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Protestant (Four Family ‘sub’ groups) – A term used to describe those Christians who sought to “reform” the Roman Catholic church. Contrary to popular misnomer, the word did not arise as a result of “protesting” the Pope or the Roman Catholic church.
Rather, the etymology of “Protestant” is tied to a group of German princes, civic centers, and authorities all of whom voiced their dissent from the Diet of Speyer which was decidedly against Luther reforms. It has since come to be known as a term for “anti papist” groups and although it primarily referred to German reformers (Lutherans) and the term “Reformed Churches” referred to Swiss and French reformers, the term protestant has today come to represent all denominations besides the Roman Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern Orthodox denominations.
Scotch Mist, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Begun primarily by Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, the Swiss Reformation resulted in a large number of denominations considering the Swiss Reformation as their historical foundation: Swiss Reformed Church, Dutch Reformed Church, Church of Scotland/Presbyterians, Amish, Evangelical Free, and Christian and Missionary Alliance.
(Switzerland 1522 , Ulrich Zwingli) Broke from the Catholic Church as a result of a sausage eating event that was scheduled during a “holy fast” decreed by the Catholic Church. It was from this arguement that man is to obey “Divine Law” over “Man’s Law” that the concept of Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) was advanced. Zwingli, a Catholic Priest, was a contemporary of Martin Luther and had a sharp division with Luther on the meaning behind the Lord’s Supper.
Zwingli contended that when Jesus declared “This is my Body, take from it and eat.” He was speaking symbolically of the bread and that the Lord’s supper or “communion” as it called by some is a memorial as opposed to the Catholic transubstation understanding that the bread is transformed literally into Jesus body and the wine transformed into Jesus blood or the consubstantiation understanding of Lutherans whereby there is a “mystical presence” of Jesus with the bread.
One of the most famous Reformers of all time is a man named John Calvin from Geneva, France whose idea of double pre destination has spurred theological debate regarding God’s role in the salvation of man, and man’s role in his own salvation. From the Reformed Church came denominations known today as Presbyterian, Church of Scotland, Reformed Baptist (Particular Baptist) and Evangelical Free.
Ulrich Zwingli was originally ordained a Catholic priest in Constance about 100 years after the fateful Council of Constance where the pre-reformer John Hus was tricked into attending the meeting with a false promise of safety by the Roman Catholic church and was then taken captive and executed for standing on Biblical principles.
Zwingli became a priest in Glarus and remained in this position for 10 yrs during which he was assigned to minister on the battlefields of Swiss mercenaries. Because of all the bloodshed he witnessed, he spoke against “trade of blood for gold” and because of this, the Roman Catholics took away his church. He then took on the role of priest at Einsiedeln where he met the humanist Erasmus and read his Greek New Testament, teaching himself Greek along the way.
In 1519 he moved to the ‘Great Cathedral” in Zurich, Switzerland which was a big step up in his career. Even though he had only heard of Martin Luther and didn’t know his positions of reform, Zwingli had arrived at many of the same conclusions independently.
He preached Matthew verse by verse – the first of his time to do so. When a plague hit Zurich, Zwingli contracted it yet survived
He preached against the Roman Catholic Church on its unbiblical practices of indulgences (selling forgiveness for the dead in purgatory), purgatory (a make-believe ‘pre-hell’ invented by the Catholic church), Mary’s veneration (worship practice of praying to her as if she can hear anyone’s praryers much less those of billions of people). He then refused wages from Pope and in defiance of the unbiblical Catholic practice of forbidding priests to marry, Zwingli took a wife just as the German reformers were doing.
In 1523 the Zurich City Council convened to discuss Zwingli’s radical views and they approached Zwingli to discuss a “state” church of sorts. Zwingli then produced 67 Reformation Articles which were supported by the council. These dealt with: Christian Essentials, Christian Living and Ecclesiology/Liturgy. Thereafter, It became law to “Preach nothing but what can be proven by Scripture”.
