What Is Calvinism? TULIP, Dort, and an Orthodox Response

Few words in Protestant theology carry as much weight, or cause as much argument, as "Calvinism." For some Christians it names the clearest account of grace ever written: God saves sinners from start to finish, and nothing in the saved person explains why. For others it names a God who chose most of humanity for damnation before anyone was born. Both groups often reach for the same five-letter flower, TULIP, as if it were the summary the Reformers themselves wrote.

This article sets out what Calvinism actually teaches, where its famous "five points" came from, and how much variety there is inside the Reformed family today. It then gives the Orthodox Church's answer. That answer is not new. Orthodox bishops met the question directly in the seventeenth century, and the Church Fathers had already spoken to its central texts long before Calvin. But the answer only means something if Calvinism is described first in a form a Reformed Christian would recognise, so that is where we begin.

In brief

John Calvin (1509 to 1564) taught that God, by an eternal decree, preordains some people to eternal life and others to eternal damnation. Later Reformed theologians developed and codified his teaching, and the Synod of Dort (1618 to 1619) answered the Arminian Remonstrants with five heads of doctrine: unconditional election, an atonement that effectively redeems the elect, human inability, effectual grace, and the preservation of the saints. The acronym TULIP is much later. Its earliest documented use is a 1913 magazine article recalling a lecture of about 1905, and leading Reformed historians say it distorts both Calvin and Dort. Calvinism is also not one thing: "four-point" and hypothetical-universalist Calvinists, confessional Presbyterians and the "New Calvinism" of the 2000s all claim the name. The Orthodox Church agrees with Calvinists that grace comes first and that no one saves himself. It disagrees that God wills the damnation of anyone, that Christ died only for some, or that saving grace cannot be refused. A synod at Jerusalem in 1672 said so explicitly, and although Orthodox theologians since have admitted that its Latin-shaped language has limits, its verdict stands: double predestination, limited atonement and irresistible grace are errors, contrary to the faith of the Fathers.

Thesis: Calvinism is a serious but mistaken reading of Scripture. Its distinctive doctrines are errors, because the Scriptures, as the Fathers and the Church have always read them, teach that God wills all to be saved, that Christ died for all, and that grace invites but does not compel.

Calvin and the doctrine of predestination

Calvin was born in Noyon, France, in 1509 and died in Geneva in 1564.¹ He published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion at Basel in 1536, a short book of six chapters, and kept expanding it until the final Latin edition of 1559 had eighty chapters in four books.² Predestination appears in Book Three, where he defines it plainly:

By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation.³

Calvin did not hide how hard this is. Asking why Adam's fall involves whole nations "in eternal death without remedy," he answers that it "so seemed meet to God," and admits that the decree is "dreadful." His Latin, decretum horribile, can mean "awe-inspiring" as well as "horrible," as Reformed defenders such as Augustus Toplady later pointed out.⁴ His pastoral point was that God's choice rests on mercy alone, so that no believer can boast, and that it gives believers a firm assurance. For a fuller account of Calvin's life and the Genevan church, see our article on John Calvin and the early Reformed church.

It is also fair to say that Calvin was one Reformed voice among several. The historian Richard Muller, himself a Reformed scholar, argues that "Calvinism" as a tradition was shaped by many teachers over several generations, and that Calvin "certainly never thought of" the TULIP model, "but neither did later so-called Calvinists."⁵

The later Reformed confessions keep Calvin's substance but state it with care. The Westminster Confession says that God "from all eternity" ordained "whatsoever comes to pass," yet so that "neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures." It teaches that some are "predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death," and that God was pleased "to pass by" the rest of mankind "and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin."⁶ Those qualifications matter. Reformed theology does not think of itself as fatalism, and an honest critic should not describe it that way.

