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Tributes: Measuring John Calvin after Many Generations · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed thinking. I am your host, and it's great
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  to be back here with you as we get ready to open up the
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  archives of church history once again.
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  Good to be here. As you listening know we're two
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  guys who hold to the Westminster Confession.
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  We love the doctrines of grace. And we're convinced that
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  theology isn't just for, you know, dusty library shelves.
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  No, it's for real life. It has to be what you believe
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  about God. I mean, it really does shape
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  everything else. It does, and usually we take a
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  specific doctrine, maybe a Bible verse, and we pull it apart.
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  Peace by peace. But today we're doing something
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  a little different. We're looking at a man.
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  A man who, let's be honest, has a bit of a reputation.
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  We are talking about John Calvin.
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  Just saying the name gets a reaction.
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  It does. And for us and probably for a
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  lot of you listening, the name Calvin triggers, you know, a few
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  specific associations you might think of the sovereignty of God,
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  maybe the. Suniva.
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  Of course, but generally I think people see him as the exclusive
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  property of the Presbyterian Church.
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  That's the standard view. He's the Presbyterian guy.
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  If you're not one, you might look at him with a bit of
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  suspicion, or maybe you just ignore them all together.
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  And that right there, is the hook.
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  For today's Deep Dive, we're looking at a stack of source
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  material, specifically from David West Hall's book The
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  Legacy of John Calvin, and this material just flips that whole
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  assumption on its head. It really goes.
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  The twist is that these sources show Calvin doesn't just belong
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  to the Presbyterian. No, not even close.
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  We're going to see today that Calvin's influence, it sort of
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  jumps the fence of Geneva and finds these champions, these
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  advocates among Baptists. Anglicans.
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  Independents, Methodists. And this is the one that really
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  got me. Even some Roman Catholics.
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  It's a pretty striking collection of tributes when you
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  see them all together. And what matters for our
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  discussion, what we really want to get into is not just patting
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  Calvin on the back. We want to figure out.
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  Why? Yes, the why?
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  Why does a Baptist giant like Charles Spurgeon physically kiss
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  a medal of John Calvin? I mean, that's just bizarre on
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  the surface. It is.
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  Or why does an Anglican Bishop say the Church of England
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  should, and I'm quoting here, go to pieces rather than lose
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  Calvin's doctrine? What's going on there?
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  That is the mission for today. We're going to try to look at
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  Calvin through the eyes of these outsiders, people who, you know,
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  technically didn't share his church, government, or maybe
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  every single aspect of his practice, to see what it was
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  they saw in him. Right.
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  And just to be clear, before we start, we're looking at
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  historical tributes, mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.
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  Right. And some of this praise is
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  incredibly high. So our job is just to report on
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  it, to convey what we're finding in the historical record.
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  We're not necessarily endorsing every word, but reporting what
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  was said. That's it.
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  We're just looking at the evidence of how these major
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  figures viewed the reformer. OK, let's get right into it.
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  And we're starting with a real heavyweight.
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  Section 1 takes us to the 19th century and the Prince of
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  Preachers. The Baptist giant himself.
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  Charles Haddon Spurgeon. A man who, yeah, needs no
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  introduction if you're in the English speaking evangelical
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  world. And if you know anything about
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  Spurgeon, you know he was a Bible man.
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  He wasn't big on tradition. He certainly didn't care for
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  high church rituals or anything like that.
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  No, he was a non conformist through and through, a dissenter
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  to the bone. OK, so with that in mind, can
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  you please explain to me why in the summer of 1860, Charles
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  Spurgeon is standing in a cathedral in Geneva and he
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  physically kisses a medal of John Calvin?
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  It's a jarring image, isn't it? It just doesn't compute with the
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  spurgeon we think we know. It's so weird.
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  It sounds like something he would preach A sermon against it
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  does. But you have to understand the
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  context of what he called his Genevan pilgrimage.
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  He'd been working himself into the ground in London.
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  It was, believe it or not, his first real holiday in seven
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  years. Seven years without a break.
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  Seven years. He was preaching multiple times
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  a week, running an orphanage, a college, editing a magazine.
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  He was completely burnt out. Wow.
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  So he finally takes a break, travels to the continent, and he
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  makes his way to Geneva. He goes to the Cathedral, Saint
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  Peter, you know, Calvin's home base, and someone there shows
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  him this medal. And he just kisses it.
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  He just kisses it. He writes about it later.
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  The first time I saw the medal of John Calvin, I kissed it.
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  But why? I mean, was it some kind of
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  superstition that seems so out of character?
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  No. And he's very quick to clarify
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  that he says he wasn't engaging in idolatry.
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  It wasn't like a holy relic that had some kind of magical power
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  for him. It was an act of, well,
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  desperate affection. Affection for a man who'd been
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  dead for 300 years. Affection for his spiritual
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  father. You have to remember Spurgeon
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  felt incredibly isolated in his day.
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  He was fighting these huge theological battles in London,
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  what became known as the Downgrade controversy, and he
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  felt almost entirely alone. So when he held that medal.
