Before you make the TULIP your flower of choice, consider it in full bloom.
TULIP is used acronymically to succinctly point out the major emphases of Calvinism. I well understand that the use of the TULIP does not fully illustrate the depth and breadth of Calvinism. I do understand that some believe the acronym has outlived its usefulness. However, it still enjoys ubiquitous usage among Calvinists and non-Calvinists alike. I find this to be particularly true among those seeking to explain Calvinism to people who may demonstrate some interest in understanding Calvinism or as a simple tool to convince young people of its biblical and systematic cogency. I am not considering this acronym in order to either portray Calvinism simplistically or inaccurately. Rather, I use it in the manner described by Roger Nicole when he said, “the five points provide a classic framework which is quite well adapted for the expression of certain distinguishing emphases of Calvinism.” ((David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas, The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, Documented from the preface written by Roger Nicole (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co, 1963), 7.))
Now admittedly, I do want to call attention to some of the frequently elided essentials of the TULIP in order to augment our understanding. To wit, I wish to not only consider the petals but the sepals (leaves) as well, so to speak. I consider these lesser known beliefs, premises, and entailments to be biblically unsustainable and therefore crippling to the more palatably related beliefs demonstrated by the TULIP.
First, I will give the normal understanding communicated by Calvinists, which will be in italics. Second, I will include some of these infrequently presented and therefore less known beliefs and entailments associated each particular petal.
1. Total Depravity: The whole of man’s being is corrupted by sin and therefore incapable of doing any eternal spiritual good.
Calvinism’s understanding of total depravity includes a compatibilist view of human nature, unconditional election, and limited and selective regeneration. This means that the only interpretive option that Calvinism permits for God to be able to redeem such a compatibly defined totally depraved person is that God must give him a new nature, which He is pleased to do only for the limited unconditionally elect; thereby, guarantying their subsequent free exercise of faith.
Viewing man from a compatibilist perspective means that while fallen man freely chooses to sin, he cannot freely choose to believe in the gospel unless God gives him a new nature which assures that he will freely choose to exercise faith in Christ; however, in either state, man cannot choose to do otherwise than he did in fact choose because while freely choosing, he has no salvific choice.
Further, defining man compatibly necessitates that while God is not the efficient cause of man’s depravity, He did in fact desire it. This is evidenced by His choice to create man with a compatibilist free will, which guaranteed by design that Adam would freely choose (be the efficient cause) to sin, and equally assured that he could not have done otherwise than what he did in fact do. To wit, if God would have desired that man not sin, he would have given him a different nature. Moreover, the use of the word “desire” as a deterministic desire in Calvinism is essentially dissimilar to other perspectives that believe God always desired man to choose holiness, a desire which permitted man to choose unholiness and comprehended that he would so choose.
Therefore, if a person believes the Scripture teaches the following, he cannot be a Calvinist: God’s only desire for Adam was for him to be holy because God is holy and always desires holiness; God created Adam with true otherwise choice so that he could have chosen to sin or chosen not to sin, and whatever he did in fact choose he could have chosen otherwise; that fallen man is totally depraved and God is able to be sovereign over beings with otherwise choice and to grace enable fallen man to have a free choice to either believe the gospel or not believe the gospel without resorting to a compatibilist (deterministic) view of free will; whatever choice someone makes with regard to the gospel, he could have chosen otherwise. This view is held in various biblical approaches but not Calvinism.
2. Unconditional Election: God chose for some to be the objects of His unmerited favor, and salvation is totally a work of God–monergistic.
Calvinism’s understanding of unconditional election necessarily includes that God has selected to give the salvifically required new nature to only some of His vast humanity even though all are in equally desperate need of such in order to experience salvation. Accordingly, it has pleased God to select some of His created people to experience incomprehensible eternal bliss while being equally pleased to withhold this surety from the vast majority of His humanity; thereby, ensuring their equally incomprehensible eternal suffering in the cauldron of inescapable torment of pain and the absolute loss of love and hope in hell.
