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John Calvin - His influence on the Western World and the Protestant Church By Alister McGrath

 Well, good evening, and let me begin by saying what a very great pleasure it is to be here with you this evening, and talking about John Calvin and his importance for us today.
And the main point I was making simply is that although Calvin is a very interesting and important historical figure, for reasons I'll make clear, he also is no voice from the past, but someone who we could learn a lot from as we face the future.
And so my lecture tonight really is going to have a number of parts.
I want to explain why the Reformation came into being.
We've got to understand why the Reformation is so important.
Then we've got to understand the special role that Calvin played in relation to Reformation, to begin to understand what is so distinctive about Calvin.
And then we've got to try and explore the reason why both the Reformation and Calvin are important for us in the modern world, because that really is the important thing of what I want to say tonight.
To study the Reformation is not to indulge in ancient history.
It is to deal with a vitally important period in the history of the Church, which gives
us a model, a way of thinking, a way of doing things, which you and I can learn from today.
I think one of the central things we need to realize is that we as Christians have this
great heritage which lies behind us, men and women who've been there before us.
And there is such a rich tradition, and to turn back and look at Calvin is to draw on
an enormously rich resource, which can help us today as we ask, how shall we live and
think and act as Christians in this world?
So to begin with, then, the Reformation.
Why the Reformation?
Why does it matter still today?
I think it's helpful just to begin to understand what the problem was at the end of the Middle
Ages.
As you all know, the Church in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages in many ways was very
successful.
It had gained spectacularly in terms of its power, and there were many, many things that
were going well for us.
Yet it seemed to many that that Church simply had lost its way.
Certainly it had become very rich, certainly some of its members had achieved great positions
of power.
For example, the Renaissance papacy was enormously rich and very, very powerful.
Yet despite all this material success, people were worried, and they were worried because
it seemed that the Church had begun to become dominated by issues of money and power.
And really, to do it very bluntly, it seemed to have lost sight of, and even lost interest
in, the Gospel itself.
And people were worried by that, because it seemed to them that it was all very well to
be successful in secular terms, but that wasn't why the Church was there.
And so in the very early sixteenth century a number of people began to undertake things
which in the long term are going to lead to the movement that we call reformation.
One of those is Martin Luther, and in many ways Luther can be thought of as the man who
really gets the reformation underway.
And Luther, like so many people at the time, is convinced, for example, that the Church
has lost sight of the centrality of Scripture, its drawing on ideas which seem to come from
nowhere in particular, and lost sight of the fact that Scripture should be there at the
heart of the worshipping and preaching life of the Church.
And of course, as many who will know, Luther the Church also seemed to have lost sight
of one of the great themes of the Christian Gospel, namely the doctrine of grace.
Luther was convinced that the medieval Church had fallen into the kind of error which goes
like this.
When you start being a good person, when you start doing good things, then God will start
being nice to you.
In other words, the doctrine of salvation by works, that you have to earn salvation,
you have to achieve salvation, you have to do certain things, and once you've done those,
you'll be right with God.
And for Luther, this was very, very bad news, because it meant that if you were a sinner
like him, there was no hope of being saved.
And Luther rediscovered in many ways the whole doctrine of grace, the amazing and overwhelming
and vitally important fact that God really does love us sinners, that through the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has opened the way to forgiving sinners their
sins and drawing them near to Him and clothing them with Christ's righteousness through that
cross of Christ.
And so Luther was adamant that this whole doctrine of grace, or to use the phrase that
Luther particularly liked to refer to this, the doctrine of justification by faith alone,
was of central importance to the Christian Church.
Luther occasionally referred to it in terms of the article by which the Church stands
or falls.
If you don't believe in justification by faith, then in many ways you have lost sight of the
gospel altogether.
And Luther was convinced that his own church, the medieval church, had in fact done exactly
that.
It had lost sight of the gospel of grace.
Now, it's all very well for us to say, well, that's very good, Luther, and we can agree
with you, and why didn't people think of this long before?
But we need to remember the enormous personal cost of this to Luther, because Luther was
put under enormous pressure by the Church authorities.
There were times when it very much looked as if Martin Luther would not survive.
It was under enormous pressure from the Church and from the state.
But Luther nevertheless persevered.
In fact, as many of you will know, during the years between 18 and 19, things did become
difficult for Luther.
And yet Luther believed passionately that God had called him to recall the Church to
the gospel of grace, and if that was what God had called him to do, then he was going
to remain faithful to that calling and vision, irrespective of what the cost might be.
