What denominations believe in Unconditional Election?

[Ain't Zwinglian]

Literally by the same author, and spouting the same false dichotomy between Scottish and Dutch traditions of Reformed theology.

About the only issues I agree with the author on, as a former pastor in a liberal Reformed denomination trained a liberal Reformed seminary, and consequently as someone with some knowledge of Calvinism and Reformed theology, are that “ Emphasis on the five points of Calvinism fails to capture the full breadth of the heritage of Reformed thought,” which is certainly true, particularly considering that the “Five Points” of “TULIP” were not even defined by John Calvin himself, but emerged at the Synod of Dort, and also that Dutch and Scottish Reformed theology are complementary.



Forgive me, but that’s a gross mischaracterization of my post. As I said in my post, regarding Swiss Calvinism, John Calvin was a French emigre to Switzerland, who wound up leading the Church in Geneva (after some initial clashes with the city council during which he took refuge in Basel) and he was the first to articulate the Swiss theological concept, and I stated as much. It was also the place from which early Calvinists including the Dutch and the Scottish learned about it. This is why the English-language translation of the Bible favored by the early Calvinists in England and the early Scottish Presbyterians is called “The Geneva Bible.”

I also mentioned that Huldrych Zwingli, who represented a more extreme form of Calvinism, was also Swiss, having been born in St. Gallen, and taking charge of the church in Zurich (and eventually dying on the battlefield in a failed and malicious attempt to blockade the Roman Catholic cantons to impose his views on them, essentially an attempt at waging a civil war in the Swiss confederation, an act which does little to make Zwingli more endearing to me personally, and I doubt my pious Lutheran friend @Ain't Zwinglian would be impressed by it either. And I felt it superfluous to mention several other 16th century Calvinists whose importance to the development of Reformed theology was on a par with John Knox, such as William Bucanus, Thomas Erastes and Heinrich Bullinger.

The reason why I mentioned Karl Barth was not to claim that Calvinism originated in Switzerland, because this fact is self-evident to anyone aware of the history of Calvinism and the geographical location of the major Swiss cities which became centers of the Reformation, but rather because the article you linked to cited the influential Systematic Theology of Louis Berkhof, which is important, but no recent work of systematic theology has attracted as much interest, or elicited such support and opposition, as Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, which I would argue are so influential as to be the most influential work of Reformed theology since John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Nor did I exclusively limit myself to praising Swiss Reformed theology - I also heaped praise upon the German Reformed theologians, among others, but omitted to included among their number the very important work of Martin Bucer, leader of the Reformed Church in Strasbourg, which is now part of France, but at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire, and Bucer, while of French descent, was a German theologian who, like Martin Luther, wrote and spoke in the German and Latin languages.

I really need to study Karl Barth on infant baptism and why he rejected it. And then write a post on it. It was at the University of Basel where he began a 20 year polemical battle with Oscar Cullman (Lutheran) on the subject of infant baptism. The content and notes of these dialogues didn't survive, but Cullman does write a book on baptism summarizing the Lutheran side of the debate and can be found free in PDF form....

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Indeed, Rev. Robert Schuller, memory eternal, of the Crystal Cathedral, was with the Reformed Church in America, which was overall more liberal than the Presbyterian Church in America that Dr. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale was a member of, the equivalent Presbyterian denomination being the PCUSA.

However, really, both denominational are Calvinist, the main difference being the Reformed churches are descended from the Continental Reformed churches (not just Dutch, but Swiss and German, although my old the UCC (the United Church of Christ, not the United Church of Canada*) is a result of a merger between the Congregationalists and the Evangelical Reformed church, comprised of Prussian Calvinist churches, to which the Prussian Lutherans had been forcibly united in Prussia, but who separated shortly after arriving in North America, the Lutherans becoming the LCMS/LCC of which my dear friends @MarkRohfrietsch and @Ain't Zwinglian are members. Although I do wish the Lutheran Church of Canada had opted for the name “Lutheran Church Manitoba Synod” so that the same initials could be used on both sides of the border.

