I am pleased that the Southern Baptist Convention has organized the Building Bridges Conference that is to take place at the end of this month to discuss Calvinism. Moreover, it’s right that Nathan Finn should be giving an address on the misconceptions of Calvinism because of his irenic, Christ-like demeanor. I would like to contribute to the conversation and polling of opinions he has started over at his blog by adding some thoughts here and would encourage readers to do the same but by leaving thoughts at his blog (or here, too, if you must). Hopefully, my thinking on this subject here won’t add to the confusion of further mischaracterization.

An obvious place to lead in talking about misconceptions of Calvinism is the so-called five points of Calvinism. One could talk about the misconceptions of unconditional election, limited atonement, or total depravity. However, I believe this is granting too much and shows a misconception in itself, namely that Calvinism is simply five points. We will do well to remember that the five points of Calvinism were not first set forward by Calvinists as the Calvinist’s credo, but were five points of doctrine with which the followers of Jacob Arminius found disagreement. The five points of Calvinism may say more about Arminians than they do about Calvinists. Consequently, I believe it a misconception to think merely of Calvinism (the outworking of theology after Calvin) merely as five points. The five points of Calvinism are the five points at which there was found disagreement by another man’s followers at the Synod of Dort and do not encompass all that is theology done after the thinking of Calvin and the reformers, both magisterial and radical. (1) Calvinism is more than “Calvinism.” Calvinism entails a certain doctrine of God, an ecclesiology, a view of sacraments, and much more that I have yet to discover. Further, this may be one reason why many evangelicals are more comfortable, like I, of referring to their theology rather as reformed than Calvinistic, though not afraid of the term Calvinism.

The last sentence above reveals another misconception worthy of address. (2) Calvinists bearing the surname of John Calvin show their indebtedness to him, but (in many cases) no special attachment to or affinity for his person. In other words, accepting the name “Calvinist” is very much unlike accepting the name “Christian” in that, while the Christian does, can and should rightfully appropriate wholesale the Christ to life, the Calvinist does not and should not the person of John Calvin. Therefore, the argument that Calvin was not a Calvinist is useless and impotent because the Calvinist is not so much concerned with Calvin per se as much as doing theology after him. Nonetheless, was Jesus a Christian?

I will end with what I see as the most common misconception of Calvinism: that because God is sovereign in salvation (call it predestination or unconditional election) missions/evangelization is not needed. The misconception is that sovereignty in salvation and evangelization/missions are mutually exclusive. John Piper has done more than anyone that I know of to combat such misguided, incorrect, and ultimately unbiblical thinking (cf. Let the Nations Be Glad). (3) Piper shows that reformed thinking is not the abdicating of, nor antithetical to, missions but a continuously combusting engine driving missions not as an end but as a means to the greatest end of the glory of God in Christ Jesus. It is therefore a gross error to write off Calvinism in one stroke with statements like “If God predestines, why go?” as did one Methodist clergyman-to-be classmate in a history of Christianity course at my state university. Calvin quipped that to fail to proclaim the gospel was to leave Christ in the tomb.