#not Christianity tho I don’t mess with that go to a theologist

[mirrabellah]

If someone were to show up at my doorstep with a mysterious cursed object and wanted to know what it was I feel like I would be prepared.

I think I’ve finally reached the point of “snippy supernatural expert” in my character development

[janiedean]

Hey Janie, I'm kind of confused about calvinism and what effect it has had, also the differences between calvinism and arminianism. Could you help explain it because I feel like I'm trying to navigate it blind to be honest XD - I'm not familiar with the concepts they refer to and believe in and when I read more about them I just get more confused :( - Thanks

okay, let’s go in order here.

first: both are results of the protestant reform started by martin luther. calvinism is one branch of protestantism and arminianism was born in a calvinist setting (holland/the netherlands) but branched off it itself. so we’re still talking about protestantism but in order to understand a few basic concepts you need to have clear a few basic things re catholicism and luther’s thought first.

second: all protestantism is ‘a bunch of different currents that does not have something in common with catholicism or rejects catholic hierarchy but might have a lot in common with catholic doctrine’. I mean, calvinism is the farthest possible thing from catholicism for reasons I’ll go at in the next point and it’s protestantism, but if I decide I like everything about catholicism except that I think the holy trinity makes no sense and I found my own church for that, I’m still protestant. also it wouldn’t be a good idea since the last time it happened said own church got annihilated but never mind.

third: catholicism has a lot of theological stuff going for itself but in order to make this simple I’m gonna narrow the basic splitting point (from calvinism/lutheran protestantism) to the following: a) free will exists, b) you make your afterlife out of your own choices, c) your actions have impact on your afterlife, d) sinning or doing something Not Cool does not prevent you from accessing paradise if you repent from it. free will is the absolute basic concept which roughly boils down to: God created you and gave you life but then gave you free will to make what the fuck you want out of it. if you’re a nice person you go to heaven, if not you go to hell, if you did horrid shit that would send you to hell but you repent you may still be saved and you can get out of it while you’re alive as well. like, you wash out sins by confessing, going to mass and whatnot and that’s why one of the holy rites of catholicism is the *last* confession and you need a priest before you die if you have anything to repent of. because if you do, then your soul goes to heaven (or purgatory). now, there’s been a lot of discussion over how free will meshes with the idea of an all-knowing God but that’s not the point, you basically just have to know the above basics. ALSO: since your action impact your afterlife, being good and kind to people less fortunate than you and doing things for others and so on is seen as something that helps you go to heaven, so charity and the likes are encouraged. keep that in mind because when discussing calvinism that comes back in full spades.

fourth: the protestant split happened when martin luther got fed up with the catholic church exploiting the above system. meaning, they got as far as actually *selling salvation* (basically you could buy a piece of paper named indulgence which according to the church granted you absolution for all sins without like actual repentance or working for it), which luther found abhorrent along with the church (in rome) asking and getting money out of german catholics and so on. while luther had perfectly good reasons to be pissed (don’t we all dislike the catholic church and its neverending love for money), that meant that when he split and wrote down his own doctrine, shit happened. now, martin luther was also sadly for us a great fan of saint augustine. saint augustine, who was a lot less warm and cuddly than the doctrine leads us to believe, was the person who shaped definitely a concept that’s THE TOTAL KEY TO UNDERSTANDING CALVINISM, as in: predestination. (admittedly it was st. paul’s thing before augustine’s and that’s why I hate both but nvm)

fifth: predestination means that where you head up in the afterlife is decided when you were born. or that God knew already or various variations of it. now, in its original conception, augustine basically went like ‘ALL OF US are doomed to hell and the only way we can be saved is - given that we were baptized before - that God’s divine grace looks upon us and saves us at random and because He wants to and He decided it and we can’t know what triggered that decision. and since it’s up to Him, you can be the best person in existence but if God decides you’re not going upstairs you’re not. what saved the entire mess here tho was that you couldn’t know if God chose you or not so in retrospective being a decent person can’t hurt, but anyway it’s not something that can be guessed when you’re alive. because I mean, the point is that we’re all going to hell anyway and some of us are not but we don’t know which, so judging someone else on account of it is fairly useless.

