As we pick up from last week, you may recall that we began to pick up the theme of why does the Reformed Church need to continue to exist and tied up with that is that answering the question “what is the reason for our being,” or if we wanted to say it with a flourish what is our raison d’etre.

We noted last week that there must be reasons for our existence. If there is not we may as well just submerge ourselves in some other denomination. But we can’t do that because of our conviction that we alone have the purest and clearest essence of Biblical Christianity and as such all men everywhere should come and join the Reformed faith.

Of all other expressions of Christianity as Reformed Christians we say that they may well be good and original, but then we would be quick to add that where they are good they are not original, and where they are original, they are not good.

We agree with 20^th century Reformed Theologian B. B. Warfield here,

“The chief dangers to Christianity do not come from anti-Christian systems … It is corrupt forms of Christianity itself which menace from time to time Christianity itself.” B. B. Warfield

So, if we were to say overall what is our raison d’etre the answer would be we exist to offer the answer to the other corrupt forms of Christianity.

Now, note we have not said that Christians occupying other forms of Christianity are not Christian. What we insist upon however is that they are part of denominations which are offering corrupted forms of Christianity.

We noted last week that one reason for the need of our continued existence is our championing the Biblical doctrine of predestination. We noted that we alone champion this doctrine. Even where we might find people using the same word and speaking well of it, more often than not they have re-defined Predestination to mean “not Predestination.”

Indeed other expressions of Christianity have so hostile to predestination that they have been willing to demote our God into a demigod or a well intended benevolent bystander.

And to that the Reformed person says, “A thousand times ‘no.'” If we cannot have Predestination we will not open our doors. If embracing a muscular doctrine of Predestination means we must be a collected handful of families in the face of the swarming hives of Mega-Church evangelicalism then so be it.

And to this Doctrine we turn to again this week.

Acts 13:48 Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

“As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.”

Before we get to the obvious teaching of Predestination here note that it was the simple preaching of the Word as traveled along by the Holy Spirit that was the means by which men were saved. This is important to observe.

What we don’t see here is the techniques and tools of the non-Reformed in order to shoe horn people into the Kingdom of God. Just the simple word simply preached by simple men.

Consider, quite to the contrary of the simple Word simply preached by simple men that the appeal the Non-Reformed have always used. The non-Calvinist’s appeal in Evangelism has chiefly been to the sentiments of their adherents. It is the emotive part of man that the Arminian evangelists is typically going after. This explains the revivalism of Arminianism. It explains the early anxious seat. It explains the long drawn out hymns during the altar call. It explains the dimming of the lights. It explains the praise bands and the smoke machines. It explains the light shows, special effects, and the celebrity attendees.

The whole environment is organized so as to play to man’s emotions. This was evident first with the early Methodists who were known as “Holy Rollers.” It was then ratcheted up by the Pentecostals (who are likewise Arminian when they are anything) who discovered that more emotion led to greater attendance and so they gave us Holy laughter, barking in the Spirit and all kinds of unique phenomena as part of their Evangelism..

All of this is keeping with the appeal of the Arminian system with its doctrine of libertarian free will. In the Arminian doctrine man has complete free moral control of himself. He is the Captain of his own fate as he responds or doesn’t respond to prevenient grace. In the Arminian system man is in free moral control of himself, and is able to, at any moment, determine his own eternal state. As this is true it only stands to reason given this anthropological conviction of Libertarian free-will in the Arminian system that what needs done in appealing to fallen Arminian man is to arouse, stimulate, and manipulate man’s emotions.

If winning a lost soul for the Kingdom of God can be accomplished by the simple arousing of the emotions then why take the long laborious route of feeding a man’s mind with the truth? Whatever can lawfully awaken the feelings is considered expedient for the purpose of winning souls. As such Arminian evangelism, theology, and continued sanctification works on men’s senses. The typical Arminian then (and remember we are talking about the lion’s share of the Protestant world) is religiously speaking, a man of feeling, emotion and sentiment and consequently is, by way of disposition, given to that which catches the eye and tickles the ear. Further, we expect to find in Arminians (Methodists, Pentecostals, Wesleyans, Nazarenes, Free-Methodist, Church of God, Many varieties of Baptists, etc.) a tendency to sporadic fluctuations in action depending at any given moment on the wave of sensation that is currently breaking upon their emotions.

Not so the Reformed. And here we are turning again to one of our raison d’etre… one of our reasons for existence...

The Reformed are simple men, simply preaching the simple word. Not pyrotechnics, no glitz, and no glamour. And any drama we have is merely the drama that comes from the Word preached.

