Theology of the Reformers - Lesson 7

Dr. Timothy George
Theology of the Reformers
th230-07
Calvin's Role in the Swiss Reformation
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:02] Theology of the Reformers. Tape seven. Tape seven is Calvin's role in the Swiss Reformation. Other comments as. Because he betrayed them. They were his followers. And then he turned against them and supported their execution and so forth. Well, yes, in the sense that, you know, these early anabaptists in Zurich were indeed the radicals of England's. They were followers of him. They came to certain insights and scripture. He couldn't go with them on that. And there was a parting of the ways. And he certainly supported the use of force against them. You know, he stood by the river when Felix Moss was drowned. That's certainly true. I don't think that he led the attack against them, but he he supported that. Yeah, that is true. It was a century of great violence. And we have to think about that when we think about one of the things in studying history, because we have so much in common with many of these people and their ideas which are alive and vibrant for us today, we forget that, you know, the past is another country as the title of a novel, Australian novel. But it's a good it's a good thing to remember that there is a distant there's a strangeness here. And part of what you do when you study history is to step back into that strangeness and to experience. Why wouldn't you have stood with the English and said, Y'all go, Let's kill the Anabaptist? You seem to think that's a bad idea. Why do you think that? I mean, it wasn't at all obvious that that should be the right response in the 16th century. So you need that sense of being a little disoriented. What's going on here? You need that if you're really going to understand not just the 16th century, but any other period of history as a good comment.

[00:01:33] So I'm glad we spent that time on the Anabaptist because we should spend all the time with Lutherans, Dingley and and Calvin and forget about the Anabaptist are very important. And what about this article on the spirituality of the Radical Reformation? I understand some of you didn't get it. Would anybody like a copy of it? All right. See those hands? Would you distribute to anyone who. I think I have ten or 12 copies. You're welcome to take one. Read that. I'm not going to lecture on it that some of that stuff might show up on a final exam. Who knows? But in any event, it's worth your knowing about. Any other questions about book? Are those of you that have completed your work and you now know a lot about the person work of Christ, about sin and the law and all that stuff? So now you're ready for book three. Now book three is my favorite book in the institute is the longest book in the institute. So get ready for that as my favorite chapter in the Institute, which is chapter 20, Book three, Chapter 22, The Chapter on Prayer. So it was a lot about the Christian life, about the spiritual life. You know, this is also where predestination comes in, so get ready for that. You thought it was already there on one and two, know, really very resurrection. It's a great it's a great book. Look great. Thank you so much time. We're not going to do it. Yeah. Continuity of the company. Right. And again. Basically, it seemed like he was reading to me that this is a bad thing to do to get. In other words, you're saying there may be some inconsistency, or at least not as strong a linkage on the question of the Sabbath.

[00:03:10] They could sound a bit more like a. Right. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. That's a very good point about your watch watching, because, you know, one of the issues in the reform tradition is the question of sabotage Zionism. And to what extent are we bound now to to observe the Sabbath in a very strict and legalistic kind of way, or at least in a way that shows that kind of continuity with the old and the new? That's a good point. I'm not sure I have a good answer to that, except that I have a sense you may be right about that. I to go back and look at that again. Somebody else have a good point about that or anything else. Yeah. Question was about the Sabbath. You want to repeat your comment? I just thought it was odd that he would spend from a deposition bringing out the company for the old interview and the transfer of the. For. I think that he felt it was appropriate for the company to run the last one. And he kind of argues from prudential reasons, doesn't he? And in some ways, the same way he does against women in ministry. You know, he says, you know, this is for order sake. And another situation might be different, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yes, sir. I know that you have a comment. So you notice that especially. Yeah. And we take the time to sit down about. So we have a lot of critics of Calvin in this class. I can see that already. That's okay. That's all right. He didn't get it 100% right. Yeah, I heard him say something. Yeah. How does he deal with the crisis descending into hell? Isn't that interesting? I don't know what I thought that would be like that.

[00:05:07] What does he do with it? What? Yeah, he kind of mythologize it, doesn't he? Right there. You know, there was no trip down there anywhere. You know, he suffered hail on the cross and all that sort of thing. The thing is, I believe what you want to do. It's good for you to be close and to do the right thing to do. The nuts and bolts include philosophy that we go by NASA, but we got to that point as well. Yeah, that's another big controversy in the reform tradition, whether the descent into hell was a literal descent or whether it was figurative and that sort of thing. Interesting story. You know, of course, we say that in the Apostles Creed every time we use that reason that Mr. Beason did not like that phrase in the Apostles Creed, and I remember him calling me on several occasions, one time visiting in his home. Why do we have the he descended into hell. He was a member of the Independent Presbyterian Church that used to always call his minister, Scott, and say, If Scott McClure, why do we use that? He descended into hell, our savior didn't go to hell and he just couldn't understand it. But we left it in the creed anyway. So I think now in heaven, Mr. Beason has a better understanding of it. Well, we've got to get going here on on Calvin. And that is to say that we're dealing now with a second generation reformer. We talk about Luther and Zwingli. They were the two giants of the first generation, both born in the same year, remember, are six weeks apart. But now when we come to Calvin, we're dealing with a person who was born a whole generation later.

[00:06:35] 1509 what was happening in Europe in 1509 Well, in that year, the year Calvin was born, Luther was granted his degree of St Ruth, which meant he was qualified to lecture on the sentences of Peter Lombard, and so began his teaching career at the University of Effort. He was already a professor in England in 1509 at Richmond Palace. The King Henry, the seventh lay dying, attended at his deathbed by his son, robust and recently married 18 year old Harry, soon to become King Henry the Ape in Rome in 1509, the Pope was Julius the second. Remember Erasmus called him the warrior pope because he said he looked more like he was the successor of Julius Caesar than of Jesus Christ. He would soon issue a plenary indulgence for the rebuilding of Saint Peter's Cathedral, which would open up the whole indulgence issue in Germany and bring Luther into it in a new way in 1517 and in 1509 in Switzerland. Called right Zwingli was already a pastor going about his pastoral work in the Canton of Glory. All of this is to say that when Calvin really enters into the Reformation as a as a player, so to speak, when he became a Protestant in the early 1530s, he inherited a tradition already well defined by nearly two decades of controversy. Luther and Zwingli and these early protagonists were dealing with issues at a very different level emotionally, theologically, even. We've seen how Luther's own theology emerged out of his intense personal struggle to find a gracious God. Not by reading books or speculating, Luther said, but by living, by dying and by being down. Does one become a theologian? And this quest for Luther. This quest of Luther to find a gracious God had led him to embrace the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which he grafted onto the radical Augustinian tradition of the Middle Ages, emphasizing grace alone, and which he affirmed in terms of an appeal to Scripture alone over against the traditions of the church.