sixth: luther sadly was a great fan of augustine and unburied the predestination and brought it back to life when the catholic church had pretty much pretended it didn’t exist in those terms up until that point. he had his own version of it which was pretty much a re-elaboration of augustine’s and it was basically ‘we’re all predestined to either hell or heaven but we can’t know it’.

seventh: and then john calvin aka the founder of calvinism happened and came up with his own version of predestination, which is where the entire problem lies when it comes to old calvinism (new/contemporary european calvinism wised up but let’s stick to the topic), which is: calvinist predestination implies that humans are inherently sinful, and until this point it’s the same as the above, but you can actually guess who goes up and who goes down. differently from augustine the idea is that God has already people who he decided are *elects* and deserve salvation and it’s all already decided, and on top of that you can see where the weight scales fall down by… seeing how you do in life. basically, if you do well and you’re rich and you thrive and your business goes great (mind that calvinism was popular in places like, as stated above, the netherlands, where a lot of people relied on being merchants/having jobs that required being successful and where a lot of these merchants actually were successful SO) then it’s a sign from God that you’re one of the elected people. if you’re poor, your life sucks, you’re a criminal or otherwise doomed then too bad, you’re going downstairs, and if it looked like you were saved but then you did something shitty and fell from grace and became poor or something then ops then you obviously were never meant to be saved in the first place and there’s literally nothing you can do about it because it’s divine will that you’re headed downstairs or upstairs and nothing can change it.

eight: ARMINIANS. so, arminianism is basically counter-calvinism culture. the founder (arminius) had been a calvinist pastor but then started questioning it and left to be a theology professor and found his own movement that later put down properly their doctrine. the differences are that: you can be saved as long as you believe in Jesus and keep on being faithful (which is basically the exact contrary of what Calvinist predestination says), Christ died for all of us and not some of us who deserved salvation, you can’t have christianity without the holy spirit, you can reject God’s saving grace (which is the contrary of what Augustine said or anyone who denies that free will is a thing says) and people who are Christians can lose it (which according to calvinists is absolutely a no because you’re born with it and God can’t have given it to you wrongly since being predestined you deserved it).

ninth: obviously the calvinists in charge were really not okay with it and tldr they held a synod named synod of dort (read on wiki for more info) where they condemned arminians as heretics and proceeded to send into exile or imprison a lot of the arminian disciples. so also because they had to leave they started being sort of influential in other countries (ie england) and like a lot of the doctrine of evangelists and new calvinists/protestants churches is actually following arminianism rather than Original Calvinism TM but basically the point is that they absolutely wholeheartedly rejected the absolute predestination theory.

and this is about the part where we talk about the arminianism/calvinism difference. now, about the consequences of calvinism:

it has had a fairly important influence on western thought because a lot of the most important northern intellectuals in europe were calvinist (francis bacon, a bunch of theologists and artists and so on), but what’s the point here is that the puritan revolution in england was led by calvinists. the point was that they wanted to purify the anglican church (mind that the anglican church was basically catholic church just with the possibility to divorce and the likes) and eliminate all the compromises with catholicism that were a thing under elizabeth I and henry VIII. like actually most british calvinism was a thing because of opposition to elizabeth and ‘puritan’ was like a dispregiative term for extremist protestants. anyway, not all puritans were calvinists and most calvinists in britain were puritan and tldr after cromwell and the failure of his revolution and the failure of reforming the anglican church, they suffered from a limitation of rights and tldr they left england and went to other places.

among which the united states.

spoilers: most of the original pilgrims were puritan calvinists.

now, while the founding fathers weren’t as bad as how I made it sound like (i mean there’s decent stuff in calvinism as well as there’s decent stuff in everything, the problem is the extremism AND the fucking predestination), most of the protestant churches that took roots in the US were calvinist and into predestination. which imo reflects greatly on a lot of US structures/ways of thinking.

example: the concept of american dream is ‘if you work hard and put effort into it you shall succeed at all costs if you persevere hard enough and if you deserved it you shall be successful and do good and earn money’. it’s basically the whole ‘if you work hard and it goes well then God loves you and you’re going to heaven’ predestination stint. or, tbh I feel like the american healthcare is also an embodiment of predestination. it’s like, if you can afford insurance and to pay for cures then you had money from before and you were successful so God wants you to be fine and it’s worth it to keep you alive, if you’re poor and can’t afford to pay for it then well it was obvious you were headed downstairs so why should we waste our money on curing you if you’re damned and you don’t deserve salvation? and so on.

