The Joy of Calvinism E-Book

Greg Forster

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 336

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The Bible's command to "rejoice continually" seems impossible and, frankly, unreasonable. Yet despite the apparent difficulty in fulfilling this commandment, Gregory Forster argues that Calvinism holds the key—namely that "real Calvinism is all about joy." Forster passionately holds to this belief, and systematically demonstrates it by addressing popular misconceptions of what Calvinism is and is not. Dismantling negative expressions of Calvinist theology, Forster positively reiterates its fundamental tenents, showing how God's love is the driving force behind every facet of Calvin's doctrine of salvation. Written accessibly, The Joy of Calvinism is an important addition to the conversation surrounding Calvinism and its advocates. Skeptics and those who have had negative perceptions of Calvinism, as well as Calvinists themselves, will find this a helpful resource for clearing up the controversies and grasping the winsomeness of the doctrines of grace.

Leseprobe

“A refreshing, clearly-written, thought-provoking, truly enjoyable book that will help overcome many misconceptions and deepen people’s faith and joy in God each day.”

Wayne Grudem, Research Professor of Bible and Theology, Phoenix Seminary

“Forster pulls few punches with his critiques both for Calvinists and also their opponents—this vigor is what makes this exploration of joyous Calvinism so welcome and so challenging.”

Collin Hansen, Editorial Director, The Gospel Coalition; author, Young, Restless, Reformed

“Concerned that some of the negative press which Calvinism receives is actually provoked by Calvinists themselves, Forster here offers a refreshing restatement of the Reformed faith. In the tradition of the personal confidence and joy one finds in the Heidelberg Catechism, he presents an account of the Reformed understanding of salvation that is accessible, reliable, and delightful. A super book to read for oneself or to give to Christian friends who may never have understood the joy that lies at the heart of Calvinism.”

Carl R. Trueman, Paul Woolley Professor of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania

“Calvinism has been the target of countless caricatures, but none so misguided as the notion that it is the enemy of joy. Forster insists rightly that Calvinism is ‘drenched with joy,’ and has done a masterful job of accounting for the beauty and delight intrinsic to biblical Calvinism. I pray this book gets a wide reading.”

Sam Storms, Senior Pastor, Bridgeway Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; author, The Hope of Glory

“Forster does a wonderful, twofold service for God’s people in this book—he retrieves Calvinism from a portrayal as a dark and distasteful version of Christianity and, instead, presents it as an attractive and beautiful expression of biblical religion. Forster speaks with deep wisdom rooted not only in a well-informed theology, but also from his own experience as he wrestled with the sufferings of life and ultimately found comfort in the God who is profoundly merciful and sovereign in Christ. I highly recommend this book for all who seek godly encouragement and joy in the midst of life’s trials.”

David VanDrunen, Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics, Westminster Seminary California; author, Bioethics and the Christian Life

The Joy of Calvinism: Knowing God’s Personal, Unconditional, Irresistible, Unbreakable Love

Copyright © 2012 by Greg Forster

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover illustrator: Darren Booth / darrenbooth.com

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2834-7 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2835-4 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2836-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2837-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The joy of Calvinism : knowing God’s personal, unconditional, irresistible, unbreakable love / Greg Forster.

        p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-1-4335-2834-7 (tp)

    1. Calvinism. 2. God (Christianity)—Love. 3. Theology, Doctrinal. 4. Salvation—Christianity. 5. Joy—Religious aspects—Calvinists. 6. Christian life. I. Title.

BX9422.3.F67          2012

230’.42—dc23   2011035957

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

VP      22   21   20   19   18   17   16   15   14   13   12

15   14   13   12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

For Larry Wilson, my father in Christ

Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then,

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rejoice . . . Always?

Detour: Five Points about Calvinism

1 God Loves You Personally

When Jesus died and rose again, he saved you.

2 God Loves You Unconditionally

Nothing is more important to your heavenly Father than saving you.

3 God Loves You Irresistibly

The “new birth” in the Holy Spirit is a radical, supernatural transformation.

4 God Loves You Unbreakably

You can do all things, persevere through all trials, and rejoice in all circumstances.

Conclusion: The Joy of Calvinism

Appendix: Questions and Answers

Notes

Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks go out to Crossway and my editor Allan Fisher for giving me the extraordinary opportunity to offer you this book, and for helping me to make it the book that it is.

Frank Marsh and Dan Kelly read the entire manuscript and gave me detailed feedback, which greatly improved the book. I also received invaluable ideas, advice, assistance, feedback, and encouragement from Larry Wilson, Glenn Moots, Caroline Stack, Kenneth Stewart, Jim Rahn, Ryan Olson, Stephen Grabill, Jordan Ballor, Wayne Grudem, and anonymous reviewers at Crossway.

Almost the entirety of this book was written away from home. I was the beneficiary of generous hospitality from my coworker Ryan Olson and his family, and on another occasion from Caroline Stack.

As always, everything I do is made possible only by the unflagging encouragement and colabor of my wife, Beth. And this is the first book I’ve written for which my daughter, Anya, was old enough to add her own words of support and encouragement. When I emerged from my office and told her that I only had a tiny bit of work left and the manuscript I was working on would be finished, her response was: “So go back and do it!” Truly, the Lord has brought forth his Word from the mouths of little children.

Above all, I give thanks to the Lord. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

Introduction

Rejoice . . . Always?

The Bible commands us to rejoice all the time. God says that if there is even a tiny fraction of a split second when we’re not rejoicing, that’s disobedience. The command is shocking, bewildering, and—to be blunt—deeply offensive. It is impossible. It is as if God demanded that I lift a house over my head and threatened me with severe discipline if I failed.

We are, of course, prepared to accept some level of accountability for our emotions. We understand that we are corrupt sinners whose emotions are badly out of line with God’s standards. We love the wrong things, hate the wrong things, are thrilled or sickened by the wrong things, get sad or angry when we shouldn’t and don’t get sad or angry when we should, and experience emotions like grudge holding and vengefulness that no one should ever experience at any time whatsoever. Getting our hearts cleaned up is going to be a long, hard slog. We know that. It’s going to be painful, it’s going to be humiliating, it’s going to be death to self every day. If God were demanding that, we wouldn’t exactly be jumping up and down with excitement, but we’d be ready to hear it.

But God is not demanding that. God does not say, “Get to work fixing your emotions so that you will eventually get into a state of mind, heart, and will, such that you can and do rejoice at all times.” He simply orders us to rejoice at all times—right now, this moment—as though we had the power to do it at will, just like that.

This is really quite clear in the Bible. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Phil. 4:4). “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16–18). For good measure, it even tells us to “rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom. 5:3).

What can it possibly mean?

I wrote this book because I believe Calvinism points to the answer. Obviously I’m not saying only Calvinists have joy. I’m saying that if you want to understand the command to rejoice at all times, and still more if you want to obey it, of all the places you might start looking for help with that problem, the best place to start is with Calvinism.

Failure to Communicate

It seems to me that Calvinists, myself included, have not been communicating well about our ideas. And we have tended to blame the audience for what are really our own failures in communicating.

Here’s what I mean. Our little daughter, Anya, has difficulty with language, and this has made it a challenge for us to teach her about God. At one point, I got it into my head to try a new way of helping her understand what’s going on during the worship service. Anya knew some things about God, but she didn’t understand what church had to do with him. So I decided to try using the fundamental principle of the Calvinistic understanding of worship, which is that the worship service is not primarily something we do for God, that it’s something God does for us. God is actively working in every part of the service; we participate, of course, but we are receiving much more than we are giving—we are far more passive than active.

So during each part of the service, I would tell Anya what God was doing. During the call to worship I would tell her, “God is saying hi to us!” During the sermon I would tell her, “God is telling us his Word!” During the benediction I would say, “God is blessing us!”

From all this, Anya learned exactly one thing: the pastor is God.

Needless to say, I changed my approach to communicating with Anya about God. I’m greatly relieved to report that we’ve cleared up this unfortunate misunderstanding, and Anya is making great progress learning about the Lord. Recently, she overheard a woman in a coffee shop misuse the name of Jesus as a swear word. Anya understood nothing about what she was hearing except the name Jesus, but when she heard that name, she immediately piped up and said in a loud voice, “Jesus loves me!” (The woman mumbled something about being more careful with what she said in front of children.) You can imagine what a relief it is for my wife and me to see that we’re now successfully conveying these precious truths about God and Jesus to our daughter. Not to mention that she’s already witnessing her faith!

It makes a big difference how you communicate your ideas. It’s not just what you say; it’s how you phrase and frame it. The difficulty I faced with Anya wasn’t simply that she has trouble processing information. The bigger problem was on my end—I was presenting the information to her in a way that invited misunderstanding. When I changed the way I communicated, she was able to understand me.

