Calvinism

The doctrines of Calvinism were originally developed by John Calvin, a 16th-century Swiss Christian church leader and successor to Lutheran church founder Martin Luther.
The theological system and practical theories of church, family, and political life, all ambiguously called "Calvinism," are the outgrowth of a fundamental religious consciousness centered upon "the sovereignty of God." The doctrine of God is, in principle, given a preeminent place in every category of theology, including the Calvinist understanding of how a person ought to live. Calvinism presupposes that the goodness and power of God have a free, unlimited range of activity -- and it works out as a conviction that God is at work in all realms of existence, including the spiritual, physical, intellectual realms, whether secular or sacred, public or private, on earth or in heaven. According to this viewpoint, the entire course of events is the outworking of the plan of God, who is the creator, preserver, and governor of all things without any exceptions, and whose will is consequently the ultimate cause of everything. This attitude of absolute dependence on God is not identified with temporary acts of piety, for example, such as prayer; rather, it is a sustained and all-encompassing pattern of life that in principle applies to digging ditches as well as taking communion. For the Calvinist Christian, all of life is the Christian religion.

Calvinism is often identified in the popular mind with the "five points of the doctrines of grace,” remembered by the English acronym [|TULIP]:

[|T][|otal Depravity]

 * People in their natural, unregenerate state do not have the ability to turn to God**. Rather it is the grace and will of God through the Spirit that causes men who are dead in sin to be reborn through the Word.

[|U][|nconditional Election]
Election means "choice." God's choice from __[|eternity]__, of who He will bring to Himself, is **not based on foreseen virtue, merit or faith** in the persons He chooses, but rather is unconditionally grounded in His own mercy.

**L**__imited Atonement__
Also called "particular redemption" or "definite atonement." Christ's death actually takes away the penalty of sins committed by those upon whom God has chosen to have mercy. (As opposed to Christ's death making redemption merely a possibility that we can perform**). It is "limited," then, to taking away the sins of the elect.**

**I**__rresistible Grace__
The saving grace of God is not resistible. Those who obtain salvation do so because of the relentlessness of God's mercy. Men yield to grace, not finally because God finds their consciences more tender or their faith more tenacious than other men. Rather, **willingness and ability to do God's will are evidence of God's faithfulness to save men from the power and the penalty of sin.**

**P**__erseverance of the Saints__
Also called the "Preservation of the Saints". Those whom God has called into communion with Himself through Christ will continue in faith and will increase in faith and other gifts until the end. **Those who apparently fall away either never had true faith to begin with or else will return**. Thus Calvinists do not subscribe to the "once saved, always saved" concept popular among many Christian denominations.

These five points are a summation of the judgments or canons rendered by the [|Synod of Dort], which was published as a point-by-point refutation of the five points of the [|Arminian] Remonstrance. They are not a summation of Calvin's writings or of the theology of the Reformed churches. The central assertion of these canons is that **God is able to save from the tyranny of sin, from guilt and the fear of death, every one of those upon whom he is willing to have mercy.** God is not frustrated by the unrighteousness or the inability of men because it is the unrighteous and the helpless that he intends to save.

-From Wikipedia, 2004