherited the teachings of Calvin are usually called Reformed as opposed to the Lutheran or Episcopalian branches of the Reformation. While not all Baptist churches hold to a reformed theology, there is a significant Baptist tradition which grew out of and still cherishes the central doctrines inherited from the Reformed branch of the Reformation.

The controversy between Arminianism and Calvinism arose in Holland in the early 1600's. The founder of the Arminian party was Jacob Arminius (1560-1609). He studied under the strict Calvinist Theodore Beza at Geneva and became a professor of theology at the University of Leyden in 1603.

Gradually Arminius came to reject certain Calvinist teachings. The controversy spread all over Holland, where the Reformed Church was the overwhelming majority. The Arminians drew up their creed in Five Articles (written by Uytenbogaert), and laid them before the state authorities of Holland in 1610 under the name Remonstrance, signed by forty-six ministers. (These Five Articles can be read in Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, pp. 545-547.)

The Calvinists responded with a Counter-Remonstrance. But the official Calvinistic response came from the Synod of Dort which was held to consider the Five Articles from November 13, 1618 to May 9, 1619. There were eighty-four members and eighteen secular commissioners. The Synod wrote what has come to be known as the Canons of Dort. These are still part of the church confession of the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church. They state the Five Points of Calvinism in response to the Five Articles of the Arminian Remonstrants. (See Schaff, vol. 3, pp. 581-596).

So the so-called Five Points were not chosen by the Calvinists as a summary of their teach-ing. They emerged as a response to the Arminians who chose these five points to oppose.

It is more important to give a positive biblical position on the five points than to know the exact form of the original controversy. These five points are still at the heart of biblical theology. They are not unimportant. Where we stand on these things deeply affects our view of God, man, salvation, the atonement, regeneration, assurance, worship, and missions.

Somewhere along the way the five points came to be summarized under the acronym TULIP.

T-Total depravity.
U-Unconditional election
L-Limited atonement
I-Irresistible grace
P-Perseverance of the saints

NOTE: We are not going to follow this order in our presentation. There is a good rationale for this traditional order: it starts with man in need of salvation and then gives, in the order of their occurrence, the steps God takes to save his people. He elects, then he sends Christ to atone for the sins of the elect, then he irresistibly draws his people to faith, and finally works to cause them to persevere to the end.
We have found, however, that people grasp these points more easily if we follow a presentation based on the order in which we experience them.

1. We experience first our depravity and need of salvation.
2. Then we experience the irresistible grace of God leading us toward faith.
3. Then we trust the sufficiency of the atoning death of Christ for our sins.
4. Then we discover that behind the work of God to atone for our sins and bring us to faith was the unconditional election of God.
5. And finally we rest in his electing grace to give us the strength and will to persevere to the end in faith.

This is the order we will follow in our presentation.
We would like to spell out what we believe the Scripture teaches on these five points. Our great desire is to honor God by understanding and believing his truth revealed in Scripture. We are open to changing any of our ideas which can be shown to contradict the truth of Scripture. We do not have any vested interest in John Calvin himself, and we find some of what he taught to be wrong. But in general we are willing to let ourselves be called Calvinists on the five points, because we find the Calvinist position to be biblical.

We share the sentiments of Jonathan Edwards who wrote in the Preface to his great book on The Freedom of the Will, "I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction's sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in every thing just as he taught."

Total Depravity

When we speak of humans as "totally depraved," they are making a qualitative, rather than a quantitative statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin pervades every part of his personality -- his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Man is not as sinful as he can be at all times (quantitative) rather, every aspect of his life is tainted by sin.

The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without regeneration man is incapable of responding to the Gospel call (John 8:47). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without saving knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's first making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5).

Irresistible Grace

The doctrine of Irresistible Grace means that the elect of God will respond to the outward call of God when the Holy Spirit calls them inwardly.  We do not teach that sinful men cannot resist the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 43:24; Ephesians 4:30) in his flesh.  But a man who is dead in his sins (Ephesians 2:1-5) must be drawn by the Holy Spirit continually and effectually if he is to be saved, for he has no desire (being dead) to come on his own. Much like Lazarus in John chapter 11, when Jesus calls a sinner to life he does not have the option of remaining dead. The sinner comes forth as Lazarus did.

Limited Atonement

We will use Wayne Grudem's definition for atonement: "The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation."  The idea of a "limited" atonement may prejudice the reader into thinking Calvinists hold there was something deficient in the atonement that makes it insufficient.  We might better use the word particular atonement since that describes the position more clearly.

We affirm that Christ died for the sin of the world (John 1:29) but only satisfied the wrath of God for the people God the Father had promised to the Son.  John 17:9 says,  "I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours."  And in verse 19 of that same chapter Jesus prays again, "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth."  This sanctification is the setting apart unto salvation.  It is for the sake of those whom the Father has given Jesus that He sanctifies Himself.

So in what sense did Christ die for the "sin of the world" as recorded in John 1:29?  Every good gift of God is a benefit of the work of Christ.  The rain falls on the just and the unjust, the gospel's general call goes out, "God is the savior of all men especially those who believe" (1 Timothy 4:10), all because of Christ.  Praise God, for his mercies are fresh every morning. 

God's mercy might extend to all men temporarily, but Jesus laid down his life for His sheep in a very particular way.  John chapter 10 tells us that Jesus has sheep (v. 14) and that He lays down His life for those sheep (vv. 15, 16).  He also states that there are those who are not His sheep and the reason they do not believe He is the Good Shepherd is because they are not of His flock (vv. 25-27)

There are many passages of Scripture that indicate that Christ gave Himself up for a definite group of people.  In Acts 20:28 God is said to have obtained the church “with the blood of His own Son.”  In John 6:37-39 Jesus relates that the Father gives a people to the Son and the Son loses none of them.  If God gave the Son for the whole world (general atonement), then the Son would lose none of them and all would be in heaven.