mankind—election by the Father, redemption by the Son, calling by the Spirit—as directed
towards the same persons, and as securing their salvation infallibly. The other view gives each
act a different reference (the objects of redemption being all mankind, of calling, all who hear the
gospel, and of election, those hearers who respond), and denies that man’s salvation is secured
by any of them. The two theologies thus conceive the plan of salvation in quite different terms.
One makes salvation depend on the work of God, the other on a work of man; one regards faith
as part of God’s gift of salvation, the other as man’s own contribution to salvation; one gives all
the glory of saving believers to God, the other divides the praise between God, who, so to speak,
built the machinery of salvation, and man, who by believing operated it. Plainly, these
differences are important, and the permanent value of the ‘five points’, as a summary of
Calvinism, is that they make clear the areas in which, and the extent to which, these two
conceptions are at variance.
However, it would not be correct simply to equate Calvinism with the ‘five points’. Five
points of our own will make this clear.
In the first place, Calvinism is something much broader than the ‘five points’ indicate.
Calvinism is a whole world-view, stemming from a clear vision of God as the whole world’s
Maker and King. Calvinism is the consistent endeavor to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord,
working all things after the counsel of his will. Calvinism is a theocentric way of thinking about
all life under the direction and control of God’s own word. Calvinism, in other words, is the
theology of the Bible viewed from the perspective of the Bible—the God-centered outlook which
sees the Creator as the source, and means, and end, of everything that is, both in nature and in
grace. Calvinism is thus theism (belief in God as the ground of all things), religion (dependence
on God as the giver of all things), and evangelicalism (trust in God through Christ for all things),
all in their purest and most highly developed form. And Calvinism is a unified philosophy of
history which sees the whole diversity of processes and events that take place in God’s world as
no more, and no less, than the outworking of his great preordained plan for his creatures and his
church. The five points assert no more than God is sovereign in saving the individual, but
Calvinism, as such, is concerned with the much broader assertion that he is sovereign
everywhere.
Then, in the second place, the ‘five points’ present Calvinistic soteriology in a negative
and polemical form, whereas Calvinism in itself is essentially expository, pastoral and
constructive. It can define its position in terms of Scripture without any reference to
Arminianism, and it does not need to be forever fighting real or imaginary Arminians in order to
keep itself alive. Calvinism has no interest in negatives, as such; when Calvinists fight, they fight
for positive evangelical values. The negative cast of the ‘five points’ is misleading chiefly with
regard to the third (limited atonement, or particular redemption), which is often read with stress
on the adjective and taken as indicating that Calvinists have a special interest in confining the
limits of divine mercy. But in fact the purpose of this phraseology, as we shall see, is to
safeguard the central affirmation of the gospel—that Christ is a redeemer who really does
redeem. Similarly, the denials of an election that is conditional and of grace that is resistible are
intended to safeguard the positive truth that it is God who saves. The real negations are those of
Arminianism, which denies that election, redemption and calling are saving acts of God.
Calvinism negates these negations order to assert the positive content of the gospel, for the
positive purpose of strengthening faith and building up the church.
Thirdly, the very act of setting out Calvinistic soteriology in the form of five distinct
points (a number due, as we saw, merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the