Category talk:Calvinist ministers and theologians

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[edit] Calvinist or Reformed

I apologise for posting this if the subject has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere, but the designation "Calvinist" for figures such as Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli strikes me as utterly inappropriate. Bucer, for example, was Calvin's mentor and predeceased him. Moreover, they did not see eye to eye on a number of subjects. In most scholarship, particularly in modern scholarship, the designation for these theologians is "Reformed." Calvin was an important and perhaps even dominant figure within this strand of Protestantism, but at least some of the theologians on this page did not simply reproduce his thought and in some cases differed from it significantly. Quicumque 15:11, 6 May 2007 (UTC)quicumque

This has been discussed at some length. In short, this category was recently renamed from Category:Reformed theologians because it is a subcat of Category:Calvinists. We may need to add a supercat to the latter (Category:Reformed Christians or the like) under which Bucer, Zwingli, et al. would better fit. I'm certainly open to other proposals, however. --Flex (talk/contribs) 14:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
There seem to me to be two problems with using "Reformed Protestantism" as an equvalent or subset of "Calvinism."
Firstly, it's anachronistic. Zwingli, Bullinger, Oecolampadius, Myconius, Bucer, Hedio, Capito (to name only a few) were non-Lutheran, non-Anabaptist magisterial Protestants, and, as such, they are usually given the name "Reformed." However, they were all older than Calvin, most influenced him, and most differed from him theologically in more or less important ways. To call them "Calvinist" is putting the cart before the horse and distorts the relationship between the later tradition and its roots.
Secondly, it doesn't reflect current scholarship, which argues that even the later Reformed Protestant tradition was the product of multiple influences and was not simply the outworking of Calvin's own theology. Calvin was an important, and even a very important figure in this tradition, but did not dominate it as totally as 19th and early 20th century scholarship has suggested. As a starting point in this regard, I would suggest Richard Muller's survey article "John Calvin and Later Calvinism: the Identity of the Reformed Tradition" ch. 11 in The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, ed. D. Bagchi and D. Steinmetz, 130-149 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004).
Thus I suggest that Calvinism be used as a subset of Reformed Protestantism.
--Quicumque 16:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
The problem that was recently "solved" was that some were drawing a rather arbitrary distinction between "Reformed theologian" and "Calvinist" to exclude those who didn't agree with some group's distinctives (e.g., Charles Spurgeon was a Calvinist but not Reformed because he, unlike Calvin, did not accept infant baptism). The old scheme suffered from the same problem you mentioned because Category:Reformed theologians was a subcat of Category:Calvinists. In two previous discussions (here and here), we resolved to rename the former to obliterate such non-neutral distinctions but recognized that renaming would not fix all the problems. Small steps were necessary to reach agreement.
I agree with the problems you point out about certain people being labeled Calvinists, and while I also agree with your point about Calvin's influence over Calvinism, I don't think that necessarily means it should be renamed. Though it is historically incorrect, it is also common parlance to identify Calvinism and Reformed theology (just as it is technically improper — but quite common — to refer to the USA as "America" since Canada, Mexico, and all of South America are also part of the Amerigo's legacy).
So I see two paths toward improvement: (1) simply rename "Calvinist" to "Reformed" in all the cats, or (2) restructure the categories something like this:
  • Reformed Christians
    • Reformed Christians by occupation
      • Reformed theologians and ministers
        • Calvinist theologians and ministers
      • Reformed politicians
        • Calvinist politicians
      • Reformed artists and writers
        • Calvinist artists and writers
    • Reformed Christians by nationality
      • American Reformed Christians
        • American Calvinists
      • British Reformed Christians
etc. etc.
The main problem with option #1 is that "Calvinism" is a much more recognizable term outside the academic community and there is no possibility for redirection for alternate cat names (cf. WP:CAT#Redirected_categories). The main problem with #2 is that it is bulky. Do you have any thoughts or other suggestions on how to resolve this problem? --Flex (talk/contribs) 13:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
I'd support option 2 for the following reasons:
  • "Reformed Protestantism" tends towards the descriptive, whereas "Calvinism" tends toward the prescriptive. As I think you've hinted, it either encourages disputes about doctrinal niceties, or it encourages people to think that there was much more uniformity in modern Christian history than there really has been.
  • "Reformed Protestantism" is historically acurate. It does not impose anachronistic categories on the pre-Calvin period, and, more importantly it is a more acurate reflection of what Christians like Calvin called themselves. "Calvinist" was a term of abuse used by Lutherans, Anabaptists, Anglicans and Catholics until at least the late 17th century.
  • I am not sure that "Reformed" is just a scholarly term. After all, it is the "World Alliance of Reformed Churches" rather than the "World Alliance of Calvinist Churches."
  • It may not be concise, but it is more precise.
  • It allows for a both-and solution to the problem
--139.133.7.38 17:58, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
Pro Flex's schema -- TimNelson 04:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Pro Flex's schema -- Alastair Haines 07:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