I can't help but just make the point that actually there's a lesson there for all of
us, that in many ways, Luther stands there just to remind us that recalling a Church
to the gospel can be painful, because there are a lot of people who are quite happy to
go on with something that is much easier to believe and much less offensive to people,
than actually which isn't really doing justice to the gospel.
So anyway, Luther himself begins to preach this gospel publicly.
In 1520 he writes at least three major Reforming works, and the great ideas of the Reformation
begin to get a hearing in popular circles, and people are excited.
They're excited about the idea of justification, this realization that God really does love
sinners, this realization that you can come to God through the death and resurrection
of Jesus.
And they're also excited by other of Luther's doctrines.
Let me mention just one to give you an idea of the kind of exciting ideas that are being
rediscovered at this time.
Luther developed the idea of the priesthood of all believers, the priesthood of all believers,
and again this idea is still with us and it's enormously important.
Luther argues like this.
There is no such thing as a professional group of priests who somehow are set apart from
and stand above ordinary Christians.
Luther argues, for example, on the basis of 1 Peter chapter 2, you are a royal priest.
He argues that all Christians are priests on account of their faith.
And he therefore argues that it's not as if somehow you are made priests by being ordained.
You already are priests.
All of us have this ability to be priests to each other.
Sure, you have to choose some and allow them to exercise priestly functions, but for Luther
the central insight is that every Christian is a priest in the sight of God.
You can minister to each other, you can pass to each other, you can encourage each other,
and Luther really was done doing something of enormous importance.
He was rediscovering the whole New Testament notion of the people of God.
In other words, that God is enabling every Christian to play a vitally important role
in the life of the church.
And that insight had been completely lost during the Middle Ages, which was dominated
by the idea of professional priests, and the laity just muddled on.
But for Luther, the laity have a vitally important role.
They matter profoundly, and it seems to me that's a central Reformation insight, that
we need to regain and reclaim the simple but stunning insight that every Christian, whether
they are lay or ordained, can be taken and used by God to serve him in this world.
In other words, every one of you here tonight has a role you can play in God.
And this is talking about empowerment.
It's about regaining a vision by which ordinary Christians can contribute to the Reformation
of the church.
So those are some of the ideas that Luther begins to develop.
And the result is that Luther begins to recall the church, to rediscover the gospel, to go
behind the Middle Ages, back to the New Testament.
And let me just focus on that theme of going back to the New Testament.
Luther argues like this.
The Christian faith begins from the New Testament.
It's grounded in the New Testament.
What has happened is that the church has become corrupted because it has brought in ideas
which come from outside the New Testament and muddied its wonderful waters.
And Luther uses the kind of imagery which other writers would use at the time.
And it's a very helpful image.
He argues like this.
A stream is at its purest, at its source.
Why bother sampling a muddy stream much further on?
Why not go straight back to the source and drink of pure water and allow that to be recaptured
in the church?
So one of Luther's central arguments is that this process of renewal and Reformation comes
about by going directly back to the New Testament, by not allowing any church authority, any
theologian, any bishop to get in its way.
And here, of course, we have this wonderful Reformation principle, the scriptural principle,
namely that it is the New Testament which in the end has ultimate authority for Christians,
that there is no way that any Christian can be required to believe something which isn't
there in the New Testament.
The New Testament is sufficient.
It tells us all we need to know, and by studying it and drinking it deeply, we are both informed
theologically and nourished spiritually.
So that is, if you like, the agenda of the first phase of Reformation.
Why does Reformation matter?
And it reminds us that at every phase in its history the church loses sight of its vision.
It tends to substitute other things to scripture, and the Reformation simply reminding us of
this to keep regaining vision, to keep returning to scripture, to keep asking ourselves, Are
we remaining faithful to our calling, or have we become distracted by other things?
And in many ways a biblical text which summarizes the early stages of Reformation is this.
First Thessalonians chapter five and verse twenty-one, First Thessalonians chapter five
and verse twenty-one, a text used by many Reformers, and you'll find it's hopeful here
tonight.
Paul writes these words, Test everything, hold fast what is good.
And in many ways that's exactly what the Reformers are doing.
They are saying, You really do need to examine everything we do and everything we believe
to make sure we are remaining faithful to our calling.
So Reformation, then, remains of importance, and what I've just described to you is the
first stage of that Reformation.