The Reformed stand in stark contradiction to those who desire to make worship a Rock concert or Evangelism a dog and pony show. In attending a genuinely Reformed Church you will not find us “treeing the devil,” like one found at the Cane Ridge Revivals in the 1801. You will not find people making animal sounds being overcome by the Spirit. You will not find anxious seats to put you under pressure and on the spot. What you will find is Word and Sacrament. What you will find is what you find here in Acts 13 … the simple Word, simply preached, by simple men.

This is one reason for our continued existence. The Church needs someone left standing who isn’t turning Worship and Evangelism into a Broadway performance and who instead of appealing to man’s emotions and sentiments appeals to man’s mind, via the Word preached and then who relies on the Spirit of the living God to convict and convert or to harden as He determines.

Before we get to the obvious Predestination in this passage we must mention another Calvinist doctrine that rubs up against Predestination that we find in this passage.

That is the doctrine of the general vs. effectual call.

You of course have noticed that St. Paul is preaching to a host of people here and yet they are not all saved? Why is that?

Well, the non-Reformed insists it is due to the fact that those who rejected the General call to come to Christ and leaves it at that. Not so the Reformed. The Reformed admit with the Arminian that many are those who reject the general call but unlike the non-Reformed they see more. The Biblical Christian looks and sees that while all heard the general call of the Gospel to come to Christ only those who were predestined to eternal life received the effectual call.

The distinction is found in the idea that the general call of the Gospel that lands on all the people who hear the Gospel can be and is resisted while the effectual call that lands on the ears of the predestined is irresistible and it is irresistible because those that hear are elect from the foundation of the world for Salvation.

Now, here we have done it, haven’t we? We have implicitly officially linked Predestination with Total Depravity, and explicitly linked Predestination to irresistible grace and unconditional election. If we were to burn a few more sentences we would easily arrive at Limited Atonement and perseverance of the Saints.

But one thing at a time. Let’s us stay with Predestination.

Predestination explains why some receive merely the general call and so do not respond to the command to repent and why some receive the effectual call and so bow the knee to Christ. They receive the effectual call because they were predestined and set apart from eternity to own Christ. God owned them as His people before they were conceived and owned by their parents. From all eternity, God’s favor was and is upon those who receive the effectual call.

This predestination (also called election at this point) accounts for why some men are folded into Christ and why some are left to gnaw at the old ends of their reprobation and so never come to Christ.

If we were to say it bluntly, we would say that many don’t come to Christ because God doesn’t and never did want them… He rejected them from the foundation of the world.

This is predestination. God from all eternity loves all His Jacobs and Hates all His Esaus. God from all eternity has set aside not just Judas as a son of perdition but all those who would hate Christ with their own free will with every inch of their being and so show themselves like Judas, sons of Perdition.

We see that just here in Acts 13:48.

48 Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

Those that believed, believed because they were appointed to believe. And when did that appointment take place? That appointment took place from eternity past as St. Paul writes elsewhere,

 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, 

Here is one of the reasons for the Reformed Church’s existence. We believe that our only recommendation to God in Christ was and is God’s work of Predestination. We find ourselves rescued and in Christ not because we are made of better dirt, not because there was something more noble in us that wasn’t in those not chosen, not because we obey the precepts of the law better after conversion, not because God knew what potential we had. No … a thousand times no. As Reformed one reason we exist is to keep thumping the truth that the only reason that we are in Christ is because of God’s unfathomable and inexplicable predestinating grace. A predestinating grace that not only set us apart, but also a predestinating grace that made provision in Christ as the demonstration of the only way to gain access with the Father and a predestinating grace that was assured in the work of the Holy Spirit as certainly applying to the elect that which was accomplished by Christ.

Again Warfield,

“As supernaturalism is the mark of Christianity at large, and evangelicalism the mark of Protestantism, so particularism is the mark of Calvinism.” Warfield

And so we champion predestination here as it pertains to our salvation. If we did not we would be like all other denominations who implicitly or explicitly suggest that the explanation for our interest in Christ is accounted for by some level of our own good-doobie-ness. Without Predestination, to us be the glory, great things we have done. Without predestination snobbery and self-righteousness should abound because without predestination some of us really would be inherently better than others and by all rights should turn their noses up at others.