The Synod of Dort and the "five points"

The five points come from a Dutch quarrel. After the death of Jacob Arminius, a Leiden professor, his followers set out their views in the Remonstrance of 1610: election based on foreseen faith, an atonement for all that anyone may accept, resistible grace, and the possibility of falling away.⁷ The quarrel was political as well as theological; our articles on Arminianism and on the Dutch Revolt tell that story. A national synod met at Dordrecht in 1618 to 1619, with twenty-six delegates from eight foreign countries alongside the Dutch, and answered the Remonstrance point by point.⁸

Its Canons, in a modern Reformed translation, teach the following:

• Election. Before the foundation of the world, "by sheer grace," God "chose in Christ to salvation a definite number of particular people." The rest God decided "to leave ... in the common misery into which, by their own fault, they have plunged themselves."⁹
• The death of Christ. It is "of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world," yet God's will was that it should "effectively redeem ... all those and only those who were chosen from eternity."¹⁰
• Human inability. Without the regenerating Spirit, fallen people "are neither willing nor able to return to God."¹¹
• Effectual grace. Regeneration is not a persuasion that leaves it "in human power whether or not to be reborn"; those in whom God works this way "are certainly, unfailingly, and effectively reborn."¹²
• Preservation. Believers do not finally fall away, not by their own strength but because "with respect to God it cannot possibly happen."¹³

Two features are often missed. Dort insists that the blame for unbelief "is not at all in God, but in humanity," and that "all who are called through the gospel are called earnestly."¹⁴ Reformed Christians hold both that God's choice is unconditional and that the gospel offer is sincere. Whether those two claims fit together is exactly what their critics question.

TULIP is a later acronym

The flower is not Dutch, and it is not from Dort. For years the earliest known printed use was thought to be Loraine Boettner's The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (1932). The historian Kenneth Stewart judged that Boettner had probably taken it from earlier use, and researchers then found a 1913 article by William H. Vail in The Outlook recalling a lecture "some eight years ago" by Dr Cleland Boyd McAfee of Brooklyn, who "made use of the word Tulip" to help hearers remember the five points.¹⁵ {{moderate: The earliest known use of the TULIP acronym goes back to about 1905, roughly three centuries after Dort.}}

Muller goes further. "There is no historical association between the acrostic TULIP and the Canons of Dort," he writes, and two of its letters misrepresent the tradition: Calvin never spoke of "limited atonement," and "Neither term appears in the Canons of Dort."¹⁶ What older Reformed writers meant by "total depravity," he argues, was not that fallen people have no goodness at all but their "inability to save one's self from sin."¹⁷ This matters for an Orthodox reader. Arguing against TULIP as popularly understood can mean arguing against something many Reformed scholars also reject.

Many Calvinisms

Reformed Christians have long disagreed among themselves, especially over the extent of the atonement. "Four-point" Calvinists accept unconditional election and effectual grace but hold that Christ died for all in some real sense. The best-known form, hypothetical universalism, was taught in different versions by the English bishop John Davenant and the French theologian Moïse Amyraut. The Reformed theologian Oliver Crisp, without endorsing it himself, has argued that it is "a viable theological option for those in the Reformed tradition": Christ "really does die for the sins of the world," his death is "a conditionally sufficient satisfaction" for all, and yet "God provides this gift to the elect alone."¹⁸

A very different development came in American evangelicalism. In 2009 Time magazine listed "The New Calvinism" among ten ideas changing the world, opening with the line "Calvinism is back, and not just musically," and naming John Piper, Mark Driscoll and Albert Mohler, "head of the Southern Seminary of the huge Southern Baptist Convention." It quoted Collin Hansen, author of Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists.¹⁹ The label had spread well beyond the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches where the confessions were written. So when someone says "Calvinist," it is worth asking which kind. For the Reformed confessional tradition as a whole, see what Presbyterians believe.

What Calvinism gets right

An Orthodox reply should begin with agreement. Scripture does speak of election: God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world," and "whom He foreknew, He also predestined" (Ephesians 1:4; Romans 8:29, NKJV). Christ says, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him" (John 6:44). The Orthodox Church affirms that grace always comes first, that fallen human beings cannot heal themselves, and that salvation is a gift no one earns. St John of Damascus, whose Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith became a standard summary in the East, says that God "is the source and cause of all good, and without His co-operation and help we cannot will or do any good thing."²⁰ Calvinists are right to insist that God is not a spectator waiting to see what we will do on our own. The disagreement is narrower and deeper than that.

