The stern orthodoxy of Calvinism, named after its founder, John Calvin, asserts the doctrine of predestination: God has chosen some people — but only a few — whose souls will be saved upon their physical death, but the mass of humankind is destined for eternal damnation because their souls are lost already when they are born. Unitarians, by contrast, picture a God who extends salvation to everyone: They insist that the distinction between those who are saved — "born again" — and the rest of humanity is hypocritical because it creates a false dichotomy between the chosen and the unchosen.
Unitarians stress a universality of Christianity's message that is not limited to those who profess a belief in Christ's redemptive death. This position puts Unitarians at odds with their more orthodox Protestant contemporaries because they emphasize the perfectibility of humankind. Traditional Calvinism stresses the utter depravity of human nature and the incapacity to do any good whatsoever without God's grace. For Calvinists, the proper posture is one of submission and repentance. Unitarians, by contrast, posit a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature: They look to a brighter future that will come about through sound education. However, this optimism should not be mistaken for religious triviality: American transcendentalism, as expressed by New England men educated in the conservative religious institutions of Harvard, Yale, and other eastern colleges, placed a heavy emphasis on morality and upright behavior derived from Puritanism. Thus, even when transcendentalists like Emerson or Amos Bronson Alcott were most rebellious against organized religion, they relied on a sense of spiritual direction instilled by strict and long-lasting religious education.
The perfectibility of humankind that so outraged Calvinists is evident throughout Emerson's writings. For example, the idea of a spiritual ascent toward a more perfect union with God is well illustrated in "The Poet," in which Emerson asserts that "within the form of every creature is a force compelling it to ascend into a higher form." Also in this same essay, Emerson states, "But nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals, than security, namely ascension, or the passage of the soul into higher forms." Salvation depends on our intuiting our souls' connections to what Emerson terms the World-Soul, or Over-Soul. The more we perceive this all-encompassing Over-Soul, the more perfect we become.
