Identity - Lesson 15

Dr. James Houston

Identity

th731-15

John Calvin—The Reformation and Christian Identity

Lesson Transcript

Dear Lord, we just realise that truly of Thee we live and move and have our being and without Thee we can do nothing. And so we just pray to bless now this next session that we are engaged in and we need your Holy Spirit to direct all of our hearts, both as we speak and as we receive. And so we pray for Your blessing to be upon us in this whole venture that it may be truly to the glory of Your grace. And so this we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, we now are beginning our ninth lecture, which is not chronological because we should have started John Calvin before Teresa of Avila, but I was deliberately bringing together Teresa with the Cistercians because they both represent, of course, the rich mystical tradition of the Catholic Church. And again, we use John Calvin selectively. We could have chosen many other reformers, but he certainly towers above all the other reformers and is second only to Augustine in the importance of the faith of the Church. And because of his importance in the foundation of the life of the Church, we should begin with the hymn which we associate very often with John and with Martin Luther, but really it’s far more appropriate even for John Calvin. So let us sing together The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord.

In view of that wonderful hymnody, we can now reflect on Calvin himself. At the beginning of the 20th century, B.B. Warfield wrote a very significant book called Calvin and Augustine. It’s an old classic, but it indicates the lasting impression that we all have that Calvin is a close second to Augustine in the importance that he has in the life of the Church. But one of the tendencies that the Church has always done is to smother the personal identity. As we try to emancipate Bernard from the Cistercian movement, so there’s a strong sense in which we need to free John Calvin from Calvinism. Now, some of our colleagues in different universities that specialise in Calvinist studies may not like that, but this is what an identity is—it’s a unique identity. And we tend to associate it too much with his admirers and his followers and the consequence is that his own identity gets confused.

One of the most objective of recent scholars to then try and free Calvin in this way from Calvinism is the Dutch/American scholar Heiko Oberman, whose posthumous essays John Calvin and the Reformation of the Refugees was published in 2009. This Berkeley historian has set the frame for understanding Calvin more personally. The second source for Calvin studies that is very popular, though distorting, is the Berkeley historian William Bouwsma, who wrote a famous work called John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait, Between the Labyrinth and the Abyss in 1988. Much more moderately, Oberman prefers to use the metaphor of bridle or yoke to guide us to understand Calvin rather than the excessive psychological language of fear as such associations as labyrinth and abyss, which Bouwsma uses, and we’ll refer to this again. Another important scholarly work is that of Richard Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin, which has a whole chapter critiquing the excessive use of the psychology of Bouwsma’s portrait, since he too wants to do what Oberman was not able to live to carry out and that is to show the bridge that Calvin makes between late medieval theology and that of Calvin himself. We think of Calvin as modern, but he certainly was the bridge to late medieval times. So these three books are my recommendations that you should use in this study of the identity of Calvin.

Every age is one of anxiety, although we always think ours is the worst. But the Black Death epidemic of 1349, which wiped out over a third of Europe’s population, was certainly one of the worst ever recorded. The hellish portraitures of Hieronymous Bosch reflect the horrifying fears of death, which still were to echo a century later in Dante’s Inferno. But the slaughter of The Hundred Years’ religious wars of Europe between 1337 and 1453 were still very fresh in the age of Calvin. And then too, the Turks besieging Vienna added a further culture of fear that reminds us very much of our concern about the Islamic movement today. So yes, the whole environment in which Calvin lived was in the environment of fear. This helps us to appreciate him personally as well.