And there was a vitally important stage, because Reformation began to get underway, it gained
momentum, and men such as Luther, Swindie, but above all, Luther, were inspirational
in beginning to get this much-needed and long overdue process of recalling a church to face
it underway.
And in many ways it's probably fair to say that Luther was a great inspirer, he was a
great preacher, but he was not a systematic thinker.
And as the first phase of Reformation began to die away, it was fairly clear that there
was a need to move on from there.
What people were beginning to sense the need for was solid, long-term systematic thinking,
which would give the Reform church a real basis on which it could begin to face the
future.
Luther had inspired people to turn to Reform the church, but he hadn't really given people
a long-term program which would keep them going.
Luther had seen the need to give people help in understanding the gospel.
Some of you may have read his Atticism, and just see how well he expresses the gospel.
But he doesn't help in the area, for example, of systematic theology.
There's a need for that kind of guidance, there's a need for the church to have long-term
systematic teaching to enable it to hold fast to what Luther had seen to be important.
And really, this is my cue to introduce John Calvin.
Calvin is a second-generation reformer.
In other words, he is building on the work of others.
But I don't want you to think for one minute that simply because Calvin is building on
the works of others, that somehow makes him second-generation.
That's simply not the case.
In many ways, the moment was right for someone of Calvin's distinctive gifts and abilities
to come along and begin to redirect the Reformation in certain directions.
So what I want to do, if I may, is introduce you to John Calvin, and then begin to identify
what is so important about him.
I guess most of us think that Calvin is Swiss, and that, after all, he is mainly linked with
the city of Geneva.
But actually, he was French.
He was born in the year 1509, about ninety kilometers northeast of Paris.
And he grew up in the midst of a church situation where his father was very heavily involved
with a local church.
He seems to have been some kind of accountant or perhaps some kind of financial advisor
to a local Catholic church.
And initially Calvin seems to have been intended to go into the priesthood.
There are certainly indications, even in Calvin's own writings, that his father in particular
wanted Calvin to go into the priesthood and achieve a high status in the church.
And at some point in the 1520s, Calvin goes to the University of Paris to begin studying
arts with the obvious goal of moving on from there, studying theology and going into the
priesthood.
But the Paris that Calvin goes up to in the 1520s is a Paris that is being excited by
a movement which is gaining sway everywhere.
And the movement is Lutherism.
Luther is being talked about.
His ideas are being discussed.
Their implication for the life of the church is a subject of debate at Paris.
And Calvin would obviously have come across this in the course of his studies.
Then something happens to Calvin's father, and we're not absolutely sure what is.
He may have become involved in some kind of financial scandal, but whatever the motivation
for it may have been, Calvin switches directions and decides to become a lawyer rather than
a priest.
And he goes to a different French university to study law.
Now, the reason I'm talking to you about this is because the university Calvin went to to
study law, the University of Orleans, which is west of East Paris, was noted for its particular
approach to law.
Now, at this stage, Calvin is not an evangelical.
He's still sort of a fairly old-fashioned happiness.
But the person who teaches him law has been brought in by the French monarch to try and
devise a new legal system for France.
And basically this man, a man called William Boudde, who would have a big impact on Calvin,
argued that what needs to be done was this.
You need to go back to a classical legal text and ask, in what way could this classical
text be interpreted in modern-day France?
How could a classical text be applied to the contemporary situation?
And Boudde was trying to develop methods of allowing a classical text to speak to, to
address the modern situation.
Now, the reason I'm underscoring that is that later Calvin would use exactly the same principles
with reference to a different text, as Calvin argues that what all Christians need to be
concerned with is applying scripture to the situation of the modern church.
So in many ways this whole thing is put on his agenda at this stage.
So Calvin completes his legal and premium.
And then something happens, and we just don't know exactly when this does happen, but there
is no doubt that it does.
Calvin has a conversion experience.
It may take place in 1532, it may be a bit later, nobody is absolutely sure, but let's
not worry about the date.
The important thing is he has a conversion experience.
In fact, he writes about this at one point in his later life, as he kind of looks back
on his younger periods, and he talks about a sudden conversion, a sudden conversion,
and he talks about God redirecting him, he talks about God taking him and making him
teachable, and there's this very strong sense that Calvin is being called by God to do something
special.
There's a deep sense there of calling.
God is calling Calvin to do something.
And at this stage, it's not clear what Calvin is being asked to do.
