There Once Was a Calvinist: Terms To Divide
My time in Calvinism and reformed theology wasn't short but it was battling
If you’ve gone through the archives you know that I’ve posted about my time in the Reformed world. In fact, my thesis in College was about the Reformation from a historical deduction point and how they killed those who opposed certain doctrines that were historically heresy. It was alarming.
Throughout this tenure of pursuing my faith, literally always asking questions, refining, exploring historical points, asking “Where does my faith come from?” and what is logical, what is accurate, I found myself disrupted by the Reformation from a historical perspective.
Terms like monergism arose from the Lutheran Reformation which eventually lead to inner-denomination splits. You have these terms being used to attempt to solve the corners of the Mysterious salvation that’s offered to us…and in that, you create more division. It’s no question or surprise to learn that many Reformers like Calvin and Knox had people killed for disagreeing with what was “new” theology — yes new. Under the guise of saying “this is old,” they used terms like predestination, supralapsarian, and monergism to weed out anyone who dared disagree.
Now, some of the irony within this starts with the sheer fact that Protestants allow themselves to have confessions. At the time, I would ask questions like, “why don’t we have one confession for the church? I don’t understand? why so many?”
Lutheran Confessions (e.g., the Augsburg Confession, the Book of Concord)
Reformed Confessions (e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Heidelberg Catechism)
Anglican Confessions (e.g., the Thirty-Nine Articles)
Baptist Confessions (e.g., the Baptist Faith and Message, 1689, etc)
Methodist Confessions (e.g., the Articles of Religion)
That’s five to just name a few of them. There are many many more.
While there are some overlapping agreements, none of them actually agree with each other as a whole. The irony goes further though because who is to hold anyone accountable for these confessions? You have no hierarchy, you have no “first among equals tie-breaker”, you have four different churches on a corner, and whatever that pastor says, goes. I’m not done, the IRONY CONTINUES, in that how can Sola Scriptura allow for confessions which are a summarized confession of the tradition of dogmas they hold to — all differing.
It’s not just illogical, chaotic, and messy…my friends, it’s utterly stupid. I mean that in the real definitions of those words. It is utterly, unequivocally, stupid. You may have one or two protestants stand up now and say:
“Well, everything in them is in the Bible, not man-made tradition”
To which I would ask…"Then why don’t they agree? Could it be that they are based on one man’s interpretation of the Bible? You know his tradition?”
So, when you arrive at terms like Monergism or Synergism you arrive at a place where men who left the Historical church are attempting to split a divine hair with their human hands in such a way that they fool themselves into logically boxing God’s divine mercy into a cube everyone can read. It’s foolishness.
The irony of these terms is that you can come to a unified decision based on Scripture alone. James says faith without works is dead, and Paul says that someone is justified by their faith by quoting Habbakuk 2:4 which means what? You must be justified by the works you do through the faith you claim to have. You don’t want to work (live out the faith)? Okay, you don’t have it.
In further articles, we will go through certain terms that the Reformation spawned and we will hunt down their roots, what they mean, why they came to be, and if they have any bearing in the Early Church.
Disclaimer: Not everything the Catholic Church has produced has been holy, right, practiced well, taught well, etc… She isn’t perfect in the hands of humans.