Category Archives: Controversial Issues

Bible Foregrounds 1: The “Restrainer” in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7

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Many passages of Scripture have been tirelessly debated not only in light of the meaning of the words and grammar, but also in light of the historical context or “background.” However, scholars often neglect the historical “foreground”—that is, the exploration of which interpretations make the most sense in light of what followed the apostolic period. The apostles and prophets who wrote the books of the Bible also taught large numbers of Christians who carried on their oral teachings in their own ministries. So we should expect that the correct reading of Scripture may “echo” forward into the writings of second and third generation teachers. As a sort of exegetical experiment, I’d like to trace the “Bible foregrounds” of a number of debated issues in theological and biblical studies, and I will do this over the course of the next several months in separate essays.

The Problem: What Restrains Him?

I begin this exploration with a relatively provincial—but interesting—test question: Does the removal of the “restrainer” described in 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 refer to the rapture of the church described in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18?

Some understand the “restrainer” to refer to the Holy Spirit, as in John 16:7–8. Others refer it to the work of human government to restrain sin by its God-ordained system of punishment and reward (Rom 13:1–5). Or to the archangel Michael’s battle against demonic forces (Rev 12). And still others apply it to the church’s spiritual restraint (Matt 16:18–19).

First, we must explore the historical background of the passage. Paul, Silas, and Timothy had gone to Thessalonica during the second missionary journey around AD 50 (Acts 17:1–14). He wrote 1 Thessalonians around AD 51, and between the first and second letters the church had become confused—either by verbal teaching or by a letter—that suggested that the Day of the Lord had already begun and the persecutions they were suffering were at the hand of the coming “man of sin.” Paul therefore wrote 2 Thessalonians to correct their thinking regarding the order of anticipated end time events.

In connection with the issue of the coming “man of lawlessness,” “apostasy,” and “restrainer,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “Do you not remember that while I was still with you, I was telling you these things?” (2 Thess 2:5). Unfortunately, because he had shared it with them orally, he did not clarify his meaning for us later readers. Instead, he wrote, “And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming.”

So the identity of the thing (or person) that restrains was already known to the Thessalonians, and was actually part of the first teaching about the faith they had received from Paul. This means that the order of end times events and the principle of the restrainer was important enough for Paul to share as part of his elementary teachings to new believers. We might assume, therefore, that Paul did the same for many of the other churches he planted. Therefore, because of the basic nature of Paul’s teaching regarding the end times and the restrainer, we would expect to see echoes of it in the early church.

I therefore pose the question: When we turn to the evidence from Bible foregrounds, which of the possibilities do we see emphasized in the early church—the restraining power of the Holy Spirit, of human government, of the church, or something else?

Bible Foregrounds: Who Knows What Restrains Him?

I should first point out that the early Christians did not see a real functional distinction between the God’s works through the Spirit and the means He uses to accomplish His purposes. So, whether we take the restrainer to be human government, the church, the conscience, or something else, ultimately God is the one who does the work through various means. To answer that the Holy Spirit restrains evil is ultimately correct, but what means of restraint was Paul describing in 2 Thessalonians 2? This leaves basically two common answers: human government or Christians (the church), among a few less common suggestions.

Human government as the Restrainer. In the early third century Tertullian gives us this following interpretation of the restrainer: “What is this but the Roman state, whose removal when it has been divided among ten kings will bring on Antichrist?” (On the Resurrection of the Flesh 24). This is the earliest clear interpretation of the passage as “human government.” Later in the third century, Chrysostom wrote that “some interpret this of the grace of the Spirit, but others of the Roman Empire, and this is my own preference. Why? Because, if Paul had meant the Spirit, he would have said so plainly and not obscurely, . . . but because he meant the Roman Empire, he naturally glanced at it, speaking covertly and darkly. . . . So . . . when the Roman Empire is out of the way, then he [Antichrist] will come” (Fourth Homily on 2 Thessalonians).

Thus, 150 years after Paul, there were already differences of opinion—the grace of the Spirit, or the Roman Empire. Tertullian and Chrysostom chose the latter, but acknowledged that there was some debate about the passage’s meaning coming out of the second century. In my study of second century literature, I have been unable to identify any clear development of the idea that human government holds back evil and the judgment of God, though some must have held this position for it to appear suddenly in the third century.