So if I could summarize it like this, Calvin is aware that God is calling him, but he's
not exactly sure what it is that God wants him to do.
He knows God wants him as a Christian, as an evangelical, but he's not exactly sure
what specific capacity God wants him to serve him.
Calvin falls foul of the authorities on account of his evangelical beliefs, and he has to
leave France.
He wanders around Europe for a while.
He settles in the city of Basel, in Switzerland.
And while he is there, he writes a book.
He begins writing it in late 1535, and it's published in 1536, and it's this book which
is one of the reasons that Calvin is of such importance.
He called it The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
The Institutes of the Christian Religion.
And in its final version, it is virtually unanimously regarded as the most important
religious book of the sixteenth century.
It would have a massive influence, and I'll explore why later, but in its first edition,
it's actually quite small.
It is, in fact, if you've seen a copy of it, it will be just slightly thicker than this
and about the same size.
Not very big, only six chapters long, but it is a very clear, a very concise, a very
persuasive, a very biblical statement of Reformed sense, and that was what was needed.
Now Calvin later would go on and expand this book, adding more and more chapters to explain
more and more aspects of the Reformed faith.
By the final version, 1559, there are eighty chapters instead of the original six, and
it's all rearranged, and to make it clearer and easier to follow.
But basically, that's what established Calvin as a leading thinker, and I'll come back to
why that is later on.
Calvin's father dies, there are family issues to be solved, so Calvin goes back to Paris,
he winds up his father's escape, and he wonders, what do I do next?
Because it's not clear.
Nobody seems to want him, so he decides he will go to the French city of Strandford to
lead the life of a scholar.
Lots of things he wants to do, so he decides to go from Paris to Strasbourg, and I remember
the point I made earlier, Calvin is convinced that God has called him, but he's wondering,
where does God want me to be?
The road from Paris to Strasbourg is very, very direct, but there was a war going on,
which meant he couldn't take the direct road.
So Calvin had to take a wide detour to get from Paris to Strasbourg, and he never made
it to Strasbourg, because the road he had to take took him through a city called Geneva.
He was passing through Geneva in the summer of 1536.
He was only going to stay there for one night before moving on to Strasbourg, and while
he was there, somebody recognized him and said, You are needed here.
And in many ways that seems to have said to Calvin, This is where you are meant to be.
Now, I've mentioned Geneva, but I haven't really said very much about it.
Let me just sketch the background here so you'll understand why Geneva is so important,
and why the combination of Calvin and Geneva would be so powerful.
Geneva, we think of it as being a Swiss city, and it was from 1814 onwards, but in the sixteenth
century it was a city on its own.
It had gained its independence from a neighboring territory in 1535, and declared itself to
be a republic, and a republic which was going to be reformed according to the word of God.
For remarkably, you know, a remarkable development, this little city, you know, just broke free
and said, We shall be governed from now on by God.
But they needed someone to guide them.
In many ways it was a city which would say, We want to be reformed, but we aren't quite
sure what that means, and we aren't quite sure how to do it.
And they needed somebody to give them that sense of direction.
And when Calvin came along, they were thrilled.
There is another point I need to make.
Geneva was a French-speaking city, very, very close to France.
Calvin was French, and of course French-speaking, so he had the linguistic skills to reform
the city, but not just Geneva, because one of Calvin's great achievements later in his
career was to begin to turn his mind to his native friends, and work out how it could
be won over for the sake of the gospel.
With that, later.
So Calvin arrives in Geneva in 1536, and soon he is firmly established as one of its leading
thinkers and leading guidance.
Now, of course, you all know the myth of Calvin.
Calvin, you'll be told by some, was the dictator of Geneva.
This ruthless tyrant threw away a mixture of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin and the
Ayatollah Khomeini and that sort of thing, and run them all together.
Ruthless dictators, you'll be told, who held Geneva in terror.
But it simply isn't true.
Now, I'll tell you why it's not, and why you know it's not true.
Because after two years, Geneva threw Calvin out.
They didn't like something he said, and they made absolutely clear, we are running the
city, not you.
You didn't like what you said, you're out.
And 1536, Calvin didn't like them very much, shall we see, but they realized that without
him, the religious situation was just deteriorating, that he had someone to give them a firm sense
of vision, and they asked him to come back.
He would stay there for the rest of his life.
But the Calvin who went back to Geneva in 1541 was a Calvin with firsthand experience
of running successful Reformed churches, and the result is that when he returned to Geneva,
he was able to set up the structures which would ensure the long-term success of reformation
in Geneva.
