Five Points, and What the Acronym Leaves Out

The five canons are commonly remembered today through the acronym TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints, a mnemonic that dates from twentieth century American teaching rather than from the synod itself, and one that has done as much to obscure the canons as to summarise them. Total depravity in the canons is a claim about incapacity, not about degree of wickedness: fallen humanity is not thereby denied any capacity for civic virtue, only the capacity to turn to God unaided. Limited atonement is the point the canons themselves phrase most carefully and least like the popular label, speaking of Christ's death as sufficient for the whole world and efficient for the elect, a formula meant to affirm a real, definite intention without denying the sufficiency of the sacrifice offered.

The canons became, alongside the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, the third of the Three Forms of Unity to which Dutch Reformed office bearers subscribe, and unlike its two companions it is not a general confession of faith but a judicial ruling on one controversy, written to be read against the Remonstrance it condemns rather than as a stand alone statement of doctrine. Reformed and Presbyterian churches outside the Dutch tradition that never subscribed to the canons directly have often received the same five points through later confessions and popular teaching, so the acronym now circulates well beyond the synod that produced the substance behind it.