YSCM Y o r k s h i r e S c h o o l o f C h r i s t i a n M i n i s t r y for all Bible believing Churches and Christians - organised by The West & North Yorkshire FIEC Churches the bible college on your doorstep J a n u a r y 2 0 0 8 XTEND Church History: John Calvin The Reformation in Europe Introduction Calvinism crystallised the Reformation. Luther and Zwingli had radically changed the old religion but beyond a vigorous emphasis on the Word of God, the reformed faiths lacked precise authority, organised government and logical philosophy. John Calvin supplied them with all this and more. The influence which he wielded from the city of Geneva, which he virtually ruled from 1541 to his death in 1564, spread through Europe and later to America. 1. Calvin - His early years and Conversion Born in France, July 10 th 1509, Calvin received an education amongst the nobility. He entered the University of Paris in 1523 where it was expected that he would enter the priesthood. However, in 1528, his father ordered him to change from theology to law. It was here that he first made contact with Lutherans. He graduated in law in 1531, and returned to Paris. Following the death of his father in 1532, Calvin dropped his study of law and turned to religion and theology and joined a group of Protestants in Paris for prayer and the study of the Scriptures. His sources of study were the Scriptures, Paul and Augustine. He acknowledged that it was in 1529 that he had begun to read the writings of Luther and Zwingli and stated that he was "Beginning to emerge some what from the darkness of popery, and having acquired some little taste for sound doctrine when reading Luther and Zwingli...". His conversion probably occurred during the autumn of 1533. Its central experience was that God spoke to him through the Scriptures and God's will must be obeyed. He wrote later, "God subdued my heart to docility by a sudden conversion". Calvin had suddenly received a total conviction of God's omnipotence; from that moment he knew himself to be under orders, an instrument chosen by God to proclaim the truth. Calvin was always very reticent on the details of his conversion. He was not a man without feeling or bereft of a true spiritual experience of God. He reveals himself as overwhelmed by the consciousness of sin, just as Luther was, and constrained in his conscience. He is telling us that his conversion was not, as has sometimes been maintained, a cold intellectual decision, but an act in the depths of a heart which trusts in the Christ of Calvary. Calvin never had doubt of the grace of God. In addition to owing a debt to Luther for his sermons, which provided a significant influence in his conversion, Erasmus' Greek Testament showed Calvin how far the teaching of the Church had moved away from the Gospel story. The timid and fearful scholar accepted the inner guidance of God and turned into the most single-minded and successful maker of a reformed Church. Will-power, discipline and order were Calvin's particular watchwords, and he put his powerful mental and moral gifts at the service of a single purpose: the erection of God's kingdom in this world. q u a l i t y t r a i n i n g f o r b u s y p e o p l e
The overwhelming difficulty of his task, the grave responsibility which rested on his shoulders as Calvinism spread throughout Europe, as well as continuous ill-health, tended to make him rather an isolated and awesome figure. On November 1 st 1533, Calvin's friend, Cop, who was rector of the University in Paris, preached a sermon of which Calvin was the author. Its affirmation that God alone opens men's hearts and gives them faith, all this is pure Reformation doctrine, and it was preached from a Catholic pulpit! Following the preaching of that sermon Cop and Calvin had to flee for their lives as the authorities were seeking to arrest them. Calvin was now identified with the Reformation. He eventually travelled to Strasburg and then to Protestant Basel where he settled for a time and the first edition of his most famous "Institutes of the Christian Religion" was published in 1536. 2. Calvin's Reforms in Geneva In June 1536 Calvin came to Geneva, for a night. William Farel had recently reformed the city in 1533. By 1536 Farel had triumphed. Farel was an enthusiastic preacher of great fire and power, but neither an organiser nor a man of constant purpose. He was, therefore, finding the task greater than he could manage. When the fiery Reformer heard that the author of the Institutes was in town he at once went to Calvin's lodgings and pressed him stay. Recognising his own deficiencies, he found in Calvin the right man to supply the qualities needed. Calvin protested his unsuitability but later yielded. Thus began the historic connection between Calvinism and Geneva. Except for three years interval, 1537-41, when the opposition gained the upper hand and expelled Farel and Calvin from the city, Calvin spent the remainder of his life at Geneva. First he sought to rectify the erroneous doctrines that were being taught by preparing articles of faith and a system of government for the Church. Next he prepared a Catechism for the children and then proceeded to attack the immorality of the city. Eventually, in 