Thank you Joel, excellent article! Hopefully the Calvinist mantra of “scum, slime, filthy sinners!” Is starting to crumble. (I can’t imagine why people aren’t attracted to it. Must be because of their depraved natures!) Thanks again.
I think you may be reacting too strongly to the personalities that have attached themselves to Calvinistic theology, rather than the actual doctrinal points.
For instance, the guilt of original sin is, I think, an important part of our covenant understanding of God’s relationship with man. Because of Adam’s position as our covenant head, we are actually born under judgement- guilty- through his sin. Maintaining that fact is important to our belief in the ability of Christ’s sacrifice to redeem us. Christ’s innocence is applied to us in the same fashion that Adam’s guilt is. You can’t really have one without the other.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t personalities within Reformed Churches who misunderstand Original Sin’s implications for how we’re supposed to think about ourselves and others. There doesn’t seem to be a close connection between our judicial guilt applied through the covenant and same-sex attraction. That would fall under the other aspect of Original Sin’s- corruption/temptation- the misalignment of human desire from birth.
That misalignment is pretty important in our understanding of whether one can be righteous apart from God. I don’t think the traditional Calvinist position is that unregenerate people flatly lack all virtue. The thing that makes human action unrighteous is that our desires are misaligned against God. I think Calvin’s position (and the position of the best people in that tradition) is that any action taken without a primary motivation of glorifying God falls short of the standard of righteousness to which we are held. That doesn’t mean there is no good done for bad reasons- by God’s grace, even evil desires can motivate virtuous action. (Sidebar: Adam Smith describes how evil desire leads to virtuous outcomes throughout his work, if you’re interested in getting a secular perspective on how that works out in practice.)
Fundamentally, I think the Reformed church accepted the Calvinistic formulation of these doctrines over the Zwinglian one because the emphasis on God’s grace is really important throughout Paul’s epistles. It’s unfortunate that people in Reformed churches misunderstand and misuses the doctrine, but I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to reject the tradition. Theology is hard. Living out our salvation is hard. We’re prone to misunderstanding our doctrine and to acting contrary to it. But these aren’t doctrinal problems, they’re pastoral problems. And you can’t fix people’s personalities by changing the doctrine.
Thanks, Thad! Just to quiet the rumors, I’m still a Calvinist. But, I think there’s a persistent pastoral problem, which I think must be addressed on both pastoral and doctrinal levels.
A few others responding to the post have mentioned hearing sermons where it was basically denied that anyone could be righteous. But the Bible says that Noah, David and others were righteous. So the doctrine of original sin, as you mention, which says that all our actions are tainted by sin, becomes that everything we do is a sin.
Then you add to that that even our desires are sin, and there really is no hope for trying to please God. Then the end point of every sermon is just believe in Jesus, and you’ve lost the third use of the law and sanctification.
Two doctrinal ways to address this are to recognize that original guilt is imputed to us, but we are not guilty on account of original sin. And, recognize the reality of civic righteousness in unbelievers, even if it is non-saving.
Got to leave it there for now, but a lot of it is based on the last decade of experiences at Westminster and other places!
This is an interesting framing of the Zwingli controversy. Generally, when I think of Zwingli, I don't think of him as in opposition to Calvin, but Luther. More specifically, my mind goes to the conference in Marburg in 1529 (I think). A meeting which occurred to resolve such conflicts in the Reformed movement. Systematic Reformed theologians like R.C. Sproul sometimes regard this conference as the theological low point of the early Reformation movement because it did the opposite of unifying anything in the long run.
Slicing and dicing doctrine to arrive at purity of belief as in "forget that one, adopt this one" concerns me as it risks disunity in the church and can cause neglect of the true purpose of discipleship. I think of John 9:49 and 50 where John told Jesus they had caught someone driving out demons in the name of Christ and told them to stop because they weren't among the 72. And of course, Jesus told John - “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”
So, this leaves us to ask ourselves: Who is against us - really? Just because someone disagrees with us over the theological application of words like essence and substance (or original sin) - does that make them unworthy of playing an informative role in our spiritual maturity? At some point I think we have to accept disagreement over the granular definitions of theological terms as best being left to the mystery of God. My personal perspective is that if something is not made crystal clear in the Bible (sola scriptura) then the unity of the church should weigh against any aggressive efforts to clarify it.
