In 1533, Calvin befriended Nicholas Cop, Rector of the College Royal in Paris.
Later, Cop was branded as a heretic by the Roman Church for calling for reform within the Church. Cop fled France for Basel and, after anonymous attacks appeared on the Mass, Calvin joined Cop in Basel. The result of the brewing controversy led toward Calvin writing the Institutes of Christian Religion. Calvin's influence still stands like a tall redwood in the forest, a tower of biblical fidelity, a solid rock on the doctrine of justification by faith. Calvin's legacy remains with us in several areas:
1) Calvin's theological legacy remains with us in his emphasis on the sovereignty of God, salvation by grace alone, and reliance only upon on Scripture for our teaching. One must realize that evangelical Christians today lean much on the emphases that came from the Reformation. Even those who resist any tie to Calvin's legacy must realize that without men like Calvin, we would not be familiar with the carefully formulated theology of salvation by faith. The Reformation was a mighty move of God.
2) Calvin's legacy in government was a break from the tyrannical governments that dominated the middle ages. Men like John Knox, the Puritans, the Pilgrims, all had strong influence from Calvin's Institutes. While Calvin did not move on to a Constitutional Republic, one must see that Calvin's influence did move toward allowing a stronger voice of the people and the importance of law as the foundation of liberty.Calvin wrote on economics, politics, the relation of government to Church, and made positive contributions in the gradual adoption of the principles of constitutional government in the Western world.
3) Calvin's emphasis on missions and evangelism served to spread the message of the Reformation. Calvin had a key role in training the Moravians, one of the greatest missionary movements in history. Hundreds of men were sent forth from Calvin's Geneva as bearers of the Gospel. Literally thousands of churches were founded from the mission work and evangelism that came forth from Calvin's influence. For a survey of Calvin's missionary influence, you can read more in this article by Ray Van Neste.
Granted, as a Baptist, this writer would not agree with every detail of Calvin's theology. But only a fool would scoff at the positive influence that has come to the Church of the Lord Jesus through the influence and ministry of John Calvin. Further information may be found at: 1. Calvin 2009
2. Calvin 500 Blog
3. Calvin 500 Resources
So, Happy Birthday, John Calvin!
6 comments:
I WAS NEVER IN COMPLETE AGREEMENT TO CALVIN'S CONCESSION TO THE DEATH OF MICHAEL SERVETUS, HIS THEOLOGICAL ADVERSARY, (OCT 27 1553, BURNED AT THE STAKE.) RELIGION IS A BLOODY SPORT. JUST ASK JUDGE PRESLER. "ON THE OTHER HAND", AS RANDY TRAVIS SO BEAUTIFULLY SINGS, CALVIN WAS A GREAT MAN. CALVIN WAS A GREAT SCHOLAR. HE SURPASSES ZWINGLI, WHO WAS KILLED IN A BLOODY CONFLICT WITH THE CATHOLICS IN 1531. IN DEPTH AND REFORMATION CONCEPTS, BUT FALLS EXTREMELY SHORT OF MARTIN LUTHER ("HIER STEHE ICH"). CALVINS TUMULTOUS "TULIP" HAS SOME FLAWS; BUT I WILL NOT GO INTO ANY FURTHER DETAIL HERE.
Great tribute to John from John.
Google up Calvin's complex legacy of cruelty and Joy at religiondispatches.org for the definitive essay.
Magisterial thoughts from the Religion Dispatches article:
The legacy Calvin left is ambiguous at best. The dominant strain that runs through consists of an accentuated Augustinian proclivity to the transform world, a stewardship characterized by leaving the place better than one found it. “Better” is subject to interpretation and debate, of course. Many of his followers, somewhat more scholastic and ever more into policing human life and less into rejoicing, were and are a tough and all-too-often nasty lot, to say the least. In fact, Calvin, with others (that fiery redhead John Knox who smashed the stained glass windows of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, to name the most notable among them) gave birth to the various denominations that make up the Reformed Protestant Church: Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and others all share the name Calvinist. In this country, these Calvinists range in their political and social world-transforming behaviors from avid theocrats, still capable of spewing a vituperative anti-Catholic polemic, to equally avid radical supporters of gay and lesbian marriage.
The history between then and now is no less multifaceted.
More often it has been marked by tragedy, brutality, and cruelty on the part of the Calvinists. If one buys Max Weber’s thesis—and in a qualified way, I do—Calvin’s theology, with its focus on work for the glory of God, eventually transmorphed into a Protestant work ethic. As a central feature of capitalism and of American secularism, this ethic has helped produce wide gaps between the poverty of the many and the wealth of a few around the globe; a gap that I imagine has Calvin writhing in his grave that God’s glory should be so abused.
And Calvinists, in something of a confusion over God’s election (namely, for Calvin, it was God’s job to save and damn, not humans’), worked tirelessly as missionaries, often aiding and abetting, intentionally or unintentionally, a steady stream of colonizers tramping through Africa and the New World, covering exposed indigenous body parts with their misplaced prurient interest in “civilizing the savages.” Perhaps the best evidence of what Calvin called the utter depravity of the human will lies in the practices of these Calvinists themselves.
No one talks much about the more left-wing version of Calvinism these days. It is just way too much fun to caricature both founder and followers. In fact, there is also a long history of Calvinists across the denominations of Reformed Protestantism slogging it out in the trenches on behalf of social justice, the glory of God captured in their radically egalitarian visions of the Kingdom of God on Earth: Abolitionists in England and the United States; French Huguenot villagers and clergy who smuggled fleeing Jews to Switzerland during World War II; Civil Rights marchers; anti-war protesters of several generations; Argentine Presbyterians who work with Catholics as liberation theologians; and pastors and congregations in San Antonio, Texas, who form base communities among Latino and Latina poor, to name a few. And I have always suspected that many non-German European Marxists, albeit avowed atheists, reflected and continue to reflect the same diligent work ethic, fixated this time on the Classless Society, as well as the same Puritanical bent that such a work ethic can produce (though I have done no research to support this suspicion).
In any case, here we sit, five hundred years later, in the aftermath of the whirlwind that was Calvin’s life, left with the consequences for better and worse. I propose we critically take a page from him and focus this celebration on the glory of God. A very private man, whose personal life we know little about, John Calvin would have preferred it that way.
He's dead!! No, happy birthday.
Well done. Thanks for the educational piece on John Calvin. We Protestants are often ignorant of the the generation of men and women and the great persecution they suffered returning us to Christ's Gospel. There is an abyss of ignorance among most Americans from about 90 A.D. to the time the Pilgrims landed in America. The Gospel was hidden in Latin and Greek for 1400 years till men were able & willing to risk their lives to reveal the Savior to commoners like you and me.
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