[00:09:00] Grace alone, Scripture alone, faith alone. And with this, a new understanding of the church. The church, Luther says, is where the word is rightly preached and the sacraments are duly administered. There is the true church. Now, when Luther's gospel burst onto the scene in the early 1520s, he was excommunicated in 1521. He was confident that the Gospel he had rediscovered the gospel of grace and of salvation by grace would win the day. Soon the papacy would crumble. The emperor would embrace the gospel. Luther said the Jews and the Turks would also be converted if only they could hear the gospel purely preached without all of the medieval trappings and so forth. And then when all of this great revival had taken place, Christ himself would return from heaven in glory, and the devil at last would be vanquished and the millennium would descend. But by the end of that decade, by the end of the 1520, Luther's apocalyptic optimism had turned to near despair. Why? Well, the Pope had excommunicated him, for one thing, and was busy convening the Council of Trent, which would open up a whole new counter insurgency against the reform of the Counter-Reformation. We call it the Emperor Charles. The Fifth had placed Luther under the Imperial Band and in the late 1820s was preparing to wage war against the Protestant princes of Germany who had supported Luther politically. And so it seemed that the very political structure on which the Lutheran Reformation had begun was about to crumble like a house of cards. The Jews, Far from responding to Luther's appeal to evangelize them, they had resisted. And so Luther himself becomes increasingly turned in harsher and harsher statements against the Jews as he grows older. Near the end of his life, writing a horrible treatise in which he calls for the burning of their synagogues and their expulsion from Germany, the Turks, the Ottoman Turks, the representatives of Islam.

[00:11:19] In the 16th century in Europe, far from succumbing to the Protestant message, were fighting a holy jihad against it. And by 1525 the year Luther is married to Kati von Bora, the Turks had advanced to the gates of the city of Vienna, which, if you know your geography very well, isn't too far from Germany, just down the Danube River. And so by the end of that decade that had begun so optimistically for Luther, the Protestant movement itself had begun to fragment within. There were the humanists led by Erasmus. They had made Luther a household name. They had taken his 95 theses and distributed them all over Europe. They had rejoiced in his attack against the abuses of the church, monasticism and all of that. But fundamentally, the humanist Erasmus and his friends were not so interested in doctrine and in theology as they were in the reform of society and morality, in education, in what Erasmus like to call the philosophy of Christ. Only slowly did they realize the implications of Luther's theology. What about the freedom of the will? Luther says We are slaves to sin until we are rescued by grace. What about divine goodness and human responsibility? Let God be good, said Erasmus. Let God be God. Said Luther. And the two went their way. And after 1525, when Luther's bondage of the will was published in response to Erasmus Treatise of 1524 on the freedom of the will, these two great leaders never spoke or wrote to one another again. And then there were all these people that we call the Spiritualists, the radicals, the Anabaptists Luther just lumped them all together. You call them Shermer. You know that word German? Shermer Sounds like a bunch of bees swarming around a hive.

[00:13:13] Luther didn't distinguish these. SHERMER They all sounded like to him like a bunch of bees around a hive. Some of them were radical, indeed. They repudiated all externals the scriptures, the sacraments, the visible church. Why do you need those things when you have the intangible, illegible, inaudible inner word of the spirit? Thomas Luther we talked about Luther was one of these people that was always talking about the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Spirit, spirit, spirit. Luther says he sounds like he swallowed the Holy Ghost feathers and all stuff too much for Luther. Or the problem was everybody could appeal to the Bible. He's already seen that in Zurich, the Anabaptist and Zwingli. One observer noted that on the basis of the Scripture, the papist down, the Lutherans, the Lutherans down the Zwingli in this lands damned, the Anabaptist and the Anabaptist and all the others, all on the basis of the Bible and even the mainline Protestants, as we call them now. Luther in Zwingli The reform in the Lutheran branches of the Reformation could not agree themselves on the most basic issue of Christian worship. That is the nature of the Lord's Supper. How is Christ present in the sacraments? And in 1529, Luther and Zwingli came to a parting of the ways of the colloquy of Marburg. So in 1531, the English was killed on the battlefield of Kapell, wielding a double headed ax defending Switzerland, the Protestant part of Switzerland, against the Catholic cantons. And it was at this precise moment with Zwingli dead on the battlefield. Erasmus was dying. Dies in five more years in the city of Basel, Luther and Lutheranism has become retrenched. The Roman Catholic Church resurgent. The Radical Reformation fragmented and soon to be further discredited by the horrible events in the city of Minster in Northern Germany is at this moment.

[00:15:20] It's a crisis moment in the Reformation, a moment when it seemed that all was lost in a way that John Calvin emerges as the leader of a new movement and the reformulate of a new theology. I say all of this by way of introduction, simply because we cannot possibly understand the impact of Calvin and the power of Calvin system and his theology without seeing pre-history that led up to it. In contrast to both Luther and Zwingli, Calvin might be said to have been born into the church. His father, whose name in French, was Gerald Kovacs. The AUV in Calvin, is the latinized form of that French name. Koven was something like an administrative assistant to the Bishop of New York City, 55 miles to the north of Paris. It was there that Calvin was born in 1509. His mother died at a very young age. And while we haven't had anybody with the audacity of Erick Erickson to do a psycho history of Calvin Klein in that caliber, we don't have a young man. Calvin, All our young man, Luther. There have been a few studies that have tried to make quite a lot out of the death of John Calvin's mother when he was just a little boy. Probably the best book here is by a scholar named Suzanne Selinger. It's called Calvin Against Himself. And she argues that the deprivation of his mother at such a tender age had a very profound psychological shaping on Calvin's later life and theology, including his aversion to the human body and so forth and so on, as he kind of paints him into this radical, dualistic, Gnostic kind of figure. Not very convincingly for me, but, you know, you read it and see what you think about it.