Greg, thanks for this caution! I have to admit, the title is designed to play well on social media. What I’m arguing for is the humanist side of Calvinism, so the rejection of Calvinism is a bit tongue-in-cheek. By putting it under the banner of Zwingli, I draw attention to a somewhat forgotten reformer.
What I am struck by is Zwingli‘s early significance to the reformation, his continuity with Erasmus and the humanists, and his strikingly early death. If he had lived longer, I am guessing it is he rather than Calvin, who would have prominence in our mind as the founder of reformed theology.
Do you think that his sacramental view is necessitated by the other humanist views? (as a cradle anabaptist, I'm now happy to be a bit more enchanted and mystical in my worldview)
As I’ve learned in philosophy, it is possible to combine almost any combination of views intelligently. However, the most systematic connection is in Zwingli’s use of the word metonymy, which you first brought to my attention! He uses it for both original sin and the sacraments.
The systematic feature there is opposition to literalism, and I do think that is a common strain of humanism.
However, I have to give it to the Catholics and orthodox who are being very humanist these days with much more mystical views of the sacraments!
Joel, thank you for a post full of moxie, lucidness, and humanity. The lines from "Carry On" have been ringing in my head since I first listened to them. I am very pleased to see a theologian boldy affirm them.
I wonder what you think of so-called "anti-theodocies". I am reminded of Jeremiah Carey's recent Substack "Dogmatic Anti-Theodicy," David Bentley Hart's book "The Doors of the Sea," and others. If I could poorly summarize the idea, it is that God becoming “all in all” never depends on evil as a necessary means; evil is only what God ultimately overcomes and abolishes.
Thank you, those comments are much appreciated! Yes, I think Marcus Mumford is quite a theologian.
On the second, I haven’t read these, and I am anti-theodicy in certain ways. But perhaps I am in a different way than what I see in Jeremiah‘s post. My new Irenaean theodicy does not meet Jeremiah‘s standard for sure.
I have long thought that the real problem of evil is the question why God has not already brought the punishment of death upon us, given human sin. I wonder if that answer is shifting as I move toward Zwingli. But I have never thought that the existence of evil says anything against God. Rather, we must all hope in the resurrection in the wiping away of every tear. Blaming God for injustice wouldn’t solve the problem of human suffering.
Joel, is there a classic work either by or on Zwingli (translated to English) you can most recommend?
I read a lot of older books on my Kindle. At one point I took to looking for books on Zwingli, and I found that while Zwingli is a name we hear briefly mentioned a lot, he really doesn't seem to be read or discussed in depth much at all!
The most promising book on Zwingli I located was from a source I seldom use: the Online Library of Liberty. It had Zwingli's selected works, translated to English in 1901 by Jackson, here:
I still haven't gotten around to reading it though.
Project Gutenberg and Monergism.com were surprisingly thin. On Gutenberg all I found was "The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli" by one Hottinger, translated from the German.
Monergism.com sometimes has good classic theology e-books, but on Zwingli it has basically nothing.
I’m reading Bruce Gordon, but I haven’t read older biographies, though I know there are many.
I found Zwingli’s *On Providence and other essays* at the online archive. One of the first essays there is the one on original sin. That’s all I’ve read so far, but I’m hoping to read more myself!
There was the first sin, and the second, and the third, and so forth and so on until this moment - all connected and all building blocks of the systems and structures, the powers and principalities, that have shaped everything we are born into and the natures we are born with - they war against us all our lives. And our own sin continues to build and ‘carry on’, propagating to the third and fourth generation that follow. But God….showing lovingkindness to the 1000’s of generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
Thank you Joel, excellent article! Hopefully the Calvinist mantra of “scum, slime, filthy sinners!” Is starting to crumble. (I can’t imagine why people aren’t attracted to it. Must be because of their depraved natures!) Thanks again.
