CALVINISM is the system of religious doctrine associated with the name of Calvin, and supposed to distinguish the churches more particularly called the reformed, in con tradistinction to the Lutheran and Anglican churches. Calvin's doctrinal views are laid down at length in his Institutio Christiana Religionis, first published in 1536. It was not till many years later, however, that the name of C. came to be attached to a cer tain set of doctrinal opinions, and not till the rise of Arminius (q.v.) and the synod of Dort (q.v.) in 1618, that these opinions may be said to have been polemically marked off from others with which they are generally contrasted, and to which they are recognized as standing in opposition, The difference of thought expressed in the Arminian and Calvinistic systems is as old as the history of Christian doctrine. In almost every point, Augustine may be said to have anticipated Calvin; while Pelagius and the eastern divines, such as Chrysostom, represented a type of opinion upon the whole consonant to that which in more modern times has been opposed to Calvinism. In the Roman Catholic church, since the reforma tion, the same opposition of thought has presented itself in the famous contest of Jansenism and Jesuitism.
The main point of distinction in the two systems or modes of Christian opinion, is as to the operation of divine grace in the salvation of sinners. In the one system, this operation is considered as predetermined and absolute; in the other, as merely prescient, and iu some sense conditioned. Predestination and irresistible grace are the great key notes of C.—its two main points. Others were added in opposition to Arminianism viz., original Sin, particular redemption, and the perseverance of the saints; but the first of these is not peculiarly Calvinistic, and the last two are merely corollaries from the doctrines of predestination and grace. Predestination is, in fact, the one distinguishing doctrine of the system, as it was of Augustinianism, of which C. was merely the revival.
The divine will, apprehended as decretave and predestinating, is necessarily irresistible in its efficacy, select in its objects, and persevering in its results. The characteristic of C., therefore, is that it is a speculative Christian system, springing from a single great prin ciple, carried out rigorously into all its logical consequences.
The church of England, in its earlier history, was Calvinistic in its creed, although mediaeval and Catholic in its ritual. Puritanism was nothing else than a movement to reduce it altogether to a Calvinistic model. In the reaction which followed this move ment, the church of England, while retaining its original articles, nearly parted with its Calvinistic faith; and throughout the 18th c., its chief divines are conspicuously Armin ian or latitudinarian. But with the revival of the evangelical party in the cud of the century, C. revived; and it still maintains, if not an absolute sway, yet a powerful influence over many minds in the Anglican establishment, while it is the professed creed of a great proportion of the dissenters.
The church of Scotland, along with the other Presbyterian churches in this country, and the large and numerously increasing bodies of Presbyterians in America, all hold to the Westminster confession of faith, the most elaborate and formal expression of Calvin istic doctrine that exists. But while holding to the same Calvinistic standard, these churches show many varieties of actual opinion; and in the history of Presbyterianism, C. has shown a tendency in its logical development to pass into rationalism or Unitarian ism. This is conspicuously the case in the church of Geneva itself, and some of the old Puritan churches of America. It still remains, however, as opposed to Arminian, Socinian, or any cognate forms of the same type of doctrine, the most living and power ful among the creeds of the reformation.