[00:17:13] His father did marry again, and Calvin spent the younger earlier part of his life in the company of some very courtly friends who were highly placed in French society. That become very important, I think, for his own sense of couture. At age 12, he received a benefits. The only one who benefits is being in EFC a benefit benefit Yume in Latin. Yeah. Yeah. It was a kind of scholarship. That's what it amounted to, actually. According to Canon law, a benefits was an office in the church that was bestowed upon a person. But it was one of the abuses of the late Middle Ages. In other words, if you received the benefits, you might take ten 15% of that and hire some illiterate flunky priest who can hardly read to go over there and say Mass in the chapel to which that benefits was given, and you could take the lion's share of that money and then go study somewhere. I mean, you'd use it as a scholarship to advance your own career. That's exactly what John Calvin did with that benefits that his father got it because his father, remember, was highly placed in the office of the bishop. That's an important point. It's kind of a little small side footnote here, but there's a great deal of debate as to when Calvin actually became a Protestant. He never tells us the date. He doesn't give us the kind of information Luther does. Luther just gushes all over the place, you know? But Calvin's very reticent about talking about his personal things. But one of the sure signs is when he goes back to his hometown of New York in 1534 and resigns the benefits gives us the benefit of that rather substantial income. At that point, clearly, he had crossed the Rubicon.

[00:19:14] Well, with the benefits in hand, Calvin is off to Paris, where he studies first at the College de La Marche and then the college near Montague, receiving a licentiate in arts. And we know a little bit about his routine during those days. His days began at 4:00 AM. Calvin later said that he used to stay up after midnight studying, so that meant he didn't get a lot sleep. So the other students had retired much earlier than midnight or 1:00 whenever he went to sleep, but he found it necessary to continue studying and staying at the books. And it was during this time that he apparently already acquired something of the censorious nature of his later years. Or he was nicknamed by his fellow students the accusative case. That may be apocryphal, but it's in some of the early biographies. I don't know if you want to believe that or not. But what's really interesting about this early period in Paris at at the College de Montague, one of his classmates was conceivably a young Spaniard named Ignatius Loyola, who later becomes the founder, of course, of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Isn't it interesting to think that for a few months, maybe, or weeks perhaps? We don't know. Sure. Surely the chronology here, these two great protagonists of the Reformation, Calvin and Loyola, shared a common table and a common library at the College de Montague. Interesting. Some historians have drawn interesting parallels, comparisons between the Jesuits and the Calvinists, the Presbyterians, whatever. On this point, in terms of their grimness and their sense of logic and the compelling, if no, no doubt about it, when you look at the face of religious Europe from 1550 to 1750, the two driving powerful forces were the reformed Calvinist churches and the Society of Jesus, particularly among the Counter-Reformation goods.

[00:21:21] I don't want to put too much into that. In 1525, Calvin's career suffered a sudden change all along. His father had expected him to pursue a career in the church. But as Calvin later recalled thereafter, my father considered that the study of law was more likely to enrich those who followed it. And this expectation made him incontinent. Lane changed his mind. Well, I think it's still quite true, generally speaking, that the study of the law is more likely to enrich those who follow it than the study of theology. Some things haven't changed since the Reformation. But here's an interesting contrast with Luther. Remember, Luther's father wanted him to be a lawyer so he could have someone to support him in his old age. Luther, however, in defiance of his father, gave up the study of law to become a monk. Calvin, in obedience to his father, gave up the study of theology to become a lawyer. And so he threw himself enthusiastically into the study of this new discipline law, first at Oriole and then at Boras, two great centers for the study of law in France in the early 16th century, eventually earning a doctorate in civil law no mean achievement. Even then, he maintained his innocence in the the discovery of something that's not exactly. Yeah, because, you see, it was sort of church related because the law, unlike today in America, separation of church and state, all that, the law was very deeply involved in the life of the church. In fact, you have a whole doctor you could earn in canon law. Now, Calvin's was in civil law, but he could still work for the church and was kind of under the roof, the rubric of the church. Even so. Though his training in law was to leave an indelible mark on his career, he was not, in the end to pursue a legal career.

[00:23:22] God. Calvin later explained in his hidden Providence at last made me turn in another direction. Now the event, which precipitated the shift of direction for Calvin, was the death of his father in May of 1531. Calvin now turned from the study of law to, well, it's hard to say what you'd call this to humanism, but not humanism. As we think about it today, a anthropocentric philosophy of life. No humanism in the sense of humanities, of the humanities, of a sense of going back to the sources of classical, antiquity, language and literature. That's what that's what humanism was in the Iranian sense of it. And he published his first book as a result and immersion into a study of the classics. His first book was on a book by a Roman philosopher Seneca on the topic of clemency. De clemency. It's a massive book. Has anybody ever looked at that interview? Calvin Freaks Go over to the library and check that out some time. I mean, that is an amazing book. It's only 21 years old when you published it. Seneca's commentary on clemencies. Calvin's additionally really with his notes. He did two things to he established the proper text on it. So it was a work of textual criticism, comparing manuscripts and all of that. Then he also gave a commentary on what it meant. So it's a major work of scholarly exposition for anyone, much less a 21 year old. But in the preface to this book, Calvin apologizes that this is merely his first book. He said, I could have written other books earlier, but I decided that I had rather be barren than put Forth Abortion's Way to put it. And this was an audacious study for anybody, not only because he was so young attempting something so difficult and magisterial, but also because just two years before, in 1529, Erasmus had published his own commentary on this very treatise by Seneca.

