But first, by way of introduction...
Reformation History
&
A Defense of the Reformed Faith
It is important to remember that I have not yet been blessed of God to attend any Bible college or seminary. As a result, for the historical section of this post, I'll be taking excerpts from an article by a trusted and beloved teacher, who I only disagree with in the area of baptism (as far as I know), but he has been a tremendous instrument in the hands of God through my short walk Christ, Dr. Joel Beeke.
The article is called "The Origins of Calvinism" and you can go right to that page by clicking here.
(I've honestly not found a better work on the history of the reformation than this article by Dr. Beeke. He gives a very thorough work with resources and further helps are noted... it has been a phenomenal help to me!)
Buckle up...
It must be this way.
It was Martin Luther, a German monk, a couple years prior to the most popular event that sparked the protestant reformation when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, who came to grasp the great doctrine of justification by gracious faith alone.
Dr. Beeke notes that it wasn't only Luther, but many before him simply lacked a full understanding of that doctrine.
We must understand what reform actually is... let's look at some definitions.
Reform - "make changes in (something, typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice) in order to improve it."
Reformation - "the action or process of reforming an institution or practice."
OK, so what the reformers did was stand in opposition against the Roman Catholic Church doctrines.
What doctrines did they stand against?
Directly from Dr. Beeke's article, here are some:
• Papal abuses. The medieval papacy was rife with abuses in theology and practice. Immoral conduct was lived out and condoned even by the popes, and grace became a cheap, commercialized religion throughout the church via a complex system of vows, fasts, pilgrimages, masses, relics, recitations, rosaries, and other works. The papal imperative was “do penance” (as translated in the Vulgate) rather than “be penitent,” or “repent,” as Jesus commanded.
• Papal pretentiousness. Biblical and historical study by the Protestant forerunners led them to question papal claims to apostolic authority as head of the church. For example, the Reformers concluded that the rock on which the church was built (Matt. 16:18) was the content of Peter’s faith rather than Peter himself, which meant that the bishop of Rome possessed no more than a position of honor. Though the Protestants initially were willing to accept a Reformed papacy that would honorably serve the church, the cruel opposition of the popes to reform eventually persuaded many of them to regard the pope of Rome as Antichrist (cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, 25.6).
• Captivity of the Word. Protestants taught that the Roman Catholic Church held Scripture captive, withholding it from the laypeople and thus keeping them in bondage to church councils, bishops, schoolmen, canonists, and allegorists for interpretation. The Protestants worked hard to deliver the Bible from this hierarchical captivity. As Malcolm Watts writes:
The Church of Rome degraded the Holy Scriptures by alloying the purity of the Canon with her apocryphal additions, by supplementing the inspired records with an enormous mass of spurious traditions, by admitting only that interpretation which is according to “the unanimous consent of the Fathers” and “the Holy Mother Church,” and, particularly by diminishing the role of preaching as their “priests” busied themselves with miraculous stories about Mary, the saints and the images, and magnified the importance of the Mass, with its elaborate and multiplied ceremonies and rituals. It was thus that preaching deteriorated and, in fact, almost disappeared. The Reformers vigorously protested against this and contended with all their might for the recovery of God’s Holy Word.• Elevation of monasticism. Protestants opposed the Roman Catholic concept of the superiority of the so-called religious life. They did not believe that monasticism was the only way to spirituality or even the best way. By stressing the priesthood of all believers, they worked hard to eliminate the Roman Catholic distinction between the “inferior” life of the Christian involved in a secular calling and the “higher” religious world of monks and nuns.
• Usurped mediation. Protestants also rejected the Roman Catholic ideas of mediation by Mary and the intercession of saints, as well as the automatic transfusion of grace in the sacraments. They opposed all forms of mediation with God except through Christ. They reduced the sacraments to two, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, thereby stripping priests and the church of mediating power and the sacramental dispensation of salvation.
• The role of good works. Protestants rejected the ideas of Semi-Pelagianism, which says that both grace and works are necessary for salvation. This theological difference was at the heart of Protestant opposition to Roman Catholicism, though it was largely through moral and practical corruption that the issue came to the fore.
The Protestant response to Roman Catholic abuses gradually settled into five Reformation watchwords or battle cries, centered on the Latin word solus, meaning “alone.” These battle cries, expounded in chapter 10, served to contrast Protestant teaching with Roman Catholic tenets as follows:
| Protestant | Roman Catholic |
| Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) | Scripture and tradition |
| Faith alone (sola fide) | Faith and works |
| Grace alone (sola gratia) | Grace and merit |
| Christ alone (solus Christus) | Christ, Mary, and intercession of saints |
| Glory to God alone (soli Deo gloria) | God, saints, and church hierarchy |
So the reformation "fixed" the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. It was an act of protest for the right interpretation of God's Word.
At the beginning of his article, Dr. Beeke quotes Charles Miller - "The spread of Calvinism was unusual. In contrast to Catholicism, which had been maintained by civil and military force, and Lutheranism, which survived in becoming a religion of politics, Calvinism had, for the most part, only its consistent logic and its fidelity to the Scriptures. Within a generation it spread across Europe."
That's what reformed theology is about. Consistent hermeneutics and faithfulness to the Scriptures!
Reformed theology has its earliest roots in Switzerland with reformers Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger.
Dr. Beeke notes "Calvin himself preferred Reformed because he was opposed to having the movement called by his name."
