What Calvinists Believe

Explaining that, dear reader, would be an impossible task. Explaining "what Calvinists believe" would require more space than I have available and far more words than you'd care to read. There are two reasons for this.

First, most of what Calvinists believe coincide with most of what any other brand of Christian believes. No one denies the Atonement, the Resurrection, the Trinity, and on and on. When "Calvinism" (as it came to be known) surfaced, it was when a small group of seminary students filed a complaint ("Remonstrance") with the church. Having read all of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (four volumes), they had five ... only 5 ... disagreements. That means that, even with the disagreement, the bulk of theology was agreeable. So to explain what Calvinists believe would require ... well ... something akin to four volumes.

The other problem is the one that bothers me most. I don't know how many times I've heard, "You dirty, rotten Calvinists believe ..." and the speaker goes on to explain some horrible position that no Christian I know, Calvinist or otherwise, has ever professed. And when I ask, "Where did you get that?", they tell me "I heard it from _____" and give me the name of their favorite Calvinist to loathe. Apparently this guy (whoever he is) is the sole voice for all things Calvinist.

In truth, there are a whole bunch of shades of Calvinism. There are Amyraldians, 5-pointers, even one I heard who said he was a 7-pointer. There are supralapsarians and infralapsarians and postredemptionists. There are dispensationalists and covenantalists. There is Molinism and Thomism, moderate Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism. Oh, and don't forget the neo-Calvinists.

There are a few basic components that make up "Calvinism". They're hard enough to discuss because of the shades of variation you will either see, hear, or manufacture. So while I like to defend Reformed Theology and have to admit that I am recognizable as a "Calvinist", it pains me to report that in this day and age with all the things that are in common and all the gradations that each person seems to have, this "shorthand" that is the term "Calvinism" isn't so short anymore. If you want to know what this Calvinist believes, you're going to have to ask because I suspect that you've heard something different somewhere along the line.