[00:25:39] Erasmus is the greatest scholar in the world. Calvin throughout is very critical of Erasmus Edition, its body. He thinks it leaves a lot of things out. Erasmus got it wrong, and now he, John Calvin, has the final word on Seneca. I maybe like some of you young whippersnapper Old Testament scholars writing a commentary on Genesis after Dr. MATTHEWS has done such a great job that maybe you can do that. I don't know. Take a little bit of brass, don't you think? That's third row, fourth over. All right. Well, here's an interesting thing about this treatise. It was a complete flop in terms of its publication value. It only went through one edition and Calvin had to pay for that out of his own pocket. He thought this would make his reputation. He would become a great humanist scholar. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even a blip on the screen. The earliest letters we have of Calvin. He's sending 50 copies to a friend. Do you think you can persuade Professor Domitian to use this as a textbook in his classes? Sell a few more copies, you know, have professors do. So, you know, here's Calvin pushing his own books. Well. Sometime between 1531 when this commentary on Seneca came out and 1534 when he turned in his benefits. Calvin underwent experienced a conversion from the Catholicism in which he had been brought up to the Protestant faith. We wish we knew more about this. There was just a lot of hidden this mystery here about Calvin. We know that he was living for a while with a family in Paris who had harbored one of the early they were called evangelicals, the French evangelicals. They were people who wanted reform of the church.

[00:27:35] They read Luther's writings, which early on had been translated into French. And one of these people was actually burned at the stake, was killed, executed as a as a heretic. And Calvin may well have seen that, or at least he was very close to people who were very close to that. That may have had some impression on him. We don't know for sure. It doesn't say this is what he does say. And this is from his commentary on the song, the preface to his commentary on the song, which is from 1557, rather late in his life. He died in 1564. Was looking back now and here's his personal testimony at first. While I remain so obstinately addicted to the superstitions of the papacy, that it would have been hard indeed to have pulled me out of so deep a quagmire. God. A sudden conversion to the door. Converting on a sudden conversion. God subdued my heart to teach ability. Latin word is no. Chillicothe Docility in English doesn't quite do it. Teach ability. It made it teachable. That's how Calvin describes his conversion. God suddenly subdued his heart to teach ability. Well, reading between the lines, here's a rising young humanist scholar. All these ambitions were world fame and renown. Oh, really? Doesn't make it. And perhaps the rise of persecution against the French evangelicals, the reading of Luther's works. All of this comes into play. And there is this moment, this event, which clearly was prepared for. It didn't happen out of the blue, but it was a turning point of great significance when God subdued my heart to teach ability. Now, what's really interesting about that is the way Calvin puts it. Who is the principal actor in all of this? If God isn't counting, God subdued my heart to teach ability.

[00:29:34] And here He is on the exact same wavelength as Martin Luther, who said, I opposed indulgences in all papers, but never by force. I simply taught, preached, wrote God's word, otherwise I did nothing. And then while I slept or drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip in my arms door, The word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a pope or emperor did such damage to it. I did nothing. The word did it all. That's what Calvin is saying, to think it all now. You know, we kind of look back on the word. What do you mean? You did nothing. You did a lot. I mean, you know, you've changed the face of the of Europe. But neither Luther nor Calvin saw themselves as a kind of Lenin of the 16th century or a Robespierre, a revolutionary. They saw themselves as acted upon, as instruments in the hands of God. And it was God who was working through them to accomplish his purpose. And it was that perspective that gave enormous power and conviction to what they were about. As I say, this must have occurred before 1534 because it was in May of that year. Calvin on renounces the benefits that had supported him through all these years of eternal student hood. And it's also later in that year 1534 that he writes his first work as a Protestant. It's a little book entitled Cycle Panic here. Which is a refutation really, of the doctrine of soul sleep. It's a fascinating piece. Not very long, 9000 pages. But he had encountered this idea. It was an idea that a lot of people had and certain Anabaptist and radical reformers thought it, and even Luther toyed with it for a while. Calvin comes out strongly against it.

[00:31:36] The doctrine of Soul Sleep. Later brings out another edition of that in a little more refined form. So it indicates that even at the time of his conversion or shortly thereafter, he was already well versed in the scriptures, already immersed in some of the theological issues. This was beginning with the fresh, clean slate. This had been percolating for some time. Well, without laboring too much in these kinds of details, let me say that the persecution against the French Protestants has increased in intensity under the King Francis, the first. Calvin is forced to flee, perhaps implicated in some of the events that were happening in Paris, the affair of the placards. And you can read about all of this. We next pick up his trail in Basel in 1536. And it was here in Basel that he published a little volume entitled In Latin Christianity. Religion is Instituto. The first edition of the Institute. Published in Basel, the very city where at the moment this book was published, Erasmus Lay Dying. Isn't that interesting? Erasmus and Calvin both in Basel at the same moment. Well, unlike his first book on Seneca, this little book did become an overnight bestseller. It began to be carried by Protestant Cole Porter's. They were all these people who who were in the business of distributing books and selling books, carried surreptitiously under cover of Dark into France, into all parts of Switzerland, because it was written in Latin. So anybody with a education could read it. And later translated into French, but originally written in Latin. Why it's success. Why did this little book. It was a little book, by the way. What you're reading is the 1559 definitive edition. It grew over time when it was originally a rather small book.

[00:33:52] You could hide it in your pocket. Why did this little book become such a bestseller overnight? Almost. I want to suggest three reasons. One, it was a track for the time. A track for the Times. And if you read the prefatory letter to Francis, the first don't be beguiled by how beautifully Calvin writes. I mean, that sounds like such a polished treatise. And of course it is. But there is far in blood breathing in that letter to Francis, the first talking about Protestants who are being burned at the stake. He's making a plea on behalf of his evangelical brothers and sisters in France who are dying for their faith, pleading, We're not anarchists, we're not against the king. We pray for those in authority. And yet I say, Your God, you have anybody I want. I see your God. Look at the last line. Do you see that on the prefatory address? The King Francis. Let the king beware of acting on false charges, the innocent and so forth. You know where it goes to this great long apology. And then he comes to this last line, and what a stinger is in this last line. 2531 MacNeil Battles Authorized Edition. Just read two or three sentences. You get the sense of this. I have not tried to formulate a defense, but merely to dispose your mind to give a hearing to the actual presentation of our case. Your mind is now indeed turned away and estranged from us. Even inflamed, I may add, against us. But we trust that we can regain your favor if in a quiet, composed mood, you will once read this our confession, which we intend in lieu of a defense before Your Majesty. Suppose, however, the whisperings of the malevolent soul fill your ears that the accused have no chance to speak for themselves.

