Quotes About Calvinism

Elizabeth George Speare

central beliefs of Calvinist teachings: You are responsible for your own situation in life, you are most likely doomed, and the future is terribly grim.

The Reformed epistemologist may concur with Calvin in holding that God has implanted in us a natural tendency to see his hand in the world around us; the same cannot be said for the Great Pumpkin, there being no Great Pumpkin and no natural tendency to accept beliefs about the Great Pumpkin.

It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.

Western democracies exalt the ideal of social equality, but our economic system arguably emerged from 16th-century Calvinism, a religion whose members believed that God showed favor by bestowing wealth and other forms of success on what they called 'the chosen.'

Then suddenly—or so it seemed to me—in the past two years Calvinism began emerging as an issue everywhere. Perhaps I am just waking up, but it seems to me that this peculiar doctrine is being promoted far more widely and aggressively now than I was ever aware in the past.4

Where Calvinism and Arminianism may lie on a map in relation to this or that heresy generates an interesting discussion but little illumination.

Recently, however, Calvinism seems to be staging a remarkable comeback. Consider the words of popular author Dave Hunt, explaining why he chose to write a book on Calvinism despite the controversy it might cause.

Southern Baptists are at a crossroads. We have a choice to make. The choice is between the deep-rooted, God-centered theology of evangelical Calvinism and the man-centered, unstable theology of the other perspectives present in the convention."7

Protestantism and Calvinism, while giving expression to a new feeling of freedom, at the same time constituted an escape from the burden of freedom

Tawney added an additional twist by suggesting that 'nascent capitalism . . . [shaped] Calvinism's attitude to enterprise and the accumulation of wealth, not vice versa'.

O calvinismo não ensina uma ética de autoconfiança, como ensina nossa ética moderna do trabalho. É, ao contrário, uma ética da graça: quaisquer recompensas tangíveis advindas do trabalho são o dom da graça de Deus.

I don't feel safe around anything when Jesus is not the Lord of it. Calvinism without Jesus is deadly; it's fatalism, it's simply Islam. We need Jesus. When the precious doctrines [of Calvinism] are used to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, morbidity, slander, gnat-stringing, and more, the soul is not safe.

Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the church upon every aspect of human life.

In this conclusion, Freeman suggests that naturalism is Calvinism revived, and that the appropriate answer to such a cold, hard, and fruitless philosophy is the same as it was to Calvinism proper.

As to myself, if I were not a Calvinist, I think I should have no more hope of success in preaching to men, than to horses or cows.

One can only say this: Calvinism is the order "left standing" in Twains' literary life and he respond on the level of form and content to the ideas found in that stern tradition. p.191

People who say that Calvinists teach predestination and deny free will, and that Arminians deny predestination and teach free will are simply wrong.

On Pilgrim's Progress: "I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.

It seems harsh to many to think that God chooses some and rejects others, and does not consider men's worth, that by his own free will he chooses whom he pleases and moreover rejects others. But what is this scruple except a desire to call God to order and subject him to their judgment?

But it is none the less true that men do not come to God by way of their own reason; neither do they in this way get near to him, because all their intelligence is but vanity. Whence

the word predestinate refers not to election but to that decree or purpose of God by which he has ordained that his own bear the cross. In

Whatever differences in polity, all Puritans shared the same fundamental theological commitment to Reformed theology (Calvinism).

Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.