The Orthodox response

God wills all to be saved

Paul writes that God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4, NKJV). Calvinists usually read "all men" as all kinds of people, a reading Augustine also offered in the West. The Greek Fathers read it as all people. St John Chrysostom, preaching on the verse, draws a practical conclusion: "Imitate God! If He wills that all men should be saved, there is reason why one should pray for all."²¹ St John of Damascus distinguishes God's "antecedent will," his original wish that "all should be saved and come to His Kingdom," from his "consequent will," which responds to our choices and permits punishment. Evil acts depend "neither on His antecedent nor on His consequent will, but are a concession to free-will."²² In the next chapter he draws the line Calvinism does not draw: "while God knows all things beforehand, yet He does not predetermine all things. For He knows beforehand those things that are in our power, but He does not predetermine them."²³

Christ died for all

John writes that Christ "is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2, NKJV). Dort answers that Christ's death is sufficient for all but intended to save only the elect. Orthodox teaching takes the verse at face value, and the Church's worship reflects it: Christ entered death to destroy it for the whole human race. Limited atonement is therefore an error: Christ died for every human being, and no one is lost because his sins were left out of the Cross. Our article on theosis explains why the Orthodox think of salvation as the healing of human nature itself, which Christ took in its entirety.

Grace invites but does not compel

The decisive difference is irresistible grace. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, commenting on Christ's words "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" (Revelation 3:20, NKJV), puts the Orthodox view simply: God "waits for man to open the door," and "He does not break it down. The grace of God invites all but compels none."²⁴ This is synergy: God's grace always goes first, and the human will, already moved by it, consents or refuses. Ware notes that Calvinists "have viewed the Orthodox idea of 'synergy' with some suspicion."²⁵ Our article on grace and free will in Orthodox Christianity answers the charge that this makes salvation a human achievement.

Salvation can be lost

Dort's fifth head teaches that true believers cannot finally fall away. The Orthodox Church does not teach this. Salvation is a life of communion with God lived in synergy to the end, and a person who has received grace can turn from it. Paul himself disciplined his body "lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:27, NKJV), and Christ promised that "he who endures to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 24:13, NKJV). The popular evangelical slogan "once saved, always saved" is likewise an error.

The Synod of Jerusalem (1672)

The Orthodox Church met Calvinism directly when a Confession under the name of Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, taught that God predestined the elect "without having in any wise regard to their works, and having, forsooth, no actuating cause for this election, except His good pleasure."²⁶ A synod at Jerusalem under Patriarch Dositheus answered it in 1672. Its third decree says that God predestines and condemns, but not "without cause," because that would contradict the nature of God, "who is the common Father of all, and no respecter of persons, and would have all men to be saved." It teaches a "preventing" grace "imparted to all," which "is of use only to the willing, not to the unwilling."²⁷ {{strong: The Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 rejected unconditional reprobation and irresistible grace in explicit terms.}}

Honesty requires two caveats. The synod's language was sharp; its acts speak of "the wickedness of Calvin."²⁸ And its theology borrowed Latin categories. Ware, who accepts its conclusions, says the seventeenth-century confessions show "the limitations of Greek theology in this period."²⁹ Jerusalem 1672 is a weighty local synod, received widely, not an Ecumenical Council. Its verdict on Calvinist predestination, though, matches the Fathers before it.

Objections and replies

"If grace can be refused, salvation finally depends on us."

This is the strongest Reformed objection. If two people receive the same grace and one believes, something in that person must make the difference, and then he has something to boast of. The Orthodox reply is that accepting a gift is not earning it. A beggar who opens his hand has not paid for the bread. The Damascene's line that without God's "co-operation and help we cannot will or do any good thing" rules out any self-made merit. The Orthodox Church declines to explain why one person consents and another refuses, and calls the meeting of grace and freedom a mystery. Calvinism explains it at too high a price, by making God's will the only real cause of who is lost, and that is an error about God Himself, who "desires all men to be saved."

"John 6 and Romans 9 teach unconditional election."

No one should pretend these passages are easy. The Orthodox reading takes the Father's drawing (John 6:44) as real and necessary, and the same Gospel says that Christ, lifted up, "will draw all peoples to Myself" (John 12:32). Romans 9 needs the whole argument of Romans 9 to 11 around it; our article on Romans 9 and predestination works through it, and our article asking whether the early Church taught Calvinism surveys the Fathers before Augustine.

