Welcome back.
Last time we talked about the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther, the 95 Theses.
We’re going to continue with the Reformation here, and talk about John Calvin for a few
moments, second to Martin Luther in influence certainly.
Calvin lived from 1509 to 1564; he sort of represents a younger generation, sort of an
heir or beneficiary of the earlier work done by Luther.
He represents kind of a consolidation of this reformed movement or this tradition to reform
the church.
He studied theology in Paris.
He begins to have doubts about the confession in the role of the priest.
In 1533, he breaks with the Catholic Church and just earlier he had published commentaries
that had challenged the church, shall we say.
And we have to put this in a little bit of context.
King Francis the First of France is disturbed by the rising number of Protestants in Catholic
France.
So there’s, the government begins to oppress Protestants.
As a result, Calvin flees to Switzerland.
There in 1536, he publishes one of the founding documents of the reformation; it’s called
The Institutes of the Christian Religion, and you can Google that and take a look at
it, if you’d like.
In Geneva, in Switzerland, Calvin establishes a city state, and it’s kind of a strict
regime over the religious life of the people of Geneva.
This city state has a heavy emphasis on public morality, things that you should not do; open
expression of joy – dancing, singing – these are bad signs, signs that you may be affiliated
with Satan.
Citizens could be executed for saying the pope was a good man.
So you can see that this Calvinist ideology takes itself very seriously.
There is no room for dissent.
So let’s look at Calvinism in a little more detail.
Calvinism argues for the absolute sovereignty of God; God perceived scripture and he is
sovereign over all.
Calvinism argues for the radical depravity of man.
That bridgeable gap in Catholicism between man and God?
Not so much in Calvinism.
Man is too depraved to have any link to God at all.
A new addition of the institutes in 1539 kind of establishes an intellectual and theological
foundation for the Reformation.
The institutes, they reflect on the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer and the apostle’s
creed and other aspects of Catholic dogma.
I heard one historian talk about an acronym to help you remember the sort of central tenets
of Calvinism.
The acronym is TULIP, like the flower.
The T stands for total depravity; man has no way, no chance of meriting any sort of
redemption.
The U from TULIP, unconditional election; God chooses people for salvation and your
behavior has nothing to do with it.
The L in TULIP, limited atonement; for whom did Christ die?
Good question.
The I in TULIP, irresistible grace for the elect.
Again, no claim to merit; grace is not a reward for conduct; it is strictly God’s choice
as he is the ultimate sovereign.
And then the P in TULIP, persistence in grace; grace can’t be lost or rejected by those
elected by God.
Now who are these elect that Calvin talks about?
This gets into some deep theological waters here.
It brings up the problem of an omniscient and omnipotent God.
If God knows everything, if he knows your fate, has he willed it?
Is it God’s choice and not yours?
What happens to free will here?
And of course, free will has always been central to Christian theology because it helps explain
the existence of evil.
If God is omniscient, if God is omnipotent, then how do we explain the existence of evil
here on Earth?
The traditional Christian explanation is that God gave man free will so that he could commit
sin or could do good works.
And of course, this notion of the elect is troubling also because it hints at what we
might call predestination; God has already made this decision; he already knows who is
to be saved and who isn’t.
So these are difficult theological questions.
Of course, the old Catholic doctrine said that humans had free will and that God knew
the outcome.
He knew the outcome but he didn’t impose it.
So you can see the difference here.
Let’s continue with Calvin a little bit more.
I’m going to sum up some basic ideas here.
All people are predestined to salvation or to damnation.
What we do is irrelevant.
All is decided by God.
God’s sovereignty is so absolute that humans can have no impact on their fate.
So why not eat, drink, and be merry?
Why not do what we want since God has already decided.
Well, according to Calvin, to fight off the possibility of hedonism, of unrestrained behavior.
Calvin talks about the signs of election, those outward symbols that you are among God’s
elect.
No one can know for sure if they’re among the elect – so public professions of faith
would indicate that you might be; regular church attendance; leading a Godly life – all
these things point to the fact that you should be, if not, you should be among the elect.
All these may be a sign of God’s grace.
So these habits, these Godly habits produced a certain uniformity of behavior.
Everyone wants to appear to be one of the elect.
Now Luther and Calvin agreed on the primacy of scripture, on justification by faith and
not works, and that free will is pointless because for humans because of the bondage
of original sin.
There are differences.
Luther did not accept that grace was persistent and irresistible.
Luther and Calvin also disagreed on the certitude of salvation.
Luther does not hold for absolute predestination.
And there are other differences between the two, but I don’t want to get into too much
detail here.
So in the end, we place John Calvin in the larger context of the Reformation and his
significance lies in creating this powerful theological foundation for certain sects of
the reformers, especially the Calvinist that will be in Northern Europe.
We get varieties of them in England and Scotland, and in Germany, and in France.
And then later of course, we’ll have the Puritans, when they go to Plymouth colony
in the early 17th century, that’s the Calvinist theology that they take with them.
Some of you may have had a chance to read Jonathan Edwards, the famous Puritan divine
and his sermons about the depravity of man and how God’s holding us like a spider over
the pit of hell.
Really chilling stuff to read, but it gives you a nice insight into the Calvinist view
of the relationship between God and man.
So I’m going to stop there with Calvin.
Next time we’ll talk about the Counter-Reformation.
Thank you.