For that matter, imagine how a Canadian version of the Gateway Arch would contributed to tourism in Winnipeg. You could even call Manitoba the “Show Me Province.” XD **

* The United Church of Canada does also consist of a mixture of Presbyterian and Congregational churches, but it also consists of all former Canadian Methodist churches, which might well be the largest group, since Toronto was, a hundred years ago, known as “Methodist Rome.” Conversely all churches in the UCC are descended from Calvinist churches, either Congregationalist or Prussian Evangelical Reformed, with the exception of certain recent admissions like the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, which joined because of the left-wing politics which now define the denominations (the Cathedral of Hope was part of the Metropolitan Community Church, which has an episcopal polity and a belief system organized around the pervasive error of contemporary liberal theology, that homosexuality is not inherently immoral). I think the early century traditionalists Congregationalists who reformed the church from Puritanism would be as upset about this as they were about the Unitarians seizing control of so many Congregationalist parishes in New England. Indeed the only traditional Congregationalist church remaining in Boston is Park Street Church, which my friends who have known me for a long time on CF.com will recall that I greatly love (the current pastor is not only an ardent traditionalist, but a great preacher - while I would prefer it if he used a lectionary, he nonetheless did an expositional sermon series in the Sundays before Christmas in 2022 that focused on Leviticus, which was brilliant, in terms of showing the Christological prophecy in that book, which is one book from the Pentateuch that I have always felt is particularly fascinating and underrated. In my youth I was likewise fascinated with Numbers as it seemed kind of an underdog among the books of the Pentateuch.

**I really wish I could have visited Winnipeg in the early 1990s when despite its relative size, the airport was home to a large number of working Curtiss C-46 Commando and Douglas DC-3/C-47 Skytrain/Dakota aircraft for use in transportation into the lightly populated northern reaches of the province. Although I think Buffalo Airways still has two of them in service in Yellowknife in the NWT, but sadly they have retired the DC-4/C-54, ironically in favor of Lockheed Electras, which reminds me of when the aerial firefighter company Aero Union retired all but two of its DC-4s in favor of Lockheed P-3s (the military version of the electra) in the 1990s, but they were later shut down by CalFire for safety reasons. Right now there is a glut of retired Douglas DC-4, DC-6 and DC-7 propliners that have rcently been withdrawn from bush cargo or safety service that are up for sale, and it would be a tragedy if they got scrapped - I digress, but perhaps those with an interest in aviation heritage might pray that does not happen.

Short article here: Whither the Prosperity Gospel? - Russell Moore.

It has been a while, but when his son stepped up, his sone was preaching a more "faith" centered theology rather than "works centered" and as a result there was a marked drop in income and contributions. The rest of the family rebelled and the boy was out. Before his son, you hardly ever heard about repentance. He gave itchy ears what they wanted to hear.

With Robert's capacity diminishing and no other "personality" to step up, things started spiraling down the drain.

The Church is the Church, it is not a family commercial endeavor.

Likewise, the Church could be described as a "Cult of the Triune God", Schuller's Church was a cult of personality; in my opinion a bastion of idolatry with Schuller at the center, not Christ.

My late mother watched him for a few minutes on TV, called him a grinning fool, and walked away.

 

[The Liturgist]

Short article here: Whither the Prosperity Gospel? - Russell Moore.

It has been a while, but when his son stepped up, his sone was preaching a more "faith" centered theology rather than "works centered" and as a result there was a marked drop in income and contributions. The rest of the family rebelled and the boy was out. Before his son, you hardly ever heard about repentance. He gave itchy ears what they wanted to hear.

With Robert's capacity diminishing and no other "personality" to step up, things started spiraling down the drain.

The Church is the Church, it is not a family commercial endeavor.

Likewise, the Church could be described as a "Cult of the Triune God", Schuller's Church was a cult of personality; in my opinion a bastion of idolatry with Schuller at the center, not Christ.

My late mother watched him for a few minutes on TV, called him a grinning fool, and walked away.

I can certainly understand your concerns. I will conduct a thorough analysis to study the issue. Now I did personally attend the Crystal Cathedral on several occasions, and also watched it on TV back to back with Dr. James Kennedy, and I never noticed anything amiss, and so for that reason, combined with my knowledge of what the family said caused the collapse (as this was widely known in Southern California), that combined with the joint services he did with Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who I greatly admired, caused me to give Schuller a bit of a pass where otherwise I might be more suspicious. For example, the fact that the Crystal Cathedral had traditional church music and traditional hymns, and also was part of the Reformed Church in America before that denomination became as spectacularly liberal as it is now, admittedly would cause me to regard it with less suspicion than Joel Osteen, in that there were fewer red flags. But it is quite possible there were excesses.