[00:35:56] But those savage furies, while you connive at them, ever rage against us with imprisoning, scourging, wracking, maiming, then burning. Then we will be reduced to the last extremity, even as a sheep destined for slaughter. Yet this will so happen that in our patients we may possess ourselves and may await the strong hand of the Lord, which will surely appear in due season coming forth armed to deliver the poor from their affliction, and also to punish their despise ers who now exalt with such great assurance. You don't think that's a threat? That is a threat. Now it's God again. Who's doing it. I did nothing to work. Did at all. But it didn't take too many decades before the Calvinist of France began to take up arms and to call for the right of the subjects to overthrow the king. And so you have the wars of religion, the Huguenots and all of that. Reading John Calvert. So there's something here beyond what meets the eye. It's a track for the Times. And there were those who were hungry to hear that kind of word. A little liberation theology, if you will, in the 16th century. Now, number two. Why was this first edition of the Institute so successful? Number one, it was a track for the time. Number two, it was an apology for life. I mean, it was his coming out of the closet, so to speak, as a Christian, as a Protestant, as an evangelical. And he declares that and and put his name now to this work. And so he becomes a very important figure in that world, really, for the first time. And thirdly, and maybe this is the most important reason, it's for surely the reason why we're still reading it today in 1997 is what you have in the institute is the first real systematic exposition of the Protestant message.

[00:38:07] Now, I know Luther wrote a catechism in the length. Von wrote a little piece called Loci Communism for Real. There were a few others who tried it, but none of them really pulled it off the way Calvin did. Now, the Institute is not a systematic theology. We'll talk about that later. It is a biblical theology. It was intended, of course, to be a handbook to scripture, something you used while you were studying the Bible. Chapter by chapter, verse by verse, book by book. And so you have to always use phonic perspective. But all of that being said, this was still the first real systematic summary or exposition of Protestant theology. And of course, it went through many different editions, and we'll be talking about that as we go through the institutes themselves. I think what I'm going to do now is ask you to take a very brief break. I've been working with the assumption this was a three hour class. I've been duly reminded it's a two hour class. So let's take a five minute break and we'll be back at 4:00 to finish. Calvin. This part of Calvin, if everybody that we've been following them from my vantage point, because it would be like an infinite. Even the perfect. Oh, yeah? What did Calvin do? I think Calvin received some special calling from God prior to his exile from France. It's just so hard to answer that question because he doesn't give us any basis for knowing. Your logic makes sense to me. He certainly was. Was moved deeply before he went to Basel. I mean, he was already pretty pretty far advanced at that point, and I don't think he was merely fleeing persecution. I think it was there were other considerations.

[00:39:50] You know, he wanted to do ministry and to write and to publish these sorts of things and to be of service to the church and. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously. Yeah. There were no, like, standard, so to speak, in the church of any great significance. It was usually something passed on by heredity. Otherwise, you know, you would bequeath this to your son or something like that. They'd become a priest with a hereditary office, which, again, was an abuse. It shouldn't have been that way. But that's really what happened, so that the standards were very low. They were mixed. I mean, you shouldn't say everybody was like that, but there were many, many, many who were the ones. I would say, well, the point is, you know, one of your sons, you don't know what to do with them. So you make them a priest. You let them become a priest. And then in turn, you know, that's passed on like the nieces and nephews, people like that in the in the family, extended family. Let's go now to what did I leave off? I was talking about why we drink wine. Yeah, okay. Exactly. Now, on the eve of the pope of the institute's Calvin makes a visit to Italy. In fact, he goes to see a very important woman there. Her name is Rene, and she is the Duchess of Ferrara. Now, the car, the Ferrari in that car, she's the Duchess of the Ferrara. And she also, maybe more importantly, is the daughter of Louis, the 12th, the king of France. She is a highly placed, very noble woman, and she has gathered around her at her court in Ferrara. A number of I guess you could call them propos Protestant. They were they were people who were friendly to the reform.

[00:41:44] They were reading Luther. They were seeking after a deeper experience of the Christian faith. And so Calvin spent some time there and actually becomes a counselor to her exchanges letters with her. Well, the interesting things to look at in Calvin's life is his relationship with noble women, well-to-do, noble women, particularly of royalty and connections in the court. He has a vast correspondence with a number of these kinds of women and actually persuades many of them to embrace the Protestant faith. And there's no doubt that that is one of the reasons why the Hugh, the no movement, the French Protestant movement, was so successful in France in the 16th century, where these noble women, who then in turn often had an influence on their husband or on those around them? Well, this is this is a beginning of a pattern of kind of Calvinist evangelism, if you will, this kind of way. After spending some time at Ferrara, he comes back to Paris. Actually goes back to No on his hometown for the last time to settle some business that has been remaining from his father's estate or something like that. He intends to go from Paris to Strasbourg. Now, Strasbourg was a pre imperial city. Today, it's a part of France. It has been in a just past a part of Germany. It's on that border between France and Germany that's so much disputed over Alsace and Lorraine. World War One was about. To some extent, that's what World War Two was triggered by that. This is a very troubled part of the world of Europe. That's where the Rock bought it. But it was a free imperial city that meant that it had its own autonomy within the structure of the Holy Roman Empire.

[00:43:28] And it was known for its strong humanistic studies for its strong Protestant church. Martin Luther, do you see TR as the reformer of Strasbourg? And it was here that Calvin intended to go, but the road was blocked because there was a major war going on between Francis, the first the King of France and Charles the fifth, the Holy Roman Emperor. And so Calvin had to take a detour, and this detour led him through the city of Geneva. Now, Geneva had already experienced a political and religious revolution before Calvin ever arrived under the fiery preaching of William Burrell, a name you should know f a r e l e r l. Obviously from his name you can tell he's a Frenchman like Calvin, but he's older than Calvin. He's a far more fiery evangelist preacher than Calvin. And Farrell had led the city of Geneva to renounce the Roman Catholic Church to oust the bishop, under whose authority it was, and to establish a kind of very nascent reformation there. They have done this somewhat in the same way that Zwingli did it in Zurich by holding a public disputation. This had happened actually in 1533rd December 1533, but clearly not a great deal had been done except that the bishop was kicked out and for real with preaching and they were trying to bring about reform. But there was a lot more that needed to be done and Farrell was probably not the one to do it and he knew it. And so when he heard that John Calvert was in town, no doubt he had read that first edition of the Institute. No doubt he had heard something of Calvin's reputation, a scholar, maybe as a preacher and leader in the church. And so he decides to make Calvin a visit, and he visits the hotel where Calvin is spending the night.