The world wants Equality. Well, for the Calvinist here is the equality we offer the World and it is wrapped up in our doctrine of Predestination. You all, inside and outside the Church were Predestined to be all the same as dead in your trespasses and sins. You were all Predestined to be all the same as in your vile reproach of the God of the Bible and His Christ. You were all Predestined to be all the same in your hatred for God’s people. This is the equality that the Reformed church teaches and the only escape to that ugly egalitarianism is the hope found in the Predestined Christ for those predestined to no longer be equal in this manner. When we command men to repent we command them to give up their equality.

Now … we have opened up some matters here that we do not have time to close and so we will continue on this march next week seeking to sew those matters up and in doing so we will find other reasons for the Reformed Church’s existence. Reasons we have hinted at this morning. Reasons like our embrace of Total Depravity, Unconditional election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible grace and perseverance of the Saints.

But let us end here this morning by saying that it is our embrace and championing of Predestination that allows us to say that all other expressions of Christianity are corrupt and so those who attend those other expressions, if they no longer are interested in knowing Christ in a strange way, should leave those denominations and find a Reformed Church to attend … if they can find one.

Acts 13:48

48 Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

1.) Note that it is God’s ordaining of men that leads to men believing not men’s believing that results in their being ordained. No one believes who wasn’t first ordained to do so from the counsels of eternity.

2.) In the phrase, “as many as were ordained,” is the absolute proof of limited atonement. If Christ died a death for all men then there would be no sense in the “as many as were ordained” being penned. That phrase implies there were those who were not ordained to eternal life. Those not ordained to eternal life were those Christ did not atone for.

3.) Though God ordains all things, this ordination is specifically tied to eternal life. God not only ordains the differences between natural men but ordains who be bequeathed with redemption and who will not.

4.) Irresistible grace is implied in the definitive character of the statement. If one has been ordained to eternal life one will believe. For the ordained there is no escaping believing unto eternal life.

“The founder of the earthly city was a fratricide. Overcome with envy he slew his brother, a citizen of the eternal city, and a sojourner on earth. So that we cannot be surprised that this first specimen, or, as the Greeks say, archetype of crimes, should long afterwards, find a corresponding crime at the foundations of that city which was destined to reign over so many nations, and be the head of this earthly city of which we speak.”

Augustine
City of God

1.) Conflict is endemic in the human race as it is fallen in Adam. The city of man seen as emblematic in Cain always destroy the city of God seen as emblematic in Abel. Christ’s blood answers Abel’s blood and guarantees that the city of God in this conflict will triumph over the city of Man.

2.) That conflict expresses itself in time and space.

3.) That conflict will be resolved by the Victory of the Heavenly city over the earthly city and that in time and space. We are not waiting for a cataclysmic Advent in-breaking wherein the impact of Christ’s finished work will finally be expressed.

4.) As the earthly city was established in blood so the Heavenly city was established in blood.

5.) The Heavenly city and the earthly city are not a two Kingdoms model in the vain of R2K where the earthly city is everything on planet earth and the Heavenly city is comprised of the Church only.

6.) Instead the Augustinian model finds the Heavenly city in every earthly Institution where love of God is the primary motive for all actions and would insist that the Church is the earthly city where the Church is animated by love for self over love for God.

7.) This means that Augustine embraced an early form of postmillennialism.

Exodus 20:¹² “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

In the early to mid 80’s I often attended 1st Presbyterian Church in Columbia South Carolina. I was in Seminary at the time and the Church would often hold meetings, conferences, and get togethers for the Seminary students. I also worshiped at 1st Presbyterian from time to time during this same time frame. At the time Dr. Glenn Knecht served the saints at First Presbyterian in Columbia.

Fast forward now 35 years and First Presbyterian has decided to bow to, and so join the Cultural Marxist band wagon. First Pres. announced today on John Calvin’s Birthday that

“The Community Relations Committee ( 1st Presbyterian, Columbia, SC) also addressed the issue of the use of the names of James Henley Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer, and the Session unanimously agreed the following calling for the “immediate removal of the Thornwell and Palmer names on church buildings, the summer lecture series, and church publications.”

The reason that First Pres. had to be so explicit here is due to the fact that J. H. Thornwell served as a Pastor for First Pres. once upon a time. Also recently, National Public Radio did a hit piece on First Pres. and their association with Thornwell in the last week. Obviously the NPR hit piece scared the Session and so it decided to join the Cultural Marxist virtue signaling throngs.

Per the session of First Presbyterian,

“Thornwell held that slavery was Biblically justified. Tragically, this view was not his alone, but widely embraced and influential. First Presbyterian Church regards his positions on race and slavery as directly contrary to Biblical teaching. “

This is, of course, a blanket statement that includes all of Thornwell’s writings on race and slavery. As such I wonder if First Pres. thinks the below quote from Thornwell is directly contrary to Biblical teaching?

