When I first started taking Calvinism seriously, a handful of trusted books really helped me with a biblical foundation on this topic. Steele and Thomas on the five points, Edwin Palmer, Loraine Boettner, and R. C. Sproul were clear where I was muddled and kind where I was stubborn, and I’ve never stopped being grateful for them. In that same spirit, I wanted to share their insight with our readers, the five points laid out from Scripture and the confessions, for people arriving with the very questions those authors once answered for me. So we put a resource together.
The Five Points of Calvinism is now live on Reformed Dogmatika. It walks through total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints, one at a time, grounded in Scripture and the Reformed confessions. It sets the Synod of Dort against the Remonstrants who provoked it, answers the ten questions people actually ask (about prayer, evil, infants who die, and whether any of this leaves room for evangelism), and points you to the ten books worth owning.
A word on the flower. TULIP is a great teaching device, and it was a real help to me early on, but it isn’t a relic handed down from Dort. The acronym is much later, English, and a little too tidy for a Dutch synod. There’s a happy irony in that: a council in the Netherlands settles the doctrines of grace, and the mnemonic that carries them turns out to spell the most Dutch flower of all. I’m not sure the divines would have minded.
I wrote this page with one reader in mind: the person who is still exploring the doctrines of grace, maybe catching resistance at home for it, wondering whether these doctrines are cold machinery or good news. The doctrines of grace are good news. The whole point of the five points is that your salvation does not finally rest on you. If God chose you, if Christ secured you, if his grace will not let you go, then your standing before him is as steady as he is.
Read it, send it to a friend who’s wrestling with this, and tell me if we missed anything.
Read The Five Points of Calvinism →
✠ ✠ ✠
Deepen Your Study
Join our community to receive Reformed reflections and resources delivered to your inbox.