[00:45:34] Calvin has no intention of spending more than one night in Geneva. He hated Geneva. It was a dirty, rat infested city. And the sooner he could get out, he thought the better. But Calvin appears at his door late one night, arouses him from sleep. Calvin is confronted by this big boy's red bearded little man, William Farrell, who's 20 years older than he is. And he says to Calvin, Oh, you must stay with us here in Geneva and take up the work of reformation. Oh, Calvin, that you know, this. This is beyond me. All I want is to study a place of leisure and quiet where I can write books that give me a carol in the library and let the rest of the world go by. But Calvin was not able to put off quarrel. If you refuse, Farrell thundered, to devote yourself with us to the work, God will condemn you. Calvin later said he was terrified and shaken by Farrell's dreadful adoration. And so God thrust me into the game. I did nothing words at all. So he was pulled kicking and screaming, as it were, into the ranks of the reformers. You've got to get this part to understand Calvin. Luther is a volcano of a personality. Zwingli was an activist. He died on the battlefield wielding a double headed sword X. Calvin, though, refers to himself as a rather unsociable and rational person who likes peace and quiet. And that note of reticence is something that we've this way throughout his whole life and his work and even his theology. In a way, it's a very reticent theology. He doesn't like speculation. He doesn't like. Following. Chasing down trail that are not clearly spelled out in scripture. Now, we may think in fact evaluate some of that on a few points.

[00:47:50] Okay. But this is what he tries to do well for. Several years. He and Pharrell stay in Geneva, and they do the work of the ministry. The first record we have of calvin in the city books, the city council books refer to him as L.A., all of that French money. And here is a very interesting point, because although Geneva was then and is still today a French speaking city, it is not a part of France. And that is a very important distinction that the people in Geneva are most aware of. Back in those days, it wasn't a part of Switzerland either. It was a canton unto itself. And when you go to Geneva today, when I was writing Theology of the Reformers, I lived in Geneva, studied in Geneva for a while. And right next to the Cathedral of Saint Pierre, where Calvin used to preach, is the headquarters of the Genevan Protestant Church. And you know what it's called? It means Protestant Nazionale. It's the National Protestant Church of Geneva. They are a nation very proud of that fact. Now, Calvin was and always remained till the day he died. And Frenchman in that Frenchman. And you're never going to understand the conflict that developed in Geneva between Calvin and the City Council, between Calvin and the people in Geneva. They're rioting in the street against them. They're naming their cats and dogs. Calvin the dog. Calvin, You never understand that animosity. Why was nearly killed three or four times by these angry mob? Unless you realize he was a foreigner, he was an alien, and he was not particularly welcome for much of his ministry there. But many of the people who were the old families, the traditions and the cultures of Geneva.

[00:49:49] I have a comment question. The reason we had to boil it down was. Yeah I did. I did. I did. I surely did. And in fact, two years after Calvin arrived in 1538, he came in 1536. Both Farrell and Calvin were expelled from the city. The issue with who controls the church. Basically because Calvin refused to give the Lord's supper to some of the leaders of the city Council, took guts. Okay? They were the people who paid his salary. They were the people who city. But he said, I am the pastor of this church, and if you're going to come to the Lord's table, then you have to have certain standards of behavior. You have to live a certain way. And when they say, well, forget you, I can go off and do what I want to and still come here and have the Lord's Supper. He says, No, you want. And that confrontation led to his expulsion, both him and Farrell. For all goes to Neuchatel. That's a little city down the lake where he actually stays for the rest of his life. And he has a wonderful, significant ministry in the town of Lucia del, which was much more French friendly than Geneva. Calvin, on the other hand, goes to Strasbourg. That's where he had been headed to start with before for a railway lady. But now he's in Strasbourg and I think this was the happiest time of his life, the three years he spent in Strasbourg from 1538 to 1541. For one thing, he was a good friend of Martin Luther, the reformer of that city, the leader of the church in that city. And so he and Boozer had good fellowship together. He was also a pastor. This is where Calvin really gets a lot of his pastoral theology and experience.

[00:51:42] He was the pastor of a little French refugee church, the crazy old Gallic Khana, the little French refugee church. Because the persecutions in France had increased and intensified. There were streams of Protestants who were leaving. They were coming for get with a border city. And so Calvin supplied the ministry to them and their own French speaking church. He was also a teacher in the academy. Early on, had a Protestant academy organized by a man named John Stern. Stu Ah, m. Well, Calvin was able to teach and to try out his lectures in this setting and to get something of an educational philosophy that he would take later back with him to Geneva to start his own academy there. The Academy of Geneva, which was started in 1559, out of which grew the University of Geneva, which exists to this day. And here's again, one of the things about the Reformation and especially the reformed tradition. Luther And the lengthen, too. We're interested in education in school, but it's really in the reform tradition that you get this almost religious and single minded commitment to education as a divine responsibility under God. Thought the Puritans were all about why they founded Harvard College. First thing they did in 1636 and before they had done anything else, really, they established a college for the training of their young people in the ways of God. Well, the third thing I mention is his writings. He was a pastor. He was a teacher. He was also a writer. And he had he began really to be the prolific writer that we now know, him looking back on his life during this time as well, for one of his most important writings was an exchange of correspondence with Cardinal Satterlee.

[00:53:42] Yes, a letter. He was a Roman Catholic cardinal who had written a letter to the church in Geneva trying to persuade them to come back to Rome, back to the fold of Rome. And Calvin writes a response to him, the wonderful apology for the Reformation. He also revises the institute. The first edition was 1536. He publicly publishes a second edition in 1539 and then a third in 1541. So he's always reworking the institutes, adding be leading, changing, reshaping, reforming until he finally arrives at that definitive edition of 1559, if you're reading. And at Strasbourg during this early time, he also writes His first commentary on the Bible is a commentary on Paul's epistle to the Romans. 1539 one of his greatest commentaries. And it's hard to say that about his commentaries because he all of his commentaries are outstanding, and they're used today even by people who aren't Calvinist, even about people who don't like Calvin because of the exegetical wisdom and insight that he has in interpreting the Scripture. I don't have enough nerve to ask you to read anything else in this class. But I will. I will say to you that before you die and maybe before you graduate from decent, you ought to read some of Calvin's commentary because it gives you a different view of Calvin in the Institute. And they're nice to be read sort of side by side. But just remember that number four, he was really involved in discussions with the Roman Catholics, a kind of early Protestant evangelical Catholic humanism, if you can call it that. There were several colloquy held to see if there were some way the Catholics and Protestants could could bridge things over and patch things up. And Calvin was a participant in those discussions along with Melanchthon and Luther.

