The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Calvin's "Institutes" most important book, after the bible?

Evangelical Universalism
#9

this may be a bit hasty of me, and poorly reasoned, but one of the things that has kept me from reading or wanting to read much of Calvin as been, well, Calvinists.

i’ve known a few really intense Calvinists, mainly through on-line conversation, and was amazed to see in a few instances that aligning with Calvinist theology seemed to lead to increased excitement, aggression, argumentativity, and extreme focus on ideas, rather than on Christ, the Living Saviour.

of course i suppose preoccupation with any aspect of theology could lead to an aggressive fixation on concepts and their defense, but i’ve seen this a few times especially with devoted Calvinists. what i’ve read of Calvin’s response to Michael Servetus hasn’t really helped me to warm to him, either.

i don’t doubt he was a brilliant thinker, but as far as books being next to the Bible in importance for Christians… i’d personally vouch for the writings of men like Ignatius of Antioch, Isaac the Syrian, or other early Christian writers as candidates.

#10

Sergius Bulgakov (1871-1944) was an Archpriest in the Russian Orthodox Church, and a thorough-going Universalist. He held that the salvation of all creation (including Satan himself) is certain. His systematic theology is his great trilogy, On Divine Humanity:

  1. The Lamb of God (1933) [which covers Christology]
  2. The Comforter (1936) [which covers pneumatology]
  3. The Bride of the Lamb (1945) [which covers ecclesiology and eschatology]
#11

Some of my dearest friends and family are Calvinists, or at least try to be (often they try to say the Calvinistic things but their generous, loving actions tell the real story :stuck_out_tongue:), so I’ll try to say this gently! if God’s end goal for most people is retribution not reconciliation, then I think it’s easier to slip into a “judging/seeking to be right” attitude :neutral_face: Obviously, this isn’t 100% of Calvinists, 100% of the time, but I’ve seen it happen often enough, to think there’s some link.

#12

Alex ~

i’ve noticed the same, too. and i don’t mean to make blanket statements, but there does seem to be this excited, almost angry passion linked to Calvinism. maybe it’s related to the enthusiasm they feel over being so specifically correct in their theology (from their persepctive), and being part of an “elect”.

i think Jason Pratt mentioned something about the possibility of one being both a Calvinist and an Evangelical Universalist, assuming that one sees all as someday being brought into the ranks of the elect.

#13

I asked my friend to expand on why he thought

He replied

#14

Bulgakov’s first book (interesting and helpful though it is in several regards) doesn’t really qualify as the kind of exegesis most of us are thinking of when using the term ‘systematic theology’, though. I haven’t read the sequels yet, but I doubt they’re any more-such like that.

Nor did I find it to be much of a systematic progressing metaphysic, although overall it’s more metaphysical in topic than exegetical.

(I say “overall” because his extensive introductory essay, practically a book in itself, is a fine history of Christological debate in the Patristic Church. But still not a systematic theology.)

I’m not trying to diss him; I’m just warning potential readers ahead of time: I went to him having heard he was a systematic theologian, but came away very disappointed. It could easily be replied that this is an example of big differences between Eastern and Western systematics. I don’t doubt that (based on my experience with Eastern theologians so far; Bulgakov is quite typical in that regard), but it still didn’t provide what I was looking for.

#15

What exactly is meant by “important” in this case? Important in the sense of it’s influence on Protestant thinking?

I can see it as important in that sense. My first reaction when I read the statement was that he was implying that we couldn’t properly understand scripture without Calvin’s commentary–and I’m sure some folks do feel that way. I’d disagree with that; Christ tells us we have One Teacher.

But, in light of the respect Calvin has been held in for so long, I’d guess we’ve probably all, consciously or not, been influenced by him in our thinking and assumptions–the things we just take for granted–and it seems to me that reading his stuff could be helpful in bringing some of those underlying presuppositions and reasonings up to where they can be examined afresh in light of scripture. So in that sense, I can see it as being very important.

Sonia
(Edited to add the second two paragraphs.)

#16

Sonia ~

i wonder the same. Evangelicals seem to kind of have a tendency to understand Christian history as “there was the Lord and His Apostles, and then 1,400 years of spiritual darkness, and then God sent Martin Luther”. not to be dismissive of Luther, or his contributions, but a rich history of Catholic and Orthodox thinking gets completely ignored. many of us don’t seem to be especially aware of their existences, myself included.

#17

Well while I can, I’m typing it up as I go, to try to help me understand what he’s on about! Here is the first page, about 50 to go :confused:

#18
#19

That’s exactly what I loved about Grudem; his echoes of Van Till. You could say the only alternative to flagrant circular presuppositionalism is obscured foundationless relativism! :sunglasses:

Alex,

Trying to convince you not to be a universlist is an outworking of my Calvinism! :stuck_out_tongue:

#20

Please could you expand on that?

#21

I guess it depends on what you define as “Calvinism”, I understand it as a wider label basically equivalent to “Reformed.” Often Reformed theology is defined around TULIP and the five solas. This comes our of the Reformed mindset of returning to first principles, God > Scripture > theology. (E.g. translation of scripture and returning to Augustine’s work on grace as opposed to the then RC church) For you, I don’t know about others on this forum, you are able to be a Christian and a Universalist because you don’t deny things like the resurrection and the Trinity and you affirm that salvation comes from Christ alone. However my “reformed/Calvinist” mindset sees the chain of consequences and wants you to see it also.

