Where Did TULIP Come From?

Why do many Christians associate Calvinism with the acronym TULIP? Today, W. Robert Godfrey explains where this familiar term came from and how it seeks to summarize Reformed teaching.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: We’re recording live from Ligonier’s 2025 National Conference, and we’re joined by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey. Dr. Godfrey, where did TULIP come from?

DR. W. ROBERT GODFREY: TULIP is an abbreviation that has been used in English to talk about what we call the five points of Calvinism, and I honestly don’t know exactly where in the history of English theology that abbreviation comes from. It’s obviously from the English-speaking world because it doesn’t work in Dutch or in Latin. So, this is a way that English speakers came to try to summarize for themselves the five points of Calvinism.

The five points of Calvinism were articulated at the Synod of Dort in the Netherlands in the early seventeenth century as a result of the controversy that surrounded Jacob Arminius, the theologian. So, Arminius actually saw his disagreements with historic Calvinism in five points. So, Calvinism has never defined itself or summarized itself in five points. Arminianism defined itself in five points, and Calvinism had five answers to the five Arminian errors. So, that’s important to remember. If somebody asks you, “What’s the summary of Calvinism?” hand them the Heidelberg Catechism, or the Belgic Confession, or, in extremis, the Westminster Confession of Faith. These are the summaries of Calvinism that Calvinists wrote to express their own faith.

And what we call TULIP is, as I say, just the answers to the errors of Arminianism, not a full-orbed summary of Calvinism. And even TULIP is a slight shift from where the Synod of Dort came down. If you followed the order at Dort, you would have ULTIP instead of TULIP. And ULTIP doesn’t work all that well; nobody’s going to remember ULTIP. But the Synod of Dort talked first about unconditional election and then about limited atonement, and then about total depravity and then about irresistible grace, and then the perseverance of the saints. And Dort followed that order because that was the order that the Arminians had raised. And of course, the issue of predestination—unconditional election—was the key controversy. The other elements kind of flowed from that, and so it made sense for the Synod to begin there. The attraction of TULIP, I think, is that there is a kind of logic to the order of TULIP, and I do believe if you start with total depravity, and you get people to really understand total depravity, then the rest of Calvinism does flow logically.

Now, we don’t believe it because it’s logical; we believe it because it’s biblical, and we can show biblical texts to support each of these points. But if people are utterly dead and lost in trespasses and sin, that means only God could help them. And since God only helps some, why does He help some and not others? And that leads then to each of the other steps of the five points of Calvinism. So, in the English-speaking world, TULIP is a very helpful way of summarizing the five points of Calvinism, but we do need to bear in mind, it’s not a summary of all of Calvinism, and it really only works well in the English language.