Zwingli removed the ornate vestiges worn by priests and replaced them with simple implements.
He stated that Christ is present in “spirit” at Eucharist for believers in a more symbolical manner than that of the Lutheran consubstantiation.
He rejected monastic life and monasteries which were then taken over by the state who redistributed the wealth to the poor and widows. (where it should have gone to in the first place!)
He believed that new beliefs should equate to new actions so he pulled down “unscriptural” elements and icons within the Catholic churches in Zurich.
Zwingli met with Martin Luther at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 which was called by Philip of Hesse. There, they discussed 15 issues of reformation and agreed on 14 yet that 1 issue became the very thing that church historians would focus on and a major difference between the denomination of the Reformed Church and Lutheranism. The singular issue upon which they disagreed was the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or communion:
John Calvin was a French humanist lawyer that broke from Catholic Church in 1530 he was a former stoic (pagan philosophy of the Greeks) he converted to Christ and and forsook what he termed a hardened heart toward God, ultimately leaving the Catholic Church.
“And now, O Lord, what remains to a wretch like me, but instead of defence, earnestly to supplicate you not to judge that fearful abandonment of your Word according to its deserts, from which in your wondrous goodness you have at last delivered me.”
He became a Pastor and Theologian in Geneva during the Swiss Reformation and was subseqently recruited to join the Swiss Reformation by William Farel, a fellow French Reformer and protégé of Ulrich Zwingli. Shortly after arriving in Geneva and as a very young Christian, he began to write his opus “Institutio Christianae Religionis” or the Institutes of The Christian Religion. This book waa an apologetic for his Christian theology (Augustine’s theology) and would go on to form the very foundational beliefs of Swiss Reformers. It was soon enlarged from 6 chapters to 17 in 1539 while Calvin ministered in Strasbourg.
In 1541 Calvin returned to Geneva where the Geneva Council accepted his proposals for reform:
Calvin preached over 2000 sermons – twice on Sunday and thrice during the week and faced opposition (along with other French refugees) from a group he would call the “Libertines”. This group believed that grace liberated them from civil and ecclesiastical law (c.f. Zwingli and the Anabaptists and Luther and the Peasants Uprising in Germany).
The Libertine’s view of flouting civic authority didn’t sit well with the state so Calvin taking a stand against them earned him the title of “defender of the faith”. He would also quote the early church fathers as an apologetic against Roman Catholic claims that reformers were “inventing” theology.
Calvin respected Luther but Calvin’s position on the Eucharist landed him in Zwingli’s camp as far as Martin Luther was concerned.
In 1555 he protected English religious refugees from the murderous persecution at the hands of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) providing these “Marian” exiles with safety in Geneva to practice their Christian Faith. John Knox, a Scotsmanf and William Whittingham, an Englishman were among those permitted to start their own reformed church in Geneva. They were both influenced and discipled in Calvin’s new theology and returned to England and Scotland with these teachings.
Knox would be credited with founding the “Church of Scotland” or “Scottish Presbyterians”. The Church of Scotland is facing extinction today due to embracing the same liberal meaningless purposeless worldly theology that has doomed so many other mainline denominations.
The theological beliefs of the Reformed Church are taken wholesale from Calvin’s “Institutes of Christian Religion”:
Calvin states that human wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves and “that For anyone to arrive at God the Creator he needs Scripture as his Guide and Teacher.”
Calvinism adheres to a Trinitarian view of God and the deity of Jesus
In a belief which arose gainst the Catholic Church practice of icons and idolatry, Calvin argues that images of God lead to idolatry.
Calvin adheres to the belief that humans are unable to fully comprehend why God performs any particular action and that all efforts will lways result in the execution of God’s will.