Now, he still had his enemies at Geneva.
In many ways he was being asked back, not because they really wanted him, but because
they just couldn't do without him.
But by 1555, Calvin really had made his presence absolutely essential.
Again, he is no dictator—I need to make that point—and Calvin was, until the end
of his life, the servant of the city of Geneva.
He couldn't even vote in elections.
He couldn't even stand for office in elections.
His influence was purely moral, yet it was enormous.
So let's get away from this whole idea of Calvin being some kind of dictator.
He is a man with a vision and a man with a real sense of what he wants God to do.
Now, some would say this is arrogant, but of course you need to remember that for Calvin
to be called by God is not a mark of brilliance or excellence.
It's simply a gracious God taking and using weak human beings.
Calvin is not being arrogant in seeing himself as having some special function in God's plan
of salvation.
If anything, he was simply conceding that God takes and uses ordinary people to serve
him.
I want to make the point that at no point in Calvin's life was there any personality
cult centering on him.
Some of his critics said, Calvin, you lack popular adulation, you won't be able to
worship you.
But it simply isn't true.
And I'll tell you one of the things that clinches this point.
Calvin died in 1564.
And if you ever go to Geneva, as I hope you will sometimes, to gain a sense of historical
perspective, one of the things you might like to try and do is to go and visit Calvin's
grave.
But you will find it rather difficult, because the grave isn't marked.
Calvin was buried in a common grave with no marker at all.
What I want to make simply is, that's hardly the mark of someone who wanted a personality
cult.
At his own request, he was buried unmarked with many other corpses.
And to this day, nobody is really sure what Calvin's body implies.
Calvin died, but in many ways, his influence began at that point.
What I'd like to do now, if I may, is move on from Calvin, the 16th century historical
figure, who I might say is very, very interesting, to Calvin as an inspiration to us in our own
day and age.
I want to ask the question, what is it that Calvin has bequeathed to Protestantism, to
Presbyterianism, to Christianity, and to Western culture?
In other words, why is he so important?
And obviously the answer to this is enormously complicated, and all I can really do tonight
is just begin to tease out a few of the reasons why Calvin is so important.
And I could add many others, but I think the ones I'm going to look at are the important
ones.
First of all, Calvin was critically aware of the importance of theology.
He saw that the Church needed a firm sense of direction, a firm understanding of what
it was there for, and Calvin saw theology as a way of stating what was distinctive about
the Christian Church, about what was distinctive of being a Christian.
In other words, for Calvin there is a need for Christians to know what they stand for
and to know why they stand for it, and in many ways that's one of Calvin's most distinctive
contributions, the development of a Christian mind which is confident about what it believes
and knows why it believes it in the first place.
There's a very famous essay by a German church historian called Karl Hall, who in fact is
Lutheran, and Hall wrote a very famous essay on John Calvin in which he made the following
comment, and I'll just quote it to you, the Calvinist knows what he believes and why he
believes it.
And Hall's point is simply that one of the reasons why even when he wrote those words
back in the 1930s Reformed theology was gaining the upper hand was that it was so intellectually
rigorous and intellectually vigorous.
In other words, Reformed theologians were thinking theologians who were aware of the
enormous strength of the Christian faith and also of the reasons for believing certain
things.
If a Calvinist was asked to give, in a marvelous phrase in 1 Peter 3 and verse 15, to give
a reason for the hope he had within him, the Calvinist could do it.
And one of the reasons is the enormously systematic and very, very lucid presentation of Christian
theology that Calvin set out in the Institutes.
So again I come back to the Institutes.
Why are the Institutes so important?
First of all, because they are biblical.
In many ways it's helpful to think of the Institutes as being a work of biblical theology.
To explain what I mean by that, Calvin did not see himself as adding to Scripture.
Rather he saw himself as stating biblical truth in as lucid and clear a way as possible.
In other words, he would in effect, if I include like this, categorize biblical teaching—for
example, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the mediator, the doctrine of the resurrection—and
he would categorize all the biblical passages that were relevant to these teachings so that
his readers, wanting to know what Scripture said about anything, would find all passages
set out and interpreted by Calvin in this book, biblically based, but educationally
extremely lucid and persuasive, not going beyond Scripture, but nonetheless setting
out what Scripture says as clearly as possible.