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  He was touching his lineage. He was making a connection.
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  He was reminding himself that he wasn't some kind of theological
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  freak of nature, that he was part of the family tree.
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  He said he loved the man because he saw in Calvin the very same
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  truth he was fighting for back home.
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  You know, when you put it that way, it's actually quite a
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  moving story. It's this moment of connection
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  across the centuries for a guy who felt all alone.
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  It is. And the people in Geneva, they
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  loved it. They were so taken with him that
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  they invited him to preach. In Calvin's pulpit.
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  In the very spot, the pulpit at Saint Peter's where the
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  Reformation was thundered out. But then they hit a snag.
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  The clothes. The clothes.
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  The dreaded Genevan gown. I've read about this the full
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  canonicals. Yeah, you have to picture this.
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  Spurgeon is a British Baptist. He preaches in a simple frock
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  coat. He doesn't do robes.
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  He doesn't do vestments. It's not his world.
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  But the Genevans insisted. They basically said if you want
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  to stand in Calvin's pulpit, you have to look the part.
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  So they actually dressed him up. They put him in the gown and
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  Spurgeon, he hated it, he said. He felt like he was running in a
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  sack. Running in a sack.
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  That is such a perfect Spurgeon phrase.
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  So vivid. Isn't it?
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  He felt silly, he felt restricted.
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  But, and this is the key insight into his thinking, he wore it
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  anyway. And you know why he finally
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  agreed. He said it was John Calvin's
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  cloak, and that reckoncide me to it very much.
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  Wow, just. Slap.
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  So he was willing to be physically uncomfortable,
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  willing to look a bit foolish in his own eyes, because of the
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  honor of standing in that man's shoes, so to speak.
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  He even made a joke about it, didn't he?
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  He did, which shows his quick wit.
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  He said something like if they had asked him to wear the Pope's
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  tiara, he might have done it just to be polite.
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  But the cloak, that was different.
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  He wore that with a sense of genuine reverence.
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  That one story really drives home the whole point of our
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  discussion today. We think of denominations as
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  these, you know, rigid walls, Baptists over here,
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  Presbyterians over there. But here's Spurgeon climbing
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  right over the wall because he recognizes the theology is the
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  same. You hit the nail on the head.
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  And that theology wasn't just a professional interest for him,
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  it was deeply personal. It was part of his home life.
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  Which brings us to his library. Right WY Fullerton, who was one
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  of his biographers. He notes that among the books
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  Spurgeon valued the most were Calvin's works, and there's a
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  really personal detail about his set of Calvin's commentaries.
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  A very personal detail. They were a gift.
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  In the front of the first volume, there's an inscription.
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  What does it say? It says the volumes making up a
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  complete set of Calvin were a gift to me from my own most dear
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  and tender wife. From his wife Susanna.
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  That gives you a little glimpse into the Spurgeon household,
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  doesn't it? It wasn't just you're as a tool
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  for your job, dear. No, not at all.
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  It was more like, here's food for your soul.
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  It shows that this theology was the very air they breathed
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  together. It was part of their marriage.
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  And that deep love for the content, it actually shaped his
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  preaching style. Fullerton makes this fascinating
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  comparison between Spurgeon and Calvin as preachers.
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  Which is surprising because we often think of Calvin as this
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  dry academic, you know, systematic lecturer, and
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  Spurgeon as the colorful, passionate orator.
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  Right, they seem like opposites, but Fullerton argues they're
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  actually very similar in a key way.
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  And how's that? It comes down to the language
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  they used. Fullerton has this great phrase
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  for it. He calls it the picturesque
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  language of colloquial social intercourse.
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  OK, that's a bit of a mouthful. It is, but it basically just
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  means they spoke the way real people speak.
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  They weren't afraid to be earthy.
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  They weren't afraid to be blunt, even a bit vulgar, if it got the
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  point across. So if a common word grabbed the
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  audience's attention better than a polished classical Latin word,
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  they'd use the common word every time.
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  Exactly. The source gives a brilliant
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  example of this from one of Calvin's own sermons.
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  You know, we picture biblical figures in Calvin's sermons as
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  being very stoic and formal. But Calvin imagines Moses
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  complaining about having to climb Mount Sinai.
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  Oh, this is great, yes, He pictures Moses grumbling, saying
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  something like that's all very fine and I'm to go and break my
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  legs climbing up there. Am I?
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  Of all things in the world? That's a fine prospect.
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  I'm to go and break my legs. That sounds like something my
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  grumpy grandfather would say, not a revered prophet of God.
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  But that's the whole point, isn't it?
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  Yeah, Calvin made these people real.
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  He brought them down to earth. He did, and Spurgeon did the
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  very same thing. They both prefer the vernacular,
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  the language of the street, over the classical language of the
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  Academy. They wanted to penetrate the
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  conscience, not just tickle the ear with fancy words.
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  Fullerton notes that Calvin despised what he called
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  ostentatious eloquence. He wanted the message to hit
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  home hard. It's the difference between,
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  say, a lecture on nutrition and a hot meal.
