THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVINISM

THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVINISM

1. Total depravity. This asserts the sinfulness of man through the fall of Adam, and the utter inability of man to work out his own salvation. God is all; man is nothing, and is the source of all evil.

2. Unconditional election. God, under no obligation to save anyone, saves, or elects" whom he will, with no reference to faith or good works. Since all things are present in the mind of God, He knows who will be saved. Thus election or reprobation is predestined. But no man can share in this foreknowledge.

3. Limited atonement. Christ did not die for all, but only for those who are to be saved. If he had not died on the cross, however, none could be saved.

4. Irresistible grace. God's grace is freely given, and can neither be earned nor refused. Grace is defined as the saving and transfiguring power of God, offering "new" life, forgiveness of sins, the power to resist temptation, and a wonderful peace of mind and heart. It is Augustine=s concept of the "restless soul having found rest in God," and is related to Luther's insistence on a sense of spiritual union with Christ.

5. Perseverance of the Saints. Those whom God has chosen have thenceforth full power to do the will of God, and to live uprightly to the end. It is the logical and necessary conclusion to the absolute Sovereignty of God.

THE PRINCIPLES OF DEISM
as set forth by Lord Herbert of Cherbury

1. That there is a Supreme Power (which he further explains to be a benevolent God).

2. That this Supreme Power must be worshiped.

3. That the rational ordering of the faculties of man constitutes the highest form of worship.

4. That all vices and crimes should be expiated and effaced by repentance.

5. That there are rewards and punishments after this life.

1. The revolt against the literary forms and ideas of Classicism and Neoclassicism,
This revolt is evident in the works of Wordsworth, Byron., and Shelley, and has some parallel in the relatively new forms of fiction developed by Irving and Cooper (and later Poe) and in the political poetry of Freneau and Bryant.

2. The new emphasis upon the imaginative and emotional qualities of literature.
Apparent in all the English romantics, this emphasis is also observable in the Americans. It includes a fondness for the picturesque, the exotic, the sensuous, the sensational, and the supernatural.

3. The strong tendency to exalt the individual and the common man.
This tendency, particularly characteristic of Wordsworth, became in America almost a national religion.

4. The reinvigorated interest in external nature.
Wordsworth is the most famous romantic poet of nature; but Cooper Bryant, Emerson and Thoreau also turned to nature with renewed interest.

5. The literary use of the more colorful aspects of the past.
This device is common in Coleridge, Scott and Keats. But it is also evident in Freneau=s "ruins of empire@ theme, in Bryant fascination with the Mound Builders, in Irving=s effort to exploit the legends of the Hudson River region, and in Cooper's historical fiction.