Was John Calvin a Calvinist? NOPE!

My Brother-in-law Chase Vaughn is working on a ThM at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI.  Dr. Richard Muller, Professor of Historical Theology, is one of his professors.  Whenever I spoke with Chase recently, he shared some of Muller’s insights concerning the reformed tradition as it relates to John Calvin, the T.U.L.I.P., and contemporary “Calvinism.”  Here are a few quotes from Muller’s article “‘Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, did Calvin (Or Anyone Else in the Early Modern Era) Plant the “TULIP”?”‘  His conclusions will surprise many, many readers.

“…In fact, it is quite remarkable how little the acrostic [T.U.L.I.P.] has to do with Calvin or Calvinism, as is most evident in the cases of the “T” and the “L.” I don’t think Calvin ever uttered a phrase that easily translates as “total depravity.” He certainly never spoke of “limited atonement.” Neither term appears in the Canons of Dort, nor is either one of these terms characteristic of the language of Reformed or Calvinistic orthodoxy in the seventeenth century. Like the TULIP itself, the terms are Anglo-American creations of fairly recent vintage. “Total depravity,” at least as understood in colloquial English, is so utterly grizzly a concept as to apply only to the theology of the Lutheran, Matthias Flacius Illyricus who an almost dualistic understanding of human nature before and after the fall, arguing the utter replacement of the imago Dei with the imago Satanae and indicating that the very substance of fallen humanity was sin. Neither Calvin not later Reformed thinkers went in this direction and, to the credit of the Lutherans, they repudiated this kind of language in the Formula of Concord. What is actually at issue, hidden under the term “total depravity” is not the utter absence of any sort of goodness but the inability to save one’s self from sin (pg. 8-9).

The question of the “L” in TULIP, of “limited” versus “universal atonement,” also looms large in the debate over whether or not Calvin was a Calvinist. This question, too, arises out of a series of modern confusions, rooted, it seems to me, in the application of a highly vague and anachronistic language to a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century issue. Simply stated, neither Calvin, nor Beza, nor the Canons of Dort, nor any of the orthodox Reformed thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries mention limited atonement — and insofar as they did not mention it, they hardly could have taught the doctrine.  (Atonement, after all is an English term, and nearly all of this older theology was written in Latin.) To make the point a bit less bluntly and with more attention to the historical materials, the question debated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concerned the meaning of those biblical passages in which Christ is said to have paid a ransom for all or God is said to will the salvation of all or of the whole world, given the large number of biblical passages that indicate a limitation of salvation to some, namely, to the elect or believers (pg. 9)…

…By way of conclusion, we return to the initial question, “Was Calvin a Calvinist?”  The answer is certainly a negative. Calvin was not a “Calvinist” — but then again, neither were the “Calvinists.” They were all contributors to the Reformed tradition.  The moral of the story, perhaps, is to recognize the common ground on which Calvin, the various Reformed confessions, and the so-called “Calvinists” of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stand, and if you must, “gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” but don’t plant TULIP in your Reformed garden (pg. 17).

Click here to read Muller’s entire article.  You really should read his entire reasoning before you respond to the above quotes.

What are your thoughts about Muller’s conclusions?  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

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Tags: calvinist, john calvin, limited atonement, richard muller, total depravity