I think you may be reacting too strongly to the personalities that have attached themselves to Calvinistic theology, rather than the actual doctrinal points.
For instance, the guilt of original sin is, I think, an important part of our covenant understanding of God’s relationship with man. Because of Adam’s position as our covenant head, we are actually born under judgement- guilty- through his sin. Maintaining that fact is important to our belief in the ability of Christ’s sacrifice to redeem us. Christ’s innocence is applied to us in the same fashion that Adam’s guilt is. You can’t really have one without the other.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t personalities within Reformed Churches who misunderstand Original Sin’s implications for how we’re supposed to think about ourselves and others. There doesn’t seem to be a close connection between our judicial guilt applied through the covenant and same-sex attraction. That would fall under the other aspect of Original Sin’s- corruption/temptation- the misalignment of human desire from birth.
That misalignment is pretty important in our understanding of whether one can be righteous apart from God. I don’t think the traditional Calvinist position is that unregenerate people flatly lack all virtue. The thing that makes human action unrighteous is that our desires are misaligned against God. I think Calvin’s position (and the position of the best people in that tradition) is that any action taken without a primary motivation of glorifying God falls short of the standard of righteousness to which we are held. That doesn’t mean there is no good done for bad reasons- by God’s grace, even evil desires can motivate virtuous action. (Sidebar: Adam Smith describes how evil desire leads to virtuous outcomes throughout his work, if you’re interested in getting a secular perspective on how that works out in practice.)
Fundamentally, I think the Reformed church accepted the Calvinistic formulation of these doctrines over the Zwinglian one because the emphasis on God’s grace is really important throughout Paul’s epistles. It’s unfortunate that people in Reformed churches misunderstand and misuses the doctrine, but I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to reject the tradition. Theology is hard. Living out our salvation is hard. We’re prone to misunderstanding our doctrine and to acting contrary to it. But these aren’t doctrinal problems, they’re pastoral problems. And you can’t fix people’s personalities by changing the doctrine.
Thanks, Thad! Just to quiet the rumors, I’m still a Calvinist. But, I think there’s a persistent pastoral problem, which I think must be addressed on both pastoral and doctrinal levels.
A few others responding to the post have mentioned hearing sermons where it was basically denied that anyone could be righteous. But the Bible says that Noah, David and others were righteous. So the doctrine of original sin, as you mention, which says that all our actions are tainted by sin, becomes that everything we do is a sin.
Then you add to that that even our desires are sin, and there really is no hope for trying to please God. Then the end point of every sermon is just believe in Jesus, and you’ve lost the third use of the law and sanctification.
Two doctrinal ways to address this are to recognize that original guilt is imputed to us, but we are not guilty on account of original sin. And, recognize the reality of civic righteousness in unbelievers, even if it is non-saving.
Got to leave it there for now, but a lot of it is based on the last decade of experiences at Westminster and other places!
This is an interesting framing of the Zwingli controversy. Generally, when I think of Zwingli, I don't think of him as in opposition to Calvin, but Luther. More specifically, my mind goes to the conference in Marburg in 1529 (I think). A meeting which occurred to resolve such conflicts in the Reformed movement. Systematic Reformed theologians like R.C. Sproul sometimes regard this conference as the theological low point of the early Reformation movement because it did the opposite of unifying anything in the long run.
Slicing and dicing doctrine to arrive at purity of belief as in "forget that one, adopt this one" concerns me as it risks disunity in the church and can cause neglect of the true purpose of discipleship. I think of John 9:49 and 50 where John told Jesus they had caught someone driving out demons in the name of Christ and told them to stop because they weren't among the 72. And of course, Jesus told John - “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”
So, this leaves us to ask ourselves: Who is against us - really? Just because someone disagrees with us over the theological application of words like essence and substance (or original sin) - does that make them unworthy of playing an informative role in our spiritual maturity? At some point I think we have to accept disagreement over the granular definitions of theological terms as best being left to the mystery of God. My personal perspective is that if something is not made crystal clear in the Bible (sola scriptura) then the unity of the church should weigh against any aggressive efforts to clarify it.