Let’s look at his biography. He was born in 1509 as Jehan Cauvin in the cathedral town of Noyon in Picardy that was 60 miles north of Paris. He died in Geneva in 1564. He was the second of four sons and two sisters, but his mother died when he was only a child about eight years old. He was about the same age when his mother died as C.S. Lewis [when he died too 00:07:57]. His father, Gerard, was a notary of the cathedral chapter and was able to provide his children with a good education because of his aristocratic and ecclesiastical patronage. First educated at college in Noyon and then in Paris in the College de la Marche in 1523, Calvin studied Classical languages under the humanist Cordier. He then entered the elite College de Montaigu. And in the late 1520s, Gerard decided his son should no longer study theology. He realised pragmatically that you don’t get much money from studying theology, so he opted that his son should be a lawyer, which was going to be a much more lucrative profession. And so he moved John to Orleans, 80 miles south of Paris, in 1528.

Pierre de l’Estoile was France’s outstanding jurist and so he might have had a remarkable legal education there except that Pierre de l’Estoile moved the next year from Orleans to study in the Italian legal jurisprudence. This legal education, however, that Calvin had was to mark him for the rest of his life. Returning to Noyon to attend his dying father, he wrote his first work on Seneca, the Stoic philosopher that was contemporary with the Apostle Paul—he lived between 4 BC and 65 AD. And he did the study as still a very young man of 22. But the humanist circles were not impressed with his attempts to enter into their circle. How this rebuff affected his conversion the next year we don’t know, but it certainly removed pride from him, which is always a prelude for a conversion to be possible. And this conversion occurred while he was in the College Royal in Paris, where he’d gone for further studies. In other words, you can see what amazing educational opportunities Calvin was given.

Now chastened, he recites: by a sudden conversion God subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters that might have been expected of one at my early period of life. Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire. Although I did not leave off other studies, I yet pursued them with less ardour. But fear, a tormented conscience and aware of its betrayal of God were some of the motives that he describes as contributing to his metanoia, his radical change of life.

Now he began reading Erasmus, Luther, [inaudible 00:11:50], all reformists. At [inaudible 00:11:55], he appears to have started teaching at the beginning of his Institutes after a bout of illness. Calvin has left us three accounts of his conversion in Psychopannychia, which he wrote in 1534, as well as in a letter to Cardinal Sadoleto in 1539 and in his preface to the Psalms in 1557. In other words, he never, never forgot how traumatic his conversion had been. At the same time, he rarely spoke about his own personal narrative, preferring to speak only of God and God’s glory. And so when he does, as he does in the Psychopannychia, it is with much of the litany of fear and terror, using terms such as ‘confounded’, ‘crushed’, ‘desperate’, ‘fearful’, of the ‘dreadful anger of God’, asking would you know what the death of the soul is. It is to be without God, to be abandoned by God and left to oneself. Would to God that some of us had more of this contrite fear in our egotism today.

But Calvin soon found that to join the Reformist movement was to be on the wrong side of the king by being in defiance of the Sorbonne. He could be tortured and imprisoned, put to death, so he fled. He fled to Basel, where Nicolas Cop, the Rector of Paris University who had been his guardian and protector had already fled. Basel was a good refuge, for it had printing presses, it had a group of brilliant scholars and it had freedom from political fear. There, he composed his first version of the Institutes in 1536–1539. But Calvin’s conversion had been a complex affair, for first it was freedom from the reign of terror of clerical teaching from his childhood. Then in his letter to Sadoleto, he describes that the next phase of his conversion was entering into even deeper existential terror of living without God in eternity, which still haunted him from his earlier way of life with no sense of forgiveness. Terror, he realised, was our fallen state. So the task of the pastor is to guide the congregants into a proper fear of the Lord.

But in his first catechism, composed in 1537, he has a breakthrough. Now he says true godliness does not consist in a fear which willingly flees God’s judgement. True godliness consists in a sincere feeling which loves God as our Father as much as it fears and reverencing Him as Lord. It is now not just a conversion of thought, but a conversion of emotions, holding intention, approaching God as father of mercy and yet as lord of judgement. We’re reminded in this regard of how Bernard’s two breasts remind us that we have the grace of God for our salvation, but we should also remember the fear of the Lord in not offending Him in our daily sins. But Calvin uniquely continued to be profoundly sensitive to the horrors of alienation, of inner loneliness and indeed of abandonment.