Also it is the case that according to the canons of the early church, a bishop cannot select his successor, and in churches like the Crystal Cathedral where the senior pastor has an authority similiar to that of a bishop within the complex nuances of Presbyterian polity (which I particularly dislike because it has no analogue in any state of the early church, although some Presbyterians have argued that the Roman church appeared to function that way based on 1 Clement, but I don’t see it; I see in the early church a jump from what looked vaguely like Congregational polity, but was really Episcopal polity but with only one church under the bishop, to the full Episcopal polity where you have multiple parishes with their own presbyter united under a bishop, and indeed in some early churches efforts were made to ensure that the Eucharist was consecrated at the cathedral and then distributed to the parishes, so everyone partook of one Eucharist, which was obviously impractical, and so that model did not last long, but it did briefly happen in some ancient churches.

But even within Presbyterian polity, I would argue that despite the model being defective, there is a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, and where you have a presbyter appointing his own successor and turning his parish into a family business, I do have a problem with that - it is possible that Schuller saw what happened to Coral Ridge, but the fact that Dr. Kennedy played by the rules and his successor was able to ruin everything he had set up points to flaws within how Presbyterian churches in general operate, and points to the benefits of a system focused on doctrinal Orthodoxy wherein an individual priest or bishop or even the Patriarch would never have gotten away with what Tchvidian got away with in terms of the changes to the church - Tchvidian would likely still be in charge and his destructive changes would have persisted had it not been for the fact that he was caught having an adulterous relationship. Two wrongs do not make a right, and that’s the case with the Crystal Cathedral even if we ascribe the family hegemony over the church to be of the best of intentions (which I am prepared to do, because I am not a fan of judging motives, and also it should be noted that while the saying “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions”, it is at least partially true, in that if we look at the many people over the millenia who have caused problems in the Christian church, not very many of them appear to have set out to actually cause destruction (although there are definitely those who were up to no good, as opposed to creating messes based on well intentioned actions which were nonetheless destructive because the person engaging in them was suffering from prelest - religious delusion, which is the main cause of heresy*).

Thus, you have raised enough red flags to prompt me to want to take a look at this. There is an ongoing component, in that their parish still exists, and so if the family of Dr. Schuller is pursuing something untoward, even if he was merely misguided, since Orange County is within range of me, although I don’t usually go down there since it is such a dreadful drive.

* Specifically Simon Magus comes to mind, and there is a crypto-Nestorian from the 5th century I won’t mention by name, but I strongly suspect he was up to no good, and also for that matter given the specific nature of the intrigues against St. Athanasius (such as the false accusation he murdered a parishioner, which resulted in him being exiled to Trier for two years, until clergy in the Church in Alexandria, who had found the person he had murdered,, were able to convince Emperor Constantine that St. Athanasius was innocent) it is difficult to find much reason to be sympathetic towards Eusebius of Nicomedia.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

The Church is the Church, it is not a family commercial endeavor.

The Levitical priesthood does not exist in the NT. The passing of the torch from Father to Son in the NT office of Public Ministry is not Biblical. Yet we see this in Jimmy Swagert, Jerry Faldwell, Mark Driscoll, and a host of husband and wife co-Pastors. The "call" comes from the HS through the church....not solely by the founding pastor. Denominationalism has curbed this contemporary practice by and large....however in American....independent churches and parachurch organizations succumb to the Levitical church model.

 

[The Liturgist]

The Levitical priesthood does not exist in the NT. The passing of the torch from Father to Son in the NT office of Public Ministry is not Biblical. Yet we see this in Jimmy Swagert, Jerry Faldwell, Mark Driscoll, and a host of husband and wife co-Pastors. The "call" comes from the HS through the church....not solely by the founding pastor. Denominationalism has curbed this contemporary practice by and large....however in American....independent churches and parachurch organizations succumb to the Levitical church model.

I agree entirely.