The Church as the Restrainer. If we back up to the first and second generation immediately following the apostles, however, the “foreground” looks a little different. Interestingly, in early writings we see clear examples of Christians who believed the church held back evil and that the presence of the church in the world stayed God’s hand of judgment.

Ignatius of Antioch, around AD 110, wrote: “Therefore make every effort to come together more frequently to give thanks and glory to God. For when you meet together frequently, the powers of Satan are overthrown and his destructiveness is nullified by the unanimity of your faith. There is nothing better than peace, by which all warfare among those in heaven and those on earth is abolished” (Ignatius, Letter to the Ephesians 13.1–2).

The Christian philosopher and apologist, Aristides of Athens, wrote around the year 125, “And because they [the Christians] acknowledge the goodness of God towards them, lo! on account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world…. And I have no doubt that the world stands by reason of the intercession of Christians” (Aristides of Athens, Apology 16).

Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century, wrote: “For the restraint which human laws could not bring about, the logos, being divine, would have brought about, save that the evil demons, with the help of the evil desire which is in every person and which expresses itself in various ways, had scattered abroad many false and godless accusations, none of which apply to us” (Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 10). Here Justin declared that human laws were, in fact, unable to restrain evil. However, the divine “Word”—the pre-incarnate Christ—worked as a force of good in the world. This force of good would ultimately manifest itself in God’s community, the church. Later, in 1 Apology 45, Justin noted: “And that God the Father of all would bring Christ to heaven after He had raised Him from the dead, and would keep [Him there] until He has subdued the demons who are His enemies, and until the number be completed of those who are foreknown by Him as good and virtuous, for whose sake He has not yet consummated His decree [of judgment]—hear what was said by David the prophet.” Justin believed that because of the presence of the virtuous Christians on earth, God withheld His judgment. Later Justin wrote against those who suggested that Christians should just kill themselves because they valued the afterlife so much: “If, then, we [Christians] all commit suicide, we will become the cause, as far as in us lies, why no one should be born, or instructed in the divine teachings, or even why the human race should not exist; and if we so act, we ourselves will be acting in opposition to the will of God” (2 Apology 4). Finally, in 2 Apology 7, Justin wrote, “Wherefore God delays causing the confusion and destruction of the whole world, by which the wicked angels and demons and people will no longer exist, because of the seed of the Christians, who know that they are the cause of preservation in nature.” Thus, in the apologetic writings of Justin Martyr, we see many instances in which he viewed the presence of the Christians as in some sense holding back evil and the coming judgment.

At about the same time, or perhaps a little later in the second century, we find an apologetic letter written to “Diognetus.” In that letter a similar thought prevails—Christians were the moral conscience and restrainer of evil in the world:

In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul, which is invisible, is confined in the body, which is visible; in the same way, Christians are recognized as being in the world, and yet their religion remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wages war against it, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is hindered from indulging in its pleasures; so also the world hates the Christians, even though it has suffered no wrong, because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and its members, and Christians love those who hate them. The soul is enclosed in the body, but it holds the body together; and though Christians are detained in the world as if in a prison, they in fact hold the world together. . . . Such is the important position to which God has appointed them, and it is not right for them to decline it. (Epistle to Diognetus 6.1–10)

Toward the end of the second century, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, wrote to Autolycus:

For as the sea, if it had not had the influx and supply of the rivers and fountains to nourish it, would long since have been parched by reason of its saltiness; so also the world, if it had not had the law of God and the prophets flowing and welling up sweetness, and compassion, and righteousness, and the doctrine of the holy commandments of God, would long ere now have come to ruin, by reason of the wickedness and sin which abound in it. And as in the sea there are islands, some of them habitable, and well-watered, and fruitful, with havens and harbors in which the storm-tossed may find refuge, so God has given to the world which is driven and tempest-tossed by sins, assemblies—we mean holy churches—in which survive the doctrines of the truth, as in the island-harbors of good anchorage; and into these run those who desire to be saved, being lovers of the truth, and wishing to escape the wrath and judgment of God. (Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.14)

Conclusion: You Know What Restrains Him

The evidence throughout the second century indicates that many Christian teachers believed it was due to the church’s presence in the world that Satan’s full power was restrained, that the judgment was delayed, and that humanity was preserved. Thus, from the perspective of Bible foregrounds, the echoes of apostolic teaching confirm that the Holy Spirit working through the church is, in fact, the thing that restrains Satan from fully manifesting evil through the Antichrist. When the restraining presence or power of the church is removed, God will begin pouring out His judgment.