The Institutes came to the notice of the Duchess of Ferrara, who then invited him to Milan and to travel to Lausanne and to visit Geneva for 20 months. Then he spent three further years in Strasbourg attending colloquia in Haguenau, in Worms and Regensburg. All this was in the aid of scholarship, for Calvin was still unwilling to be a pastor. Probably all this was to protect his inner feelings involved in this new culture of printed books that quickly made him more famous as a reformer, his key writings being the Institutes, which were now enlarged in 1539 from 85,000 to 200,000 words and then translated into French from Latin in 1541, further revised in [1553 00:17:33] and with a definitive edition in 1559. And now there are 450,000 words.

Calvin began to preach in 1536 occasionally. His friend Theodore Beza records that from 1541–64 his daily schedule over these 23 years was to preach every day on alternate weeks. He tried as often as possible to preach twice every Sunday. He also taught three times weekly on theology. He gave a lecture every Friday. [During our scripture lessons we call the congregation 00:18:23], he says. He developed reading holy scripture, a wholly new device, which was giving a running commentary of the text that provided his material later for writing his various Biblical commentaries. An amazing industry. As his friend Beza wrote in the dedicatory letter to Calvin’s Commentary on Ezekiel, ‘No single person of our time has left so many works containing such healthy and complete doctrine’. Yet he also wrote catechisms, confessions of faith, liturgical works, legislative texts for the Geneva governance, polemic sermons, and on and on. It was an extraordinary, incredible literary achievement for any single person.

Meanwhile, he still had time to write to numerous friends all over Europe—over 7,000, of which 1,247 survive. But he had copies of nearly every one of his letters. He never wrote in isolation, for it was usually the pressures from friends that kept forcing him to keep on writing and printing. The rest were prompted by his ecclesial calling. Fluent in French and Latin, he now began to learn Hebrew with the help of Jewish rabbis, which caused some criticism from his rival reformers. But it explains his skill in appreciating the Psalms, especially the texts of the Old Testament. He’d access to many [inaudible 00:20:23] texts with special knowledge of Augustine’s works and with special admiration of the works of John Chrysostom and Bernard of Clairvaux, that was a special favourite of his.

Denise Tamburello in her book Union with God argues it was Bernard who deepened Calvin’s mystical sense of the love of Christ, deepening his inner experience of participation in Christ that became a major doctrine that he expounded throughout the later part of his life. Calvin was also an avid reader of fellow reformers, reading the works of Bucer, Vermigli, Bullinger, Viret, as well as earlier authors like Luther, Erasmus, Peter [Martyr 00:21:18], Zwingli, Melanchthon and on and on. All this was possible because of this remarkable new innovation of a new culture: printed books.

What was Calvin as a family man? Many of Calvin’s theological metaphors are about God as our Father and of we as His loving children. His first catechism of 1537 was intended as a manual for parents and children to learn at home. So he states we do not pray aright unless we’re persuaded that He is our Father, while baptism is our adoption into the family of God. The Lord’s Supper is the way a benevolent father feeds his household. Therefore, God both calls Himself our Father and would have us so address him. By the great sweetness of this name, He frees us from all distrust, since no greater feeling of love can be found elsewhere than in the Father. Therefore, he could not attest His own boundless love towards us with any surer proof than the fact that we’re called the children of God. Again, in his Commentary on Galatians he states a similar emphasis on God as our Father: we are the sons of God because we have received the same spirit as His only son.