The Church of the East also used to do this. The nephew of each Catholicos-Patriarch, who was required to be celibate (all bishops are celibate except Chorepiscopi, choir bishops, who can only ordain readers and other minor orders, but not subdeacons, deacons, priests or bishops, and as such are basically archpriests but with some extra authority), would ne his successor.

The origin for the schism between the Ancient Church of the East and the Assyrian Church of the East was when a bishop discovered the ancient canons prohibiting bishops from selecting their own successor. However, the last straw for the already agitated traditionalist bishops, who had been incensed to discover that the hereditary patriarchate was, as an institution, uncanonical, amd who were also annoyed by the patriarch living in Chicago rather than in Iraq, where a majority of the faithful were, and still are, for reasons of his own personal security and comfort following the 1915 genocide and an assasination attempt in 1920, was when Catholicos Mar Shimun XXIII, the last hereditary patriarch, unilaterally changed the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian, which was an overreach, and so the Ancient Church of the East was organized around Catholicos Mar Addai II, who lived in Baghdad, and who reposed in 2018 and was one of the last Middle Eastern bishops from before the ISIS war to repose (three others, Mor Ignatius Zakka Iwas, Metropolitan Philip Saliba, and Mar Dinkha IV, may their memory be eternal, reposed over the course of 2014, right after my conversion, although I had met Mar Dinkha IV the previous year).

Mar Shimun XXIII was the last hereditary Catholicos, fallimg victim to an assasination in 1974, tragically after announcing his intention to break with tradition, having become engaged to be married. His successor, Mar Dinkha IV, was the first Catholicos elected by the Holy Synod in generations, and made numerous wise decisions, in my opinion, such as making a formal declaration renouncing Nestorianism, and his successor, Catholicos Mar Awa Royel, who I also met, as he was Bishop of California, has moved the Patriarchate to Iraq, and if I recall lives in Erbil, Kurdistan, which is somewhat safer for Christians, indeed some of the Kurds such as the Yazidis are quite friendly to the Christians.

 

[David Lamb]

I have never seen a Calvinist Church in person, I have only seen Presbyterian, which I know teaches Unconditional Election.

Are there any others that teach this?

Historically, most Baptists believed in and taught unconditional election. When we read the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, for example, we read:

"The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts, and is ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word by which also, and by the administration of baptism and the Lord's supper, prayer, and other means appointed of God, it is increased and strengthened."

Nowadays, many baptists no longer believe that. Those that do, tend to be called "Reformed Baptists" or "Grace Baptists".

 

[ViaCrucis]

The Levitical priesthood does not exist in the NT. The passing of the torch from Father to Son in the NT office of Public Ministry is not Biblical. Yet we see this in Jimmy Swagert, Jerry Faldwell, Mark Driscoll, and a host of husband and wife co-Pastors. The "call" comes from the HS through the church....not solely by the founding pastor. Denominationalism has curbed this contemporary practice by and large....however in American....independent churches and parachurch organizations succumb to the Levitical church model.

I'd think that's just old fashioned Nepotism.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

I'd think that's just old fashioned Nepotism.

-CryptoLutheran

Well the point is that it is uncanonical according to the Early Church, it was a disaster for the Assyrian Church of the East, and also we have seen a related increase in errors of church polity, such as Vatican I and the idea of Papal Infallibility, or the “Moses Model” taught by the Calvary Chapel in which the pastor is absolutely in charge and not accountable to any other authority, in contrast to the Patristic - Episcopal and derived Anglican and Lutheran Episcopalian, and Presbyterian and Congregationalist polities, all of which have checks and balances so that no one hierarch can tip the scale or exercise undue influence without accountability.

 

[Ain't Zwinglian]

the “Moses Model” taught by the Calvary Chapel

Now that is a blast from the past.

Chuck Smith starts a church in 1969 and ends up with a 1,800 CC's. I must have had good pastors when I was a young buck...warned me about the "Moses Model." The old hermenuetical rule still stands....The NT interprets the OT. No such thing as a "Moses" model in the NT.

 

[The Liturgist]

Now that is a blast from the past.