We Calvinists need to do the same.

Beyond Formulas to Joy

In this book, I use “Calvinism” to mean the soteriology—the understanding of how sinners are saved—that has developed over time in the faith tradition that traces its history back through Calvin. The Calvinistic faith tradition is really much more than that, of course; it has a distinctive approach to pretty much everything. But our understanding of how sinners get saved is what most needs clarifying.

The world misunderstands what Calvinists believe about salvation. The misunderstanding is not just on the margins, but radical—almost as radical as Anya’s misunderstanding about God. I think that’s because we usually present what we believe in a way that invites misunderstanding.

Real Calvinism is all about joy. But for some time now, defenders of Calvinism have tended to communicate about it only in highly technical, formulaic, and (especially) negative terms. To take only the most obvious example, the notorious “five points of Calvinism” are now virtually the only terms in which Calvinism is formulated. The five points that we now use didn’t even exist until the twentieth century and weren’t widely used until the second half of that century.1 Even then, they used to be just one framework among many for talking about Calvinism. But today, these five vague phrases abbreviated by a clever acronym (TULIP) have come to be completely identified with Calvinism. If you tell people you want to defend Calvinism, you’re saying you want to defend the five points. What else could “Calvinism” possibly mean? (If you’re not familiar with the “five points” and want to know more about them, see the appendix, question 2.)

Bafflingly, this has happened even though many Calvinist writers seem to agree that the five points are a lousy way to describe Calvinism! The five points use highly technical and idiosyncratic terms that invite misunderstanding. And they’re almost entirely negative; they tell you a lot about what Calvinists don’t believe but very little about what Calvinists do believe. It sometimes feels like Calvinists first invoke the five points, then apologize for invoking the five points, and then explain how the five points don’t really mean what they seem to mean and aren’t really saying what they seem to be saying. This can’t possibly be the best way to introduce people to what we believe.

What makes this especially puzzling is that Calvinists usually don’t have this problem when they write about John Calvin the man, or other great heroes of faith within the Calvinist tradition, or just about anything else besides Calvinism itself. They will write with great eloquence about Calvin’s passion for God and his pastor’s heart for bringing God’s Word and God’s comfort to ordinary people, or about Augustine or John Newton, or the beauty and purity of the Reformed worship tradition, or the real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. But when the subject is Calvinism itself—the distinctive theology that provides the underlying basis for all the other beautiful Calvinistic things they write so eloquently about—they suddenly shift gears and retreat to formulas and technicalities.

The trouble is that people outside the Calvinistic tradition only hear the formulas and technicalities. They don’t hear what we say “within” Calvinism; they only hear what we say about Calvinism. So while Calvinists produce reams and reams of positive, spontaneous, and devotional religious writings, the outside world never knows. If it hears our devotional voices at all, it never associates that devotion with our Calvinism; it thinks we’re pious in spite of our Calvinism, not because of it. “Calvinism” to the outside world means only the formulas, technicalities, and negations.

As a result, the substantial reality of Calvinistic religion, the affirmative faith from which it draws all its energy and vitality and joy, is almost completely unknown to the outside world. Even most of the people who worship in Calvinistic churches, and are thus nominally “Calvinists,” don’t understand what really makes Calvinistic religion such a precious treasure. Because we don’t communicate clearly, our own congregants have a very inadequate grasp of what lies at the heart of Calvinism. As a result, they’re robbed—in whole or in part—of the everyday experience of devotional joy that a robust and well-formed Calvinistic piety always produces, and in which, as Calvinists, they ought to be living.

What would happen if we talked about other theological topics, such as the divinity of Christ, the way we usually talk about Calvinism?2 Consider two different historic confessions of the divinity of Christ, both of which play essential roles in Christian theology and history. First, consider Thomas, falling to his knees (or so we picture him) before the resurrected Christ, crying out in that perfect combination of shock, joy, love, awe, repentance, self-abasement, and holy terror, “My Lord and my God!”(John 20:28). Now compare that confession with the early medieval priests rhythmically chanting the metered Latin of the Athanasian Creed: “Although he is God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by assumption of the manhood into God; one altogether, not by confusion of essence, but by unity of person; for as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.”