All this suggests the profound sensitivity that Calvin felt within his soul to the horrors of alienation, loneliness and abandonment that he had felt since he was a child. They had a primary influence on his theology, observed Oberman, so that before and after conversion, knowing fear in all its gradations and using words in the Latin language that escalate from metus to [timidatus 00:23:39] to anxietas and terror. He saw it was the pastoral task to guide souls then from these terrifying fears to a proper fear of the Lord. And this is precisely what Rome had never done by intensifying fear through the confession box, but it was a neurotic fear. It was not the fear of the Lord. Our hearts are frightened and they falter because there’s nothing more difficult for us than to realise that God is gracious. Surely, they have long sermons about the fear of God, but because they keep miserable souls strapped in their doubts, they may be building without foundation. This was his commentary on Psalm 4:7]. And what is this foundation? Calvin explores 1 John 4:18 saying this is nothing about our love for God. It’s about His love for us. The love of God is really what tranquilises the heart. As John says that it’s the love of God that casts out all fear.

But what about Calvin’s own bachelor status? He was already 30 years old and numerous noble ladies had already written to him about their being truly cruelly treated by their spouses because of their reformed faith. Should they flee from their husbands and get divorced? What should they do? The Duchess of Ferrara had invited him to visit her to encourage her faith in a hostile household. So Calvin had no lack of potential opportunities. His friends Bucer, a former Dominican friar now happily married in Strasbourg, and Farel in Neuchatel, both volunteered to find Calvin a good wife. Bucer was too pushy, so he wrote Farel to help him find the right woman, writing I have never married and I do not know if I ever will. If I do, it will be in order to be freer for the Lord. Farel promised him a most beautiful prospect. Farel responded that he had exactly the right lady and hastily Calvin wrote back the only beauty that seduces me is one who is chaste, not too fastidious, modest, thrifty, and hopefully she will be attentive to my health.

Again, a wealthy, eager family then presented their daughter. So by the summer of 1540, besieged with so many attempts and so many strings of failures on the part of his friends, Calvin took things in his own hands and then he genuinely fell in love with Idelette de Bure, who was a widow of an Anabaptist with two children. He married her quickly in August 1540. But even their honeymoon was interrupted by the plague that kept them apart for several months. And after their marriage, Idelette had at least three or four infants, all born stillborn, such was the grief in those days of infant mortality rates. Then after eight years of marriage, Idelette died, leaving Calvin alone again.

No wonder he cultivated so many friends for the rest of his life as his one human solace. Some were very close, as with Bucer. Some were much more complex, as with Farel. And among them in nobility, there were many more formal friendships. But in bodily health, Calvin suffered from gastric problems which tended to make his temper testy with occasional outbursts of anger. He was always quickly repentant, but with those very close like Bucer he could write: because you are quite accustomed to my rudeness, I will make no excuse for writing to you so uncivilly. Today with our fierce independence of spirit, matchmaking is frowned upon, but in Calvin’s day it was quite appropriate for the clergy privy to many more household secrets to be asked to do this as a pastoral task. Exchanging at least 390 letters with Viret, the leading pastor in Lausanne, close to Geneva, Calvin learnt that his wife Elizabeth had died on February 1545, leaving Viret devastated and lonely. Intrigue followed intrigue as various parties including the city council of Geneva debated the issue and Calvin wrote letter after letter. At the end of the year, Viret, as Calvin himself had done, found his own wife and for the rest of his life Calvin exercised far more restraint in volunteering matchmaking. There’s an interesting book that’s been published called Courtship, Engagement and Marriage. Sex, Marriage and Family in Calvin’s Geneva, so it’s been already well researched.

Widowed himself at 39 years old, Calvin intensified his workload [attacks 00:29:53] and from 1547 on he was just like a madman. He began suffering punishing migraines and after 1541 these intensified as well as suffering from, we’ve already mentioned, his gastric and stomach and bowel disorders. Fortunately, his [older 00:30:18] brother Antoine had become close to Calvin and his two sisters were also a comfort to him, but most of all he relied on his close friends, enjoying with them a glass of wine, enjoying a good meal, music and art. These were some of the pleasurable things in life for him, for although there was so much appalling suffering around him, there was the beauty of the Swiss landscape to sustain the pilgrim’s heart. The portraits painted of him show his good taste: simple, yet elegant clothes, all pointing to a gracious Creator of all good things.

