| Basic Concept: Calvinism
John Calvin was a second-generation participant in the European Protestant Reformation. He is best remembered for his monumental compilation, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, written over the decade of 1526 to 1536. While visiting the city, Calvin was summoned to serve as the chief protestant magistrate in Geneva, Switzerland. A jurist and logician, John Calvin was eminently suited in training and personality for the arduous position which promulgated the Protestant cause from the legal bench for almost thirty years. . Calvin's Institutes became extremely popular in Protestant communities and functioned as the foundation of faith for the Reformed Churches that spread across Europe, England, and Scotland. The five primary principles have come to characterize the purveyors of Reformed faith as extremely narrow interpreters of the Christian concept of salvation. Calvin's five principles, generally referred to as "Calvinism," are remembered widely as the "TULIP" acrostic: . 1) Total Depravity--All people are condemned by the original sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden. 2) Unconditional Election--Because of the inherent evil nature of all people, no condition that God might impose as a factor in salvation could any human being ever hope to satisfy. For this reason, if anyone is to enjoy salvation and eternal life, the process of redemption must be "unconditional" and freely manifested by God. 3) Limited Atonement--Although God has made possible the salvation of the human race through the death and resurrection of Jesus, that process is extended only to those who will accept that process. Therefore, those who refuse to accept through faith God's process of redemption, through their own free will, elect damnation. 4) Irresistible Grace--Once accepting God's process of salvation through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, believers are transformed immediately into the ranks of the "Elect" and "Saints" of God, fit to do the work of promoting the prophesied coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth. 5) Perseverance of the Saints--The "Elect" will naturally persevere in their service to God, a belief that complements the "Protestant Work Ethic." . Online Connections For a brief biography of John Calvin, see "John Calvin." Online also is the full compilation of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. A webliography devoted to an interpretation of Calvin and his influence is found in the online The Influence of John Calvin. . Our Course Connections Calvinism was most influential on the English theologians and magistrates including the likes of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Plantation; John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony; Increase and Cotton Mather, Harvard educators and religious scholars; and Jonathan Edwards, the latter day factor in the eighteenth-century religious revival, "The Great Awakening." .  |