"The Orthodox caricature Calvinism as fatalism."

Sometimes they have. The Westminster Confession denies that God is "the author of sin" or that "violence" is done to the will, and Dort places the blame for unbelief "in humanity." Reformed theologians are compatibilists: they hold that God's decree and human choice both operate, at different levels. The Orthodox objection survives that clarification, though. If God's decree, not foreseen refusal, is why some are passed by, then God does not will all to be saved in the sense the Fathers meant.

"Jerusalem 1672 was itself borrowing from Rome."

Partly true, as Ware concedes. The Orthodox case does not rest on that synod. It rests on the Greek Fathers' consistent reading of 1 Timothy 2:4 and 1 John 2:2, which the synod restated in the vocabulary available to it.

What we can say confidently

• Calvin taught a double predestination in which some are preordained to life and others to damnation, and later Reformed confessions kept that teaching with careful qualifications.
• The Synod of Dort (1618 to 1619) set out five heads of doctrine against the Remonstrants; the acronym TULIP is a twentieth-century teaching aid.
• Reformed Christians differ among themselves, especially over the extent of the atonement.
• The Greek Fathers read 1 Timothy 2:4 as God's will for the salvation of every person, and St John of Damascus distinguished foreknowledge from predetermination.
• The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) explicitly rejected unconditional reprobation and irresistible grace.

What remains disputed

• Whether Calvin himself taught a limited atonement, or only later Reformed theologians did, is debated among Reformed historians.
• How much weight the particular Latin-shaped wording of the 1672 Confession of Dositheus carries is discussed among Orthodox theologians; its rejection of Calvinist predestination is not in question, and agrees with the Fathers.
• Whether hypothetical universalism is a softened Calvinism or simply another form of particularism is argued within the Reformed world.

Conclusion

Calvinism grew from a desire to give God all the glory for salvation, and the Orthodox Church shares that desire. Where it parts company is the claim that God's glory requires the eternal passing-by of most of the human race. The Church confesses in the Creed that the Son of God came down "for us men and for our salvation," and the Fathers heard in that "us" every human being. Grace goes before, calls, heals and carries us; it also waits at the door. Reformed Christians are fellow baptized believers in Christ, and Orthodox Christians who discuss these things with them will find that they agree on more than the five points suggest. But the Orthodox answer is not uncertain: God predestines no one to damnation apart from his own free refusal, Christ died for all, and grace, offered in earnest to every person, can be refused. Double predestination, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the impossibility of falling away are errors; the faith of the Fathers, kept in the Orthodox Church, is the answer to them.

Notes

1. Christian Classics Ethereal Library, "John Calvin" author page, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin.
2. "1536 John Calvin Publishes Institutes of Christian Religion," Christian History (Christianity Today), October 1990, https://www.christianitytoday.com/1990/10/1536-john-calvin-publishes-institutes-of-christian-religion (which gives the 1559 edition 79 chapters). The 1559 text in Beveridge's translation has 80: 18, 17, 25 and 20 chapters in Books 1 to 4, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.html.
3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.21.5, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845), https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.v.xxii.html.
4. Calvin, Institutes 3.23.7, trans. Beveridge, https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.v.xxiv.html. Beveridge prints "The decree, I admit, is, dreadful." On the Latin decretum horribile and Toplady's reading of it: Gordon H. Clark, encyclopedia entry "Decretum horribile," reproduced at https://unapologetica.blogspot.com/2023/01/gordon-clark-decretum-horribile.html.
5. Richard A. Muller, "Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, Did Calvin (or Anyone Else in the Early Modern Era) Plant the 'TULIP'?" (lecture, 2009), section 1, as reproduced at https://theologicalmeditations.blogspot.com/2012/04/richard-muller-on-problem-of-tulip.html; revised in Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition (Baker, 2012), 51-69.
6. Westminster Confession of Faith 3.1, 3.3, 3.7 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church text), https://opc.org/wcf.html.
7. Christian Reformed Church in North America, introduction to the Canons of Dort, https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dort.
8. CRCNA, introduction to the Canons of Dort.
9. Canons of Dort, First Main Point, articles 7 and 15, trans. Faith Alive Christian Resources (2011), CRCNA.
10. Canons of Dort, Second Main Point, articles 3 and 8.
11. Canons of Dort, Third/Fourth Main Point, article 3.
12. Canons of Dort, Third/Fourth Main Point, article 12.
13. Canons of Dort, Fifth Main Point, article 8.
14. Canons of Dort, First Main Point, article 5; Third/Fourth Main Point, article 8.
15. PCA Historical Center, "Originator of the T.U.L.I.P. Acrostic?" (This Day in Presbyterian History, 25 September), quoting William H. Vail, "The Five Points of Calvinism Historically Considered," The Outlook 104 (1913): 394 (the PCA page uses the magazine's later title, The New Outlook), https://thisday.pcahistory.org/2013/09/originator-of-the-t-u-l-i-p-acrostic/; Justin Taylor, "Origin of TULIP," The Gospel Coalition (2009, updated), citing Kenneth J. Stewart, "The Points of Calvinism: Retrospect and Prospect," Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 26.2 (2008): 187-203, https://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/origin-of-tulip. Vail's article was not opened directly.
16. Muller, "Was Calvin a Calvinist?" section 1.
17. Muller, "Was Calvin a Calvinist?" section 1.
18. Oliver D. Crisp, Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology (Fortress, 2014), 183 and 210, as quoted in Forrest H. Buckner's review, Themelios (2015), 159-160, https://ms.fortresspress.com/downloads/9781451486131_Review_Themelios.pdf. Crisp's book was not opened directly.
19. David Van Biema, "The New Calvinism," in "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now," Time, 12 March 2009, https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884760,00.html.
20. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.30, trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33042.htm.
21. John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Timothy 7, trans. Philip Schaff, NPNF1 vol. 13, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230607.htm. For Augustine's narrower reading ("the human race in all its varieties of rank and circumstances"), see Enchiridion 103, NPNF1 vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm.
22. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition 2.29.
23. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition 2.30.
24. Timothy (Kallistos) Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part II, "Man: his creation, his vocation, his failure" (section on grace and free will), https://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0804/_P13.HTM. Edition and page not stated by the online text.
25. Ware, The Orthodox Church, same section.
26. Confession attributed to Cyril Lucaris, chapter 3, in J. N. W. B. Robertson, trans., The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (London: Thomas Baker, 1899), appendix, 187-188, https://archive.org/details/actsdecreesofsyn00orth.
27. Confession of Dositheus, Decree 3, in Robertson, Acts and Decrees, 114-115.
28. Robertson, Acts and Decrees, acts of the synod, 11-12.
29. Ware, The Orthodox Church, Part I, "The Church under Islam," https://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0804/_PI.HTM.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Trans. Henry Beveridge. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845. Online at CCEL.
• The Canons of Dort (1619). Trans. Faith Alive Christian Resources, 2011. Christian Reformed Church in North America.
• The Westminster Confession of Faith. Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition, opc.org.
• Robertson, J. N. W. B., trans. The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem, Sometimes Called the Council of Bethlehem, Holden under Dositheus, Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1672. London: Thomas Baker, 1899.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• John Chrysostom. Homilies on First Timothy. Trans. Philip Schaff. NPNF1 vol. 13. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1889.
• John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan. NPNF2 vol. 9. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1899.
• Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Church. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Online text at IntraText.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Muller, Richard A. Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012.
• Stewart, Kenneth J. "The Points of Calvinism: Retrospect and Prospect." Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 26.2 (2008): 187-203.
• Crisp, Oliver D. Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014. Reviewed by Forrest H. Buckner, Themelios (2015).
• Van Biema, David. "The New Calvinism." Time, 12 March 2009.
• "1536 John Calvin Publishes Institutes of Christian Religion." Christian History, October 1990.

Sources from the tradition being discussed (Reformed)

• Christian Reformed Church in North America. Introduction to the Canons of Dort. crcna.org.
• PCA Historical Center. "Originator of the T.U.L.I.P. Acrostic?" This Day in Presbyterian History.
• Taylor, Justin. "Origin of TULIP." The Gospel Coalition, 2009.