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Commentary
WESLEYAN WISDOM: Calvinist revival reaches Methodism Donald W. Haynes, May 13, 2009
Donald Haynes
By Donald W. Haynes UMR Columnist
Editor’s Note: This in the first in a series of columns observing the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth.
John Calvin (1509-1564) has recently made a comeback in theological popularity.
His Institutes of the Christian Religion (1534), his astute legal mind and his theocratic leadership stimulate to this day the branch of Protestant Christianity known as Reformed theology; that theology was opposed in the early 17th century by Jacob (or James) Arminius (1560-1609), whose work inspired Wesleyan theology.
Arminianism almost eclipsed Calvinism in the U.S. during the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century. At the heart of this revival were “altar calls” for the repentance of sin, with the offer of forgiving grace. Since many of the hearers had either an immoral, illegal or socially ostracized past, that promise had a powerful impact.
The prevalent theology of the late 19th and much of the 20th century did not see humans as sinners but as children of God who had the free will to become Christians and change their morality and ethics. This dominant premise, rooted in the Enlightenment of the 18th century, led to progressive education theory in public schools, the emerging social sciences of sociology and psychology, and the theology reflected in most Sunday school literature.
But the pendulum swung too far. Some have called the result “libertarian freedom”: the notion that humans “think God’s thoughts after him” and are free to decide whatever we will about our relationship to God. And no denomination moved further toward this theology than the Methodists.
Our theological posture was dominated in that era by Boston School of Theology, along with such giants as Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar S. Brightman, Albert Knudson and Harold Dewolf. Most Methodist theologians rejected the doctrine of original sin. Until Albert Outler led Methodism to a recovery of Wesleyan theology in the 1960s, mainstream Methodism had ceased to be Arminian, either in Christology or the doctrine of salvation.
A backlash emerged in a well-funded tract called The Fundamentals (1918). Since then, a divide in theology, among other things, has focused on human free will versus divine causation or predestination. Arminianism, for decades, seemed more suited to the American psyche, but Calvinism gradually eclipsed it in most evangelical circles, including Methodism. Classical Arminianism became a fallow field, long unplowed.
Meanwhile mainline Presbyterians, the flagbearers of theological Calvinism, shifted their stance to what is often called “soft determinism” or “compatibilism.” That is, human beings are indeed responsible for their actions, and if responsible, then free to make choices with resulting consequences. That is, we are not compelled or “caused” to make moral or personal choices by any external agent, including God. Rather our choices are “caused” by such internal forces as our psychological state, momentary desires, personal religious beliefs or some combination of the above.
But today, “high Calvinism” is staging a remarkable comeback. Rick Warren reflects Calvinism in his best-selling Purpose-Driven Life: “Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. . . . He planned the days of your life, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. . . . Many children are unplanned by their parents, but all are planned by God.”
To live out this doctrine would make God responsible for every baby addicted to crack cocaine, every car wreck, every war casualty and even war itself. This is a virtual textbook of neo-Calvinism, taught uncritically in thousands of United Methodist churches!
So what is Calvinism? Calvin admitted that he first designed his theology, then selected Scripture to defend it. Calvinism emphasizes God’s absolute sovereignty and predestined will or “causation” of whatever happens—in nature or in human behavior. It also insists that humanity’s depravity is a complete estrangement from God, and that God chooses to save “the elect,” leaving others to their just desserts.
This means that Jesus’ death on the cross was an atonement limited to the elect. The elect cannot resist God’s grace, and the eternal security of election prevents backsliding. An oversimplified explanation of Calvinist doctrine came from the 17th-century Court of Dort in The Netherlands, learned by millions as the acronym TULIP:
Total Depravity—Sin has so contaminated every facet of human nature that sinners have absolutely no capacity to do anything good nor to turn to God for salvation. They have no capacity for “hearing” God or responding to God. Albert Outler called it “tee-total depravity.”
Unconditional Election—God has chosen to rescue certain fallen and undeserving sinners from their helpless, sinful state, leaving the rest of humanity to perish eternally. Those so chosen are called “The Elect.”
Limited Atonement—Calvinism is very logical; therefore, if only some are elected to be saved, the atonement of Christ is limited to those predestined to be saved. (There are misgivings about this in the current Reformed theological faith community, due to concerns that it impedes evangelism.)
Irresistible Grace—The elect cannot resist God’s sovereign decision to save them. Election eliminates human participation in our eternal destiny.
Perseverance of the Saints—This is colloquially called “eternal security,” or “once saved, always saved.” If salvation is predestined and humanity lacks the freedom to resist God’s grace, then it logically follows that none whom God elects will be lost. (Many Baptists who lean toward Arminianism in evangelism have insisted on this one tenet of Calvinism.)
The acceptance of Calvinism by some United Methodists may be the consequence of a Methodism that has become, doctrinally speaking, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” We could also blame the entertainment focus in much so-called “contemporary worship” or pop-religionists for whom the Bible is a self-help manual from which we pick and choose feel-good text.
The first challenger to Calvinism, ironically, was a Calvinist! Jacob Arminius, a precocious young pastor in Amsterdam, was sent to Geneva to study under Calvin’s successor Theodore Beza. Arminius retained his belief in God’s grace as the source of our salvation, but while studying Romans he came to believe that we can resist God’s grace, and that Jesus died for all because every human being is a child of God and therefore one of the elect.
Arminius was tried for heresy, died and was convicted posthumously. His chief advocate and polemicist was John Wesley.
Dr. Haynes is an instructor in United Methodist studies at Hood Theological Seminary. dhaynes11@triad.rr.com
Donald Haynes