Some of you may know the very famous illustration of this kind of approach given by a Scottish
writer in the 1830s back in Edinburgh, and this writer was very fond of the Botanic Gardens,
and his argument goes like this.
It's helpful to think of flowers or plants in two different contexts, as you find them
in the wild.
In other words, in their natural context, their natural habitat, and as they are arranged
in a botanical garden, beautifully arranged in patterns systematically to make them easier
to study and appreciate.
Same flowers, the difference is, in one case in their natural environment, in the other
they've been arranged in a certain way.
But the flowers haven't been changed.
And this writer says that what Calvin is doing, he's not changing things, he's simply arranging
them in a particular way so that you and I can appreciate the coherence of what Scripture
is saying about various things.
So there we have one of the reasons, I think, why Calvin is so important historically and
also in the modern period, because Calvin, I think, reminds us that there is a real need
for us to take theology seriously.
Now, by that I don't necessarily mean you all rush off and buy theological textbooks.
What Calvin is really saying is that we need to think about our faith.
We need to be aware of the biblical foundations for key Christian doctrines.
We need to be able to defend those doctrines and explore the way in which they relate to
each other.
We need to be confident about the coherence of Christian truth.
Again, the point I must stress is that one of the reasons why Reformed theology has become
so powerful in the last two generations is that Reformed theologians encourage their
people to appreciate the attractiveness, the coherence, and the reliability of key Christian
doctrines.
And that, I think, continues to be needed to be done.
In other words, we need to say, look, Christians aren't just people who've had a wonderful
experience of God, though they have had that experience.
They are people who are able to give an account, not just of Christian experience, but of Christian
thought as well.
You and I have this great privilege of being able to talk about God in terms of the way
we experience Him, the way we know Him.
But Calvin is saying, don't stop there.
Understand Him.
Develop those doctrines.
Because by doing so, you will gain a firmer grasp of the truth of the Christian faith
and be able to defend that to those who ask you.
Theology matters, and Calvin, I think, is an inspiration as you try to develop your
understanding of the Christian revelation.
You think about God, and Calvin is a superb guide to that process of thinking.
So the whole area of theology, I think, is very important there.
Of course, Calvin is more than just a theologian.
He's also very concerned about the Christian life.
And there are many things that Calvin does to help us understand the way in which we
ought to be living the Christian life.
I'm again only going to single out one thing.
I think it's a very important thing, but there are others we couldn't mention.
And the one thing I'm going to single out is the work ethic, the work ethic.
Let me ask you a question.
I want you to—I have an English word at the back of my mind, and it's a word that
you would use to refer to somebody who had certain gifts, someone who had certain abilities,
somebody who was very good at, for example, playing the piano or painting or something
like that.
You would say they were very talented.
And I just want to ask a question.
Why do we use the word talent to refer to those kind of gifts?
And interestingly, historically, the reason is John Calvin, because Calvin is the one
who takes the parable of the talents—now, a talent, as you all know, is a weight of
silver.
But Calvin says certainly the parable refers to silver in one sense, but in a deeper sense,
the parable is talking about the gifts which God entrusts to Christians, by which they
are able to fulfill God's calling in the world.
And what I'm saying to you is that that word in the English language, talent, meaning a
gift and ability, has its origins, really, with John Calvin.
Here's what Calvin says.
He says, Work is a means by which Christians may praise and honor and glorify God.
Now, the point I want to make is that Calvin uses the word work to mean things that we
do, no matter what the human valuation of those things may be.
Now, I think one of the problems we have here tonight is that you will say, well, we all
know that it's obvious, but it wasn't always obvious at all.
And in fact, if you are saying it's obvious that's true, then that is actually one of
the greatest compliments that could ever be paid to Calvin, because it's showing the
complete inversion of the existing way of thinking that was there.
If you were to go back to the early Middle Ages, work was something that was to be avoided
at all costs.
I mean, in some ways that hasn't changed all that much.
But work was more than that seen as something that got in God's way.
Work was humbling, work was demeaning, and therefore it wasn't the kind of thing that,
in the word of commerce, important Christians would do.
So we're seeing a very significant transformation here.
It begins with Luther.
Luther says the word vocation, the word calling, doesn't mean someone being called to be a
monk and leave the world behind.
It means being called by God to serve Him in the world.
And Calvin develops that, and he talks about the word calling in two senses, being called
by God to be a Christian, but also being called by God to serve Him in some special way in
the world.
