In reality, Calvinism doesn’t have five points, Calvinism has many points as we can see in the Westminster confession of faith and in the Belgic confession. But when the Arminius followers came up to challenge Calvinism in the Netherlands they came up with the five points of Arminianism and so the synod of dort responded to those five points of Arminianism with the five points of Calvinistic answers to the Armenian error so dort is really the source of what we know of today as the five points of Calvinism. But we always need to remember that those five points don’t summarize the fullness of Calvinism it is just a very small part of the answer that was given in response to the Arminianism challenge against Calvinism. But John Calvin never talked about five points that is a later phenomenon. Calvin knew that you can’t just lift one doctrine out of the bible and make it the center of everything if the bible doesn’t do that and that’s what Calvin did his best to try to avoid doing. He tried to develop a theology that was based faithfully on the bible and he based all of his teachings on the holy word of God and not on his own ideas. So you see the five points of Calvinism were not formulated by John Calvin but by the synod of dort, so neither was it Arminius who articulated the five points of Arminianism, but the remonstrants who did so after his death. so you see that Calvin has nothing to do with the five points of that bear his name.
There are two main camps of theology today within Christianity in America and they are Arminianism and Calvinism.
The system of Calvinism adhered to a very high view of scripture and seek to base its theological formulations based solely on the word of God. That God, by his own sovereign grace predestines a people into salvation; that Jesus died only for all that the Lord gave to him in the convent of grace, John 6:40 and 17:2.
On the other hand, Arminianism maintains that God is predestined, But not in an absolute sense. But rather, He looked into the future to see who would pick him, and then he would choose them because Jesus died for every human being who ever lived and the ones that are not even born yet. Each person is the one who decides if he or she wants to be saved or not because God can’t save you against your will. Nowhere in the bible teaches this lie.
five points to Calvinism:
T-Total Depravity
U-Unconditional election
L-Limited atonement
I-Irresistible Grace
P-Perseverance of the saints
The five points of Arminianism
Free will, or human ability
Conditional election
Universal redemption, or general atonement
The work of the holy spirit in regeneration is limited by the human free will
Falling from grace, or that one can lose his or her salvation
these are the five points of each. In my next blog, I will start teaching about the Total depravity of man from a biblical perspective.