There is no question that the latter sort of confession—formalistic, technical, and negative—is indispensable in keeping the church’s confession pure from faith-destroying errors. Without the Athanasian Creed and other formulations like it, Christianity could not possibly have survived the relentless assaults against the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation in its first five centuries. You and I would not be Christians today.

Yet there would have been nothing to protect—no Christianity for the Athanasian Creed to keep pure in the first place—if not for the sort of confession we get from Thomas. Here, and only here, we have the spontaneous voice of living Christian faith, expressing what the believer really experiences in the presence of the living Christ. True, this faith could not have survived if it had not been protected by the shield of technical theology, but that shield was forged only to protect and nurture spontaneous, affirmative faith. It has no other legitimate function. An “Athanasius confession” without a “Thomas confession” is just as dead, empty, and useless as a suit of armor without a knight inside. Athanasius himself would have been the first to insist on this!

Thomas faith—and only Thomas faith—gives Christianity all its spiritual power. How many doubters would come to accept the divinity of Christ if the only thing they ever heard about it was the Athanasian Creed?

That’s about where we are right now in talking to the world about Calvinism. We’re rhythmically chanting our technical formulas, not only in the times and places where technical formulas are properly called for, but all the time. Athanasius could fall down on his knees with Thomas and say, “My Lord and my God!” We need to remember how to fall down on our knees and say, with Peter:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3–7)

We say things like this often enough; it’s time we showed people that this is really what Calvinism is all about.

Other Christians say the same things, of course—they’re in Scripture, after all! But they miss, or ignore, or explain away the full meaning. That’s why it’s so important to point the way to the fullness of joy and power and peace that can only be had by grasping that full meaning firmly and holding on tight. Being a Calvinist means living in the fullness of joy that Peter expresses in this passage, by embracing its full meaning and all the implications of that meaning for doctrine, piety, and life. Defending Calvinism means defending that fullness of joy by defending that full meaning.

What Calvinism Tastes Like

There are a million books out there claiming that “everything you know about” some subject “is wrong.” This is another one. But in this case it’s really justified. The absence of affirmative and spontaneously devotional expression of Calvinistic theology has left a gaping hole in the public understanding of what Calvinism is.

Put simply, the rest of the world has no idea what it’s like to be a Calvinist. It’s like trying to describe Italian food by making a list of all the things it doesn’t taste like. When you get to the end of the list, you won’t really know more about the taste of Italian food than you did when you started.

And that’s not the worst of it. When we don’t show people what Calvinistic religion is really like, they form impressions of it based on other sources. The law that “nature abhors a vacuum” applies to the human mind and spirit as much as to physical nature.

If you’re an average American Christian from a non-Calvinist background, the (sort of) accurate information you receive about Calvinists is probably limited to the following: Calvinists don’t think people have any natural ability to repent and trust Christ. They don’t think people have ultimate control over their final destinies. They don’t think Jesus died and rose again to atone for the sins of all humanity. They don’t think God allows us to choose whether to follow him. And they think “once saved, always saved.” That’s it. Then, alongside this (sort of) accurate information, you’ve probably also heard that Calvinists think we don’t have free will (i.e., human beings are not responsible moral agents but are puppets under the control of exterior forces), that unbelievers are as evil as they can possibly be, and that God doesn’t love unbelievers. You may have been told that Jonathan Edwards—the greatest American exponent of Calvinism and a figure of titanic importance to the history of the Calvinist tradition—described the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers as “holy rape.”

Based on this information, what would it be natural for you to conclude about Calvinists? What would you naturally expect was the motivation for their belief in Calvinism, and what would you think their devotional lives were like? At best, you would think Calvinism was theological oversystematization gone horribly haywire—like those atheist philosophers who firmly insist that human beings cannot think and are not conscious because that’s what their materialistic assumptions imply, and they’re prepared to defend their assumptions in the teeth of all absurdity. At worst, you would think Calvinism was a manifestation of thoroughly demonic self-righteousness and presumption.

And all of that is before the more irresponsible opponents of Calvinism have even opened their mouths. It’s no wonder they find a receptive audience when they falsely attribute to us all sorts of absurd and wicked beliefs and spin their tales about Calvin the bloodthirsty tyrant, who delighted in nothing but endless torture and slaughter of heretics. All of that propaganda is naturally plausible to the millions of American Christians who know nothing about Calvinism except its technical formulas.