” It is a public testimony to our faith that the Negro is of one blood with ourselves that he has sinned as we have and that he has an equal interest with us in the great redemption. Science falsely so called may attempt to exclude him from the brotherhood of humanity. Men may be seeking eminence and distinction by arguments which link him with the brute but the instinctive impulses of our nature combined with the plainest declarations of the Word of God lead us to recognize in his form and lineaments in his moral religious and intellectual nature the same humanity in which we glory as the image of God. We are not ashamed to call him our brother.”

J. H. Thornwell
Southern Theologian
Sermon — The Christian Doctrine of Slavery

First, clearly, nobody on the Session is familiar with the writings of Thornwell. If they had been they would have been more careful about their wording in dismissing Thornwell. As such we find them condemning Thornwell’s positions on race and slavery but without even being familiar with Thornwell’s particular positions of race and slavery. Such a repudiation is moronic and is but one more example of the success of cancel culture.

Second, I’d like to see the session of First Pres. prove for me, from the Scripture, that slavery is not biblically justified. Now, they may want to try and say that unbiblical slavery is not justified (though even St. Paul’s words to slaves in what was Roman unbiblical slavery makes that difficult) but there is no way in Hades they can prove from Scripture that biblical slavery is not biblically justified. What do these ecclesiastical clowns do with the book of Philemon, never mind the injunctions in Colossians and Ephesians for slaves to obey their Masters?

In the end we find 1st Pres. violating the fifth commandment by libeling and slandering one of their former Pastors and all to appease the Cultural Marxist vultures who will never be satisfied no matter how many sacrifices are offered up to it.

The hypocrisy here is breathtaking. Southern Churches find themselves thinking it is necessary to flog themselves over slavery and race while it is the case that Northern Churches can glory in their support of the rape, murder, theft, and mayhem visited upon their Christian brothers in the South. Where is the apologies from Northern denominations and congregations for the sin of abolitionism, the sin of Jacobinism, the sin of egalitarianism? No, apologies necessary for these sins but any Church in the South that wants to function has to repudiate its own past in order to make sure the jackals don’t descend upon it to rip it apart.

This violation of the fifth commandment on the part of First Presbyterian is a serious matter. There are plenty of their own sins that need to be confessed without confessing the sins of their own Fathers. All this confession and repudiation are is virtue signalling.

The First Presbyterian Session stood by itself and prayed, ‘God, I thank You that we are not like the other churches — racially insensitive, anti- egalitarian, not willing to denounce their fathers, or even like J. H. Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer. We renounce fake sins and libel our Fathers.

Scripture does not speak well of this kind of cowardice on display by First Presbyterian in Columbia, SC.

⁸ “But the cowardly …. they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”

There is no such thing as a “traditional American” who is not a Calvinist. All other “Americanism” is an Americanism that is artificial and non indigenous to the American soil. The Pilgrims who settled here were Calvinists. The founders of Plymouth Rock were Calvinists, the first two Governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony were Calvinists, the founder of Connecticut and New Haven colony were Calvinists. Even Wm. Penn, though no Calvinist was still discipled by the Calvinist Huguenots. America’s founding was Calvinist.

The original Ivy League Universities were started by Calvinists for Calvinists. The Calvinists understood there was no education that was not a Calvinist education. America’s University system was Calvinist.

The population was Calvinist. At the time of the American War for Independence Calvinists were thick as flies on honey. The colonies recorded a population of 3 million. Of that 3 million an easy 2/3 were assorted ill tempered fighting Calvinists. Among this number were 900K stubborn Scots / Ulster-Scots, 600K punctilious English Puritans, 400K exacting German or Dutch Reformed, as well as a significant smattering of Huguenots, as well as Episcopalians who understood their 39 Articles were Calvinistic. The British parliament knocked over a Calvinistic hornets nest and the English would be stung without mercy.

All this is to say that Americans who are not anchored in Calvinism are all Cowboy and no hat.

Doubt me?

When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown he surrendered in the teeth of a Continental Army which every single Colonel save one was a Presbyterian Elder. Further, over 50% of the whole Colonial Army at the time of Cornwallis’ surrender — officer and men — were Presbyterians.

