John Calvin Predestination Analysis

During the time of Protestant Reformation within the Church, John Calvin, an influential religious reformer throughout Europe, having studied Martin Luther's teachings, decided to establish his own religious sect which has been described as a "theocracy." John Calvin being one of the most indisputable reformers in Church history, was very strict on upholding the teachings of Christ stated within the Scriptures as being the teachings of how to live our own lives of faith. According to Calvin, he explains that the Church is, "a society of all the saints, a society spread over the whole world, and existing in all ages, yet bound together by the one doctrine and the one Spirit of Christ." (16). Hinging off this theme of a Church of Saints, Calvin

In his text Predestination: Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin holds that predestination is "One's salvation had already been determined by God, and those elect who had been "chosen" gave evidence of their calling by living exemplary lives" (18). This idea of predestination is one of the key teachings of the Calvinists. They believe that from the beginning, God "predestines" some of the people in the world to go to heaven and the rest to go to hell. No matter how virtuous or vicious you are in life, one will still go to heaven or hell and cannot do/choose anything in life to change finality. The article continues with Calvin's stressing that "we mean the eternal decrees of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man, All are not created on equal terms, but some preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation: and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death…" (18). Calvin believes that because man is not equal, this idea of predestination fits into his ideal Church. Calvin bases his idea of predestination from the bible, when he states, "Scripture clearly proves this much, that God by his eternal and immutable counsel determined once and for all those whom it was his pleasure one day to admit to salvation, and those whom, on the other hand, it was his pleasure to doom to destruction." (18). Calvin believes that God chooses who will receive His mercy and who will