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  They were serving hot meals from the pulpit.
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  And that meal was fueled by a very specific theology, and we
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  have to talk about how Spurgeon came to that theology, his own
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  conversion to reformed doctrine. Oh, this is a classic story.
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  The source material quotes Spurgeon recalling the very day
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  he realized the truth of these doctrines.
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  It was April 7th, 1850. And you should notice the logic
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  he uses. It's a perfect example of how
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  this system of thought works. He's sitting in church not
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  really paying attention to the sermon, and he starts to trace
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  his own spiritual history backwards.
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  He starts with the question how came I to be a Christian?
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  And his first answer is, I sought the Lord.
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  But he doesn't stop there. That's the key.
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  He keeps asking why. Right, he asks.
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  But how came I just seek the Lord?
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  And the answer flashes into his mind.
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  I should not have sought him unless there had been some
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  previous influence in my mind to make me seek him.
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  He just keeps pulling on that thread.
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  I prayed. OK, how came I to pray?
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  I was induced to pray by reading the scripts.
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  OK but how came I to read the scriptures and he keeps going
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  back and back until the final conclusion just hits him like a
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  ton of bricks. God was at the bottom of it all.
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  God was at the bottom of it all. He saw in that moment that God
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  was the author of his faith from beginning to end, and in that
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  moment the whole doctrine of grace just opened up to him.
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  He realized that if he were a Pelagian.
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  OK. You mentioned Pelagian there for
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  the listener. Who hasn't, you know, dusted off
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  their seminary textbooks in a while.
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  You break that down for us. Sure, Plagianism is, at its
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  core, the idea that human beings are capable of choosing God
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  entirely on their own, without any special prior work of grace.
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  It's the ultimate pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
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  theology. You save yourself yourself by
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  your own free will. So Spurgeon realizes that if he
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  believes in free will in that way, he's basically standing all
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  by himself in church history. Correct, He says.
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  If he's a Pelagian, he stands with a few scattered heretics.
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  But by accepting God's sovereignty and salvation, he
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  looks around and he sees father after Father, confessor after
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  confessor, martyr after martyr, standing up to shake his hand.
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  He's part of the great tradition.
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  That image of walking alone versus walking with the father's
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  is so powerful, he says. I care not for the present.
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  He's looking to the past for his confirmation.
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  And that leads to one of the most famous analogies in all of
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  church history about this very subject, the sugar and tea
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  analogy. I love this one.
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  So good Spurgeon is talking to his students at the Pastor's
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  College. He references John Newton, the
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  man who wrote Amazing Grace. He says Newton put Calvinism in
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  his sermons the way you put sugar into a cup of tea.
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  Meaning you don't necessarily see the big lump of sugar
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  anymore. Right.
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  It dissolves, but it flavors the whole thing.
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  It's everywhere in the cup. You can't take a single sip
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  without tasting it. The whole sermon is sweetened
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  with the sovereignty of God. And then Spurgeon adds his own
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  little twist, his own advice to his students.
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  He does, he tells them. Don't be afraid of putting in an
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  extra lump now and then. Don't be afraid to be explicit
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  about it, to state the doctrine clearly.
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  Spot on. Spurgeon did not view what we
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  call Calvinism as some kind of sectarian side issue.
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  He famously said it's just a nickname for the revealed truth
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  of God as it is in Christ Jesus. So for him, it wasn't a
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  denomination, it was just the gospel in its purest, most
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  consistent form. That's how he saw it.
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  And that explains everything. It explains why a Baptist like
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  Spurgeon would kiss the metal of a Presbyterian like Calvin.
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  They were fighting for the same gospel.
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  OK, that's a great place to start.
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  Let's move across the ocean now. Section 2 takes us to the
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  American South. We're looking at the
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  intellectual weight of some of the early Southern Baptists.
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  And this is really interesting because often people associate
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  the Southern Baptist Convention with a more revivalist.
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  That may be a less self consciously reformed history,
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  but the founders were deeply, deeply theological men.
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  The source gives us tributes from leaders like John Broadus,
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  James P Boyce and BH Carroll. Let's talk about Broadus first.
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  He has this fantastic line about people who sneer at Calvinism.
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  It's a great line, he says. The people who sneer at what is
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  called Calvinism might as well sneer at Mont Blanc.
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  Mont Blanc, the highest, most massive mountain in the Alps.
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  Think about that imagery for a second.
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  You could dislike a mountain. You can say it's too cold or too
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  steep, or you don't want to climb it, but you can't just
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  sneeze at it. You can't dismiss it.
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  It's just they're there, it's massive, it's undeniable.
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  And Broadus is saying that this system of theology is like that.
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  You can disagree with it, but you can't dismiss it as
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  something trivial or simplistic. It commands respect by its very
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  size and its intellectual coherence.
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  And Brodus makes a linguistic argument too, doesn't he?
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  He brings in the Apostle Paul and Calvin.