And this Calvinism was not the sterilized R2K modern effeminate Calvinism. It was a fighting Calvinism. It was a Calvinism that scratched, clawed, and swung from the hip relentlessly. It was the same Calvinism that was defeated four score and seven years later by the same enemy it defeated in 1781. The Calvinism of America’s founding would not have recognized the Calvinism in America today. If those Calvinists were alive today they would pity the Calvinist clergy we have today. The Calvinism of our founding was characterized by “election Sermons,” the “Black-robed regiment,” and firearms everywhere in the Sanctuary. Our current Calvinism is characterized by “Clergy” in skinny jeans, the forbidding of preaching on God’s Law, and absolute terror at the sight of a weapon in the sanctuary. We have fallen.

Even the Brits understood that 100% proof Americans were Calvinist. English Prime Minister Horace Walpole standing in Parliament said, “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian Parson.” An American Tory wrote home saying, “I fix all the blame for these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians. They have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures. They always do and ever will act against government from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit which has always distinguished them everywhere.”

Our own American Historian, George Bancroft could write, “The Revolution of 1776, so far as it was affected by religion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the natural outgrowth of the principles which the Presbyterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the Presbyterians of Ulster.”

The home grown American, in its original meaning, was a Calvinist and any hope that America has going forward to find her footing once again will be anchored in American returning to her Calvinistic roots.

Don’t tell me you are American Patriot unless you’re next sentence is “I am also a Calvinist.”

Men are animated to action by one of two great motivators. The first is sentiment which is the compulsion of feeling. Men’s wills are often quickened to action by their feelings being plucked. The second great motivator of the will of men being catapulted into action is firm conviction as arrived at by ideological persuasion. As either of these control a man or woman, over the course of time their moral character will be shaped.

When we consider the man who is animated by sentiment and feeling we can know that we are dealing with a person who is unstable in all his ways. He is blown about by whoever or whatever can stir the shallows waters of emotion. A song on the radio. A wistful look from a maiden fair. A poetic turn of a phrase. An image brought before his eyes. In all these things the man of feeling is animated.

To the contrary the man who is animated by thought and conviction is the man who tends towards stability in all he does. He does not enter into flights of fancy merely by the tweaking of his emotions. Instead, he is the man who examines all that comes into his orbit of consideration. He can not be changed until his mind has changed and his mind, constantly turning matters over as it does, does not change easily or quickly.

As applied to the area of Christianity we have already, perhaps quite without realizing it, drawn a line distinguishing Calvinism from Arminianism. These two longstanding expressions of the Protestant faith have ever stood contrary to one another in their systematic approaches to the Scripture. However, we see here that there is more than just systematic theologies that separated these expressions of the faith. What also separates them is that central pivot upon which the respective men of these competing Protestant expressions are animated by unto action.

Consider, that the appeal of Arminianism has always chiefly been to the sentiments of their adherents. It is the emotive part of man that the Arminian evangelists is typically going after. This explains the revivalism of Arminianism. It explains the early anxious seat. It explains the long drawn out hymns during the altar call. It explains the dimming of the lights. The whole environment is organized so as to play to man’s emotions. This was evident first with the early Methodists who were known as “Holy Rollers.” It was then ratcheted up by the Pentecostals (who are likewise Arminian when they are anything) who discovered that more emotion led to greater attendance.

All of this is keeping with the appeal of the Arminian system with its doctrine of libertarian free will. In the Arminian doctrine man has complete free moral control of himself. He is the Captain of his own fate as he responds or doesn’t respond to prevenient grace. In the Arminian system man is in free moral control of himself, and is able to, at any moment, determine his own eternal state. As this is true it only stands to reason given this anthropological conviction of Libertarian free-will in the Arminian system that what needs done in appealing to fallen Arminian man is to arouse, stimulate, and manipulate man’s emotions. If winning a lost soul for the Kingdom of God can be accomplished by the simple arousing of the emotions then why take the long laborious route of feeding a man’s mind with the truth? Whatever can lawfully awaken the feelings is considered expedient for the purpose of winning souls. As such Arminian evangelism, theology, and continued sanctification works on men’s senses. The typical Arminian then (and remember we are talking about the lion’s share of the Protestant world) is religiously speaking, a man of feeling, emotion and sentiment and consequently is, by way of disposition, given to that which catches the eye and tickles the ear. Further, we expect to find in Arminians (Methodists, Pentecostals, Wesleyans, Nazarenes, Free-Methodist, Church of God, Many varieties of Baptists, etc.) a tendency to sporadic fluctuations in action depending at any given moment on the wave of sensation that is currently breaking upon their emotions.

