Personality Profile of the Typical Calvinist?

[steve]

Someone sent me this interesting link, and associated quote, about the personality profile of the average Calvinist. It may seem like an over-generalization, or even an ad hominem attack, but, in all honesty, it seemed fairly accurate, so far as my experience would confirm. What do you think?

"Calvinism today seems to appeal mostly to a certain sort of personality, and that personality is not always healthy. I have discovered that the person who really spends a lot of time talking about the "doctrines of grace," tends to fit a typical profile. They tend to be male (rarely do you find women sitting around arguing about the details of TULIP), intellectually arrogant, argumentative, insecure (and therefore intolerant), and prone to constructing straw-man arguments. In order for the typical Calvinist's faith to remain secure, he seems to feel the need to imagine all others outside his theological box as evil, uninformed, or just plain stupid. I have seen this in men of all ages, some Baptist, some Presbyterian, some laymen, some ordained ministers."

http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_ ... -owen.html

[dwilkins]

That may not be a very nice description, but it is essentially accurate in my experience. One of the things that I'd add that we don't often notice is that all of their arguments about given proof texts are made from a very modern, logical or philosophical point of view. I can't remember any Calvinist that I've talked to deliberately inserting analysis of 1st Century culture or 2nd Temple Judaism into the conversation. So, the conclusions of the author of "Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity" would be completely lost on them.

http://www.amazon.com/Honor-Patronage-K ... hip+purity

One of the critical observations he makes is the cultural context of the terms grace and faith. Calvinists use them as if they are logical elements of a flow chart or a venn diagram. Instead, they were very culturally loaded terms that don't fit into a Calvinist box. Grace was simply an overarching term used to describe the giving function of a patron who was essentially like a godfather. He did people favors (grace) that they couldn't do for themselves. He expected faithfulness from his clients. There is no implication that the client wasn't capable of being faithful, or wanting to be faithful. These are logical constructs derived through a clinical analysis of the nature of man that is logical, but divorced from the Biblical narrative.

Doug

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[Singalphile]

Good article, but I think it's probably unfair make this a Calvinist thing.

The more likely culprit, as he put it (with my editing), is that ...

"the evangelical church has no robust ecclesiology, and thus no structured spirituality to put into practice as the body of Christ. [So] ... Christianity tends to be reduced to a set of doctrines to contemplate, which attracts mainly certain kinds of people, and encourages certain kinds of attitudes among believers."

No one can know which denomination or sub-group is worse. That man, as a Calvinist, may simply attend lots of Calvinist functions and know more Calvinists, who are naturally more likely to talk with another Calvinist about Calvinism than his non-Calvinist friends who don't want to bring up a controversial topic.

I've read uncharitable, condescending, and divisive comments by people of all sorts, including some supposed Christians. Of course the internet brings this out. I don't see this in real life, I'm glad to say.