Sep 14
When is a TULIP not a TULIP?
John Hobbins has puzzled me. (Perhaps it’s only because I’m aware that I shall shortly come to the article on predestination in my series that I noticed this.) But he professes to be a TULIP, which for those of you who need reminding – and half the time I do – stands for:
- Total depravity
- Unconditional election
- Limited atonement
- Irresistible grace
- Perseverance of the saints
These have always had some fairly clear doctrinal definitions in the Calvinist tradition, which have provided a base for controversial engagement with and by those in other traditions, particularly over the seriously un-Christian idea of limited atonement. But people knew what was meant, at least until John came along to redefine everything:
Total hereditary depravity is no match for God’s grace. He shall overcome.
Unconditional election is the chief and most glorious expression of God’s unconditional love.
Limited atonement is a reality faced today. The consequences of sin are still born in part by sin’s perpetrators and victims. The time is coming, and is almost here, when the Lamb’s victory over sin will be universal.
Irresistible Grace means that God’s saving purpose cannot be thwarted by human disobedience and incredulity.
Perseverance of the saints: God’s grace guarantees it. Relapse into sin is terribly destructive, but cannot separate us from the love of God.
Now I think John’s ideas are broadly right here, except that this is not what anyone means by TULIP — except John. In fact it is pretty much a full-blown repudiation of five-point Calvinism. So why try to give it the same name? I also feel like this about Chris Tilling’s attempts to save the word “inerrancy” for intelligent users, on which I have previously commented. John would presumably agree with Chris.
Whether for good or ill words like “inerrancy” and phrases like “limited atonement” have become irretrievably associated with views that are profoundly unbiblical and deserve only to be repudiated. Lone voices redefining them to mean their opposites will not rescue them. Quite frankly, this is just the Humpty-Dumpty school of theological definition, and I can’t see the point of it..
September 14th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
We need to be careful here that we don’t attribute TULIP to Calvin. Indeed, it summarizes not his theology but that of his descendants. It is a common error to attribute it to Calvin, but that is simply historically quite wrong.
However you are right that John’s rendering is exactly NOT what the adherents of 2nd generation Calvinism believed.
September 14th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Indeed, Jim: the picture was just a bit of fun, and the text doesn’t mention Calvin, only Calvinists. Calvin was in many ways more catholic (small-c) than his descendants have made him
September 14th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Very true indeed Doug!
September 14th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
John’s just trying to get the BHT guys to make fun of him so he can increase visits to his blog. He was hoping to bring some life into the tired tulip. His T and U seemed strongest to me.
BTW, TULIP in Portuguese is DERGP. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
September 14th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
John Hobbins is not the only self-confessed Calvinist who has been redefining “limited atonement”. So has Jeremy Pierce, in comments on my blog referring to, and subtly correcting the emphasis of, an earlier post of his. This got so far that I threatened to out him as an Arminian! In response he wrote:
So, in one sense he is a TULIP Calvinist, and in another sense he is not.
September 14th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Doug, you should check your own links before correcting others’. Your link to John’s post in fact goes to your image.
September 14th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
Huh. Beams, Motes.
September 14th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Hey Lingamish,
it’s working, too.
As for what kind of TULIP I am, the only kind I want to be is one faithful to the entire witness of Scripture.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Posting provocative attacks on other people’s blog postings just to generate traffic… now that’s total depravity.
September 15th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
if john wrote a comic strip about being a tulip, would it be calvin and hobbins?
September 15th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
If TULIP is taken the way it was originally meant, then the position I have defined is not in one sense TULIP Calvinism and in another sense not. It simply is TULIP Calvinism, as opposed to those who have taken TULIP to be something else entirely.
The kind of Calvinism that contemporary philosophers would call compatibilist, that recognizes potentiality and human freedom as true but on a different level of explanation from divine sovereignty, was denied by a number of people in the development of Calvinist thought. These people became known as hyper-Calvinists. See the Wikipedia entry on hyper-Calvinism. The view of TULIP required by what some here are saying is in fact hyper-Calvinism.
The same is true of inerrancy, of course, but that would take a lot of work to show that I haven’t at this point written out anywhere. What’s funny is that revisionists like George Marsden show that historical inerrantists did not accept the straw man version of inerrancy that contemporary opponents of inerrancy are often rejecting, and their evidence for this is that historical inerrantists’ views are more like what the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy allows for (e.g. imprecision, different perspectives from different authors, round numbers, phenomenological presentation of information; I have written on this aspect) and the use of the historically stronger term ‘infallible’ instead of the weaker term ‘inerrant’ (another issue I have written up my arguments for).
September 15th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Jeremy, my previous comment mentioning you was not intended to be taken all that seriously.
Now you may be right that your compatibilist view may be true Calvinism and the other version hyper-C. But what I see promoted on so many blogs etc, by people who deny being hyper, so often seems to deny compatibilism with statements like that people cannot decide for themselves whether to respond to the gospel, because it all depends on whether God has predestined them to have faith. Indeed doesn’t the “total depravity” teaching that people cannot decide for themselves to believe contradict compatibilism? But perhaps this subject needs deeper consideration than I can give it in these comments.
September 15th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
[...] topic for that blog, so don’t be scared to read this if you don’t know any Hebrew), at Metacatholic, and in a long comment thread on this very [...]
September 20th, 2007 at 3:21 am
I think it does need deeper consideration. Compatibilism allows for different senses in which something can be possible, and it would take a while to explain that. I’m intended to get to it when I get back to my Theories of Knowledge and Reality series, but I keep putting that off, because the next post involves a lot of material not included in the notes I already have, which is where many of the posts in the series have come from.
September 20th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Jeremy, if you do write that post, please append a link here. While I can see the strength of what you’re putting forward as compatabilism, I can’t resist a nagging suspicion that it looks like sleight of hand.
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Well, my previous post in the series does begin to argue for compatibilism. I haven’t begun looking at the particular compatibilist accounts of freedom, though. When I do, this post will link to it. If it’s in the near future, I may remember to come back here and provide a link, but I don’t know when I’ll be getting to this.