Deadline interviews Paul Schrader about his new film: come for the Calvinism, stay for the Plantinga/Wolterstorff shout-outs:

DEADLINE: I wanted to ask what by now you’ve learned about guilt and inherent vice or human fallibility? You’ve explored these themes a lot across decades. What have you learned about those qualities by this stage in your work?

SCHRADER: Yes, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. I was raised within a guilt-driven form of Protestantism: Calvinism. The notion of total depravity is very important. “Our righteous works are like filthy rags” in the eyes of God. The TULIP represents the five points of Calvinism: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace and Perseverance of the Saints. That gets hammered into you. I was raised to believe that we are incapable of salvation. You had to accept it by grace. It was a puzzle box of a conundrum. But it was also a great education. I’m even wearing my Calvin shirt today. Unlike many from evangelical churches, John Calvin was a hardcore intellectual. He believed you could think your way into heaven, and he constructed this whole edifice of thought, the Institutes, two volumes of it. I took it in college. It was all logic with one little pinhole of faith. But of course, a pinhole of faith is about the same size as a barn door of faith because once you let faith into the argument, all the logic and all the reasoning in the world doesn’t matter, and so that was the whole gimmick of Calvinism: to try to think or reason your way into salvation, but you need to have that little pinhole of faith…

DEADLINE: Do you resent this upbringing in any way? Given how formal and strict it sounds…

SCHRADER: Not at all. It was great. My college [Calvin College/University, Michigan] has fallen a little behind. It was a premier liberal arts Christian school, and those schools, primarily because of funding, are drifting more to the right. And so, when I went to school, the idea of liberal arts, thinking, and philosophy was very much in the Christian tradition. It’s become less so now, which is a pity. But I did not feel encumbered. A number of my professors went on to become quite famous philosophers such as Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga. The whole notion of Christian philosophy was very invigorating, and I think that gets sort of short shrift by some people who just assume that because you have faith, it means you don’t have to think.