[00:55:46] Some of these people. Well, I wouldn't make that claim, but we could say that in a way now. Number five, you got married. And here N is an interesting story because he was clearly the most eligible bachelor in town. And Martin Luther, the reformer and his friend was known as a matchmaker. And sure enough, Boozer tried to match Calvin up with three or four eligible young ladies. But there was always some problem. One of these young young women could not speak French. She only spoke German. Calvin couldn't speak any German, so they thought they'd have the communication problem. It didn't work out. Another one that boots her was urging on him. Calvin thought she was just fine. Her looks were good and so forth. But then right before they were scheduled to be married, it was discovered that she had been withholding a lot of information about her past and she had a rather unsavory past. And so that would not really be the pastor's wife. So that didn't work. Finally, Calvin writes the following letter to his friend Burrell. Ian Burrell back in Russia. Tell me, why is boots are always trying to get me met? He says, I am not of that wild race of lovers who are so taken by a woman's beauty that they overlook their faults. The only beauty, the only beauty which can seduce me in a woman is that she be modest, submissive Sunni's and French without heirs, economical patience, and above all that she be able to care for my help, which led one of my students to say on an exam with a with a personal ad like that. It's amazing Calvin ever found anybody. As a matter of fact, he did find somebody. He found a a widow of a French speaking Anabaptist.

[00:57:36] Her name was Eaglet the Boar. He was a member of the little French refugee church where he was serving as pastor. And they were married, happily married for ten years before her untimely death in 1551. And if you want to see the human side of Calvin, then read some of the letters he wrote to his wife and read some of the letters he wrote to his friends after the death of his wife. And the sense that here is a person who had a heart. There is a there is a book called The Humanness of John Calvin by French scholar named Richard, sort of a askew FDR Richard stuff. The Humanness of John Calvin. I recommend between those, you know, you've got to make it through. We can always do to make it available to put it through that. I wouldn't say that's wrong. I wouldn't say that's the only reason for which he married, but certainly that would have been a proper and appropriate reason for him to marry. I think he would have agreed to that. Yeah. 37. To go back to last year when she was no longer an Anabaptist. Calvin had converted her husband and her to the reform faith before he died. So, you know, she wasn't a practicing Anabaptist, but she had been. So, yeah, they were pretty hard and fast. And 1541 between the Reformed and the Anabaptist. Now it's 1541. Calvin is enjoying life in Strasbourg. He's married, he's a pastor, he's riding, He's doing all these things. And the call comes from Geneva. Now, for him to come back to the city of Geneva, things have gone from bad to worse. I'll just get Calvin back. And so the city council writes in the letter and somewhat pleading and sort of semi apologizing for expelling him in the first place.

[00:59:44] Will you please come back? Oh, no. Calvin says I'm not interested in going back to Geneva. You know, he was glad to be rid of Geneva before, and he certainly doesn't want to go back that he says, I would rather bear a thousand crosses than to go back to the city of Geneva days. So he turns them down, but they can't find anybody else to do what they think Calvin alone can do and giving order and direction to the reform. And so somebody in Geneva said, why don't why don't you write Farrell and get Farrell to ask Calvin to come back? And that's exactly what I do. They write Farrell a letter, and Lucia tells him, Please. And poor Caso so frail right now that if you don't go back to Geneva, God will continue. So we can't say no to Farrell and back. He goes in 1541 where he stays, of course, until his death in 1564. Now, there are several things to be said about Calvin's reentry into the Geneva situation. In the first place. When he arrived back in town, there was electricity in the air. The cathedral was packed, filled with people. On the first Sunday of Calvin's return to Geneva and everybody expected that Calvin would get in the pulpit of the air and thunder out against his enemies and say, I told you so. This is what Calvin does. He goes into the pulpit of Saint Pierre. He doesn't say a word about the last three years. Doesn't say a word about his expulsion and his humiliation. He goes into the pulpit and he takes the scriptures and he opens them to the very verse he had been preaching on in 1538. And he takes up an expository sermon on the scriptures right where he left off.

[01:01:38] Finishes the sermon, closes the Bible, leaves the church. And what was he saying? Well, he was saying the Reformation isn't about me. It's not about personality. It's not about politics. The Reformation is about the word of God. That's what needs to be heard. That's what needs to be proclaimed week by week, day by day. And in saying that, you know, he gave a a direction and a tone to the work in Geneva that has endured long after he himself died in 1564. There was something else. Remember, the church in Geneva was in shambles. I mean, before they'd had conflict over who runs the church. Is it the city council? Is it the pastor? Is it the elders? Who is in charge here? So Calvin says the only way I'll agree to come back. Is if I can propose a new church polity, a church government for the city of Geneva. And so, Calvin. The first working publishes upon his return in 15 5041, is a work entitled in French lays ordinance ecclesiastic the ecclesiastical ordinances of the City of Geneva. It was essentially a book of church order, but Presbyterians would call it today. It was a it was a church constitution, and it set forth a four fold office that became standard for reform that most Presbyterian polities from that day to this. What were the for offices? Pastor, Teacher, Elder and Deacon. The pastor would have primary responsibility for preaching the word or administering the sacraments. The tincture, which Calvin distinguished from the pastor. Later in the reform tradition, these two offices sometimes seem to collapse into one. You have a pastor teacher, but the teacher was really one who was expert in holy Scripture, who knew Old Testament and New Testament in biblical languages and could could teach the church the word of God in a very deep and profound way.