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  He does. He says that if you really truly
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  understand the Greek of the Apostle Paul in the Latin of
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  John Calvin, you have to admit that they are teaching the same
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  substance. So it's not that you have to
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  agree with every single action Calvin took as a civic leader in
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  Geneva. No, Broadus is clear on that.
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  But theologically, he's saying Calvin is just systematizing
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  Paul. He's taking the raw data of
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  Scripture and organizing it into a coherent whole.
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  And he also notes that this theology tends to attract a
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  certain kind of mind. He says it compels an earnest
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  student to thinking. That's a key observation I think
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  brought us believe that Calvinism, by its very nature,
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  forces you to think deeply. It's not a shallow, feel good
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  theology. It makes you grapple with the
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  biggest questions in the universe, God's ultimate
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  purpose, Eternity. The nature of the human will.
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  He says it makes him at home among the most inspiring and
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  ennobling views of God. Yes, it elevates the mind
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  because it elevates God. Then you have James P Boyce, who
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  was another one of the founders of the Southern Baptist
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  seminary, and he's very specific about the doctrine of election.
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  Boyce is rock solid here. He states with absolute clarity
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  that God saves A definite number of people, not because of any
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  foreseen faith or merit in them, but solely from His own good
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  pleasure. It's that phrase, his own good
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  pleasure that's the anchor for these Southern Baptist founders,
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  isn't it? It is.
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  It locates the ultimate cause of salvation, not in man's ability
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  or man's choice, but in God's freedom and God's will.
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  Which is a perfect transition to a more modern voice that the
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  source material brings in. Someone who really picks up that
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  banner of God's pleasure and God's glory.
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  John Piper. Yes.
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  The source cites a 1997 address that Piper gave, and Piper
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  zeroes in on something that I think is the absolute key to
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  unlocking Calvin's heart and mind.
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  What's that? He argues that the root of
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  Calvin's quarrel with Rome, his fundamental disagreement, wasn't
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  just about justification by faith or the Mass or the role of
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  the priesthood. Those were the symptoms, not the
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  disease. Exactly the root cause, the
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  disease itself, was the obscuring of the majesty of the
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  glory of God. He talks about that famous
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  letter to Cardinal Satellite. Can you set that up for us?
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  Who was Satellite? Cardinal Satellite was a
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  high-ranking, very smooth Catholic official who wrote a
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  letter to the city of Geneva after Calvin had been kicked
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  out. He was trying to woo them back
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  into the full of the Catholic Church.
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  It was very polite, very persuasive, very diplomatic
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  letter. And the City Council in Geneva,
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  they didn't know how to answer it, so they asked the guy they
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  just exiled to write a response. They did, and Calvin's response
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  is a masterpiece. And Piper notes that Calvin's
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  main critique isn't just procedural, or about this
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  doctrine or that one. It's that Rome has, over
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  centuries, systematically obscured the glory of God.
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  How? So by putting things in the way,
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  by putting Saints and Mary and the Pope and human merit in
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  between the Sinner and the immediate stunning glory of God
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  in the face of Christ. Piper suggests a banner that
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  should hangover Calvin's entire life and work.
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  Yes, and that banner reads Zeal to illustrate the glory of.
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  Of God. I think it was BB Warfield who
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  said that no man ever had a deeper sense of God than John
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  Calvin. And Piper is echoing that.
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  He argues that for Calvin, the fundamental problem with the
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  world, and specifically with false religion, is that the
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  excellence of Christ is not perceived by us.
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  When the center of gravity shifts from God to man,
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  everything falls apart. So for Piper, Calvin is not just
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  a theologian of cold, hard logic.
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  He's a theologian of white hot majesty.
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  He was recovering a passion for the absolute reality of God.
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  And that passion fueled his entire ministry, especially his
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  preaching. And there's this famous story,
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  and honestly, it's one of my favorites in all of church
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  history, about Calvin's return to Geneva. 1541 set the scene
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  for us. OK, so Calvin had been exiled,
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  kicked out of the city in 1538 because he and the City Council
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  clashed over church discipline. He goes to Strasbourg, he has a
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  happy and productive 3 years. He gets married.
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  He pastors a Church of French refugees.
• 18:35
  He's content. He doesn't want to go back.
• 18:36
  He absolutely does not want to go back.
• 18:38
  In the meantime, Geneva falls into political and religious
• 18:42
  chaos and they beg him to return.
• 18:44
  He says he would rather die 1000 deaths than go back to that
• 18:47
  cross, but he goes because he believes it's God's will for his
• 18:51
  life. So he walks back into that
• 18:53
  pulpit at Saint Peter's Cathedral.
• 18:54
  The whole city is holding its breath.
• 18:56
  What is he going to say? I mean, they're expecting him to
• 18:57
  blast them. Of course I told you so, you
• 19:01
  ungrateful wretches. Look at the mess you've made.
• 19:04
  Or maybe, you know, recount the story of his unjust exile and
• 19:07
  vindicate himself. Right.
• 19:09
  Instead, Calvin gets up, opens his Bible, and resumes his
• 19:13
  expositional preaching at the exact verse he had lift off at
• 19:17
  three years earlier. Next.
• 19:18
  Verse. Next verse.
• 19:19
  Not a word about himself, not a word about the past three years,
• 19:22
  just the word of God. It sends a chill down your spine
• 19:26
  when you think about it. So what's the message in that
• 19:29
  single action? What was he communicating?
• 19:30
  Piper analyzes this beautifully. It shows this absolute refusal
• 19:35
  to let human events, human drama, dictate the message of
• 19:39
  God. It doesn't matter that he was
• 19:41
  exiled. It doesn't matter that they
• 19:42
  treated him badly. The word of God is a lamp that
• 19:45
  must not be suppressed. It just continues on
• 19:47
  uninterrupted. It also says so much about his
• 19:49
  philosophy of the pulpit. He had a what the source calls a
• 19:52
  horror of preachers who brought their own dreams and fancies
• 19:55
  into the pulpit. That's the phrase dreams and
• 19:57
  fancies. Calvin believed that continuous
• 20:00
  exposition, just going verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book
• 20:03
  by book, through the Bible, was the only safeguard.
• 20:07
  It forces the preacher to deal with what God actually says, not
• 20:10
  what the preacher feels like saying that week.
• 20:12
  Right. If you just skip around and pick
• 20:14
  your favorite texts, you end up riding your own hobby horses
• 20:17
  over and over again. But if you go verse by verse,
• 20:19
  you have to deal with the hard stuff, the confusing stuff, the
• 20:22
  stuff that challenges your own ideas because it's right there
• 20:25
  in the text. You can't avoid it.
• 20:26
  And Piper says This is why preaching will never die.
• 20:29
  Because as long as God is the great I am, as long as He is
• 20:33
  this majestic reality, people will have a deep hunger for that
• 20:36
  kind of expository exultation. It all connects back to the
• 20:39
  majesty. If God is that big, you don't
• 20:41
  just chat having him from the pulpit.
• 20:44
  You herald him. You proclaim him.
• 20:47
  Let's move on to Section 3, the Anglican view.
• 20:50
  And this might surprise some people because the Anglican
• 20:53
  Church is often seen as a, via media, a middle way between
• 20:57
  Protestantism and Catholicism. But the source material
• 21:00
  highlights 2 huge figures, Ji Packer and JC Rile.
• 21:04
  And Packer makes a massive claim.
• 21:06
  Just a huge claim. He says that for a full century,
• 21:10
  basically from the mid 16th to the mid 17th century, John
• 21:14
  Calvin was the world's most influential man.
• 21:16
  Not just in the church. In the World in the World,
• 21:18
  Packer argues that you cannot explain modern Britain or Europe
• 21:22
  or America without understanding him.
• 21:24
  His ideas, Packer says, made more history than anyone else
• 21:27
  alive at the time. Packer calls him God's man for a
• 21:30
  crisis. He does, and he draws this
• 21:31
  parallel between 1564 of the year Calvin died and 1964 of the
• 21:36
  year Packer was writing. And honestly, you can easily say
• 21:38
  it applies to today as well. What's the?
• 21:41
  He talks about global unrest, the denigration of Christian
• 21:44
  civilization, widespread religious confusion.
• 21:47
  He sees his own time as a time of turmoil, just like Calvin.
• 21:50
  'S And in the middle of all that confusion, what does Calvin
• 21:52
  offer? What's the remedy?
• 21:54
  It's the vision of God. Packer comes right back to that
• 21:57
  central theme of majesty. He's like Psalm 93.
• 22:00
  The Lord reigns. He is robed in majesty.
• 22:04
  Packer says this one verse is the sum of Calvinistic
• 22:06
  confidence is the vision of God on the throne, ruling over all
• 22:10
  things. Packer was heavily influenced by
• 22:12
  BB Warfield on this point, wasn't he?
• 22:14
  He was. He quotes Warfield's definition
• 22:16
  of a Calvinist, which is just beautiful.
• 22:19
  Warfield says a Calvinist is simply a man who has seen God.
• 22:22
  Not a man who has mastered A logical system.
• 22:25
  A man who has seen God. Exactly.
• 22:28
  And having seen God in His glory, he is filled, on the one
• 22:31
  hand, with a profound sense of his own unworthiness and
• 22:34
  sinfulness, and on the other hand, with adoring wonder that
• 22:37
  this glorious God would save sinners like Him.
• 22:39
  So it's not about being a dour, angry, argumentative debater.
• 22:43
  It's about being a man who has been humbled and overwhelmed by
• 22:46
  a vision of God. Precisely.
• 22:48
  And that brings us to JC Rile, the great evangelical Bishop of
• 22:51
  Liverpool in the late 19th century.
• 22:53
  Rile was a fighter. He was constantly fighting for
• 22:55
  the evangelical soul of the Church of England.
• 22:57
  And he points specifically to the 39 articles for our
• 23:01
  listeners who might not be familiar.