Chuck Smith starts a church in 1969 and ends up with a 1,800 CC's. I must have had good pastors when I was a young buck...warned me about the "Moses Model." The old hermenuetical rule still stands....The NT interprets the OT. No such thing as a "Moses" model in the NT.

Indeed, that is my view. And I have grave objections to those denominations which follow the inverse of this hermeneutical principle, of which there are several.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Well the point is that it is uncanonical according to the Early Church, it was a disaster for the Assyrian Church of the East, and also we have seen a related increase in errors of church polity, such as Vatican I and the idea of Papal Infallibility, or the “Moses Model” taught by the Calvary Chapel in which the pastor is absolutely in charge and not accountable to any other authority, in contrast to the Patristic - Episcopal and derived Anglican and Lutheran Episcopalian, and Presbyterian and Congregationalist polities, all of which have checks and balances so that no one hierarch can tip the scale or exercise undue influence without accountability.

I don't know how accurate this is, per se; but I've often viewed Nepotism (in the classic sense, as seen for example in middle ages) as kissing cousins with Simony.

There are good reasons why the ancient Church didn't do things like this. The Church's Sacred Office is a huge deal, and how it is handled matters. So I certainly agree with you; in fact I'd refer to that kind of unaccountability as intrinsically dangerous. And we have historical precedent for how it has caused issues--abuses, corruption, etc. It's a major reason why I simply cannot abide with celebrity pastors, where churches are identified as "So-and-so's church" as is the case with the many megachurches. It's Jesus' Church, pastors are shepherd-servants, they are the under-shepherds of Christ. It is the Sacred Office and Ministry that matters, not the person occupying the seat--except insofar as they are fit to serve, and faithful to minister.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

I don't know how accurate this is, per se; but I've often viewed Nepotism (in the classic sense, as seen for example in middle ages) as kissing cousins with Simony.

I think that’s a very good point actually.

 

[RileyG]

Are there churches that actually use the Calvinist title? I assume most calvinists are either Reformed or Presbyterian, thanks to John Knox of Scotland?

 

[RileyG]

Presbyterianism is just a system of church policy. But most churches which call themselves Presbyterian were indeed at least historically following in the Scottish Reformed or English Reformed tradition. Whereas those that call themselves Reformed tend to be following in the Dutch Reformed or Swiss Reformed or German Reformed, “Continental” tradition. Which differs only in terms of the preferred confession (Belgic or Hiedelberg vs. Westminster) and the use of the word “Classis” (literally translated as “fleet”) instead of “Presbytery.”

Thanks for the info! I was aware of Swiss Reformed, Dutch Reformed etc traditionally, the United Church of Christ/Congregationalist were reformed, but they are a union of Lutheran and an Evangelical reformed union, IIRC.

 

[David Lamb]

Are there churches that actually use the Calvinist title? I assume most calvinists are either Reformed or Presbyterian, thanks to John Knox of Scotland?

There are churches in Wales known as Calvinistic Methodist churches.

 

[bbbbbbb]

There are churches in Wales known as Calvinistic Methodist churches.

Quite true. Curiously, although there are no Calvinistic Methodist churches in the USA there are many called Wesleyan . . . (Methodist, Nazarene, etc.).

Also, although the Calvinistic Methodists followed George Whitefield's theology, you will not find any churches named after him.

 

[RileyG]

There are churches in Wales known as Calvinistic Methodist churches.

I apparently looked them up, and it is known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales. They are relatively small.

thanks for the response!

God bless you

 

[bbbbbbb]

I apparently looked them up, and it is known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales. They are relatively small.

thanks for the response!

God bless you

I find it curious that there are many denominations which claim the names of Luther, Wesley and Menno, but none today which claim the name of Calvin or Luther nor even Zwingli.

 

[RileyG]

I find it curious that there are many denominations which claim the names of Luther, Wesley and Menno, but none today which claim the name of Calvin or Luther nor even Zwingli.

Many claim the names of Luther.

Many are influenced by the theology of Calvin.

I don’t know about Zwingli.

 

[bbbbbbb]

Many claim the names of Luther.

Many are influenced by the theology of Calvin.

I don’t know about Zwingli.

Quite true. Curiously, Zwingli's theology has found its way into a lot of American Protestant denominations, although he himself is barely a footnote in history.