Five Pillars - Chapter One

“For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever.

Amen.”

The Current Religious Environment

On a return flight from Bucharest to Boston I enjoyed a fruitful conversation with a Harvard student on her way back to campus life. She was returning for her second year after spending summer at home in Uzbekistan. I mentioned that I was a pastor, and that I had just completed a short stay in Romania. She inquired about the work that I was doing there. I told her that I had come to Romania in order to teach a class on “The Five Pillars of Calvinism.”

Guessing that she was from an Islamic background, I anticipated that this title might make her curious enough to keep this interchange going. When we think of the words “five pillars” our minds naturally turn to the Islamic faith. As I hoped, she proceeded to ask me this question: “What are the five pillars of Calvinism?”

She had recently taken a course in American Puritanism, and was aware of the fact that the Puritans were Calvinists. Yet she seemed unaware of the beauties of the basic tenants of Reformation faith, and had been led to focus on other aspects of New England heritage that matched the interests of her professor. She told me that she was a Muslim.

I asked her if that was a matter of her heritage or was she actually a practicing Muslim. With some slight hesitation, she identified herself with the latter category. She added, “Well, I don’t pray five times per day toward Mecca, but I do believe in God, and I am a Muslim.”

I took out my pen and drew several boxes on a napkin. One I labeled “Islam.” The second I called “Romanian Orthodox.” Then following on other boxes I wrote the words, “Roman Catholic,” “Buddhist,” “Calvinist Protestant,” and “…” to indicate that we could go on making boxes for some time. I then drew another box and said, “This one is the majority religion in the Western world.” In that box I wrote the words “Non-practicingism.”

This required further explanation...

I decided to start with my choice of the word “pillars.” I suggested that every religious perspective has some number of pillars by which it is defined, and that the number five does seem to fit our capacities. (Who could remember the finer points of an obscure religion with twenty pillars?) I explained why the label “Baptist” or “Buddhist” tells me surprisingly little in our day. I don’t know if people are actually Muslims just by their use of the word “Muslim.” I need to ask them about the pillars of the faith. Do they agree with and practice these pillars?

We began to list the five pillars of Islam on the napkin.

1. Declaration of Faith: There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.
2. Prayer: Every good Muslim must pray five times per day toward Mecca.
3. Charity: The Islamic faith has certain specific giving requirements.
4. Fasting: During the month of Ramadan Muslims must fast all day.
5. Pilgrimage: Almost every Muslim has to take a special trip to Mecca at least once.

I then asked her about pillar number 2 – was this one debatable, or was it actually necessary?

A slightly uncomfortable pause…

I returned to my last box on the napkin – the non-practicingism box.

The big surprise in discussions like this is that non-practicingism has its own box and that there are pillars of faith connected to that box, just as there are for every other box. She needed to see that she was really holding to a different faith than Islam even though her heritage was Islamic. Without that insight we would merely have talked past each other.

Non-practicingism

Non-practicingists are everywhere, especially in societies that have largely walked away from a close observance of an earlier religious tradition. Whether one is a non-practicing Muslim or a non-practicing Methodist makes very little difference. The pillars of the faith are the same.

From my own limited personal experience then, here are the five pillars of this faith position:

1. There is a god.

2. I am not rejecting that god.

3. I loosely embrace the tradition I am most comfortable with.

4. I disturb no one with any faith claims.

5. I ask that no one disturb me with their faith claims.

Interestingly, you can be a non-practicingist and still attend religious services of your choice on a weekly basis. You can even be a spiritual leader of others and be very dedicated to various activities and celebrations connected with that faith. Attendance or lack of attendance is not one of the pillars.

It will be useful for our later examination of the five pillars of Calvinism to briefly explain the five pillars associated with this faith position.

First, there is a god. Non-practicingists are not atheists. There are still some atheists in this world, but in our day the great majority of people have a conscious belief in some kind of god.

In the second place, non-practicingists go beyond a bare acknowledgement of the existence of a god. They have personally chosen not to reject their god. They may even speak of having a relationship with god.

Thirdly, there is some minimal “practicing” that is almost a necessary part of non-practicingism. The non-practicingist loosely embraces the tradition with which he is most comfortable, normally claiming the right to hold on to the label of that tradition. Yet the key word in this pillar is the word “loosely.” If a person holds to any tradition strictly and on its own terms then he is not a non-practicingist.