• 23:02
  What are the 39 articles? They are the official confession
• 23:06
  of faith for the Church of England.
• 23:07
  It's their doctrinal standard, their statement of what they
• 23:10
  believe. And Ryle zeroes in on Article
• 23:12
  17, which is specifically on the doctrine of predestination and
• 23:16
  election. And what's his argument?
• 23:18
  He's challenging the people of his day who are trying to argue
• 23:21
  that election is just a Presbyterian thing or a Baptist
• 23:23
  thing, but not an Anglican thing, Ryle basically says.
• 23:27
  Have you read your own prayer book?
• 23:29
  Look at your own confession. He calls Article 17 one of the
• 23:32
  sheet anchors of sound doctrine. He argues that Calvinistic
• 23:36
  divinity is the divinity of the Bible of Augustine and of the 39
• 23:40
  Articles. He does.
• 23:41
  He's claiming it as the historic, mainstream position of
• 23:44
  his own church, and he uses very, very strong language to
• 23:48
  defend it. The parish and go to pieces
• 23:50
  line. Yes, he says, the Church of
• 23:52
  England had better perish and go to pieces, then forsake the
• 23:55
  foundational principles of the Protestant Reformation.
• 23:58
  That is some serious intensity. He really believed that without
• 24:02
  these doctrines, the Church would lose its very reason for
• 24:05
  existing. He did.
• 24:07
  He even defended a book by Augustus Top Lady, who was the
• 24:11
  guy who wrote the hymn Rock of Ages.
• 24:13
  Top Lady wrote a book called Historic Proof.
• 24:16
  That was just a mountain of evidence showing that the early
• 24:19
  Anglican Reformers and Divines were all Calvinists.
• 24:22
  And what did Ryle say about that book?
• 24:24
  Ryle says that book has never been answered for the simple
• 24:27
  reason that it is unanswerable. The historical evidence is just
• 24:31
  too overwhelming. It's fascinating to see how
• 24:33
  integrated Calvin was into the Anglican identity for someone
• 24:37
  like Ryle. It wasn't some alien intrusion
• 24:40
  for him, it was the bedrock of his church.
• 24:42
  Absolutely. OK, let's widen the net even
• 24:44
  further. Section 4 covers independence
• 24:47
  and Methodists, and we can start with a modern independent John
• 24:50
  MacArthur. MacArthur is a great example.
• 24:52
  That same expository tradition we talked about with Piper, he's
• 24:55
  known for his verse by verse preaching through the entire New
• 24:58
  Testament. And the source notes a couple of
• 25:00
  personal tributes from him. He has a grandson named Calvin.
• 25:03
  That's a pretty clear tribute, isn't?
• 25:04
  It it is, and he also mentions that he owns a 1599 Geneva
• 25:08
  Bible. The Bible of the Puritans and
• 25:10
  the pilgrims. And it wasn't just scripture.
• 25:13
  The Geneva Bible had the scripture, a prayer book, and
• 25:16
  the Psalms for singing. All bound together in one
• 25:19
  volume. It was a for life, not just for
• 25:22
  study. MacArthur also makes a really
• 25:24
  important point about the relationship between theology
• 25:26
  and praise, theology and worship.
• 25:28
  He does. He says the depth of theology
• 25:30
  creates the height of praise. This is such a crucial point.
• 25:34
  If your theology is shallow, if your view of God is small and
• 25:37
  sentimental, your praise will be shallow too.
• 25:40
  It might be loud, it might be emotional, but it won't be high.
• 25:43
  It won't have weight. So Calvin's sense of God's glory
• 25:46
  LED directly to a high and weighty form of praise.
• 25:49
  And MacArthur attributes that directly to Calvin's relentless
• 25:52
  exposition of the text. It wasn't just his systematic
• 25:55
  theology, his institute's. It was the day in, day out,
• 25:59
  digging into the text that produced that vision of God.
• 26:02
  Now moving to the Methodist, we come to Martyn Lloyd Jones, the
• 26:05
  Doctor. The Doctor A Welshman,
• 26:08
  originally a brilliant medical Doctor Who left a promising
• 26:11
  career in medicine to become one of the greatest preachers of the
• 26:14
  20th century. And the source highlights a
• 26:16
  famous address he gave on the BBC in 1944.
• 26:19
  Think about the context 1944. The world is at war.
• 26:24
  D-Day had just happened. London had been bombed
• 26:27
  relentlessly during the Blitz. The world was, to use his
• 26:32
  phrase, shaking in his foundations.
• 26:34
  And in the middle of all that, Martyn Lloyd Jones goes on the
• 26:37
  national radio to talk about Warren Calvin.
• 26:40
  It seems like an odd choice of topic for that moment.
• 26:43
  It does, but not for him. He notes that for a long time
• 26:46
  before this, Calvin's reputation had taken a nosedive.
• 26:49
  He was viewed as a monstrosity in a dank museum, a cruel, hard,
• 26:54
  unfeeling person. Lloyd Jones wanted to correct
• 26:56
  that caricature. And he does it by comparing
• 26:59
  Luther and Calvin, the volcano analogy.