Renewing Our Minds—Spiritually

This book is mostly about our daily walk with God—all the triumphs and failures, the death to self, and the invitations to joy that make up the Christian life as we really live it. But this book also deals with something that is called, in the jargon of academia, “systematic theology.” In seminaries, systematic theology is carefully distinguished from Bible scholarship. Systematic theology is the attempt to express the integrated, coherent testimony of all Scripture taken together, while Bible scholarship is the study of individual Bible texts.

Many people don’t accept the legitimacy of systematic theology. They want the text of the Bible and nothing else. If you step away from the texts of Scripture, they think you must have also stepped away from the teachings of Scripture.

But you cannot really go without systematic theology, and in fact there is no one who does. Those who claim that their theology is “the Bible and only the Bible” have simply taken their systematic theology, whatever it may be, and relabeled it as “the Bible.” I don’t see how you can be a Christian if you don’t have an answer to the question “What do you think the Bible teaches?” Your answer, whatever it is, is your systematic theology.

Bible scholarship and systematic theology must cooperate closely in order for either of them to be of any use. Systematic theology must be grounded in the final authority of the Bible, so it must be informed by what individual Scripture texts teach us. And our reading of any individual Bible passage must, in turn, be informed by the testimony of the rest of Scripture taken together.

Nonetheless, it is not usually possible to do both at the same time. At any rate I certainly can’t, since I’m not a trained scholar in either field! So you should not expect to find detailed expositions or examinations of specific Scripture passages in this book. I do quote some passages of Scripture to support some of my arguments, but if you’re looking for extensive interaction with the text, you won’t find it here. Other authors—who are real Bible scholars—have already written an endless series of books going over particular texts to debate whether they teach, or are consistent with, Calvinism.

My goal is different but equally important. I want to tell you what Calvinism says, especially what it says about your everyday walk with God and the purpose of the Christian life, and how you can have the joy of God even in spite of whatever trials and suffering the Lord has called you to endure. I think most people today are either ignorant or badly mistaken about what Calvinism really is, especially when it comes to these practical applications in everyday life. And you can’t very well examine Scripture to find out whether it teaches, or is consistent with, Calvinism until you know what Calvinism really is. Once you understand that, then you can go see whether or not it is the coherent teaching that emerges from the integrated witness of Scripture. My goal is not to examine Scripture extensively but to put you in a position to do so.

Taking Our Ignorance Seriously

I’ve mentioned that some people don’t accept systematic theology. One reason for this is a problem that we will be encountering throughout this book. God is infinite (unlimited) in many ways—infinitely powerful, infinitely good, infinitely knowing, infinitely wise, infinitely present, and so on. We, on the other hand, are finite (limited) in every way. We are not infinitely anything.

That means we can never totally understand anything about God. His infinite reality can’t fit into our finite understandings. Theologians refer to this as the “incomprehensibility” of God. This doesn’t mean we can’t understand anything about God. Obviously we can. It means we can’t understand everything about God. And we must take our ignorance seriously.

One of the most important reasons people reject systematic theology is that they want to take seriously our ignorance about God. That is an important concern. But, in fact, God has made our minds in such a way that we cannot make practical use of any knowledge—including the knowledge he gives us about himself—unless we systematize it. Whether we’re talking about theology or science or literature or child rearing or figuring out where I left my car keys, we have to take the available data and organize them into a coherent whole from which we can draw conclusions.

The danger is that we will forget to take our ignorance seriously. And one of the interesting things about theological disputes—especially the dispute between Calvinism and its rivals—is that each side thinks the other side goes wrong partly by not taking our ignorance seriously. Calvinists think that the other traditions assume they know more about God than they really know. Non-Calvinists think the same thing about Calvinists.

The starting point for a serious conversation is to acknowledge that the basic teachings of Christianity are deeply mysterious. We believe them because God tells us about them and we trust God, not because we understand them. Free will and providence are mysterious. We are, somehow, in control of our own actions such that we are responsible for them (Ezekiel 18). Yet this does not exclude God’s being in control of everything that occurs, down to the smallest events (Matt. 10:29–31) and including our actions (Gen. 50:20; Rom. 9:19–23; 1 Thess. 5:9; 1 Pet. 2:8). God planned everything that would ever happen before he created the world, yet we are in control of our actions moment by moment.

Original sin is mysterious. We are, somehow, born already guilty and corrupt (Romans 5). We are guilty of sin before we have ever committed a single sin. We are predisposed to sin before we have had any experiences to form our predispositions. And somehow both of these realities are consistent with our free will.

Atonement is mysterious. We are guilty and God never acquits the guilty (Ex. 34:7; Num. 14:18; Nah. 1:3). Jesus is righteous and God never convicts the righteous (Gen. 18:27–33). Yet, somehow, God changes our statuses so that we become righteous and Jesus becomes guilty on the cross (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2:24). Talk about mystery!

We don’t even need to bring in God to find mystery. The human mind, heart, and will are deeply mysterious simply considered in themselves. Even the tiniest things about us are completely inexplicable. How can I forget what something looks like, then recognize it the next time I see it? If I forgot what it looks like, why do I recognize it? There’s no end to the unanswerable questions we can ask about ourselves. Attempts to wrestle with these questions usually produce little more than confusion, question begging, circular reasoning, and finally (if people are honest enough) confessions of ignorance. In this book, I will not attempt to explain or investigate these mysteries. Rather, I want to take for granted their mysteriousness and ask what we can know about God in that context based on what God has told us about himself.

One final word on this topic: although we must take our ignorance seriously, we must also take seriously our knowledge. Both the knowledge we already possess and our capacity for learning more come from God, and he demands that we make good use of them.

Theology may correct people if they have incorrect ideas, but it may not simply tell people to forget everything they already think and substitute some new body of knowledge instead. That is not how God himself speaks to us in the Bible. God does not present an argument that he exists or that there is such a thing as right and wrong. He assumes you already know, and it’s a safe assumption because he gave you that knowledge when he made you (Romans 1–2). He then corrects the various errors and perversions you have laid on top of this knowledge, and he does it precisely by pointing to the things you already know and demanding that you be faithful to them.

In other words, we can never say that everything we think is true, God says is false, and that everything we think is good, God says is bad. Not everything. If we said that, we’d be denying the image of God in ourselves. And—more important for the purposes of this book—we’d be denying that we can ever possibly know anything about what God says is true and good. We’d be admitting that we don’t worship God for the right reasons.

If we discover—really discover, as opposed to just saying it—that something we thought was true about God is actually false, or that something we thought was good is actually bad, it will be because we see a deeper truth or a deeper goodness that we really knew about all along but had forgotten or twisted out of shape. We must be ready to reexamine all our beliefs in light of Scripture because we’re finite and sinful, and so we require correction from our Lord. But we don’t need to be worried that God’s truth and goodness are fundamentally different, all the way down, from our truth and goodness. They can’t be. We’re made in his image.

Brothers and Sisters After All

As we turn to the broader conversation, let me open with a provocative observation and an urgent warning. The provocative observation is that Calvinism does not really confess anything that isn’t also confessed by all the other major Christian theological traditions—not ultimately, not at its heart. All the major traditions confess the same doctrines that are central to Calvinism: original sin, the sovereignty of God, substitutionary atonement, supernatural regeneration, and so forth. What makes Calvinism Calvinism is not so much that it has something that other traditions lack, but that it preserves these doctrinal commitments more purely and follows them more consistently than other traditions do. It does so not by adding anything to them but by striving to reject and expel a foreign element—the attribution of God’s supernatural works to human or other natural causes.

The impulse to attribute God’s saving work to humanity or nature has existed, to a greater or lesser degree, in all parts of the church at all times. The impulse is so strong that even the churches planted by the apostles themselves seem to have been constantly falling back into it—and not centuries later, but while the apostles were still living. In fact, the special purpose for which Jesus appointed the apostles was not to plant churches (lots of people did that) but to correct churches when they went off the rails in precisely this way. In the apostolic Epistles, as in the Hebrew prophets before them, we hear the battle trumpets of the great spiritual war to expel this foreign element from our hearts, minds, and lives. This war is almost by definition the struggle of the church militant in every age.

For those of us who are Calvinists, Calvinism is just our name for this war. I don’t mean that we’re the only ones who fight the war. All branches of the church agree, in principle, that we must fight it; we agree, in principle, that it is God who works salvation. But those of us who are Calvinists believe that the rest of the church has not gone far enough in prosecuting the war. Many of the teachings that the rest of the church believes to be truth, we believe to be a series of compromises in which the truth is mixed together with the very error that we are all agreed, in principle, must be rejected.

This, of course, explains why Calvinists tend to lapse into technical formulas of negation so often when they talk about Calvinism. To some extent, we have to do so; we must negate the attribution of God’s supernatural work to human and natural causes. The problem is that we Calvinists have become so uniformly negative that people no longer recognize that Calvinists share the same fundamental doctrinal commitments as non-Calvinists—that our negations are intended to guard the same things everybody else wants to guard. We just disagree about how to guard them.

This view also provides an explanation for a strange fact—a fact that people find so surprising and incredible that they often don’t believe it even when they see it with their own eyes. I mean the fact that Calvinistic religion is so drenched with joy. Everyone expects Calvinists to be sour and flat souled, and when they discover just how false this is (if they do ever allow themselves to be sufficiently exposed to Calvinism that they discover it), they respond with puzzlement and even with disbelief. But there’s no mystery about it. Without Calvinism, Christian religion filters God through a series of spurious claims attributing God’s direct and supernatural works to ourselves, or the church, or nature generally. With Calvinism, we get God pure and unfiltered. And, if you will forgive what may be a scandalous metaphor: the purer the drug, the more potent the high.

The adherents of other traditions, of course, see things differently. I don’t want to offend my brothers and sisters in Christ, but I do want to serve them by telling them what I think—just as I always rejoice to hear them tell me what they think. And there is a very weighty matter for mutual celebration here. It turns out we’re not as different as we thought. It turns out the heart and soul of Calvinism can be expressed as nothing more than a call to be fully faithful to the light, as God gives us ability to see the light, of the same truths that other Christians also confess. It turns out we’re all striving to preserve the same truth. It turns out we really are brothers and sisters after all.

Warning against Presumption

Now for the urgent warning. Throughout this book I speak of the promises of salvation with reference to “you”—as in, “when Jesus died and rose again, he saved you”—on the assumption that you, the reader, possess those promises. If you have genuinely repented from sin, trusted Christ alone as your Savior and Lord, and embarked upon a life of active discipleship through obedience and service to others, you do. If not, you don’t.

I beg you, examine your life to know whether you have truly done so. I speak as someone who once had a false assurance of salvation. I know firsthand how easy it is for a self-righteous man to preserve his delusional opinion of his own goodness and his demonic presumption upon God’s grace. The key method of self-deception about your salvation is to avoid self-examination about the state of your life. The biblical basis of assurance is to test the fruits of your faith in your life by God’s standards; that’s what the famous passage in 2 Peter 1:1–11 and the whole book of 1 John are all about. Don’t delay—lay your life out on the examining table this day, this hour, this moment. And whatever you find, evaluate it by God’s standards and offer it to him, knowing that “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Detour

Five Points about Calvinism

In the introduction, I said that Calvinism is radically misunderstood by most people in our day. I expect that at that point, my readers divided into two groups. One group really wants to hear me make the case to support that assertion, either because they disagree with it or because they’re undecided and are interested in hearing my argument. The other group doesn’t need to hear me make the case on this, either because they already agree with me or because they’re not interested in the issue—they picked up this book to hear about the joy of Calvinism, not an argument over whether Calvinism is misunderstood. This section is a detour for the benefit of the first group. Members of the second group may feel free to skip it entirely.

To try to convince you of just how drastically Calvinism has been miscommunicated and misunderstood, let me offer my own five points about Calvinism. I’m willing to bet that they’ll challenge most people’s conception of Calvinism in a pretty fundamental way. These points challenge five common myths about Calvinism. I think these myths are the main reason people don’t hear what Calvinism really has to say.

To support my five points, I need to refer to an objective standard of what Calvinists believe. I want you to know that when I say Calvinists believe this or that, I’m not just making things up as I go. To confirm that I’m accurately representing Calvinism, I use the Westminster Confession of Faith as a standard of reference.1 Of course, there’s no authoritative or mandatory doctrinal statement that all Calvinists without exception unconditionally accept. But we need to use something as a reference, and the Westminster Confession is the overwhelmingly predominant confessional statement of Calvinist theology in the English-speaking world. This is the statement that most confessionally Calvinist church bodies require their clergy to affirm. That’s more than enough for my purposes. If I want to prove that “Calvinism doesn’t say x,” pointing out that the Westminster Confession says “x is false” is pretty much a slam dunk.

1. Calvinism does not deny that we have free will.

The Westminster Confession has a whole chapter called “Of Free Will.” Here is the first section of that chapter, in its entirety: