This coming Friday, July 10, marks the 500th birthday of John Calvin. Dr. R. C. Sproul has written a four-page tribute to John Calvin entitled “The Theologian” as follows:
Dr. Philip Ryken, senior minister of Tenth Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, has also written an excellent, short tribute entitled “The Pastor Scholar” (click on article listed on right-hand column) as follows:
Thank you Dennis for reminding us about this anniversary of Calvin’s birth. There is enough negative information about Calvin the man and his theology, so this year brought a time when a more accurate view is presented in the books dedicated to this anniversary.
As far as I’m concerned, after consulting some of the biographies of Calvin available online, my favorite book is one recently written by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California, a book about which R.C. Sproul said that it is “a masterful treatment of John Calvin by a masterful theologian”, and D.G. Hart said that “arguably the best introduction to the life and ministry of John Calvin… For anyone wondering what the fuss is over the five-hundred anniversary of Calvin’s birth, this is the place to start.”
Entitled “John Calvin - Pilgrim and Pastor” the book aims to show BOTH the mind and the heart of Calvin. There are many books that present Calvin’s doctrine, life and piety, but this book, as Michael Horton says “it’s a marvelous integration of all three”.
Below is an excerpt from the book, highlighting Dr. Godfrey’s accessible style and that the book actually delivers what it promises. I’ll quote from the first chapter of the book in which Godfrey introduces us all to Calvin’s famous “Reply to Sadoleto,” the cardinal who tried to regain Geneva for Rome after Calvin was banished by the city council . It highlights also the ability of Godfrey the historian to go to the essence of a historical document and produce a good history book.
Sadoleto made a very personal attack on Calvin and the other ministers, saying that they had been motivated in their reforming work only by a desire for fame and money. Second, Sadoleto argued that only the Roman Catholic Church possessed truth, certainty and salvation--issues of deep personal significance for Calvin. Third, Sadoleto had created several prayers in his treatise that he had put in the mouths of an imagined person to illustrate some of the points he was making. These prayers written in the first person evoked from Calvin a response written in the same language.
[...]
Calvin’s “Reply” begun with a vigorous rejection of the idea that he was motivated by a desire for fame or money. He could more easily have found those in the Church of Rome. What motivated him, he insisted, above all was a concern for the glory of God. Where Sadoleto had declared that the Christian should first be concerned for his own salvation, Calvin maintained that the Christian must first be focused on God and his glory: “It is not very sound theology to confine a man’s thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him, as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to show forth the glory of God. For we are born first of all for God, and not for ourselves.” Calvin always intended his life and thought to be God-centered.
For Calvin, once the Christian saw the glory of God as central, then a proper discussion of salvation could follow. Only when we see God as truly glorious can we see the true nature of salvation and its importance. He wrote to Sadoleto, “...you have a theology that is too lazy, as is almost always the case with those who have had no experience in serious struggles of conscience.” Laziness and self-indulgence are not the path to true theology. Calvin believed that such attitudes had dominated the old church in which he had been raised and produced a church life filled with formalism, indifference, and superstition.
Calvin’s criticism of Sadoleto at this point certainly implied that he himself had had serious struggles of conscience. What kinds of struggles? We can see echoes of those experiences in Calvin’s discussion of justification. He had struggled with the great question of how to be right with God. Calvin stressed that a correct understanding of justification was fundamental. He wrote to Sadoleto that justification was “the first and keenest subject of controversy between us.”
Calvin presents his thought on justification in his “Reply” in terms of several steps. The first was self-examination. The sinner must come to recognize his own plight: “First, we tell a man to begin by examining himself. He must not do this in a superficial or perfunctory way, but must call his conscience before the judgment seat of God. When he is sufficiently convinced of his iniquity, then he must reflect on the strictness of the judgment pronounced on all sinners. When thus confronted and amazed at his misery, then he prostrates and humbles himself before God. He casts away all self-confidence and groans as if given up for final destruction.” The conscience of the sinner must come to see profoundly his lostness and helplessness. Calvin made this same point in his Institutes: “...no man can descend into himself and seriously consider his own character without perceiving that God is angry with him and hostile to him.”
This theme of very serious and searching self-examination was not an incidental matter for Calvin. Rather it was absolutely central to Reformation theology and spirituality. In many ways the Reformation was born out of the sense of the hopelessness and spiritual powerlessness of sinners. For Calvin the complete lostness of man was not only a teaching of the Bible and of all sound theology since the days of the church father Augustine (354-430)--it was also part of his own experience. Scattered throughout the “Reply” are indications that Calvin had personally struggled with his own sin and the terrible judgment that awaited him apart from Christ.
Calvin preserved something of this struggle before coming to faith in his final edition of his Institutes in the very first section of the first chapter: “...every one, therefore, must be so impressed with a consciousness of his own unhappiness as to arrive at some knowledge of God. Thus a sense of our own ignorance, vanity, infirmity, depravity, and corruption, leads us to perceive and acknowledge that in the Lord alone are to be found true wisdom, solid strength, perfect goodness, and unspotted righteousness.”
For example, in the “Reply” Calvin elaborates on this theme of struggle in one of the prayer he puts in the mouth of his average Christian: “I expected a future resurrection, but hated to think of it, since it would be a most dreadful event. And this feeling not only had dominion over me in private, but had its origin in the doctrine that was then everywhere delivered to the people by their Christian teachers.” Further the prayer speaks of efforts to satisfy God with works of righteousness: “When, however, I had performed all these things, though I had some intervals of quiet, I was still far-off from true peace of conscience; for, whenever I descended into myself, or raised my mind to you, O God, extreme terror sized me--terror which no expiations or satisfactions could cure. And the more closely I examined myself, the sharper the stings with which the conscience was pricked, so that the only solace which remained to me was to delude myself by forgetfulness.”
Although these prayers are not strictly autobiographical, they are so intense and personal that they must reflect something of Calvin’s experiences in his own conversion only six or seven years earlier. He had come to see for himself his desperate condition and had come to see it as essential for all sound theology and religious experience.
To Sadoleto Calvin insisted that after this self-knowledge the next necessity was a knowledge of God’s way of salvation. The sinner could hope only in God and his work since the work of man is utterly futile. Again Calvin puts words in the mouth of his representative Christian: “I was exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen, and much more alarmed at the eternal death that threatened me. As in duty bound, I made it my first business to find your way, condemning my past life, but with groans and tears. That way of God is the way of Christ. A knowledge of the work of Christ as God’s way of salvation is the second step of justification. Calvin, writing as a pastor and teacher, said, “Then we show that the only haven of safety is in the mercy of God, as shown in Christ. In him every part of our salvation is complete.”
For Calvin, Christ displayed all the promises of God concerning the Savior who would fully bear the sins of his people on the cross and impute the saving benefits of his work to them. These promises brought salvation to the sinner when they were received through faith alone. Faith was the link between Christ and the sinner. “Paul, whenever he attributed to faith the power of justifying, restricted it to a free promise of the divine favor, and keeps it far removed from all works.” Faith rests alone in the promise of salvation in Jesus.
Calvin showed Sadoleto that the result of the faith that rests in the justifying work of Christ is great peace and assurance for the Christian. “He has nothing of Christ, then, who does not hold this basic principle, that it is God alone who enlightens our minds to perceive his truth, who seals it on our hearts by his Spirit and who by his sure witness confirms it to our conscience. This is, if I may so express it, that full and firm assurance commended by Paul.” Calvin stressed the “confident hope of salvation both commanded by your Word, and founded on it.” Struggles of conscience drove Calvin to faith in Christ, and that faith brought a settled assurance and confidence to his soul.
Calvin Pilgrim and Pastor, pages 15-19, by Dr. W. Robert Godfrey
Dr. Godfrey quotes from the first edition (1536) of Calvin’s Institutes, which is just an introduction to Christian faith, and not the systematic treatise that became in time by Calvin’s revisions of it. He quotes what Calvin said about faith at this early stage of his Christian life, Calvin being converted just some years earlier, between 1529-1534:
God offers to us and gives us in Christ our Lord all these benefits, which include free forgiveness of sins, peace and reconciliation with God, the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. They are ours if we embrace and receive them with sure faith, utterly trusting and, as it were, leaning upon divine goodness, not doubting that God’s Word, which promises us all these things, is power and truth [Rom.3:21-26; 5:1-11]. In short, if we partake of Christ, in him we shall possess all the heavenly treasures and gifts of the Holy Spirit, which lead us unto life and salvation. Except with a true and living faith, we will never grasp this. With it, we will recognize all our good to be in him, ourselves to be nothing apart from him; we will hold as certain that in him we become God’s children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom [John 1:12; Rom. 8 14-17]. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536, page 24
In reply to Colin Hansen’s use of the word “Reformed” in his book “Young, Restless, and Reformed”, Scott Clark points in his book “Recovering the Reformed Confession” to the fact that “Reformed” has a different meaning that the original and historical understand of the word “reformed.” It’s similar to the way in which Norman Geisler calls himself a “moderate calvinist” while he’s not calvinist, and speaks about the true calvinists as “extreme calvinists”
One place where Reformed confessionalism will place us in conflict with some segments of contemporary Reformed Christianity is in the way the word “reformed” is defined and used. In a Christianity Today article Colin Hansen chronicled the rise of “Young, Restless, and Reformed” leaders in evangelicalism. The essay describes the popularity of and reaction generated by several evangelical leaders, none of whom is identified with a historic Reformed denomination or confession. For the purpose of this argument, however, what interests me about the article and the subsequent discussion is the way the adjective “Reformed” is used. It is clear from the article that what is meant by the adjective “Reformed” is “predestarian.” It never seems to occur to anyone in the discussion to correlate the adjective “reformed” to the historic Reformed churches and confessions.
Imagine, however, if we were to transport the current discussion to the early seventeenth century, when the Reformed churches were defining themselves in the forge of controversy with Rome, the Arminians, and the rationalists of their day. Imagine that these “young, restless, and Reformed” leaders traveled to the Synod of Dort and presented themselves to the Reformed churches of Europe and England as “Reformed Christians.” Would they be accepted as such? Of course, the first questions would be “What do you mean by Reformed?” “Do you confess the BC [Belgic Confession] and the HC [Heidelberg Catechism]?” At that point the discussion would soon fall apart because, though the visitors to the synod would have much in common with the synod on soteriology, they would have rather less in common with them on the doctrines of the church and the sacraments and on the hermeneutics of covenant theology. One cannot doubt that our time travelers would return home disappointed to be rejected by the Synod of Dort, but were they to try again at the Westminster Assembly, they would find a similarly chilly reception.
If our young, restless, and Reformed theologians could not find hospitality at Dort or Westminster, we may fairly ask whether the adjective “Reformed” is properly used of them. If, as this volume has argued, the Reformed Confessions are the measure of what it means to be Reformed, then it cannot include those, however earnest, who deny doctrines that are of the essence of the Reformed theology, piety and practice. Recovering the Reformed Confessions, pp. 343,344
Dennis, I actually attended Mars Hill Church for several months recently and made the decision not to stay there. My main concern with Driscoll is that his larger-than-life persona gets in the way of his message. I see this persona and his communication skill as both his greatest strength and biggest weakness. For example, he would often make himself an example of how to have a happy marriage, be a good father, or have a fulfilled life. This leads the flock to place him on a pedestal and attempt to emulate all of his masculine, hyper-cool mannerisms and conduct. Instead of focusing attention on the biblical text, the attention is unfortunately drawn to whatever catchy phrase or irreverent joke that might come out next.
Furthermore, Driscoll seems to really enjoy being at the center of controversy. Recently he finished preaching through the Song of Solomon and took many opportunities to criticize scholars who did not go far enough with their interpretations, preferring to take the most sensually explicit interpretation instead. For example, he said the Dance of the Mahanaim (or Dance of the Two Companies) in Song of Songs 6:13 was symbolic of an erotic dance performed by Solomon’s wife, and he encouraged the women of his church to follow suit with their husbands. This is one of the more mild examples out of several I could list. Driscoll has preached through Song of Solomon three times in the 10 year history of his church. In one of his books, he details how he found that preaching about sex caused church attendance to explode each time. “I assumed the students and singles were all pretty horny, so I went
out on a limb and preached through the Song of Songs. .... Each week I extolled the virtues of marriage, foreplay, oral sex, sacred stripping, and sex outdoors, just as the book teaches ... This helped us a lot because apparently a pastor using words like ‘penis’ and ‘oral sex’ is unusual, and before you could say ‘aluminum pole in the bedroom,’ attendance began to climb steadily to more than two hundred people a week.”
The open question period you mentioned, Dennis, gave occasion for people to ask him about such topics as Can I perform anal sex on my wife?. The blog post associated with this answer linked the reader to a “Christian Nymphomaniacs” page for more information. While I appreciate Driscoll’s desire to minister in a difficult part of the world, I think his desire to be “edgy” sometimes leads him to cross the line of acceptable pastoral conduct in very unwise ways. If you’d like to learn more about some of the concerns others are having about Driscoll, check this link.
Back to the topic of MacArthur, I found an interesting post on Phil Johnson’s site that gave a little more detail on the infamous 2007 address on premillenialism.
