What really distinguishes Calvin as a theologian, and Calvinism as a theological tradition is its uniquely “high” doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit. In all the areas of theology where Calvin made his most distinguishing contributions, such as his doctrine of scripture or his doctrine of the church and the sacraments, we see the exaltation of the work of the Spirit driving his analysis. Even if we look only at his understanding of salvation itself, what makes Calvinism uniquely Calvinistic is not primarily its doctrine of the work of the Father in election, but its doctrine of the work of the Spirit in regeneration.

The Westminster Confession of Faith, the predominant confessional statement of Reformed theology in the English-speaking world, has a whole chapter called “Of Free Will.” Here is the first section of that chapter, in its entirety:

WCF 9.1 God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil.

The chapter on God’s providence likewise says that when God ordains what will come to pass, “neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes [a category that includes the human will] taken away, but rather established” (WCF 3.1).

This myth arises from historical changes of language. Today, the phrase “free will” refers to moral responsibility. It means people are not just puppets of exterior natural forces like their heredity and environment. But in the sixteenth century, at the very beginning of the Reformation, one of the key debates was over “free will” in a completely different sense. The question then was whether the will was, by nature, enslaved by sin and in captivity to Satan. Believing in “free will” meant believing that human beings are not born as slaves of Satan. Denying “free will” meant believing that they are. Calvin even called the slavery of the will to Satan “voluntary slavery.”

Just as God’s providential control of all events does not, on the Calvinist view, negate the free will of human beings in general, the particular work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers doesn’t negate the free will of those individuals. Section 10.1 of the Westminster Confession, which describes the work of the Holy Spirit in converting sinners, insists that when the Spirit is “drawing them to Jesus Christ” they “come most freely.” The role of the Spirit is to remove the power of sin and instill new powers of belief and trust, which do inevitably result in saving faith–but this is done without violating the will’s freedom.

In fact, the work of the Spirit enlarges our freedom. The natural human life is dominated by ignorance, impotence, frustration, compulsion, self-obsession, solipsism, disappointment and (at best) resignation. The Christ-life that the Spirit puts into us lives into ever more abundant knowledge, power, self-control, self-givingness, pleasure, contentment, and joy. In one sense, we are as free as we ever were–free to act within the life we have. But in another sense, who would not agree that the freedom to live as a slave is a lesser freedom than the freedom to live as a god? (Psalm 82:6, John 10:34-36)

Okay, yes, the famous “five points of Calvinism,” at least in their much-oversimplified and deeply misleading twentieth-century form, begin with the assertion that human beings in their natural state are “totally depraved.” But just as the phrase “free will” meant something completely different in the sixteenth century Reformation debate than it does today, the phrase “totally depraved” in the five points doesn’t mean what it would mean if somebody used that phrase in everyday conversation.

Read More. Content adapted from The Joy of Calvinism by Greg Forster. The article originally appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission.