48 Quotes About Calvinism

There is great confidence in trusting God's sovereignty, especially when it comes to the fact that even Christians are willing to place their own supposed freedom and autonomy over the true freedom and autonomy of God. I have seen many precious souls struggle through these foundational issues and emerge changed, strengthened, with a new and lasting appreciation of the holiness and love of God along with a passion for His grace that cannot be erased.

As Boettner so aptly observes, for the Calvinist, the atonement "is like a narrow bridge which goes all the way across the stream; for the Arminian it is like a great wide bridge that goes only half-way across." p. 41

Far from me, heretics Whom the Church has condemned With all their fancy practices And their sophisticated books; Far from me, Calvinism! Far from me, Jansenism! I serve God with my whole heart,It is my glory and my joy.

Far from me, hereticsWhom the Church has condemnedWith all their fancy practicesAnd their sophisticated books; Far from me, Calvinism!Far from me, Jansenism!I serve God with my whole heart,It is my glory and my joy.

If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves!

John Calvin says that when a seed falls into the ground it is cherished there, by which he means that everything the seed contains by way of expectation is foreseen and honored. One might as well say the earth invades the seed, seizes it as occasion to compose itself in some brief shape... So a thriving place is full of intention, a sufficiency awaiting expectation, teasing beyond hope itself.

At the same time, there flourished around them an equally remarkable, and for us more interesting, defiance of the Calvinist spirit: the art and culture of the Netherlands, in which man’s relation to the world of objects, and to his own physical life, became the subject of a profound spiritual interrogation.

If a man is drawn, says an objector, he comes against his will. [We answer] If he comes unwillingly, he does not believe: if he does not believe, he does not come. For we do not run to Christ on our feet but by faith; not with the movement of the body, but with the freewill of the heart. Think not that thou art drawn against thy will: the mind can be drawn by love.

A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.