Defending my Homie...

So yesterday this got passed around the churchy parts of the interweb.  And I have to say, as a Presbyterian, and one who is speaking from inside the stream of reformed Christianity that John Calvin kind of founded, I agree with a lot of the critiques of Calvinism. However, there's a bit too much hater-ade being passed around.  Jesus said something onetime about logs and splinters in people's eyes.  Modern Progressives, like Ben here, can sometimes get so focused on the narrow-minded, self-righteousness of those they are criticizing that they jam a big old log right in their own eyes.  They say things like: "Out of all of the theologies in the world, I find Calvinism among the most offensive. And frustrating. And irritating."  Really, of all the theologies?  Even the one that convinces people to fly planes into buildings in the name of Allah?  Even the many that allow us to treat human beings like property? 

Hyperbole has it's place, but perhaps theological arguments are not that place.

I was fortunate to study Calvin's Theology with Charles Partee, at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and he was the first to point out to me (and other students in the class) that Calvin's theology is a lot better than the "theology" of Calvinism.  Dr. Partee emphasized showing Calvin a little grace, because despite his sometimes cranky persona, Johnny believed in the grace of God towards humans very deeply.  Deeply enough to challenge a thousand years of church teaching and write an exhaustive and audacious summation of Christian Theology called The Institutes of the Christian Religion, which most "Calvinists" and critics of Calvinism have not read.  There are two big thick books, where Calvin expounds on every aspect of faith and theology, and he finished them when he was 26 years old.  I could barely formulate a coherent thought at 26.  That Calvin has been used and abused and misunderstood, and sometimes even properly chastened for going too far is just a fact of history.
There is no better example of this than the doctrine of election, sometimes wrongly called predestination.  When you read chapters 21-24 of book III of the Institutes, you find Calvin, sometimes rather crankily discussing the doctrine.  Right off the bat though you find that he was aware of the fact that the very discussion of the doctrine was going to cause problems, he spends most of those sections responding to objections to the doctrine.  In point of fact, he didn't make most of it up, he was drawing heavily on Augustine, which any student of Christian theology will find a difficult thing to avoid.
It's important, in judging this whole mess to understand the reasons and the historical context of the writings.  Calvin was still holding to an extremely medieval understanding of heaven and hell, election and reprobation.  He was also living with the reality that people were being killed and excommunicated for theological positions.  His was an age where no sentence that was written passed by unnoticed, and the charge of heresy could be leveled with fiery force at any moment.
The world that Calvin inhabited was rife with passionate arguments about doctrine and no shortage of condemnation for those who dared express different opinions.  If you judge Calvin by the standards of his age, which is really the only fair way to judge, he was remarkably circumspect; leaning much more on the sovereignty and grace of God than you might suspect from the way people who have adopted his name into their "ism."
Calvin's purpose in discussing election, as I understand it, was to reassure people who were daring to challenge the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church (which consequently was not shy about condemning it's enemies to mortal and eternal suffering), that if they were God's elect, nothing could shake or challenge that identity.  The fact that so many people chose to focus on the negative aspect: the ones who are not elect and therefore predestined to damnation (which is, I admit, a pretty crappy idea), seemed to annoy Calvin, and he flat out chooses to ignore them: "Here I shall pass over many fictions that stupid men have invented to overthrow predestination.  They need no refutation, for as soon as they are brought forth they abundantly prove their falsity." III.21.7
So, Calvin was not soft and cuddly, by any stretch of the imagination, but remember, what he's trying to do is to assure people of God's unconditional love.  See, from the perspective of the elect, you are utterly free from the fear and guilt that so many people associate with Christian religion these days (and in those days as well), and which Calvin found to be contrary to true faith in Jesus Christ.  Calvin never prescribes a formula for determining who is elect other than the Biblical doctrine that: "You shall know them by their fruit."
Paul says to the Galatians: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Gal. 5: 22-23)  One wonders, if those are the signs of election, why we seem to want to focus on people who exhibit the inverse qualities: hate, negativity, intolerance, cruelty, greed, infidelity, violence and indulgence.  If someone is living in the grip of those things they are already in Hell.
The doctrine, while we may rightly argue with certain aspects and the worldview it represents, is mostly about describing reality, rather than condemning any particular person.  Some people "get it" and some people don't.  Calvin was writing unabashedly for those that "get it" and challenging them to live into "joyous obedience" to God's plan.
It is certainly possible to sit here in the 21st century and judge our ancestors harshly: most of the founders of the United States were slave owners.  However, if we do that we can easily miss the contributions they made.