Greg, thanks for this caution! I have to admit, the title is designed to play well on social media. What I’m arguing for is the humanist side of Calvinism, so the rejection of Calvinism is a bit tongue-in-cheek. By putting it under the banner of Zwingli, I draw attention to a somewhat forgotten reformer.
What I am struck by is Zwingli‘s early significance to the reformation, his continuity with Erasmus and the humanists, and his strikingly early death. If he had lived longer, I am guessing it is he rather than Calvin, who would have prominence in our mind as the founder of reformed theology.
Do you think that his sacramental view is necessitated by the other humanist views? (as a cradle anabaptist, I'm now happy to be a bit more enchanted and mystical in my worldview)
As I’ve learned in philosophy, it is possible to combine almost any combination of views intelligently. However, the most systematic connection is in Zwingli’s use of the word metonymy, which you first brought to my attention! He uses it for both original sin and the sacraments.
The systematic feature there is opposition to literalism, and I do think that is a common strain of humanism.
However, I have to give it to the Catholics and orthodox who are being very humanist these days with much more mystical views of the sacraments!
Joel, thank you for a post full of moxie, lucidness, and humanity. The lines from "Carry On" have been ringing in my head since I first listened to them. I am very pleased to see a theologian boldy affirm them.
I wonder what you think of so-called "anti-theodocies". I am reminded of Jeremiah Carey's recent Substack "Dogmatic Anti-Theodicy," David Bentley Hart's book "The Doors of the Sea," and others. If I could poorly summarize the idea, it is that God becoming “all in all” never depends on evil as a necessary means; evil is only what God ultimately overcomes and abolishes.
Thank you, those comments are much appreciated! Yes, I think Marcus Mumford is quite a theologian.
On the second, I haven’t read these, and I am anti-theodicy in certain ways. But perhaps I am in a different way than what I see in Jeremiah‘s post. My new Irenaean theodicy does not meet Jeremiah‘s standard for sure.
I have long thought that the real problem of evil is the question why God has not already brought the punishment of death upon us, given human sin. I wonder if that answer is shifting as I move toward Zwingli. But I have never thought that the existence of evil says anything against God. Rather, we must all hope in the resurrection in the wiping away of every tear. Blaming God for injustice wouldn’t solve the problem of human suffering.
A few disjointed thoughts!
Joel, is there a classic work either by or on Zwingli (translated to English) you can most recommend?
I read a lot of older books on my Kindle. At one point I took to looking for books on Zwingli, and I found that while Zwingli is a name we hear briefly mentioned a lot, he really doesn't seem to be read or discussed in depth much at all!
The most promising book on Zwingli I located was from a source I seldom use: the Online Library of Liberty. It had Zwingli's selected works, translated to English in 1901 by Jackson, here:
https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/zwingli-selected-works-of-huldrich-zwingli
I still haven't gotten around to reading it though.
Project Gutenberg and Monergism.com were surprisingly thin. On Gutenberg all I found was "The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli" by one Hottinger, translated from the German.
Monergism.com sometimes has good classic theology e-books, but on Zwingli it has basically nothing.
I’m reading Bruce Gordon, but I haven’t read older biographies, though I know there are many.
I found Zwingli’s *On Providence and other essays* at the online archive. One of the first essays there is the one on original sin. That’s all I’ve read so far, but I’m hoping to read more myself!
Thanks for recommending the video!
Thanks for making it! I’ve been really enjoying your YouTube content.
Glad to hear that!
There was the first sin, and the second, and the third, and so forth and so on until this moment - all connected and all building blocks of the systems and structures, the powers and principalities, that have shaped everything we are born into and the natures we are born with - they war against us all our lives. And our own sin continues to build and ‘carry on’, propagating to the third and fourth generation that follow. But God….showing lovingkindness to the 1000’s of generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.