John Calvin laid the groundwork. The heart of this theological system comes directly from John Calvin himself. While Calvin drew deeply from Augustine’s emphasis on the sovereignty and grace of God, he shaped a distinct and influential teaching on salvation. In Calvin’s writings, we already find the major doctrines later associated with Calvinism: the deep moral inability of fallen man, God’s unconditional choice to save, a redemption designed for the elect, the effective drawing of God that brings sinners to faith, and the perseverance of those truly born again. These core ideas were present from the beginning, even though Calvin never arranged them into the later TULIP format or listed them as five points.
After Calvin’s death, Theodore Beza continued to carry forward and better articulate the same doctrines with greater clarity and detailed reasoning, strengthening the theological structure already laid down by Calvin. In his works, the themes that would one day be summarized as TULIP appear with strong definition. Yet Beza likewise did not create the TULIP acronym or publish a tidy five-point summary.
The familiar five-point expression did not arise until the Synod of Dort in 1618–1619, when Reformed leaders needed a concise response to the five points raised by the Arminian Remonstrants. Dort did not invent new theology. It simply organized existing Reformed teaching into a clear and memorable response that later came to be known as TULIP.
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