1537, those who considered his reforms too far-reaching expelled Calvin and Farel from Geneva. However, during his absence of a period of three years, during which Calvin was pastoring a church in Strasburg, the situation in Geneva deteriorated and the city leaders pleaded for his return. Whilst away from Geneva he married a girl years younger than himself in 1540, enlarged the "Institutes" and wrote his "Commentary on Romans". During his second term in Geneva, Calvin sought to make the city a model of the perfected Christian community. He was strict on discipline within the church, giving this duty to elders who were the very heart of his system. Other offices included deacons to care for the hospitals and poor. Pastors, teachers and ministers took care of the teaching in schools and churches and the general ministry of the fellowships. The case of Servetus presents a significant negative mark against Calvin. Servetus, a Spanish physician, held heretical views about the Holy Trinity. To his thinking, the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity and the Chalecedonian Christology were the chief sources of the corruption of the Church. The court, of which Calvin was a part, condemned the views of Servetus. He was accordingly sentenced to death in October 1553. On October 27 th 1903 a memorial was established in Geneva to mark this sad event. 3. Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion" The "Institutes" formed the very text book of the Reformation. The book instantly made Calvin famous and demonstrated that a new leader of Protestantism had arisen. Within twenty-three years of its publication (1536), its six original chapters had been increased to eighty. Throughout the rest of his life he laboured on it, till the final version appeared in 1559.
Calvin presented a theology in which God was central. Obedience to God's will is man's primal duty; the glory of God being the ultimate end of all things. Calvin was much more concerned with God than with man. The stress is from the first, and throughout, on the overwhelming omnipotence and omnipresence of God who has created the world so that man may have knowledge of the Supreme Being. The "Institutes" also portrayed an intimate subjective experience indicating the place of the sinner as the object of God's immense love and mercy. Calvin saw that justification was alone by the grace of God through faith but he also recognised the importance of works within the Christian life, "We are justified not without, and yet not by works". This new life of faith is salvation, but it is salvation unto righteousness. That the believer now does works pleasing to God is the proof that he has entered into vital union with Christ. The necessity for holiness receives significant emphasis in the "Institutes". It has been said that the theme of the work itself is "godliness". Calvin initially presented his "Institutes" not as a theological treatise for the academics, but as a basic instruction in the Christian religion for the average Christian to read. Calvin intended, the work to present an introduction to, and instruction in the Christian faith, a commentary on the only authority (God s will as revealed in scripture), addressed not to fellow scholars but to the world. A translation of the Latin title of the "Institutes" reads, "Containing virtually the whole sum of Christian practice and all that needs to be known in the doctrine of salvation; a work very well worth reading for all Christians with a zeal for godliness". Predestination, whilst it dominated later Calvinism, was not the core of Calvin's own religion. His starting point, as always, was God's omnipotence and omniscience. From before the beginning of time, God had predestined some men to be saved (election) and others to be condemned (reprobation); the means He had chosen for executing the decree was faith in Jesus Christ, which, of His grace, He imputed to the elect and refused to the reprobate. This double predestination was not stressed by Calvin (although it was made a future characteristic of Calvinism). However, he felt that it was impossible to conceive of a positive predestination without actually implying the negative element. Calvin argued that predestination was a natural and logical derivation from the concept of an omnipotent God and was fundamental to Christianity, being found in Paul and Augustine, advocated by Luther and Bucer. Like Augustine, Calvin held that every human being is from birth guilty of his own sin and that of Adam, thus man is incapable of saving himself by his own actions and can only be saved through the unmerited, freely given grace of God. If anyone argued that God was thereby unjust, Calvin replied that all men are justly condemned for their sins, and beyond that we cannot see the almighty purpose. We know that God always acts in justice. How that justice works is beyond our sight in this life. Election itself is seen as the Christian s comfort, being taught as a blessing to the soul. That God had a plan of salvation for a man, individually, was an unshakable rock of confidence. In respect to the Lord's Supper, he naturally denied the sacrifice of the mass and transubstantiation. Calvin took a position midway between Zwingli and Luther, he did not see the body of Christ present in the bread and wine, for Christ was in heaven, but to believers He is spiritually present, having chosen the means of bread and wine in the communion to infuse grace into the redeemed soul. He stated that the elements were a "seal that confirms the promise, and in order to do so, it sends us to the cross of Christ, where that promise was performed". The elements "assure us" when we "partake of it by faith". Calvin held that the whole of scripture was authoritative. Like Luther he thought the New Testament superior to the Old; but where for Luther the gospel had superseded the law, for Calvin the New Testament reaffirmed the Old. Calvin's opposition against moral and spiritual