or: I find the concept of ‘I don’t want to pay taxes for someone else’s wellbeing/education because I don’t need it so why should I pay for them’ also very predestination!calvinist because like, it’s ‘I earned my money and it’s a sign that I’m chosen/blessed/whatever so why should I waste it on someone else’ when actually if everyone paid a small tax to send everyone to university for free you’d pay less than it costs you to send your kids to college on your own without a scolarship. like the entire american school system is also ‘if you come from a successful family you can afford it and you get privileges that come with being educated, if you can’t afford it fuck you here’s your GED college ain’t for you’. and so on.

now, this whole thing also shows up when you end up judging others out of what they do or their lifestyle or what they like. you’re poor? meh, fuck off, it’s because you don’t work hard enough. and in fandom it’s kind of blatant from this whole new discourse showing up because like, most of the Discourse TM is ‘I don’t like this fictional thing and I think it’s Bad and you like it so therefore you also must be Bad and you shouldn’t like it’, which is judging someone based on what little you know about their life/tastes and deciding they’re immoral or not acceptable while yours are. pure 100% calvinist puritan drivel, except that people didn’t study it at school so they don’t realize they’re being puritan calvinists. the problem is that in europe people evolved from that concept, the US - being on the other side of the world - didn’t get the wave of new calvinism that rejected or softened the predestination concept, which is why I have a feeling old calvinism still is to be found in a lot of what comes from the US’s way of thinking.

now, FAR FROM ME TO MAKE A CATHOLIC CHURCH PAMPHLET BECAUSE I’M ATHEIST AND I HAVE ENDLESS ISSUES WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, but going back to the beginning (and also partially to arminianism because arminianism and catholicism have a lot in common doctrinally - the points listed above are all things that catholics admit/have accepted for ages)… okay so, I’ve seen people going like UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE OR FREE EDUCATION ARE SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA AND SOCIALISM IS BAD TM. now, I live in the country where the vatican is, I can 100% assure you italy’s not socialist per se (lol as if, we haven’t had a left wing government that lasted a legislation never mind socialism) and that the church and socialism aren’t really politically friends… and we have both. because paying taxes to help your neighbor is seen as the right and *catholic* thing to do, since it’s a good thing you do to help others and being a good person and helping others is also what gives you the keys to paradise. you have to earn your salvation and you aren’t born with sin that you can’t shake off (that’s what baptisms are for) and you can confess your sins and do something to have them forgiven, so not shelling out for others doesn’t mean at all that you’re keeping your hard-earned money that some sinner doesn’t deserve. if you shell out for others you’ve done a good thing and you helped someone else, and especially, being poor is not seen as a sign of being damned. which is why charity is encouraged and so on. now, there’s the downside that a lot of people take it in a very paternalistic way and would rather run soup kitchens to help poor people right in the moment rather than coming up with a solution to solve the issue at the root so people aren’t poor in the first place, but basically free will and the lack of predestination turns into a general culture where it’d be inconceivable to think that someone on welfare is stealing other people’s hard-earned resources or anything like that because someone on welfare isn’t some poor bastard destined for hell who just doesn’t want to work for it, it’s someone who was less lucky than I was and since I got it better it’s my duty to help out my neighbor in need. and so on. like that is what I mean with basic cultural difference between calvinism-run societies and catholicism-run societies.

goes unsaid as I mentioned above that not all calvinists are still into absolute predestination (hell, the day I pay taxes I’m gonna give a share that goes to churches on automatic to a protestant calvinist italian church that uses its money for secular projects and like finances scientific research, volunteering organization and so on rather than giving it to the catholic church) and a lot of current day european calvinists are a lot more advanced than the catholic church (female priests! non-hetero weddings! and so on) but count that a lot of those also incorporated parts of arminian doctrine accidentally or not. anyway that’s not even 10% of it so I hope it’s a good starting point to read more on the subject (mind that I simplified a lot of stuff here XD) but like that’s the basic differences. but by all means read also from other sources don’t take me for granted because as stated this is all v. complex stuff and I narrowed it down a lot. :)