Those who hold to an actual future rapture of Christians as described in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 would therefore interpret the restrainer of evil described in 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 as the presence of Christians in the world—a thought common to a number of writers of the first and second generations of Christians after the apostles. The removal of the Christian presence in the world would thus be equated with the removal of the church at the rapture.

Putting the Sabbath to Rest

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Lately I’ve been encountering Christians from both denominations and “home churches” who are meeting on Saturday (the Sabbath) to worship, rather than on Sunday. When asked why they do this, the responses are diverse. Some believe the regulation in the Ten Commandments requires the observance of the Sabbath day. Others claim that this was the day the New Testament believers and the ancient church assembled for worship, and they want to return to that original practice.

Obviously, if the earliest Jewish believers (that is, the apostles and their first and second-generation converts) worshipped on Saturday, somewhere along the way the Christians changed from Saturday to Sunday. In fact, in The Da Vinci Code, this was one of the charges the dreadful fictional historian laid at the feet of Emperor Constantine and the “paganizing” of Christianity. He claimed that the earliest Christians worshipped on Saturday, but that when Christianity “sold out” to the world, they started worshipping on Sunday, the day the Roman and Greek pagans worshipped the sun.

Because this question comes up all too frequently, I wanted to debunk the myths and set things straight as a historian who actually knows what really happened. And unlike many biblical and historical issues, this matter is an open-and-shut case. The historical evidence is clear.

The Bible says the earliest Christians gathered together on “the Lord’s Day.” By AD 95, the phrase “the Lord’s Day” (Greek kuriake hemera) had apparently become a common term for the day of Christian corporate worship centered on preaching and the Lord’s Supper (called the “eucharist” or “thanksgiving”). We see that the Apostle John so used it in Revelation 1:10, assuming his readers in western Asia Minor would know immediately what he meant by “the Lord’s Day.”

Prior to that, the apostles referred to Sunday as “the first of the week,” on which Christ rose from the dead (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1). Jews at the time regarded Saturday (the Sabbath) as the seventh or “last” day of the week.

We see indications already in the earliest days of the church that the apostles and their disciples gathered together for worship on the “first day of the week,” that is, Sunday, in commemoration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts 20:7, we read: “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight” (KJV). The practice of “breaking bread” is an early reference to the corporate worship of the believers, centered on the Lord’s Supper and fellowship around the preached Word. We also see Paul addressing the issue of the collection of money for the churches in 1 Corinthians 16:1–2, instructing the Corinthians to make the collection “upon the first day of the week” (16:2). Because this was a collection from among members of the church, it indicates that this was the day they gathered together as a corporate body.

Now, we do know that on the Sabbath the apostles would go to the Jewish synagogues and preach about Christ to the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles. This is absolutely clear (Acts 13:14; 13:42; 13:44; 16:33). But this evangelism is not the same as gathering together for the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread, and prayer—characteristics of early Christian worship.

So, from the New Testament we see that there’s an early emphasis on Sunday, the “Lord’s Day,” the day the Lord rose from the dead, also called the “first of the week.” When we move forward in church history to the very next generation of Christians—to people who actually sat under the teachings of the apostles and their disciples themselves—the picture becomes even more clear.

In Didache 14.1, a church manual which, according to an emerging consensus of specialists, was probably written in Antioch in stages between AD 50 and 70, the instruction is simply, “And on the Lord’s own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks.” The “Lord’s own day” is the same phrase used in Revelation 1:10 by John.

At about the same time (around A.D. 80 or so), an anonymous but highly-respected letter later attributed to “Barnabas” makes it clear that Christians intentionally worshipped not on the “seventh day” (the Sabbath), but on the “eighth day,” as a memorial of the resurrection:

Further, He says to them, “Your new moons and your Sabbath I cannot endure.” Ye perceive how He speaks: Your present Sabbaths are not acceptable to Me, but that which I have made, namely this, when, giving rest to all things, I shall make a beginning of the eighth day, that is, a beginning of another world. Wherefore, also, we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day also on which Jesus rose again from the dead. And when He had manifested Himself, He ascended into the heavens. (Barnabas 15.8)

This evidence is important, because it comes to us from a very early and respected Christian document that helps us understand historically when the earliest Christians worshipped. It was the “eighth day” of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead: Sunday. Clearly th

Around AD 110, Ignatius, the pastor of Antioch, wrote a letter to the church in Magnesia of Asia Minor while on his way to martyrdom in Rome. In that letter he addressed the problem of Judaizers infecting the church with divisions and false doctrine, and found himself having to explain the Christian practice of worshipping on Sunday rather than on the Sabbath:

If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things [Judaism] have come to the possession of a new hope [Christianity], no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master . . . (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 9.1)

Before you dismiss this evidence as “outside the Bible” and a later corruption by the church fathers, remember that Ignatius was not just some monk from the Dark Ages. He was an old man already by AD 110, which means he was middle aged when the apostles themselves still lived and as pastor of Antioch would have known some of them. Further, history tells us that he was close friends with Polycarp, pastor of Smyrna, who was himself ordained into the pastoral office by the apostle John himself. So, the teaching about Sunday worship by Ignatius almost certainly came from the apostles and their disciples, whom Ignatius knew. Furthermore, note that Ignatius was not pushing for a new day of worship, nor was he defending it. Rather, he was simply explaining why the original Jewish disciples of Jesus switched from keeping the Sabbath to worshipping on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of His resurrection.

The biblical and historical facts are clear: every bit of evidence we have shows that from the apostles themselves throughout the early church up until this very day, the true church met together for worship on the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath, Sunday. On this day they commemorated week after week the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any teachers or traditions today that seek to establish Sabbath observance or corporate Christian worship on Saturday are not in keeping with the apostolic practice or the most ancient practice of the church, but are, in fact, deviating from the teachings of the apostles.

But what about Emperor Constantine in the fourth century? Didn’t he make Christianity the official Imperial religion, establish the State Church, and change Christian worship to Sunday? No! First, Constantine legalized Christianity (which had previously been outlawed). He did not make it the official state religion (that came later by future emperors). Second, his program of funding the construction of church buildings and the copying of Scripture was to replace the buildings and Bibles that had been destroyed or burned in the last great persecution. Those acts of Constantine were matters of restitution for wrongs inflicted on the church. Third, with regard to Sunday worship, Constantine simply decreed that Christians would be allowed to take Sunday mornings off for worship, making room in the laws for Christians to observe legally what they had already been observing illegally, that is, Sunday morning worship. Constantine did not, in fact, change Saturday to Sunday worship. (This myth, by the way, has been thoroughly debunked by patristic scholars, and I have recently attended meetings of patristic experts who were amazed that anybody would still allege such an indefensible version of history.)

Let’s briefly return to the reasons I’m often given for changing Christian worship to Saturday. 1) “Because the regulation in the Ten Commandments requires the observance of the Sabbath day.” If this were true, then the apostles and their original disciples themselves broke the Sabbath and set a bad precedence. This is unacceptable. 2) “The Sabbath was the day the New Testament believers and the most ancient Christian church assembled for worship.” This is simply not true and there is no evidence that it ever was. Those who maintain this claim are guilty of revisionist history.

Fact: from the days of the apostles themselves Christians have celebrated the resurrection of Jesus on Sunday. So, let’s stop this nonsense about “ancient Saturday worship” and put the Sabbath to rest.

V.T. on T.V.?

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I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on the complexities of children’s television. If it’s like most human institutions, I’m sure it’s a swirling vortex of numerous interests—cultural, religious, political, and above all, economic. And I’m fairly certain that network executives are far more interested in turning a profit than in advancing their personal ideologies. But, acknowledging that I’m passing judgment on this complex world of television from the outside and probably over-simplifying it, allow me to comment on the sudden appearance of VeggieTales on NBC Saturday morning cartoons.

Although some have complained that VeggieTales had to water down its message to make it big, in my opinion this is really just a case of watered-down water. VeggieTales has never struck me as a distinctively Christian program. They never brought children face to face with the incarnate Son of God who died and rose again. They quoted a few Scriptures, told some Bible stories (mostly Old Testament), and pushed a Judeo-Christian ethic, but that alone could never introduce us to the Savior, without whom all the rest is powerless.

We have to remember that VeggieTales was always meant to appeal to a broader audience than evangelical Christians. Not only did evangelicals gobble it up like cotton candy, but so did Mormons and Catholics and everyone in between. Why? Because the morality was universal, the stories entertaining, the animation above average, the music outstanding, and the theology unobtrusive. It was, on all counts, safe viewing. You could allow kids to watch it without supervision. And you still can.

VeggieTales works best if you have believing parents helping them see that Christ is the center of the Christian life, not some moral dos or don’ts. However, this is probably done very rarely—even in Christian homes. And now the “Christian” message broadcast all over the world through VeggieTales T.V. is portraying Christianity as a set of moral choices without the heart of the Christian life—Jesus Christ. It’s all rather unfortunate, I think. But again, not much has changed between pre-NBC version of VeggieTales to the T.V. version. I don’t see how somebody could sustain a charge that VeggieTales “sold out” . . . they never had but crumbs to offer.

Like it or not, V.T. has come to T.V. Personally, as a father with three kids, I welcome the safe Saturday morning programming. However, I’m not counting on the T.V. version of V.T. for communicating to my children their spiritual need to know the person of Christ, the payment of His death, and the power of His resurrection.

In fact, I never have.

The Church Has Emerged . . . Deal with It!

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Postmodern Christians live with an uncomfortable tension between primitivism (going backward) and progressivism (moving forward). On the one hand, they are progressing, with the postmodern culture, out of the prison-like structures and strictures of modernism and the sometimes scientific approach to dogma that stripped the Christian life of its mystery. On the other hand, postmoderns sometimes see themselves as returning to the unity and diversity of the first century church, when the earliest Christians were joining together to find the right way to express their faith, hammering out Christian doctrine and practice in unique cultural contexts, and learning and teaching theology by doing and living theology. Those must have been exciting times as the church was emerging from the explosive event of the resurrection of Christ toward the rise of the worldwide body of Christ. Indeed, the first century church probably looked a bit more like the emerging church movement than do mainline churches, which probably look more like the churches of the second and third centuries.

But is this a good thing? Do we really want to retreat back to a first century, pre-catholic, pre-canon, pre-creedal Christianity?

No!

The Spirit led the church universal out of that period of infancy. Doctrinal standards were established. Scripture was collected and defined. The church has emerged. Paul wrote:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:11–16)

In Paul’s mind, the church was going to “grow up.” As in life, we learn from our childhood years and sometimes long for the innocence, nurture the naiveté, and wish we could relive some of the memories . . . but we cannot become infants or toddlers again. We must allow the youthful ingenuity and energy to continue to revive and revitalize us, but not to the detriment of maturity and wisdom.

The emerging church is not the only primitivist movement in Christianity. It is simply the latest. Every now and then we have groups of Christians that see themselves as direct heirs of the apostles, who want to plot themselves in the New Testament and stay there. They rewind the reels of history to around AD 100, chop off 1900 years of the Spirit’s recorded work, and try to splice their own strange version of Christianity at the end, hoping nobody will notice the inconsistency. In fact, they often re-interpret the early years of Christianity to support their new ideas.

But God sent the Spirit to lead the church into all truth. The Son did not leave us as orphans. He didn’t just throw us a thick book and tell us to keep struggling with the same conflicts as the Corinthians or to build on the same foundation as Peter and Paul. God has been building the body of Christ by the work of His Spirit for nearly 2000 years. Governed by the normative theology of the Bible, let’s continue to build on what has already been worked out in the history of the church.

And while we’re at it, let’s give up that strange idea of going back to the first century.

The church has emerged . . . deal with it!

Calvinist Confusion?

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The September, 2006 cover of Christianity Today pictures a young adult in a tee shirt with an image of early American Congregationalist pastor, theologian, and evangelist, Jonathan Edwards. In a distinct, postmodern font, the shirt says, “Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy.” The cover of the magazine reads, “Young, Restless, Reformed. Calvinism is making a comeback—and shaking up the church.”

In my own life and ministry, I can confirm that Calvinism is making a comeback . . . as well as a renewed interest in theology and church history in general. The seeker-sensitive, mega-church trend of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s is, I believe, fading into its twilight. Younger generations of both believers and theologians are embracing an evangelical theology that taps into its historical roots and draws generously from the deep doctrinal wells of the community of faith—both past and present. The resurgence in Calvinism is part of this trend.