Before, turning to the opposite side of this sentiment / conviction coin, we should offer that it really is the case that most Americans, regardless of their official denominational or theological affiliations are, personality wise, functional Arminians. In its macro-culture Americans have, from birth, been animated by sentiment and feeling. The advertising industry, the film industry, and the K-12 education industry combined with the sensuous nature of our culture overall has propelled modern Western man for decades towards being animated by sentiment and emotion. The latest Wuhan scare as proven that in spades. Using the emotion of fear, modern Western man has been stampeded into action. Very few were those who approached the plannedemic from a position of thinking the matter through. Instead, feelings were manipulated and to this day a large segment of our population is living according to the emotion of fear.

The contrary to being animated by sentiment, feeling and emotion is being animated by idea, thought, and conviction. The older Calvinists called it “conscience.” In this older Calvinistic conception God has marked out the way in which man is to walk. Sentiment or emotions have very little to do with how the Calvinist is animated. It is a matter of thought out duty. This is not to say that there will not be emotions present – there may or may not be – but the engine of action is the conscience informing the sense of duty. For the Calvinist, man walks in this assigned path by God with as much or as little sentiment as man pleases. As such the Calvinist is not, religiously speaking, a man whose character is defined by emotional demonstrations, but rather typically is a man of ideas. This disposition towards thoughtfulness and rationality has the consequence of building a character that is associated with stability and strength which can sometimes bleed over into stubbornness and a certain jaggedness.

The Calvinist’s theology teaches him to view all things as operating under the great and prefect system of God’s laws – both decretal and by way of precept. These laws operate in defiance of man’s emotions or sentiments and must be obeyed lest corrective punishment be visited upon the disobedient. The Calvinist’s theology, unlike the Arminians, instructs him that the sinner is dead in his trespasses and sins and so is unable, even by the most heated emotion, to find faith leading to salvation. His Calvinist theology teaches him that feelings cannot adjudicate truth. That theology instructs the Calvinist evangelist to turn away from techniques and human efforts for “soul-winning” to the God who holds all men’s hearts in His hands. Calvin considered it almost criminal to appeal to men’s feelings simply in order to have them act. Calvin desired rather to bring the thought life, as based on Scripture, into the practical life and so make the voice of God as speaking in Scripture and mediated by the Spirit that standard by which the life of the mind would measure all conduct.

This is all consistent with the great idea of the Calvinist; The contemplation of the universe made by God for His glory and revealed in Christ. This great idea is not one of sentiment but one of thought that can and will go on for eternity. To be sure that great idea will affect the sentiment but it is in that order… thought unto affections.

The life of the mind; this is the Calvinist byword. It is the life of the mind, as dwelling on Scripture, and illumined by the Holy Spirit that animated the Calvinist and that still animates that odd Calvinist you can find laying around. This life of the mind then gave way to a sense of duty in the moral life of the Calvinist. Duty, not in the sense of bothersome drudgery, but duty in the sense of the great privilege in serving the King. Emotion need not apply.

“He (the Calvinist) is troubled,” offered the French Historian Hippolyte Taine, “not only about what he must believe, but about what he ought to do; he craves an answer to his doubts, but especially a rule for his conduct ; he is tormented by the notion of his ignorance, but also by the horror of his vices ; he seeks God, but duty also. In his eyes the two are but one.” “We have” Taine continues, “considered these Puritans as gloomy madmen, shallow brains and full of scruples. Let us quit our French and modern ideas, and enter into these souls : we shall find there something else than hypochondria—namely, a grand sentiment – Am I a just man ? And if God, who is perfect justice, were to judge me at this moment, what sentence would he pass upon me?’ Such is the original idea of the Puritans. . . . The feeling of the difference there is between good and evil had filled for them all time and space, and had become incarnate. . . . They were struck by the idea of duty. They examined themselves by this light, without pity or shrinking; they conceived the sublime model of infallible and complete virtue; they were imbued therewith; they drowned in this absorbing thought that lit all worldly prejudices and all inclinations of the senses. . . . They entered into life with a fixed resolve to suffer and to do all, rather than deviate one step.”

And while Taine, doubtless is in error regarding the Puritan’s self understanding regarding the basis of God’s judgment of said Puritan, Taine has captured the mindset of the Calvinist. Historically, at least he has not been a man that was guided, manipulated, or animated by emotion. He is the man of thought and so stability in an otherwise unstable church and world.

And in our 21^st century context, the Calvinist (should you ever come across one) is a strange breed.

God give us more Calvinists.