[01:04:02] Not to say that the pastor didn't also have teaching responsibilities, but there was a separate and distinctive office of teacher. Dr. Thielman is a Presbyterian teaches New Testament with us here at. He is ordained in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church as a teacher, ordained to that office. So it's still in some Presbyterian tradition, still an office for which you can be ordained today. Now, the third office was an elder. This was a lay office, very important, a lay elder. And they were responsible for the discipline of the church. And this meant very specific things in Geneva, as we'll see in just a moment. And then there were the deacons. The deacons in Geneva took over the old offices of those who cared for the sick, the needy. They were ministers of pastoral care. We probably call it something like that today. Now, how was how were these four offices to work together in the reform of the Church of Geneva? Well, Calvin established an organization called the Consistory, the Kansas Law, and the consistory was made up of elders and pastors, both two of the four for four offices, and they met once a week on Thursday in Geneva to consider the state of the church and what needed to be done to continually reform it. And a part of that was the setting forth of a discipline for the church. It was something of a court, but it was not a civil court. In other words, they did not have the authority to put people in prison to execute anybody. That was not the work of the consistory. That was the work of the city council, the magistracy. And yet remember that some of these elders were on both sides. So there was a interweaving connection between the civil and the church system of Calvin.

[01:06:24] There is a very important distinction between church and state in Calvin's Geneva, but there is not the separation of church and state as we have in America today. Very important to understand that. That's why servants could be condemned to death and burned at the stake, not by the church, but by the civil government. But with the approval of the church and not only the approval, but also the judgment against it rendered by the consistory. And there was a closely interlinking connection, not highly different than what happened in Puritan New England, Massachusetts Bay Colony, which, after all, with a very Calvinist society, intended to be set up as such. Well, I don't wanna get too much into that. You can read about it. A good book is called Calvin's Geneva by William Monitor, IMO NPR. It's been around a long time. I used it when I was a student, so, you know, it's been around a long time, but it's still good. Calvin's Geneva. If you want to know about kind of the intricacies of church and state. But not everything went as planned. Why? Well, because it was a it was a fluid situation with a revolutionary situation. What Calvin and these people were trying was very difficult. Difficult. And there was resistance. That's why he was kicked out in the first place. And even though he was invited back with open arms, many of those who said, We want you back soon said we want you out again to the way it is very fickle. But this time, Calvin was able to hang on. And despite a lot of close calls when he was nearly expelled several times and very often he would be set upon and attacked physically as he walked through the streets.

[01:08:05] And why were they against it? Well, part of it was this French-Swiss thing I talked about before. He was still illegal. Was that Frenchman? Part of it was just the rules and regulations that they were trying to establish in Geneva for the reform of the church and the city. Now, some people loved John Knox, you know, from Scotland, the great reformer of Scotland. He spent a while in Geneva in exile under Bloody Mary. And he he wrote back and said, this is the most perfect school of Christ on earth since the days of the Apostles. It was John, not his cup of tea, but he wasn't everybody's cup of tea. One of the things they tried to do was to do away with the taverns, you know, the drinking houses, the pubs in England. Well, they couldn't completely do away with it because, you know, there were buildings there where people went to drink after work before work and during work. And so so instead of, you know, just demolishing the buildings, Calvin and the Consistory had this great idea. Let's turn them into little evangelical hospitals. And so they had a name for them, the abayas and a a y. E. S. They were to be centers of innocent entertainment. Every table had to have a French Bible. And the Innkeepers were encouraged to foster religious discussion and to serve no food to anybody who had not said things and to report on anybody who engaged in excessive drinking or protracted card game. They were trying to reform the city of Geneva. Well, what happened? People boycotted these things. They didn't go. The innkeepers got near because they weren't making any money. And in three months, the taverns were opened in. The wine spigot was running.

[01:09:47] So it didn't all work like Calvin. Oh, by the way, Calvin was not a takeover back. The city council paid him part of his salary and barrels of wine every day. So he believed drinking in moderation, but not he was not a teetotaler. Well, another big change occurred in 1555. I've got to get Calvin buried here real quickly. In 1555, there was what has been called the second Genevan revolution. The first one being 1533. And they kicked out the bishop. Now, in 1555. There is an influx of refugees from all over Europe, not just France. There are a lot still from France, but they're coming from Italy. They're coming from Hungary. They're coming from England. Mary Tudor. Bloody Mary. All that's going on. They're flocking to Geneva. And these refugees gained citizenship, many of them with the right to vote in elections. And so in 1555, there is a major victory of the party that supports Calvin. And from 1855 until his death in 1564. Calvin does have far more influence on the events in Geneva than he did prior to that time. He still is not a tyrant. He still doesn't rule with an iron fist. Everything he says goes. That's just a myth of Protestant liberalism. But he does have a great deal more in. Florence from 1555 onward. In 1559, he brings out the final edition of the Institute in Latin, translated into French the following year, 1560. Also, in 1559, he establishes the Academy at Geneva and calls Theodore phase off from the city of low, then a across the lake to come and be the first rector of the academy. And of course, Beza will eventually succeed Calvin as the reformer of Geneva when Calvin dies. In 1564, Calvin is on his deathbed.

[01:11:49] He gathers the leaders of the city, the company of pastors around him, and he gives his farewell address. I don't have time to read it to you, but I recommend I think I include a little snippet of it in my book. And you can you can read the whole thing. Well worth reading. He looks back on his whole life. He kind of summarizes his life and his work and his ministry and looks into the future. What do you hope will will happen when he is gone? And then in 1564, he dies. He requested that he be buried in an unmarked grave. And he was. When you go to Geneva today, you cannot find the grave of Calvin. We know where Luther's buried. He got a bit buried with a big grave in the church and place where his sarcophagus lies. We don't have any marker for Calvin because he was buried with the papers thrown, his body thrown into the common ground where the poor were buried without any monument. However, there is, of course, a monument to Calvin. You would guess that in the early 20th century, they erected what's called the Wall of the Reformation, has this huge statues of Calvin and Bazan Farrell and the leaders of the Reformation that people come to now Geneva and sometimes they don't like Calvin the rotten eggs at it or spray paint on it or something like that. But it's sort of a place of veneration for those who are in the reform tradition. I never really like it. And so it's an impressive place, but I don't think Calvin would be very happy with it because he would have said I did nothing the word at all. Okay, I'll see that we meet that week. Yeah. One more week before that break. Yeah, next week we'll do. Is theology. Okay? I'll give you a one lecture summary of his whole theology.