Monday, September 25, 2017

J I Packer on Calvinistic Determination

Calvin and Calvinism are often linked with determinism. Well here is a quote by J I Packer on the determination (rather than determinism) of Calvinism in the persistence of Protestantism...

“Without [Calvin], pure Protestantism might not have survived beyond the middle of the seventeenth century, for it is simple truth that the only Protestants who would stand and fight, to the last ditch if necessary, against Roman and Erastian pressures, were the Calvinists.”

(Source: "John Calvin and Reformed Europe" in Honouring the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J. I. Packer Volume 4, p14)