Why Calvin’s T.U.L.I.P. continues to cause controversy

In 1982, at the tender age of 21 and shortly after converting to Christ, I began my journey towards becoming a fully-fledged card-carrying member of the Calvinist ‘club’.

At university, in St Augustine, Trinidad, several other members of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship baulked at the very idea of predestination. However, I was impressed by the overall cogency of Calvinism’s T.U.L.I.P acronym. Briefly, the letters stand for the following principles of Calvinism: Total depravity; Unconditional election; Limited atonement; Irresistible grace; Preservation and perseverance of saints.

It’s important to note that these teachings are interdependent. So, unconditional election should not be construed as being at odds with the preservation and perseverance of saints.

Calvinism resonated with not only my ‘Damascus Road’ experience of sudden and unexpected conversion, but also with the subsequent moral transformation that I underwent. Over many years, I came to realise the thoroughgoing pervasiveness of our ingrained preference for self-determination which, without divine grace, persistently overrules obedience to God’s will.

My experience of God’s grace aligns with the words of that great Christian hymn, ‘Rock of Ages’: ‘Nothing in my hands I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress, Helpless, look to Thee for grace: Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die.’

Fast forward 40 years from my conversion, and I find it fascinating that all five Calvinist principles are still as hotly debated as they were when I was a young undergraduate on campus.

For instance, consider total depravity. It was only a few weeks ago that one of our church’s regular preachers delivered a sermon on grace, taking Galatians 1:1-10 as his text. During that message, he referred to the following quote from Tim Keller’s book, the Meaning of Marriage (p.48): ‘The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.’

Well, within a few minutes of that quote being posted on the church’s Facebook page, the social media pile-on went ballistic. One church member could not identify with the idea that she was in any way evil, while several ex-members decried the post as unloving. Yet another, non-Christian, commentator, who works in social services, insisted that a Scriptural quote would have been better received and would not have provoked the same adverse reaction. In fact, she was so offended that she decided to report the post to Facebook, alleging a safeguarding violation.

Now, considering our church’s membership of the thirtyoneeight.org safeguarding organisation, you can imagine how seriously we took this allegation.

Initially I tried to avoid the comment thread’s escalation from offence to vitriol, but eventually I’d had enough. So, given the social-services worker’s recommendation about posting Scriptural quotes, I asked her whether she would similarly report the church for posting the following Bible verses:

‘All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away’ (Isa. 64:6).

‘If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!’ (Matt. 7:11).

‘The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?’(Jer.17:9).

‘If God places no trust in his holy ones, if even the heavens are not pure in his eyes, how much less mortals, who are vile and corrupt, who drink up evil like water!’ (Job 15:15, 16).

The dithering response to these verses betrayed considerable ignorance of God’s prophetic revelation of Himself through Scripture. However, as far as Bible literacy is concerned, she is certainly not alone.

Back in 2014, a survey by the Bible Society revealed that 23% of 8–15-year-olds surveyed indicated that they have never read, seen or heard the Bible narrative of Noah’s Ark.

Since then, the decline in Bible literacy has continued unabated. That’s why I’m not surprised that, in 2021, for the first time since the Dark Ages (5th to 14th centuries) less than half of the UK population in the UK identifies as Christian.

In a recent post to his blog, the Revd Gavin Ashenden absolutely nailed the reason for this decline:

‘…it was very hard [in the 1960s] to get people into church in the first place. We were competing with a number of different ideologies, but at the top of the list was the culture of therapy. The language and culture of therapy told people that they were basically OK.

‘A famous, much-read book of the time was called I’m OK – You’re OK. It was all about self-acceptance. The language and practice of therapeutic culture was that everyone was acceptable just as they are without any preconditions. Self-acceptance was the task, and a whole industry emerged to sell people that message.

‘In church, it became more and more obvious that this was part of our message too, and one people responded to. So we borrowed the self-affirming language of the therapeutic movement. God became the great therapist in the sky.’

Surely the reason for the earlier Bible verses and the quotes from Tim Keller remaining so unpalatable to most modern Western minds is that such messages don’t affirm our essential goodness. In fact, Bible teaching insists that, without submitting ourselves to Christ’s care, we are not OK.

Yet, widespread assertions about humanity being essentially good (‘I’m a nice person’) fly in the face of all the statistical evidence that reveals our overwhelming native propensity for selfishness.

Ultimately, when it comes to the doctrine of total depravity, Christians have to make a choice. For example, we can dismiss that doctrine as ‘out of touch’ with modern thinking, chime in with the zeitgeist and promote the therapeutic ‘gospel’. However, to do so involves repeatedly putting Scriptural truth on the back burner wherever it describes unregenerate human nature in unflattering terms.

Alternatively, we can maintain a high view of Scripture as providing the ‘whole counsel of God’, such that we continue to recognise and declare how desperately we all need Christ to save us from ourselves.

In terms of that choice, whatever others decide, I’ll adamantly persist with the latter. And that’s because, as Peter and the other apostles told their detractors in Jerusalem: ‘We ought to obey God, rather than people’ (Acts 5:29).