Calvinism

Calvinism is a Reformed church of Protestant Christianity that goes back to John Calvin and other theologians.

Overview

Important Calvinists from Europe include Martin Bucer, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Huldrych Zwingli. In England, Reformers include Thomas Cranmer and John Jewel. Because John Calvin had great influence and played an important role in the confessional and ecclesiastical debates throughout the 17th century, the tradition generally became known as Calvinism.

Today

Today, the term also means the doctrines and practices of the Reformed churches of which Calvin was an early leader. The system is perhaps best known for its doctrines of predestination and of total depravity.

History

1530s

Calvin's international influence on the development of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation began at the age of 25, when he started work on his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1534 (published 1536). He also contributed to confessional documents for use in churches, and his beliefs and practices left a direct influence on Protestantism. He was only one of many people to influence the doctrines of the Reformed churches, but he eventually became one of their most prominent theologians.

1540s

The rising importance of the Reformed churches and of Calvin happened during the second phase of the Protestant Reformation, when evangelical churches began to form, after Martin Luther, another important Reformer, had been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. Calvin was a French exile in Geneva who had signed the Lutheran Augsburg Confession in 1540, but his importance came from the Swiss Reformation, which was not Lutheran but followed Huldrych Zwingli and then Calvin.

True Calvinism, or historical Calvinism, does not teach that God chooses the people who will be saved. Instead, it teaches that for God's own glory recreates men with a new nature, which loves God and hates sin, instead of men keeping their old nature in which they would not want to follow God (Romans 3:10-12). Historical Calvinism also teaches that if God does not choose to save someone, that peron cannot be saved.

Spread

Europe

Although much of Calvin's practice was in Geneva, his publications spread his ideas of a reformed church to many parts of Europe. Calvinism became the theology of most Christians in Scotland (see John Knox), the Netherlands, and parts of Germany, and it was influential also in France, Hungary, Transylvania, and Poland. Calvinism was popular as well for some time in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, but it was rejected for Lutheranism after the Synod of Uppsala in 1593.

North America

Most settlers in the Mid-Atlantic and New England regions of the United States, were Calvinists, including the Puritans and the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (now New York City). 

South Africa

Dutch Calvinist settlers also began to be the first successful European colonisers of South Africa in the 17th century and became known as Boers or Afrikaners.

Other regions

Some of the largest Calvinist communions missionaries were started in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in Korea and Nigeria.

Related pages

 Protestantism
 Baptist
 Anglicanism
 Lutheranism
 Eastern Christianity
 East–West Schism
 Oriental Orthodoxy
 Eastern Orthodox Church
 Protestant Reformation
 Roman Catholic Church

Resources

 John Wesley (2001). Calvinism Calmly Considered. 
C. Gordon Olson (2002). Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism: An Inductive, Mediate Theology of Salvation. Global Gospel Publishers. 

Other websites

 "Calvinist Childrearing Methodology" from A Study of the First Maternal Association of Utica, New York, 1824-1833 by Elizabeth Shanklin
"The Impact of Calvinism on Sixteenth Century Culture" 1967 By Dr. W. Stanford Reid

Calvinist websites

Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics - offers many materials from a Calvinist perspective.
Monergism - classic articles and resources; claims to have the largest collection of Reformed/Calvinist resources on the Internet.
Calvinism Index  by Colin Maxwell

Calvinism and other theological systems

What is Calvinism? - A Summary of the Presbyterian Religion.
Calvinism & Arminianism - a brief comparison of Calvinism and Arminianism from The Five Points of Calvinism - Defined, Defended, Documented by Steele


Category:Christianity
Category:John Calvin
Category:Protestantism
Category:Protestant Reformation
Category:Christian movements and denominational families