Imperishable Inheritance

The first post in the series on reformed the­ol­ogy has to do with this tra­di­tion in his­tory. When we study the growth of the­ol­ogy, we are study­ing his­tor­i­cal the­ol­ogy. This tra­di­tion is one of the longest tra­di­tions in Chris­tian­ity. As time devel­ops, the­olo­gians begin to make their the­ol­ogy clearer and clearer. As such, the begin­nings of reformed the­ol­ogy didn’t start with the five points of Calvin­ism; in fact, that didn’t come until over 1,500 years after the death of Christ! What we want to study is how and why it got to where it is today.

Augustine & Pelagius

The church itself never did seri­ous inves­tiga­tive work on the doc­trine of predestination/original sin until the 4th cen­tury. It started with Augus­tine who was the first to debate a man name Pelag­ius over what effect the fall had on man. Augus­tine said that the fall of Adam left man spir­i­tu­ally dead, but Pelag­ius declared that we are actu­ally a ‘blank slate’ that is not affected by Adam’s fall. Pelag­ius, in effect, denied orig­i­nal sin! Pelag­ius also declared that we could, hypo­thet­i­cally, live a life with­out sin. Man was, in effect, respon­si­ble for his own sal­va­tion apart from the inter­ven­tion of God.

The Pela­gian Con­tro­versy, as it was dubbed, was one of the ear­li­est here­sies the church had to battle. Pela­gian­ism was declared as heresy by a church coun­cil in the 5th cen­tury. It was the first time that the church dealt with an apolo­getic con­cern­ing the state of fallen man. This battle will con­tinue to be one that rages through­out the centuries.

Semi-Pelagianism

A few cen­turies later a move­ment dubbed Semi-​Pelagianism arose in the 6th cen­tury. This move­ment took sin more seri­ously, but still held to the thought that sal­va­tion had to start with man’s ini­tia­tive. This move­ment didn’t deny orig­i­nal sin, but it still had a strong empha­sis upon the fact that man could indeed ini­ti­ate the process of sal­va­tion. They would deny that man is nat­u­rally inca­pable of dis­cern­ing the Gospel. It was how­ever also con­demned as heresy in the year 529 at the Coun­cil of Orange, but it wasn’t until the 17th cen­tury that the debate came to its great­est point yet.

The Reformation

While many attribute the “reformed” to the ref­or­ma­tion we can see that reformed the­ol­ogy did not begin during the Ref­or­ma­tion. While Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all had a sim­i­lar view on what we today know as “Calvinism,” the debate of the Ref­or­ma­tion was in all real­ity over some dif­fer­ent issues. Con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of a debate between a “Calvinist”/reformed the­olo­gian and some­one opposed to that view was Martin Luther vs. Eras­mus. Luther wrote his great work The Bondage of the Will as a polemic against Erasmus.

The first of the issues was whether the right­eous­ness of Christ is imputed (that is, given all at once) or infused (that is, given over time through the Catholic sacra­ments). This debate, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith and imputed right­eous­ness, became the eye of the storm during the divi­sion. The other points of dis­agree­ment included the suf­fi­ciency of Scrip­ture and sal­va­tion by grace alone. These five points of dis­agree­ment between the reform­ers and the Catholic church are expounded in the Five Solas of the Reformation.

Arminianism vs. Calvinism

A man by the name of Jacob Arminius stud­ied under a staunch reformed teacher named Theodore Beza. The pre­vail­ing the­ol­ogy of the Dutch church was that man was born in com­plete bondage to sin and that only God could take ini­tia­tive in our sal­va­tion (which was the view Augus­tine defended). The church also had a strong view on pre­des­ti­na­tion in terms of future events. Jacob thought that these teach­ings denied man’s moral respon­si­bil­ity and made God the author of evil. He then wrote out against the teach­ings of the Dutch church, but Jacob would never see his teach­ings take off. A year after he died his fol­low­ers took his thoughts and com­piled them into the Remon­strance which were five objec­tions to the Dutch church’s view on sal­va­tion. It then became known as the five points of Arminianism.

The Dutch church held a Synod which is a meet­ing to dis­cuss doc­trine called the Synod of Dort to review the Remon­strance and to make a ruling. After sev­eral months of debate, the Synod pub­lished The Canons of Dort which was a mag­nif­i­cent doc­u­ment out­lin­ing answers to the objec­tions by Arminius and his fol­low­ers. From this doc­u­ment we get the five points of Calvin­ism which they named after John Calvin who was known for his writ­ings on pre­des­ti­na­tion. Armini­an­ism, or Semi-​Augustinianism, went largely under­ground until the advent of John Wesley in the First Great Awak­en­ing on the 18th century.

Puritanism

The Eng­lish Ref­or­ma­tion (the for­ma­tion of the Church of Eng­land from Catholi­cism) saw a group of Calvin­is­tic Chris­tians deter­mined to be free of the reli­gious tur­moil. The Puri­tans then took their desire for reli­gious free­dom over to Amer­ica set­tling in New Eng­land (cf. Mayflower). The trans­plant­ing of their the­ol­ogy would have a huge impact on the col­o­niza­tion of America.

The Puri­tans had inter­nal dis­agree­ment most notably of which was church polity (gov­ern­ment). The two camps emerged were Pres­by­ter­ian and Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ists (Bap­tists). It is still a debate that is widely dis­puted amongst reformed Chris­tians (to be dis­cussed in a later post). The belief that the Pope was the Anti-​Christ also had a strong back­ing in this time period, and they cham­pi­oned The Reg­u­la­tive Prin­ci­ple which we will talk about in the next post. Pop­u­lar Puri­tans include John Bunyan, John Owen, Stephen Charnock, and Thomas Boston.

First Great Awakening

The first of the three “Great Awakenings” which refer to evan­gel­i­cal revival in the states were spurred on by Calvin­ists. The first of these took place in the mid 18th cen­tury. Two Calvin­ists in par­tic­u­lar: Jonathan Edwards and George White­field spurred the move­ments. Jonathan Edwards fiercely defend Calvin­is­tic doc­trine with such great works as Free­dom of the Will which still today remains an impact­ful work on the Calvin­is­tic bal­ance of divine sov­er­eignty and human freedom.

George White­field debated a man by the name of John Wesley. This debate reminds us of when Augus­tine debated Pelag­ius, and the fol­low­ers of Arminius debated the Dutch church. Since the First Great Awak­en­ing the teach­ings of John Wesley, which revived Armin­ian doc­trine, have taken over the church at large. But we are in a time where Calvin­is­tic doc­trine is seeing a revival as more and more Chris­tians look to the rich his­tory of reformed theology.

Resources

• Augus­tine and Pelag­ius (R.C. Sproul)
• Calvin­ism in His­tory (Loraine Boettner)
• Puri­tans (Mon​er​gism.com)