• 27:01
  A volcano analogy so helpful he called Luther a volcano.
• 27:04
  Luther was this explosive force of nature spewing out fiery,
• 27:07
  brilliant, world changing ideas in all directions.
• 27:09
  But Lloyd Jones says ideas can't live without a body.
• 27:12
  They're just sparks. They need a structure.
• 27:14
  Yeah, and Calvin was the one who took all those fiery sparks of
• 27:17
  the Reformation and gave them a body, a coherent, logical,
• 27:22
  durable system in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
• 27:25
  He systematized the explosion. He gave it a form that could
• 27:28
  last. And Lloyd Jones then uses this
• 27:30
  incredible phrase he calls the Institute's The Iron Ration of
• 27:34
  the Soul. Iron ration.
• 27:37
  We need to stop right there. What exactly is an iron ration?
• 27:40
  It's a military term from that era.
• 27:42
  An iron ration is the emergency food supply a soldier carries in
• 27:45
  his pack. For the absolute worst case
• 27:47
  scenario, it's usually canned meat, maybe some hard biscuits.
• 27:51
  It's not gourmet, it's not tasty, it's not meant to be
• 27:54
  enjoyed. It's meant to keep you alive.
• 27:55
  It is dense, and it keeps you alive when the regular supply
• 27:58
  lines are cut, when you're surrounded by the enemy, when
• 28:00
  everything else has failed. So why does he call Calvin's
• 28:03
  theology an iron ration? Because when the bombs are
• 28:06
  literally falling on your city as they were in 1944, or when
• 28:10
  you're facing being burned at the stake take as the Protestant
• 28:13
  martyrs were, You don't need theological cotton candy.
• 28:16
  You don't need fluff. You need to know down in your
• 28:20
  bones that God is sovereign. You need to know that not a
• 28:24
  single hair can fall from your head without His permission.
• 28:27
  That is the iron ration. It keeps your soul alive in the
• 28:31
  worst imaginable conditions. That is a hauntingly beautiful
• 28:35
  and incredibly powerful description.
• 28:37
  It connects this high theology directly to human survival in
• 28:41
  times of crisis. It does.
• 28:43
  Lloyd Jones said. This theology was the food for
• 28:45
  the martyrs, for the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, for the
• 28:48
  Covenanters in Scotland. It's what gave them the
• 28:50
  spiritual backbone to stand when everything was telling them to
• 28:53
  fall. Lloyd Jones also touched on the
• 28:54
  political and social aspect of this, didn't he?
• 28:57
  He did. He argued that Calvin's teaching
• 28:59
  is the basis for true order and discipline in society without
• 29:02
  descending into tyranny. On the one hand, no king has a
• 29:05
  divine right to tyrannize his people, but on the other hand,
• 29:09
  liberty doesn't mean license. There must be order.
• 29:11
  Now we can't talk about Methodists without addressing
• 29:15
  the elephant in the room, the honest opponent, John Wesley.
• 29:19
  Wesley, the father of Methodism, the great Armenian champion.
• 29:23
  You'd expect him to just despise Calvin.
• 29:25
  You would, but the source material shows he had a much
• 29:28
  more nuanced view. He did.
• 29:30
  Wesley openly admitted that Calvin was a great instrument of
• 29:33
  God and a wise and pious man. He disagreed with him on key
• 29:37
  points, but he respected him. And he gave some very specific
• 29:41
  advice to his followers about the Cervetus affair.
• 29:45
  For listeners who don't know, Michael Cervidis was a heretic
• 29:48
  who was executed for blasphemy in Geneva, and it's often used
• 29:51
  as a club to beat Calvin with personally.
• 29:54
  And what was Wesley's advice? He told his followers to let
• 29:57
  Cervidis alone. Basically, don't use that
• 30:00
  historical tragedy as a cheap rhetorical attack unless you've
• 30:03
  taken the time to understand the full historical context of the
• 30:06
  16th century. That shows a lot of intellectual
• 30:09
  integrity on Wesley's. Part.
• 30:10
  It really does. And he leveled the playing field
• 30:12
  between the two theological camps.
• 30:15
  He said that at the end of the day, Armenians and Calvinists
• 30:18
  are just upon a level. He acknowledged that good,
• 30:21
  pious, learned people could be found on both sides.
• 30:25
  He disagreed strongly on predestination, absolute versus
• 30:28
  conditional. But he didn't unchurch Calvin.
• 30:31
  He respected the man's piety in his work for God.
• 30:34
  That brings us to our final section, unexpected tributes and
• 30:37
  the broader cultural impact. And here we're going way outside
• 30:40
  the normal Protestant camp. We are The source mentions a
• 30:44
  Lutheran theologian named Valentine Andre visiting Geneva
• 30:47
  and just being blown away by the moral order of the city.
• 30:50
  He called it a perfect institution of a perfect
• 30:53
  Republic. But the real surprise is the
• 30:55
  Roman Catholic scholar Alexandra Ganassi.