On to the fourth pillar: The non-practicingist disturbs no one with any faith claims. The whole connection between doctrine and behavior is speculative in his view. The practitioner of this view is probably unenthusiastic about considering his beliefs as a separate religious choice with a set of distinct faith claims. For this reason at least, it would not necessarily occur to a non-practicingist that he has a common faith with a majority of people in his society, and that his faith positions have a very practical impact on the society he belongs to. Who would think that the quiet “victory” of non-practicingism could affect something like birth rates in the Western world?

This final pillar exposes this system for what it is: an effort to remain untouched by the faith claims of the true and living God. “I ask that no one disturb me with their faith claims.”

While we can readily see why true Christianity is different from non-practicingism, we would do well to consider that the pillars we have been exploring are perhaps the results of a weak understanding of the Christian faith.

Doctrinally-weak religion has led people to recommend to others a spiritual experience with very little theological content, almost no claim upon the life of the individual, and no particular implications for the world. We have urged people to stop rejecting God, to believe in Him, to come to church, and to share their faith in appropriate and winsome ways. These directives are not very different from the five pillars of non-practicingism.

It is actually surprising that our evangelistic efforts have not been more effective. They seem to be right in step with the majority religious view all around us. Yet true non-practicingists are well aware that surrendering to the One who is called “King of kings and Lord of lords” must mean something more than they wish to agree to.

The non-practicingist world is a tough environment for the proclamation of Christian truth. We should admit that the idea of a life of surrender to the Jesus of the Bible who now reigns at the right hand of the Father is not appealing to a great majority of the people in our region. The church and her leaders would love to be more successful, but victory seems to elude the great majority of us. In the midst of our marketing disappointments, we have also seemed to forget our beliefs.

It must be our purpose to call the church back to a clearer understanding of the pillars of a Sola Scriptura faith.

When Calvin Presented the Faith…

Forget what you may have heard about Calvin or Calvinism for a moment, so that you can give fresh consideration to what Calvin said about true Christian faith.

John Calvin was the premier systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation. In an era when the church was working to rediscover the truths of the faith based on the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura) it was Calvin who most clearly and logically addressed the topical matters of concern to God and His people. For his era, he wrote the definitive theological statement of biblical teaching. His masterpiece, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, is widely used and highly regarded down to the present day. In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, his writings greatly changed the church and the world.

The impact of his work was dramatic. Wherever his ideas were known they had an amazing power. This was not so much because of the personal details of the man, which he was never eager to promote, but because he presented the truth of the Bible in a way that could be powerfully understood.

The copy of The Institutes on my bookshelf is a fairly meaty two-volume set. In 1537 Calvin wrote a much shorter book appropriately entitled A Brief Outline of the Christian Faith. This book, consistent with Calvin’s larger work, was lost to the world until 1877 when an original copy was discovered in the Paris National Library. It is now available in an English translation by Stuart Olyott. The original French text was Calvin’s simple presentation of the truths of the Christian faith.

How then did Calvin present the faith to ordinary people? What are the pillars of Calvinism? While the book has six chapters, I have organized this material into five points that I will present in the remainder of this essay. In doing so I will quote frequently from Olyott’s translation of Calvin’s work, but will also endeavor to discuss certain points in light of the religious environment that we face in the world of today’s non-practicingism.

Without further delay, here are the “five pillars” of Calvinism:

1. The All-Surpassing Glory of God
2. The Surprising Depth of Human Sin
3. The Perfect Righteousness and Atoning Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
4. The Powerful and Orderly Plan of New Testament Church Life
5. The Resulting Witness to and Transformation of a Dying World

The student of the historical movement known as Calvinism will immediately note that these five pillars differ from the “5 points of Calvinism” that are frequently thought of as a summation of Calvin’s theology. As valuable as those five points are (often presented using the acronym “TULIP,”) they are not a sufficient summary of the Christian faith. They deal mainly with questions of God’s sovereignty and grace in salvation, and do not contain any statement on essential matters such as the nature of God and the worship and ministry of the church.

To make the point succinctly, when Calvin presented a brief outline of the Christian faith to people in his day, he did not use TULIP. He started with wonderful statements about God, about humanity, and about Christ. He went on to talk about God’s plan for the church and His sovereign care for the world.

Anyone who believes that the Scriptures are the Word of God would do well to consider Calvin’s brief summary of what the Bible teaches. By attending to these matters of great importance we are introduced to a Calvinism that few people seem aware of. Furthermore, we are granted a blueprint for a necessary journey out of the confusion of non-practicingism and are granted a vision of the glory of God and His kingdom that demands the reformation of the Christian church in our day.