If you were a non-Christian, I would share the motivation of all Christians (Calvinist of not) in seeing you become a Christian. However my particular desire to debate the particulars of universalism comes (I believe) from my desire to follow my “Calvinism” to it’s natural destination.

Thanks for asking me to clarify.

#22

Until Grudem (and Morey, and Van Till) rejects flagrant circular presuppositionalism engaged in by their opponents, on the ground that it’s flagrantly circular presuppositionalism. :wink:

They know perfectly well that circular presuppositionalism is worthless for being circular, when other people do it.

Insofar as they stick with abductive presuppositionalism, there’s some real value in testing the hypothesis of their presuppositions by checking how well the data fits. (Morey, for example, often does this–or something close enough to count in the short range–once he gets past the opening chapters of his book.) But they have a tendency to treat the presuppositional set as not being a hypothesis for abductive testing. They would much prefer it to be treated as a necessarily granted presuppositional set; but then when the question comes up for why we should necessarily grant the presupposition they want to show why by appeal to the data, as though the set was being abductively proposed.

That’s cheating. And they know it’s cheating, which is why they go out of their way to reject it when their opponents do it (or when they think they can paint their opponents as doing it. Either way fits the principle.) Otherwise they would have to admit that an opponent could do that with the exact same parity of result, leaving their own position (arrived at by the same circular strategy) at no advantage.

Moreover, you yourself know better than to engage in circular presuppositionalism. This is why you don’t propose to argue from the necessarily granted truth of specifically Calv theology (and, btw, every Protestant Armininan I have ever met also considers themselves Reformed non-Catholic :wink: ) that specifically Calv theology is true. You propose to argue from “things like the resurrection and the Trinity and you affirm that salvation comes from Christ alone”, i.e. things we already hold in common as Christian believers (or trinitarian Christian believers anyway). You consider specifically Calvinistic theology to follow as a chain of (logical) consequences from that shared position, and you want us to see it also.

Whereas, I consider the resurrection, salvation from Christ alone, and universalism to follow as a chain of (logical) consequences from trinitarian theism (as well as being testified to exegetically in the scriptures). But I’m not setting up Trinitarian Universalist Christianity (of this-or-that variety) as a necessarily presumed truth set and then arguing that universalism (much less trinitarian Christianity) is true. Similarly, you (at least seem to) know better than to think we would (or even should?) be at all impressed if you set up Trinitarian Calvinistic Christianity (of this-or-that variety) as a necessarily presumed truth set and then argued from those presumptions that Calvinistic soteriology is true.

Your reply to Alex, in other words, doesn’t appeal through circular presuppositionalism (flagrant or otherwise). It does proceed by locating common ground shared by both sides and using that common ground as a presumption relative to any following argument; but that is not the same thing as circular presuppositionalism.

Trinitarian Christianity leads to... Calv? Kath? (Arm? {g})
#23

Not quite.

I’ve read enough to regard it as the most important book after “Mein Kampf”

#24

Btw, I have created a thread where Luke can work up and post a discussion for why he thinks Reformed/Calvinistic soteriology (of one or another sort, distinct from one or another sort of Arm or Kath soteriology) follows as a logical consequence from trinitarian theism (and from the fact of the resurrection, as well as from the doctrine of salvation through Christ alone, since he mentioned those, too.)

As someone who came to universalism from studying trinitarian theism (and from having appreciated both Calv and Arm theologians and what they had to say about salvation from sin), I’m quite interested in comparing notes on this. :slight_smile:

#25

What is ‘Kath’ please?

#26

Oh, sorry. It’s just a short nifty abbreviation for ‘universalist’ or ‘universalistic’.

Calvinist can be abbreviated to the cool-sounding “Calv”. And Arminian can be abbreviated to the cool-sounding “Arm”. But “Universalist” abbreviates to “Uni”, which at best reminds me of that annoying baby unicorn in the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. :laughing:

So when I abbreviate ‘universalist’ like Calv or Arm, I go back to ‘katholic’–a Greek word for universal–and abbreviate from that: “Kath”.

Calv == Calvinististic
Arm == Arminianistic
Kath == Katholic (distinct from “Catholic”, which is a specific group title.)

#27

Incidentally, for those like me who watched the D&D cartoon when we were kids:

The final episode, which was written but never produced, was going to be about how Venger was actually the fallen son of the Dungeon Master, and the DM’s plan the whole time was to beef the kids up enough that they could go on a mission to save Venger from his sins and restore him to being a good son again. Which they succeed at, reconciling Venger with his father.

Years later, most of the English voice actors from the series were brought together at a fantasy or comics convention somewhere, in order to do a live recording, in front of an audience, of the series finale. This can be found on the out-of-print and very rare 2006 series collection by BCI.

(Which I just remembered today I’ve never gotten around to collecting… :mrgreen: Off to Amazon to shop the used vendors…)

#28

Wow, Goodwin’s Law invoked already!

@Jason

I might not have the time and energy to engage in a full blown defense of Calvinism. Maybe when things lighten up over Christmas I can get stuck into the trench-warfare of showing why I think Calvinism makes biblical sense. I’d abandon the label if it was shown to be unbiblical but use it only as a handy reference point for what I believe the Bible is communicating as a whole.