More thoughts:

  • Another possibility would be to have a "Magisterial Protestantist" category, which would include Lutherans, Anglicans, Calvinists, and "Other"
  • I'll eventually cross-post parts of this discussion to the page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Calvinism/FAQ. That page represents the majority opinion developed out of some of the previous discussions (not including the aforementioned category renaming option). The talk page has lots of discussion about the main page that have been moved from other pages.

--TimNelson 11:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Support Calvinism is a subset of Reformed. This is an important issue, and it effects the List of theological journals field "affiliation". There I've have a provisional system something like this.
  • Academic (read "secular", i.e. no theological affiliation, e.g. Journal of Oriental Studies)
  • Ecumenical (read "inter-faith", i.e. "Judeo-Christian" or "Abrahamic" [+Islam])
  • Islamic
  • Jewish
  • Mormon
  • Christian (read "ecumenical Christian", i.e. [+Orthodox] and [+Catholic])
  • Orthodox
  • Catholic
  • Protestant (includes pentecostal)
  • Pentecostal (should this be Charismatic? Charismatic is also used by Catholics, so I think it is a more generic term.)
  • Evangelical (includes SDA and liberals, i.e. traditional protestants, though I'm not sure Pentecostals would appreciate being excluded)
  • Anabaptists
  • Baptists
  • Reformed (five solas +explicit use of term)
  • many Anglican/Episcopal
  • Reformed Baptists (who do not consider themselves Calvinist)
  • Calvinist (TULIP +explicit use of term, all Calvinists consider themselves reformed, though the reverse is not true)
  • some Reformed and Calvinist Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, many Reformed denominations ... e.g. Spurgeon, Packer, ...
I am concerned that there could be subjective elements in the classification. On balance it seems better to have an imperfect system that gives some guidance on affiliation and relationships, rather than to have no distinctions and avoid potentially helpful discussions about borderline cases.
Any generalizable classification schemes for Christian denominations (and rationales, references) would be appreciated. This will continue to cause debate until we find references that are sufficiently satisfactory for people who come across any consensus decision after it has been made. Alastair Haines 09:16, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a scheme that distinguishes Calvinists from all Reformed Baptists and (Reformed) Anglos to be accurate. Charles Spurgeon is of the former group and J. I. Packer of the latter, and both affirm TULIP and consider(ed) themselves Calvinists. --Flex (talk/contribs) 20:48, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I probably didn't make things clear enough. As things move to the left in the tree above, they become more specific. I've added a line to make the intention clearer. I've also placed adjectives describing broad groupings of denominations and/or individual theologians in bold, to distinguish them from the plain font examples of group members. I'm sure there's still room for ambiguity and error. Thanks for prompting a little extra clarity already.
I can anticipate one major objection many would raise, which is that matters of church government are often considered doctrinal distinctives, commanded by scripture, thus only notionally distinct from soteriological doctrine -- i.e. "your denomination doesn't really believe inerrancy of scripture because you ignore its teachings regarding governance ..." Likewise, baptism and millenial views are often conflated with soteriological classification schemes. There is genuine overlap in such things, of course, but my point would be that soteriological distinctions are probably the ones we're best off focussing on.
Again, I can anticipate difficulties where, for example, pentecostals claim to be reformed, but are logically inconsistant in their analysis of issues. How would we classify them at Wiki, without imposing "original research" or our own opinion, etc.
Finally, I have another question. How do we handle JWs, Cristadelphians etc. who often describe themselves as Christian? For the moment, I'm happy to defend the position that Christian should imply belief in Jesus as God, regardless of what sources may say otherwise. How does Wiki handle issues like this? Alastair Haines 06:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