• 30:57
  Right, and he uses this fascinating musical analogy to
• 31:00
  describe Calvin's work. How does he put it?
• 31:02
  He views Calvin as a great composer.
• 31:05
  He says Calvin took themes from earlier Reformers, from Luther,
• 31:08
  from Zwingli, from Booster, like musical motifs, and then he
• 31:11
  orchestrated them into his own grand personal composition.
• 31:14
  So he wasn't just copying them, he was arranging their best
• 31:18
  ideas into a coherent Symphony. That's the idea.
• 31:22
  And Ganassi, a Catholic scholar, freely admits that Calvin was
• 31:26
  superior to Luther in his documentation, his structure,
• 31:29
  his sheer architectural genius. The intellectual power is
• 31:34
  undeniable, even to an opponent. And finally, let's circle back
• 31:37
  to the political angle. We touched on this with Lloyd
• 31:40
  Jones, but the source mentions the skeptic David Hume and the
• 31:43
  historian George Bancroft. And this is a point that often
• 31:46
  gets lost. David Hume was a philosopher and
• 31:49
  Enlightenment skeptic, an atheist essentially.
• 31:51
  He was no friend of Christianity.
• 31:53
  Yet he admitted that the English Constitution owes its very
• 31:56
  liberty to the Puritans. And who are the Puritans?
• 31:58
  Overwhelmingly, they were Calvinists.
• 32:00
  And George Bancroft, the American historian, explains
• 32:02
  why. He describes Calvinism as being
• 32:05
  rooted in predestination, which earthly monarchs feared because
• 32:09
  they saw it as republicanism in disguise.
• 32:12
  The logic is just fascinating when you unpack it.
• 32:15
  If you believe that you have a charter from the King of Kings,
• 32:18
  if you believe your name is written in the Lamb's Book of
• 32:21
  Life from before the foundation of the world, that becomes your
• 32:25
  ultimate title of nobility. So you don't need to bow and
• 32:28
  scrape before an earthly aristocrat or a king.
• 32:31
  Exactly. You have a direct standing
• 32:32
  before the God of the universe. Your identity is secure in
• 32:36
  eternity. This radically levels the social
• 32:39
  and political playing field. So in a strange and wonderful
• 32:42
  way, the doctrine of election, which so many people today think
• 32:45
  is restrictive or unfair, was actually the engine of political
• 32:49
  liberty in the West. You're right, it destroyed the
• 32:52
  idea of the divine right of kings by establishing the far
• 32:56
  more radical idea of the divine rights of God over all people
• 32:59
  equally. Wow.
• 33:00
  OK, let's try to synthesize this deep dive.
• 33:03
  We've traveled from Spurgeon's London to brought us as
• 33:06
  Kentucky, from Pipes papers Minneapolis to Packers Oxford,
• 33:09
  and all the way back to 16th century Geneva.
• 33:11
  The common thread, it seems to me, is crystal clear.
• 33:14
  Whether it was Spurgeon kissing that metal or JC Rile defending
• 33:18
  the 39 articles or Lloyd Jones preaching during the blitz, they
• 33:22
  all saw the same thing in Calvin.
• 33:24
  And it wasn't just a system of logic.
• 33:25
  No, they saw a man who was utterly consumed by the majesty
• 33:29
  of God. It always comes back to that,
• 33:31
  doesn't it? The sheer weight and reality of
• 33:33
  God. It does for all these different
• 33:35
  figures, for all these different traditions.
• 33:38
  Calvin's theology wasn't an abstract intellectual game.
• 33:41
  It was a life altering vision of God on the throne.
• 33:45
  And that vision provided the iron ration that sustained
• 33:48
  people through crisis, through doubt, and through history.
• 33:51
  So here is a final, provocative thought for you, the listener.
• 33:54
  We live in a time that feels a lot like the times that Packer
• 33:57
  and Lloyd Jones describe. Confused.
• 33:59
  Shaking. Uncertain.
• 34:01
  If so many diverse voices, Baptists, Anglicans, Methodists,
• 34:05
  independence, found their stability, their spiritual food,
• 34:08
  their iron ration in this theology during their own
• 34:11
  crises, what might we be missing if we dismiss it or ignore it
• 34:15
  today? If John Piper is right and
• 34:18
  preaching will never die because the human hunger for God's
• 34:21
  majesty is eternal, then maybe it's time for us to blow the
• 34:25
  dust off those old commentaries and see that majesty for
• 34:28
  ourselves. Or at the very least, like
• 34:30
  Spurgeon advised his students, not be afraid to put an extra
• 34:33
  lump of sugar in the tea now and then.
• 34:35
  I love that. Thank you for joining us on this
• 34:37
  deep dive into the surprising legacy of John Calvin.
• 34:40
  We hope it has challenged you, encouraged you, and maybe even
• 34:43
  surprised you a little. It certainly has been a great
• 34:45
  discussion. Until next time, keep thinking
• 34:48
  and keep looking at the majesty of God.
• 34:50
  Goodbye.