Here’s a quote that is relevant to the discussion here:
John himself is well known as someone who doesn’t back away from controversy—especially when some vital point of truth is at stake. And he does make careful distinctions between fundamental and secondary doctrines—the fundamental ones being those cardinal truths that are of the very essence of the gospel.
But as he demonstrated so graphically last week, he also has firm opinions on certain key doctrines he himself acknowledges are matters of secondary importance—not principal tests of orthodoxy or inviolable requirements for Christian fellowship (see John MacArthur, The Second Coming [Wheaton: Crossway, 1999], 19). He doesn’t necessarily mind taking a controversial, public stand on such matters.
There is also a discussion at the end of the page about how MacArthur and Johnson handle criticism from the “Truly Reformed”. It’s worth a read.
Greg
Greg,
Here is another review of a book written by Mark Driscoll. His preoccupation with sex seems quite unhealthy.
For some the doctrine of election (God’s free and sovereign decision to choose a people for salvation from the foundation of the world-Ephesians 1:3-6) is an abominable thought that produces great fear and concern. However, I propose that a clear understanding of this doctrine should instead produce hope and assurance. Allow me to share some of the reasons why the doctrine of election is so precious to me.
The doctrine of election is precious to me because it is biblical. In a display of the Father’s love for the Son, He gives a specific people to the Son (John 6:37). This truth is evident in the testimony of the book of Revelation when it declares that the only ones entering the eternal heaven are those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (Revelation 21:27). John further testifies in Revelation 13:8, that these names were written in this book before the foundation of the world. In other words, one fruit of the Father’s love for Jesus, is our salvation. The Father made a free and sovereign decision to save a people as a gift for the Son and for His own glory from the foundation of the world (see also John 8:47; John 10:26-29; Romans 9:10-16).
The doctrine of election is precious to me because it secures my salvation. Jesus declared that all that the Father gave Him would come to Him and that He would never cast out any who came to Him (John 6:37). Jesus delights in receiving and keeping those whom the Father gives Him because He came to do the Father’s will (John 6:38-40), and the Father’s will is that Jesus not lose any of the ones that the Father has given Him but that He raise them all up on the last day (John 6:39).
The doctrine of election is precious to me because it encourages me to pursue holiness. Paul reminded the Thessalonians “God chose you as the first fruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13, ESV). The Bible assures us that even though now we are only gradually being conformed to the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), we will at glorification be completely conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29).
The doctrine of election is precious to me because it is the basis for assurance of my salvation. Because God gives a people to the Son, and because the Son receives that people and keeps them, I am assured that I will never be cast out (John 6:37), nor perish, nor be snatched out of Jesus’ hand (John 10:28). Can you imagine such assurance? The God who predestines for salvation (election) will insure that all whom He calls to salvation will ultimately be glorified (Romans 8:30).
The doctrine of election is precious to me because it encourages me to share the gospel and gives me hope for fruit in evangelism and missions. Not only does the Father give a people to the Son (John 6:37), and not only does the Son receive these people and keep them (John 6:37-39), but the Father also assures that those whom He gives to the Son will come to the Son. It is the Father’s will that everyone believing in the Son have eternal life (John 6:40), and these who believe can only come at the Father’s drawing (John 6:44, 65). Therefore, if the Father gives a people to the Son, and He assures these people come to the Son, then we can be assured that evangelism and missions will bear fruit (Acts 13:48), and we can find encouragement in our Lord’s words to Paul, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” (Acts 18:9-10, ESV).
Finally, the doctrine of election is precious to me because it moves me to make much of God through Christ (true worship) and little of myself (humility). May we understand election and may it strip us of personal pride and move us to worship the Sovereign Lord in all His glory and grace.
----------------------------------------------
Your statements and text are artfully stated and biblically very well supported! I thank you for your time and effort in this post and your witness!
Like two gears within a precision machine, the irrefutable fact of God’s absolute sovereignty meshes perfectly with the doctrine of election.
We, as vile sinners, bring NOTHING to the table of salvation. It is by His grace, through faith in Christ that we are saved....
Ephesians 2:8-10 (NIV) 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
And even the good works that we do are done only because they have been willed (prepared in advance) by an infinitely generous and merciful God; who alone directs our own selfish will to want to serve Him in grateful thanksgiving, with tearful gratitude, not in obligatory servitude (as if to somehow consign to God an obligation and thereby, by our works, earn His indulgence...).
In Christ,
P.S. My thoughts and prayers continue for you and Marti…