laxity meant that he laid greater stress on obedience to the law than any other Reformer. Like others Calvin distinguished between the visible and invisible Church. The latter consisted of all those who had been predestined to salvation. His view of the Church was (similar to Augustine) one in which ultimate authority resided. Calvin viewed the civil authority of the state as the "ministers of divine justice". Whilst the Church deals with the life of the "soul or the inner man", the magistrates are concerned with "setting up of civil external justice of morals". The Church was to have two ruling institution, the Venerable Ministry and the Consistory. The Consistory was a court of morals. Its discipline was strict and upheld by excommunication; the sentence it passed were often but not invariably harsh. Adultery, gambling, swearing, dancing, drinking, sleeping in sermon times and any practice that could be conceivable be described as Roman, all came within its control. 4. Calvin's Outstanding Influences on the Reformation in Europe Calvin laboured for twenty four years in Geneva, preaching many times each week, lecturing daily and continuing with his literary efforts. His influence extended far beyond Geneva inspiring and moulding the ideals of Protestantism in France, Netherlands, Poland, Hungry, England, Scotland and South East Germany. Protestant refugees in large numbers from all over Europe, especially from countries that were experiencing religious persecution, among which were Scotland and England. Many leading Reformers fled to Geneva to escape death. They came under the teaching and experience of Calvin resulting in their acceptance of his theology taking it back to England during Elizabeth I reign to make it the foundation of the Reformation in their own country. Calvinistic scholarship flourished in its university and in the Academy, which Calvin founded in 1559. Literature printed in Geneva flooded Europe. Calvin was the only system, which the Reformation produced that could organise itself powerfully in the face of government hostility. It trained strong men, confident in their election to be fellow workers with God, in the accomplishment of His will, courageous to do battle, insistent on character, and confident that God has given in the Scriptures the guide of all right human conduct and proper worship. By his death on May 27 th 1564, Calvin deserved the description of "The (only) International Reformer". Following his death, for a hundred years, Calvinists were the most potent religious force in Protestantism due to his teaching, zeal, discipline and organisation. The moral and devotional power in his doctrine proved to be the most compelling force of all. Through Calvin's ²"theocentricity" (God centred theology) in which God was presented in the Scriptures as being totally sovereign, men found a new strength, a renewed purpose and an ultimate goal at which to aim in the Reformation. In his Catechism of 1542, Calvin wrote, "God created us and set us in the world to be glorified in us. It is very reasonable, since He is the author and principle of our life, that we should give back to Him all His glory". Conclusion Calvinism, therefore, was the foundation of the Protestant movements in France, Geneva, Scotland and Holland, and a major influence in Germany and England, more especially in the colonies, which Puritan settlers founded in America in the seventeenth century. The Calvinist was undoubtedly strengthened in his struggles against principalities and powers by his sublime faith in the guiding wisdom and merciful grace of God. Far from making men indifferent to virtue, belief in predestination spurred them on to live a good life. Belief in salvation provided a stimulus to further efforts and a feeling of correct spiritual superiority and pride in their God because of His electing grace, and this in turn added to their strength.
Whereas Luther's ultimate religious act was an utter trust in a redeeming Saviour, and his ultimate text, "the just shall live by faith", Calvin's ultimate religious act was the assent of the will to an everlasting Lord; his ultimate text being, "thy will be done". If the circumstances are friendly, the Christian will give all the glory to God and none to himself. If the circumstances are unfriendly and ruin afflicts him, he will recognise the chastening of God and cry with Job, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed by the name of the Lord". Richard L. Lee File under Church History