This doctrine is maintained with full awareness that God could have just as easily chosen to provide such favor upon any and all of His humanity, but it pleased Him to select only a few, comparatively speaking, to be so favored. These inextricable realities of unconditional election are neither explicated nor moderated by retreating to phrases like, “God is just to send all to hell” or “God is gracious to save even one sinner” or “God loves the non-elect differently” because none of these contribute one whit to either explaining how this is perfect infinite love, mercy, and compassion, or explaining the scriptural portrayal of God’s exercise of such. I find all Calvinists’ attempts to assuage the reality of these entailments as dreadfully troubling and actually serving to enfeeble the doctrine of unconditional election.
Therefore, if a person believes the Scripture teaches the following, he cannot be a Calvinist: God salvifically loves all of His humanity and has graciously provided for everyone to be able to receive the treasures of the gospel by simple faith. Just as God is perfect holiness and would therefore never be pleased to act unholy; He is also perfect love and mercy, and would therefore not be pleased to withhold the offer of salvation from billions of His creation, thereby delightingly assuring their eternal doom in hell when He could have just as easily offered them salvation. God is not pleased to predestine the incomputable majority of His humanity to spend forever in the crucible of hell’s torment, which torment by comparison makes the most shuddersome, gruesome, ghastly, and torturous woes of crime or natural catastrophe nothing more than trifling annoyances. These truths are embraced by other biblical approaches but not Calvinism.
3. Limited Atonement: Christ’s death is of infinite value, but He died salvifically only for the unconditionally elect.
Calvinism understands limited atonement to mean that Christ’s death did not in any eternally meaningful way pay for the sins of the non-elect. Thus, there is not even the remotest possibility of even one of the unconditionally non-elect experiencing salvation in spite of such opportunity being so lucidly and compellingly commanded and presented in the simple call of the gospel for everyone to repent and believe; correspondingly, this point, along with the aforementioned points, gives rise to the need for and creation of the extra-biblical “good faith offer.”
Four-point Calvinists reject this point in order to avoid trying to reconcile the idea that Christ died only for the sins of the elect with what they believe to be the clear, consistent, and undeniable teaching Scripture; which is that Christ’s death paid for the sins of the human race. This frees the four-point Calvinist to make an actual offer of the “good news” to all as is so vividly portrayed in the gospels. As a result, the position of four-point Calvinism is understood to eliminate the need for a good faith offer.
However, if a four-point Calvinist believes in the previous two points as defined by Calvinism, it seems to me that their offer to the non-elect is actually as salvifically hollow as is the offer of the five-point Calvinist. To wit, they may be free to speak more consistently with the gospel’s message of God’s salvific love for all of the lost, but they still offer no real hope to the non-elect. This is particularly true, and I believe unavoidably true, for anyone who embraces unconditional election (even if they call themselves a one-point Calvinist and the one point is unconditional election).
To state it differently, if a person does not fully embrace unconditional election (where unconditional really means unconditional), he should doff the title “Calvinist.” Lastly, limited atonement is organically related to God’s pleasure in limiting His salvific grace, love, mercy, and compassion. Additionally, I do not believe any reference to God providing temporal grace, e.g. rain, temporal life, other earthly blessings, etc., or “God loves the lost differently” allays this reality in the slightest–voluminous attempts notwithstanding.
Therefore, if a person believes the Scripture teaches the following, he cannot be a Calvinist: God really does love His humanity as evidenced by His declarative statements, God gave His Son to die for the sins of the world, the gospel being His power unto salvation for everyone whether they are Jew or gentile, and He sent the church to every nation with this gospel because He truly loves and desires everyone who hears it to repent and be forever forgiven and delivered from their just desert; that Christ passionately desires for everyone whom he commanded “repent and believe in the gospel,” to do what He so commanded them to do; and further believes that all of these scriptural attestations quite obviously disallow the likelihood that the God who does these things also devised a plan that inviolably precludes the remotest possibility for the vast majority to obey His gospel. These truths are embraced by other biblical approaches but not Calvinism.
