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Calvinism
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After John Calvin's teachings, the earliest authoritative explanation of Calvinism is what was given at the Synod of Dort in 1618-19. Nearly three decades later, the wording cited at Dort was slightly altered without changing its substance in the Westminster Confession of Faith, finished in December of 1646. Both of these sources of primitive Calvinism reveal that it was not different back then, than it is today. Calvinism has always allowed for a Christian to be immoral under their warped concepts of grace and salvation. Below is exactly how Calvinism was originally worded in these two sources respectively in the early to mid 1600's. Both statements were written about the elect under their doctrine of the perseverance of the saints:
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Calvinism, in its broadest sense, is the entire body of conceptions arising from the teachings of John Calvin. Its fundamental principle is the conception of God as absolutely sovereign. More than other branches of Protestantism, Calvinism emphasizes the doctrine of predestination, the idea that God has already determined whom to save and damn and that nothing can change his decision. The 1618–1619 Synod of Dort produced five canons that defined Calvinist orthodoxy: total depravity, the belief that original sin renders humans incapable of achieving salvation without God's grace; unconditional election, that the saved do not become so as a result of their own virtuous behavior but rather because God has selected them; limited atonement, that Christ died only to redeem those whom God has already chosen for salvation; irresistible grace, that individuals predestined for salvation cannot reject God's grace; and perseverance of the saints, that those whom God has chosen for salvation cannot lose that grace. The statement of Calvinism most influential in the United States was the Westminster Confession of 1647. New England Congregationalists accepted its doctrinal portion and embodied it in their Cambridge Platform of 1648.
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While Lutheranism was largely confined to parts of Germany and to Scandinavia, Calvinism spread into England, Scotland, the English-speaking colonies in North America, France, the Netherlands, much of Germany, and parts of central Europe. This expansion began during Calvin's lifetime and was encouraged by him. Religious refugees had poured into Geneva, especially from France during the 1550s as the French government became increasingly intolerant but ... from England, Scotland, Italy, and other parts of Europe into which Calvinism had spread. Calvin welcomed them, trained many of them as ministers, sent them back to their countries of origin to spread the Gospel, and then supported them with letters of encouragement and advice. Geneva thus became the centre of an international movement and a model for churches elsewhere. John Knox, the Calvinist leader of Scotland, described Geneva as “the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles.â€
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The history of Calvinism changed dramatically in the seventeenth century. In Europe, it stopped growing through armed struggle with Catholic governments, and instead it lost ground in many places. In Poland-Lithuania, it disappeared entirely through a peaceful Catholic reconquest. Its only new foundations, destined to become important in subsequent centuries, were in overseas colonies like New England or South Africa. Occasionally, Calvinism still seemed bellicose after 1600. Historians still debate the extent to which an international Calvinist conspiracy provoked the Thirty Years' War in 1618 by encouraging the ill-fated adventure of the elector palatine Frederick V, who became Bohemia's "Winter King."
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For Calvinism, in this soteriological aspect of it, is just the perception and expression and defence of the utter dependence of the soul on the free grace of God for salvation. All its so-called hard features—its doctrine of original sin, yes, speak it right out, its doctrine of total depravity and the entire inability of the sinful will to good; its doctrine of election, or, to put it in the words everywhere spoken against, its doctrine of predestination and preterition, of reprobation itself—mean just this and nothing more. Calvinism will not play fast and loose with the free grace of God. It is set upon giving to God, and to God alone, the glory and all the glory of salvation. There are others than Calvinists, no doubt, who would fain make the same great confession. But they make it with reserves, or they painfully justify the making of it by some tenuous theory which confuses nature and grace.
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By the early 17th century, Calvinism had been adopted by Protestant groups in many lands. The Synod of Dort (1618-19) in Holland fixed this form of belief as Dutch orthodoxy (see Arminianism). French Calvinists founded the Huguenot movement (see Huguenots), which was suppressed by the Roman Catholic church. In England, Puritanism developed and briefly achieved ascendancy during the period when the monarchy was suspended under Oliver Cromwell. The Westminster Confession (1646) represents the systematic expression of Puritan theology. It was adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1648 and has become the basic creed of Presbyterian groups in Britain and throughout the world.
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