We've answered the question about how Wikipedia deals with the distinction between Reformed and Calvinist at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Calvinism/FAQ. The problem with this policy is that since there is no consensus terminology, many of the terms are so broad and synonymous as to be not very useful. We may have to use more descriptive titles, etc.
I think the problem with your categorisation scheme is that it assumes that things on separate axes are subsets of each other. For example, we apparently have self-described liberal Calvinists, non-liberal Calvinists, liberal non-Calvinists, and non-liberal non-Calvinists. This highlights that liberalism and Calvinism (as self-descriptive labels) are separate axes; neither is a subset of the other.
In my opinion, liberals aren't Calvinists, but that's my POV opinion, and doesn't align with the Wikipedia way of doing things.
Incidentally, I would (and I'm not sure if this agrees with Wikipedia policy :) ) have classed Pentecostals as evangelical, but wouldn't have classed liberals as evangelicals; I thought the main reason that the term "evangelical" became popular was to distinguish evangelicals from liberals.
-- TimNelson 01:14, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Loan-word forms of evangel, especially in romance languages, are used to denote protestants. I suspect this usage predates English language terminology from the evangelical awakening -- liberals had to be protestant for long enough to go liberal before a distinction in terminology was needed. Perhaps evangelical in English had romance influence at the point of coining it -- ie it suited itself to describing "reprotestantizing".
I think the main thing about terminology at Wiki, is being positive. Liberal is only occasionally a self-descriptive term. It's about what people don't believe. ;) Alastair Haines 01:29, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Terminology: And here I thought that NPOV required us to be a) inclusive, and b) neither positive or negative :).
  • Use of evangelical: I thought the liberal/evangelical distinction was somehow related to the fact that liberals tended to think that the social gospel was the main point of Christianity, whereas evangelicals tended to think that the main point of Christianity was that, by believing in Jesus one could be saved from sins (which I always hear referred to as the "gospel" in the circles I'm in). I should possibly point out that the english word gospel derives from "good spell", by which they meant "good message", or "good news". This is a fairly literal translation of the Greek "euangellion" (no, I can't type Wikipedia Greek :) ), from "eu", good, and "angel", message. Due to the history of language, "euangellion" is often written "evangel". I suspect that this is what the coiners of the phrase "evangelical" had in mind. Basically, I'm saying that I think that, in the minds of these people, "evangel" and "gospel" were synonymous.
Anyway, I'm not sure any of this brings us any closer to a decision. I support the schema suggested above by Flex. -- TimNelson 04:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, the Latin term evangelion for news of victory or news of an heir to the throne was seen by the inspired NT writers as apt to describe the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. European languages incorporate Latin words easily, from long association. English, rather like with Easter, goes its own way though:

The "Evangelical Awakening" was terminology novel only to English speaking Protestants, thank God! The "gospel-ness" of protestantism had already been common parlance among the protestant minorities in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal for centuries.

Liberalism is associated with many issues beyond the social gospel -- low view of scripture, universal salvation, etc.

Looks like you need to change the Calvinism project policy though. It currently supports (1) not (2), as you, Flex (and I) agree. Alastair Haines 07:55, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Liberalism: Yeah, I agree.
  • Calvinism policy: Which part of the Calvinism policy are you referring to? The FAQ or something else?
-- TimNelson 12:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)