I thank God for that little note because as I said in my post about leaving much of the traditions I've been taught my whole life due to their error, I said and still proclaim that reformed theology isn't about John Calvin, it's about his interpretation of Scripture and builds upon much of what he left behind.
He let be God be God and believed that man is a creature created by God who is subject to Him in every way. Well, before I ever read anything about John Calvin, that's what I gathered from Scripture.
This theology spread more throughout the mid 1500's and early 1600's. To Germany, Hungary, Poland and the Netherlands.
In 1618 the Synod of Dordt came together for 7 months to settle the conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism because they had the Netherlands on the brink of civil war.
This is also where the 5 points came from.
These 5 points are often known today by the acronym TULIP:
T - Total Depravity
U - Unconditional Election
L - Limited Atonement
I - Irresistible Grace
P - Perseverance of the Saints
Aso stated in the Canons of Dordt (with info, from prts.edu), page 1, "Though these points do not embrace the full scope of Calvinism and are better regarded as
Calvinism's five answers to the five errors of Arminianism, they certainly lie at the heart of the Reformed faith,
particularly Reformed soteriology, for they flow out of the principle of absolute divine sovereignty."
I went through these points very briefly in my 2nd video, attempting to lay a foundation for my channel, but in this series we'll take a much more in depth look at each point.
You can get a PDF version of the Canons of Dordt, from the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary by clicking here.
Stay with me!
History is important since some people think reformed theology is some kind of cult!
Seriously...
(Even though most cults are usually saturated with overt ritualistic satanism with sex as it's usual medium... but I guess that doesn't matter.)
So, after the Synod of Dordt which ruled in the reformed favor and deemed Arminianism as heretical, pointed out the 5 points of Arminianism and the 5 reformed answers against those 5 errors, what happened next?
The Reformed faith then made its way to France! "By the time Calvin died in 1564, 20 percent of the French population—some two million people—confessed the Reformed faith."
"The Reformation spread rapidly to Scotland, largely under the leadership of John Knox (1513–1572). In 1560, the Scottish Parliament rejected papal authority, and the following year, the Scottish Reformed “Kirk,” or church, was reorganized."
Through the persecution of "bloody" Mary Tudor (1553 - 1558) and her half sister Elizabeth (1533 - 1603), a more thorough version of Calvinism was born, called Puritanism.
"Puritanism lasted from the 1560s to the early 1700s."
"Eventually, Calvinism made it to North America. "The Puritans who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony continued to sanction the Church of England to some degree, whereas the Pilgrims who sailed to America in the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth (1620) were separatists. 27 Despite these differences, all Puritans were zealous Calvinists. As John Gerstner observes, “New England, from the founding of Plymouth in 1620 to the end of the 18th century, was predominantly Calvinistic.”
From the 1620s - 1777, with the settlement of the pilgrims and colonies, Calvinism was the main interpretation of the time.
“As a consequence of this extensive immigration and internal growth it is estimated that of the total population of three million in this country in 1776, two-thirds of them were at least nominally Calvinistic,” John Bratt concludes."
"It is noteworthy that all of these Reformed bodies shared the conviction that Christianity in many parts of Europe prior to the Reformation was little more than a veneer. As these Reformed believers surveyed Europe, they saw what they could regard only as large swaths of paganism. The planting of solidly biblical churches was desperately needed. This explains in large measure the Reformers’ missionary focus on Europe."
That's a very sad conclusion... and it's one that could easily be made from today's so-called Christian movements.
That's a very sad conclusion... and it's one that could easily be made from today's so-called Christian movements.
"Calvinism Today
Calvinism has stood the test of time. Most Protestant denominations that originated in the Reformation were founded on Calvinistic confessions of faith, such as the Thirty-nine Articles (Anglicanism), the Canons of Dort (Reformed), the Westminster Standards (Presbyterianism), the Savoy Declaration (Congregationalism), and the Baptist Confession of 1689 (Baptist). All of these confessions essentially agree, with the major point of disagreement being the doctrine of infant baptism.
Reformation theology prevailed, for the most part, in Protestant evangelicalism for many decades, but was diluted in the nineteenth century because of several influences, such as the Enlightenment in Europe and Finneyism in America. By the mid-twentieth century, Calvinistic theology had declined dramatically in the Western world, having been assaulted by nineteenth-century liberal theology and revived Arminianism."
Reformed theology has been the main theology of the Christian faith for the majority part of the last 499 years! Arminianism and Dispensationalism has only recently began to dig back into the scene in the past 150 years, tops!
"Today, Reformed churches exist in the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, the United Kingdom, North America, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, China, the Philippines, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Israel, and various additional African and Asian countries. Also, since the 1960s, there has been a resurgence of interest in Calvinistic literature. Calvinistic conferences are being offered in numerous countries; in many of these nations, the number of Calvinists is steadily growing in our new millennium."
History backs reformed theology!
Not just history, but an honest look at the Bible, in its proper context, will lead us to a reformed interpretation.
So, unless you want to call the majority of Christian forefathers, martyrs, evangelists and theologians cultists, let's do some research before we make such arrogant and in most cases ignorant accusations.
So begins this series!
As we continue, let's be praying for hearts and minds submissive to the Word of God.
The next outline on "The Doctrine of Total Depravity" will be up asap as I don't want to take too much time between each one for better fluidity.
May God bless the reading and meditation of His precious Word.