What about Calvin’s political life in Geneva? Geneva was never Calvin’s foremost concern. When he had first taken refuge there in 1536, he served as lector and right hand man to Farel the French reformer. Thrown out by the city council two years later, Calvin vowed he would never return to Geneva. But he changed his mind in September 1541 only because he saw Geneva was so close to France: a convenient staging post to return one day to his beloved country. He never gave up his French citizenship until 1559, now seeing Geneva could be a model for the rest of Europe. When I visit Singapore, I remind our friends there that they are the Geneva of the 21st century.

Calvin too faced the disenchanted Lutheran reform, which occupied a patchwork territory of many princes and duchies where there were territorial consolidations, like there were in the small city state of Geneva. Refugees doubled the size of the city while Calvin lived there, closer to each other in their poverty and their beloved leader than with the original wealthy burghers who had no desire to make any personal sacrifices. Reminds us very much of what’s happening in the refugee problem of Germany today. So the magistrates had a love/hate ambiguity towards Calvin. Politically, he was admired, but privately his charity was distrusted. Like Machiavelli writing in 1527, when one constitutes a society and gives laws for it, it must be taken for granted that all men are evil and that they will always give vent to the evil will rooted in their minds whenever opportunity arises. And this sombre view of the role of power was Calvin’s own pessimistic anthropology.

But unlike Machiavelli, Calvin the brilliant lawyer by training recognised that human depravity had to be redeemed by the grace of God. There’s a wonderful book that discusses this by Susan Schreiner, The Theatre of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin. Of course, political governance is always complex and stormy, but Calvin’s legal training helped him to create the new constitution after the expulsion of its Catholic bishop. His role is first substituted by the Company of Pastors and the Consistory of which Calvin was the moderator from 1541–1564. The company met every Friday to oversee doctrine and the community fellowship of the churches. But first, he had to weed out many local Genevan pastors with more radicalised reformed pastors because, like so many of us, we have pastors that sleep with the status quo.

The Consistory oversaw the laity, supervising the attendance of Genevans on Sundays and Wednesdays, which was also regarded as a day of prayer. To deepen the Genevans’ worship, daily Calvin emphasised union with Christ as his central message. This was hated by some of the citizens for a number of years. So not only imposing discipline on them, he strongly disciplined himself, seeing the Apostle Paul as his exemplar and mentor. Meditating on 2 Corinthians, [Paul embraced Paul 00:35:42], who speaks of his struggles and fears in the plural, meaning that he had to fight in many different ways against many kinds of enemies and at the same time he had many levels of fear.

At the height of his political career, his complicity in the death of Servetus in 1553 has cast a dark stain on Calvin’s reputation until we know the truth. To the end, Calvin had tried to get Servetus to recant his Unitarian heresy insisting stubbornly that Jesus was not the Son of God. Servetus had entered the city as a Frenchman in defiance of the city magistrates. Calvin gently reminded him how I had risked, he said, my own life more than 16 years earlier to gain him for the Saviour. I would faithfully reconcile him to all good servants of God if he recanted. You see, what Sadoleto was doing was trying to destroy the whole nature of the city of Geneva. It was not just a personal animosity or a personal controversy. He was trying to destroy the credibility of the whole reform movement of Geneva, so he got what he asked for. And it was finally not Calvin but the Geneva Senate that sentenced him to death, for the while credibility of the city state was at stake. What Sadoleto had really acted was in suicidal hubris.

Well, as we bring our meditations on Calvin to a close, and they could be inexhaustible, let me remind you of the fact that Calvin never opened any of his lectures without prayer. And one of the typical opening prayers that he gives when he starts to give a lecture is may the Lord grant that we may be engaged in the mysteries of His heavenly wisdom with a true increase of piety for His glory and for our edification. And we could appropriately conclude that as our prayer at the end of this meditation on this wonderful man.