4. Irresistible Grace: The Holy Spirit efficaciously applies salvation to those unconditionally elected sinners whom He personally calls to Christ.
Calvinism believes that the general call of the gospel extends to everyone, but the internal efficacious call of the Holy Spirit that is both required and inexorably results in salvation is only extended to the unconditionally elect. The nature of these two calls is that the former can only be rejected and the latter can only be accepted. That is to say, the non-elect can never do anything but reject the preaching of the gospel, and the elect will do the same until they receive the internal efficacious call, which they can only respond to by believing.
Regeneration is monergistic (God alone), and man is totally passive until regeneration is accomplished. After God regenerates an elect individual, then and only then does the relationship become synergistic. Calvinism’s understanding of God’s work of regeneration (sometimes referred to as or included in the concept of the efficacious call) necessarily involves irresistibility in purpose, availability to the unconditionally elect only, and the inevitability of a subsequent free exercise of faith.
Worth noting is that the adjectives “general” and “efficacious” in both order and description are not explicitly taught in Scripture, but rather are understandings of Calvinism. I would suggest that the term “general call” be replaced with the much more biblically congruent term “sufficient call;” additionally, that the efficacious call (if there is such a thing) be understood as consummating (securing) salvation for all who accept the sufficient call rather than initiating salvation for the unconditionally elect.
It is important to understand that while, according to Calvinism, the act of faith that follows regeneration is a free act, the act of regeneration which inescapably leads to this free exercise of faith is forced upon the totally passive and depraved unconditionally elect (monergism and compatibilism). That is to say, the “free act of faith” is more accurately defined as an eternally predetermined free act of choosing, which excludes any idea of having choices (i.e. compatibilism). Thus, eliminating even the remotest possibility for the elect to do other than what he did in fact do and the non-elect the same end. While this is Calvinism’s portrait of the inner workings of the gospel, I do not believe it is the picture of the gospel painted by Scripture.
God’s choice to ration His salvific grace to only the unconditionally elect necessarily means that the lack of faith and resistance to the gospel by the non-elect is as equally and inviolably a predetermined free act as is the predetermined free exercise of faith of the unconditionally elect. Therefore, the offer of salvation to some and the withholding from the incalculable majority were predetermined by God’s good pleasure; thereby, making the gospel the most unfathomably and ghoulishly macabre news for the great majority of God’s humanity.
Therefore, if a person believes the Scripture teaches the following, he cannot be a Calvinist: the gospel is good news for everyone and not merely some who hear the words “whosever” or “who wishes take the water of life without cost;” God has grace enabled all who hear the good news to receive His forgiveness by faith in the gospel. These truths are embraced by other biblical approaches but not in Calvinism.
5. Perseverance of the Saints: This includes both preservation by God and perseverance by the saints. The Westminster Confession says, with regard to the truly elect, they “can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of Grace.” ((Westminster Confession 17. 1.)) J.P. Boyce notes in his Abstract of Systematic Theology, “It is not merely preservation by God, but also perseverance of the believer, in faith and holiness, unto the end.” ((James Petigru Boyce, Abstract of Systematic Theology, (reprinted by the den Dulk Christian Foundation, Escondido, CA, 1887), 431-432.)) Within Calvinism, God’s preservation of the truly elect is standard, while there is variation in understanding of how eternal security, internal and external assurances, and warning passages of the Scripture relate to knowing one is elect in this life.
This petal is not a simple affirmation of the eternal security of the believer. Since there does seem to be such acceptable variance in defining perseverance of the saints as long as one does not question the security of the truly elect, this point does not seem to be as biblically problematic as the other four petals–a point with which some disagree.
Therefore, if a person believes the Scripture teaches the following, he cannot be a Calvinist: anyone who hears the gospel can accept the gospel by faith and thereby become eternally secure in the safe-keeping of God; those so saved do demonstrate evidence of such. As well as believing the Scripture does not teach the other calvinistically defined petals of the tulip. These truths are embraced in other biblical approaches but not in Calvinism.
© Ronnie W. Rogers 2013