Perhaps the most controversal theological belief of Reformed theology is the Calvinist framework by which a person is saved. This framework was adopted almost entirely from Augustine’s post 410 A.D. theology which Calvin admits when discussing his source for Institutes of Christian Religion. I don’t see anything terribly controversal in Calvin’s process of conversion which he describes in book 2 of Institutes:
I believe the controversy begins to arise when we go a little deeper into the framework which houses the above process. This framework was later organized into an acrostic known as TULIP at the Synod of Dort:
Total depravity of man -This is a radical belief of the condition of man whereby Calvin emphasized that we are entirely without any and all capacity to make right choices and therefore carry out right actions. That is to say we are incapable of any other choice than evil. Here is a quote from IOCR:
“...all men are so contrived by the original corruption, that they are justly considered as liable to damnation; and that this corruption is so diffused through the whole man, as to leave no part of him exempt from the deadly infection.”
Biblical View* – Because of the fall of Adam, every person inherits a nature and environment inclined toward sin and that every person who is capable of moral action will sin. Adam’s sin did not result in the incapacitation of any person’s free will. That is to say that mankind, made in the image of God, has had that image “defaced” by the sin of Adam and not “erased”. Genesis 3:15-24; 6:5; Deuteronomy 1:39; Isaiah 6:5, 7:15-16;53:6;Jeremiah 17:5,9, 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18:19-20; Romans 1:18-32; 3:9-18, 5:12, 6:23; 7:9; Matthew 7:21-23; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 6:9-10;15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Hebrews 9:27-28; Revelation 20:11-15
*Biblical View sourced primarily from Leighton Flowers’ soteriology101.com
Unconditional Election – Calvin, like Augustine believed that God’s election is based on his own random predestination of those to be saved whereby God looks at the whole of humanity and before any of them are created, He selects some to be saved thereby leaving the majority to be condemned. The election to salvation is not based on foreseen merit or faith yet, according to Calvin, the damnation is based on a foreseen lack of merit and rejection of Christ. The election of some to salvation and subsequent condemnation of the majority to damnation, according to Calvinism, is based purely on God’s sovereign will. Here is a quote from Calvin’s Institutes:
“...God, by his eternal good pleasure, separated those whom he pleased from the rest, rejecting some, and adopting others.”
Biblical View* – Denies that only a select few are capable of responding to the Gospel while the rest are predestined to an eternity in hell. While no sinner is remotely capable of achieving salvation through his own effort, the Bible refutes the idea that any sinner is saved apart from a free response to the Holy Spirit’s drawing through the Gospel. All men have been given the “ability to respond” to the Gospel that is mankind is responsible (able to give a response). Genesis 3:15; Psalm 2:1-12; Ezekiel 18:23, 32; Luke 19.10; Luke 24:45-49; John 1:1-18, 3:16; Romans 1:1-6, 5:8; 8:34; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Galatians 4:4-7; Colossians 1:21-23; 1 Timothy 2:3-4; Hebrews 1:1-3; 4:14-16; 2 Peter 3:9
*Biblical View sourced primarily from Leighton Flowers’ soteriology101.com
Limited Atonement – Calvin held that Christ’s atoning work was only specifically for the elect not for all of the “whosoever” mentioned in John 3:16. He believed that the atoning work actually accomplished it for the predetermined elect as opposed to the Biblical belief held by all the early church Fathers including pre-410 A.D. Augustine and Bible believers today:
“The efficacy of the death of Christ extends to none but the elect... for whom he laid down his life.”
Biblical View* – Penal substitution of Christ is the only available and effective sacrifice for the sins of every person. This atonement results in salvation upon a person’s free response of repentance and faith. God does not impose or withhold this atonement without respect to an act of the person’s free will; a free will which God in His sovereignty has provided to mankind. Christ did not die only for the sins of those who were elected randomly at some point prior to their birth but rather he died for the “whosoever” of the entire world spoken of in John 3:16. Psalm 22:1-31; Isaiah 53:1-12; John 12:32, 14:6; Acts 10:39-43; Acts 16:30-32; Romans 3:21-26; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:10-14; Philippians 2:5-11; Col. 1:13-20; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; Hebrews 9:12-15, 24-28; 10:1-18; I John 1:7; 2:2
*Biblical View sourced primarily from Leighton Flowers’ soteriology101.com
Irresistable Grace – Like post-410AD Augustine, Calvin believed that when God calls someone to salvation, that calling is effective no matter if the person wants it or not — it overcomes any resistance by the individual and and essentially brings about regeneration despite any choice or response of the person being regenerated. Augustine and Calvin believed that somehow this was the only way that God could take full glory and have full sovereignty in the entirety of a person’s salvation. They failed to grasp that God in His sovereignty has provided mankind with a responsibility for his heart and behavior and it is for this reason that God has, in His sovereignty, also provided mankind with the ability to hear the Gospel and respond accordingly.
“The Spirit of God is not only the initiator of faith, but the creator of it. The grace of God is so efficacious, that it produces the result for which it is given.”
Biblical View* – Grace is God’s generous decision to provide salvation for any person by taking all of the initiative in providing atonement, in freely offering the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, and in uniting the believer to Christ through the Holy Spirit by faith. Grace does not negate the necessity of a free response of faith or that it cannot be resisted. In order to be held culpable for sin we must be responsible for that sin which also means we are held responsible/culpable for the sin of rejecting the grace of God. Ezra 9:8; Proverbs 3:34; Zechariah 12:10; Matthew 19:16-30, 23:37; Luke 10:1-12; Acts 15:11; 20:24; Romans 3:24, 27-28; 5:6, 8, 15-21; Galatians 1:6; 2:21; 5; Ephesians 2:8-10; Philippians 3:2-9; Colossians 2:13-17; Hebrews 4:16; 9:28; 1 John 4:19
*Biblical View sourced primarily from Leighton Flowers’ soteriology101.com
Perseverance of the Saints – Calvin believes that the elect will persevere because their salvation is grounded in God’s unchanging will and power which has predetermined their salvation and His grace offered to them is irresistable so they cannot fail, even if they wanted to.
“God, having once embraced the elect in his gratuitous love, never leaves them so as to stop bestowing his grace until they arrive at the goal of final salvation.”
Biblical View* – When a person responds in faith to the Gospel, God promises to complete the process of salvation in the believer into eternity. This process begins with justification, whereby the sinner is immediately acquitted of all sin and granted peace with God; continues in sanctification, whereby the saved are progressively conformed to the image of Christ by the indwelling Holy Spirit; and concludes in glorification, whereby the saint enjoys life with Christ in heaven forever. This is predicated on the promises of God to “never leave us nor forsake us” (Heb 13:5, Isa 41:10) and not due to hard determinist view that a select few were chosen before they existed by random selection to receive a grace that is irresistable. John 10:28-29; 14:1-4; 16:12-14; Philippians 1:6; Romans 3:21-26; 8:29,30; 35-39; 12:1-3; 2 Corinthians 4:17; Ephesians 1:13-14; Philippians 3:12; Colossians 1:21-22; 1 John 2:19; 3:2; 5:13-15; 2 Timothy 1:12; Hebrews 13:5; James 1:12; Jude 24-25
*Biblical View sourced primarily from Leighton Flowers’ soteriology101.com
No one receives eternal life and eternal presence with God, from who all good things come (James 1:17), by belonging to the right church, denomination, world religion, or by having a particular world view. Rather only those who trust in the Lord Jesus preached by the Apostles in the Bible, for their own sin. We will not trust in a Savior for sins that we either don’t believe we have or that we think aren’t deserving of hell. But the Bible says that ALL have sin and the wages of that sin is eternal separation from God (death). The good news is that the Bible says that you can know that YOU have eternal life. Click the button below to see if you are genuinely saved from your sins according to the Bible: