Did you miss Part 1 of “Who Invented the TULIP?” Click here to read it.
Tiptoeing through (the History of) the TULIP
The earliest name clearly connected to the TULIP seems to be Cleland Boyd McAfee. Born in Missouri in 1866, McAfee became a prominent leader in the Presbyterian Church. He moved to Union Theological Seminary in 1884 to prepare for pastoral ministry. After earning his divinity degree at Union followed by a doctorate from Westminster College in Missouri, McAfee served as a professor and pastor at Park College, north of Kansas City. In 1901, Cleland McAfee left Missouri to become pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Chicago.
Two years after McAfee arrived in Chicago, his brother and sister-in-law lost both their daughters to diphtheria within twenty-four hours of each other. McAfee responded to this loss by composing the now-familiar hymn “There is a Place of Quiet Rest (Near to the Heart of God).” According to one report, Cleland McAfee directed a small choir that sang these words in the front yard of his brother’s quarantined home.
“There is a place of quiet rest,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where sin cannot molest,
Near to the heart of God.”“There is a place of comfort sweet,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where we our Savior meet,
Near to the heart of God.”“There is a place of full release,
Near to the heart of God;
A place where all is joy and peace,
Near to the heart of God.”“Oh Jesus, blest Redeemer,
Sent from the heart of God;
Hold us who wait before thee,
Near to the heart of God.”
The next year, Cleland McAfee was called to Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. It was during his pastorate in Brooklyn that he delivered a lecture to the Presbyterian Union of Newark. In this lecture, he employed the mnemonic device “TULIP” to summarize the five points of Calvinism. No manuscript of this lecture seems to have survived, so it’s not known whether McAfee meant to promote the TULIP or merely to provide a simple tool for recalling the canons of Dort. His version of TULIP—at least as it was reported eight years later—differed slightly from the one we know today, but the essential elements remain:
- Total depravity
- Universal sovereignty
- Limited atonement
- Irresistible grace
- Perseverance of the saints
By the time this memory device appeared in a Presbyterian newspaper in 1913, Cleland McAfee had already left Lafayette Avenue to become professor of didactic and polemic theology at McCormick Theological Seminary. He remained at McCormick until 1930 when he became director of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. Given the 1932 response of this board to the rising tide of theological liberalism in the denomination, it may be that Cleland McAfee’s theological leanings were more moderate than conservative.