What, exactly, is Calvinism? What does it mean to be “Reformed”? Is it the same as Covenant theology? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Does it matter?

The Road (Back) to the Reformation

When I was a high school student at a secular school, I learned only two things about John Calvin (1509–1564)—the father of Calvinist theology: 1) he believed people were predestined for hell, and 2) he burned Michael Servetus at the stake. When I became a Christian and attended Philadelphia College of Bible, I actually read Calvin (and Michael Servetus!) and I realized that he had been unfairly caricatured and demonized . . . even by Christians. And in one of my doctrine classes with Charles Ryrie I slowly became convinced of the key Calvinist doctrines. My own awakening into Calvinism was a gradual process of unlearning and relearning, coming to terms with what the Bible actually says (not what I wish it said) about issues like free will, sin and guilt, grace, faith, predestination, and all these major issues that distinguish Roman Catholic from Protestant theology. I began to believe that evangelical theology that rejected Calvinism was unwittingly stumbling into the murky swampland of medieval Roman Catholic salvation—the idea that we cooperate with God to be saved.

In the end, I embraced Calvinism as the best expression of the theology of the reformation and the most biblically-faithful explanation of the doctrine of salvation. So, in a large part, I am personally part of the resurgence of Calvinism that Christianity Today was describing. (But, no, Jonathan Edwards is not my homeboy.)

This often comes as a shock to those who, like me, were raised thinking that Calvinism violates free will, that it relieves Christians of the responsibility for missions, that it predestines people to hell, and that it requires you to believe in amillennialism, infant baptism, and allegorical interpretations of Scripture. None of these things are true, and foolish statements like these are best left unsaid. A professor at Philadelphia College of Bible convinced me that a person can hold to the Calvinist or “Reformed” doctrine of salvation while also embracing a Baptist view of the church and a premillennial, dispensational view of the end times. There have always been Calvinist Baptists, Calvinist Prebysterians, and Calvinist Congregationalists.

So, we need to realize that the recent upsurge in Calvinism is not a “take-over” by a hostile heresy or attack by dangerous doctrines. Both Dallas Seminary and my local church home, Scofield Memorial Church, have deep historical roots in American Calvinist theology. In fact, one could make a case that a rejection of Calvinism over the last several decades reflects a deviation from the original, rich theological soil of our Bible Church tradition.

Calvinism Clarified

So, what do Calvinists actually believe?

Through the centuries, Reformed theology has communicated its essential doctrines with five “points” summarized by the acrostic, “TULIP.” These are: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints.

Because of the fall, the human mind, emotions, and will are totally depraved—lost and unable to respond to God’s salvation without His quickening Spirit giving us the ability to believe (Romans 3:9–10; 8:7–8). If all human beings throughout history are lost and already condemned, and if God must act first to save anybody, then God must choose to save those who are saved (Acts 13:48; Romans 9; Ephesians 1:3–6). He thus elects those He will save unconditionally, not based on anything they have done or will do. Next, the controversial doctrine of limited atonement does not teach that Christ’s blood is insufficient to pay for all sins, but that in the purpose of God’s election, Christ died only for the eternal benefit of the Church (see Ephesians 5:25–27). Because God chose who will be saved, all of the elect will come to believe through the prayers and preaching of believers, and no non-elect will accidentally believe. God’s grace for those whose mind is illuminated is irresistible (John 6:44; 10:27; Acts 2:39; Romans 8:29–30). Finally, those that God elected, called, and saved by grace through faith can never lose their salvation. True saints will persevere in faith until the end and are therefore saved eternally (John 10:27–29; Romans 8:29–39; Ephesians 2:8–10).

This five-point doctrine of salvation represents the essence of “Calvinist” or “Reformed” theology. It also represents several distinguishing marks of Protestant versus Catholic views of salvation and taps into the roots of our own conservative, fundamentalist, and even dispensationalist heritage, regardless of the drifts and deviations of the past several generations.

Whether or not you agree with Reformed theology, in light of its recent revival and resurgence believers ought to at least be aware of what Calvinism really is—and is not. And, as always, we must consult the Scriptures before either embracing or dismissing current trends in theology.