Friday, February 13, 2009
Do calvinists follow Calvin and not Christ?
I once had a friend tell me that he wasn't a Calvinist because Calvinists follow Calvin, and he (my friend) follows Christ. Well if you aren't a Calvinist then you're an Arminian. Doesn't that mean you follow Arminius? Just because we believe the ideas of John Calvin doesn't mean we're his followers. We believe that what he said is true, but we follow Christ. If the case is that Calvinists follow Calvin, and that means that they don't follow Christ, then no one follows Christ. You believe a lot of the things that your pastor preaches is true, that means you follow your pastor, and not Christ. You believe a lot of what your parents tell you is true, that means you follow your parents and not Christ. Do you see how pointless it is to say that Calvinists follow Calvin? Of course we follow his teachings, but he teaches about Christ, which also means we follow Christ.
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To call oneself a Calvinist is simply to say that you believe in the doctrines of Grace, which are commonly called Calvinism. It is a way of identifying oneself and is not intended to display allegiance to the man Calvin, though he was certainly a man worth emulating. The head of the church, however, is Christ, and it is usually those who don't know anything about Calvinism who accuse us of "following Calvin."
ReplyDeleteThis all comes from a simple and misapplication of 1 Corinthians 1:10-13 and 3:1-9. Unlike what Paul is saying here, we who refer to ourselves as Calvinists do not look to the man Calvin for all of our doctrine, nor do we place him above Christ. On the contrary, of all the men I read, Spurgeon and others like him, Calvin's material is the least of what I've read. But those doctrines which bear his name are what we adhere to, for the simple reason that they are clearly taught in Scripture! :)