My sense of Calvin

[Response to an email correspondent...]

Here's my sense of Calvin. He was separate pretty much from the revolutionary Christian world going on around him, basically he was content to be a scholar, he was very much into classical literature, his father put him on track to be in the church, then something happened with his father's relationship to the church and he put him on track to be a lawyer, then his father died, so Calvin followed his real interest to be a classical scholar. All during that time Lutheranism was an influence in his university environment. He also lived with a Waldensian, a wealthy merchant who later was burned at the stake. He wrote a book on Seneca. Then something happened. He barely alludes to it, but he was regenerated by the Word and the Spirit, strongly, quietly, then he found that people were coming to him for the 'pure teaching' despite himself. He became known. He had to leave Paris when some religious scandal broke out involving people associated with him. He wanted still to go somewhere and lead the quiet life of a scholar. At some point he wrote the first edition of the Institutes (much smaller than the final edition). It became a bible of the Protestant cause. He became famous, though he was using about six different fake names in his wanderings. Then he was accosted by a firy guy name Farel and told to come to Geneva and be a leader there or experience the wrath of God.

All through it he seemed to be passive. He seemed to be quietly resigned to not have, or own, his own life. But he was quite strange in his ability to learn the Bible and apostolic doctrine and to elucidate it so young. Jacob Arminius (the father of Arminianism, kind of the opposite of Calvinism) had this to say about Calvin:

"I recommend that the Commentaries of Calvin be read…. For I affirm that in the interpretation of the Scriptures Calvin is incomparable, and that his Commentaries are more to be valued than anything that is handed to us in the writings of the Fathers -- so much so that I concede to him a certain spirit of prophecy in which he stands distinguished above others, above most, indeed, above all."

Another thing I discern in Calvin is he intentionally didn't mix the language of the faith with anything else. This is why you don't see him saying anything positive about Homer, et al, other than something like you find in his Institutes in Book 1, chapter 10, paragraph 3. In that passage he subtly separates the Homeric pantheon from the usual false idols that were worshiped. Yet still, condemns the whole lot. Zwingli was more open about his classical learning and valuation for it, but I can tell Calvin is doing the "when I learned the truth I put childish things away" thing. Plus, he carried the gravitas of the Reformation on his shoulders and couldn't be wishy washy to any degree. This includes politically. This is also why he didn't write about himself much at all. It was all seriousness in time of war when everything was at stake, and he was the central figure others looked to for guidance.

You rightly discern in the post-Calvin Reformed theological universe (really once out of the 1500s, except maybe in the Netherlands) a less deep understanding, even though the intellectual level is extremely high. I can still get things from those guys, but we know more and can navigate it all for the wheat and not stumble upon the chaff.

An intense intellectual scholasticism entered the picture, but it happened for a reason. When truth - apostolic truth - is so blatantly brought into the light it gets attacked and attacked and attacked and every kind of attempt from every conceivable angle to defile it is made. Not only from without the camp, but from within the camp as well. So the intense definitions and so forth, and the confessionalism (the composing of so many confessions an catechisms and writing of the systematic theologies, by whatever name or form they took in the early decades and onward) were necessary. Because there really are 'hinges' in doctrine upon which falls to one side or the other internal states, and it is those hinges that get attacked and false teachers try to present them dishonestly and so on and so forth. Hinges such as justification by faith alone. Or sola Scriptura. All of the five solas.

And the practical matter is this: when a person is converting (they've already been quickened by the Word and the Spirit, but now when they are converting) they need to come into contact with clear, on-the-mark doctrinal teaching. So as a practical matter it is effective for the forces of darkness to engage in the endless sophistry and defiling of the truth, as well as the controlling of what is published and taught and so on, because it keeps the truth away from God's elect and it buys them time, which is really the only thing the devil's side has. A continual hold-everything-up strategy. Because they can't win. But they can delay the proceedings. At least it seems that way. But it's a real conflict with real demands and payment and so on.

Gurdjieff was right about Roman Catholicism. You really have to know the history of Christianity at a sophisticated level to see the Reformation and everything else clearly. The Church prior to the Reformation was many things, geography alone dictating alot, distance from Rome dictating alot, it's not monolithic. But the real Beast/anti-Christ stuff began to emerge (and if I knew more I could give an exact date, but) around probably when the Inquisition started to take off. 1100s? I need to read Schaff, but it's 8 volumes. The corruption had really set in by the time Luther hammered the 95 theses on that church door.

One last note: Calvin and Zwingli both were forced to be more conservative publicly and in their main writings because of the Anabaptists to their left. The radicals of the Reformation were as demonic as the Romanist side, in their own way, and as off-the-mark. For instance Zwingli was forced to officially adopt infant baptism - the Romanist practice - after initially being against ritualism and all that because he was in a battle with extremists on his left who threatened everybody because bad doctrine was an invitation for Rome and the secular powers they influenced to attack (ironically, but good doctrine is the armor of God), so the on-the-mark doctrine (which is why Calvin wrote his Institutes, to be a document presenting on-the-mark Protestant doctrine, which is how it was received as well, and was extremely effective as that) was a real weapon in that war. So mostly concessions were made by Zwingli and Calvin in this context in the realm of ecclesiology and sacramentology. The less important, really, areas of doctrine in question; and you really see the schisms and arguing among the post-Calvin Protestants in these two areas too, though that is a simplification. - C.

ps- The Puritans are always 'suspect' by the mainstream Reformed/Calvinists of our day and in the post-Reformation eras generally. It's because the Puritans are seen as 'pietists', which to Puritans just means having and doing the practical level of the faith, and to their critics it means being weird and 'mystical' and so on. Modern day Calvinism is really 'academic theology'. Those types are Man #3 types, but the reformers were Men #4 types.