And Calvin's point is this, that whatever you do in the world for God is a means of
praising Him and honoring Him and bearing witness to Him.
And Calvin is saying it doesn't matter how humble it may seem to be, the point is that
whatever you do, you do it well, and that's an act of witness.
People will notice, they'll wonder what their motivation is, and as they wonder, they can
be pointed by you towards God.
So you have the interesting historical phenomenon that Calvinists worked incredibly hard and
became very, very rich.
And that actually is one of the reasons why Calvinism has had such a big impact on Western
culture.
Work is a means of honoring God.
It doesn't matter how humble it is, it is something by which God can be honored.
And certainly that kind of attitude is still with us.
Even in a very secular culture, the word vocation is still used, and in its deep sense used
by Calvin, it doesn't mean something we have chosen to do, but rather something God has
chosen for us, which we are to discover.
And again, one of the reasons why Calvin continues to be important is this.
He is challenging us to think through what it is that God wants us to do for Him in the
world.
And again, one of Calvin's very distinctive emphases is this.
You mustn't be influenced by the valuation that the world faces on a job.
Calvin is very, very anti-ambition.
He's saying the important thing is this.
What does God want?
Not what does the world think of it?
So you go only for those jobs which are held in high esteem, but rather you go for where
God may well want you to be, and see what you can make of it.
So again, there's another area where Calvin's influence continues, and also his challenge
continues.
The challenge is to us to think through where it is that God wants us to be in the world.
Calvin does not say, leave the world behind when you become a Christian.
He says, get into it, and serve God there, and bear witness to Him, the salt and light
to that world.
And the final point I'd like to make is to do with Calvin and the natural sciences.
And you must forgive me for making this point, because my own background is in the natural
sciences.
Science actually matters to me a lot.
If you read the first five chapters of the Institutes – and again, let me encourage
you to dip into the Institutes at some point, just for some inspiration – if you read
the opening five chapters, one of the themes that becomes dominant is this.
Although God has revealed Himself supremely and fully through Scripture and through Jesus
Christ, nevertheless there are points in nature where something may be known of God.
The invisible Creator can be made known, at least in some way, through the creation.
In other words, this invisible and intangible God can be seen reflected in His creation.
And Calvin therefore makes the point that to study God's creation is potentially to
appreciate God Himself.
To appreciate the wonder of creation is also to appreciate the wonder of the God who created
it.
Calvin constructs this absolutely rigorous theological framework, which makes it impossible
for us to confuse the creation and the Creator.
The creation and God are different – we're not talking about nature or religion, we're
not talking about pantheism, we're simply talking about this insight that the God who
created this world has left imprints of His wisdom upon it.
And then Calvin makes this remarkable comment, which I think is very, very helpful.
At one point Calvin says, the doctors and the astronomers have the privilege of being
able to know more of the wisdom of God by studying the creation.
The doctors, by studying the human body, the astronomers, by studying the night sky, they
are able to appreciate the wisdom of God even more by looking at the world.
And of course you can see there the kind of impetus that that will give to the development
of natural sciences.
In other words, to deepen our awareness of the natural order brings home to us the wonder
and the majesty and the wisdom of God the Creator.
And that was the original motivation for the study of natural sciences.
And even if that motivation may have gone in some quarters, it's still an amazingly
helpful lesson.
You can go and admire the sun setting over the ocean.
You can go and admire some of the beautiful scenes in this country of yours.
You can look at a night sky and feel overwhelmed by what you see and be amazed by it.
And then you can say, what a wonderful God to have made these things so well.
It enhances your appreciation and awareness of the majesty and the wisdom of God.
And we have Calvin to thank for pointing us in that direction.
Now obviously there's a lot more I could say, but I promised the organizers that I
would limit myself to less than an hour, and an hour has gone by.
So let me try and summarize what I've been saying.
First of all, I've been saying that the Reformation in general matters profoundly.
We always need to regain a sense of vision and ask ourselves, what is the Church there
for?
And that means returning to Scripture and making sure that we haven't added something
else on.
So the Church is there to bear witness to the Lord, to nurture Christians, to preach
the Gospel, that kind of thing.
It's our invitation to ensure that we remain committed to the Christian Gospel.
It's all about Christian integrity and Christian vision.
And again, you may know the very famous slogan, which I think is helpful here, the Church
must always be, and Latin phrase is, ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church which is always
reforming itself.
Reformation is not something that happened only in the sixteenth century.
It's something that must happen all the time, as we keep asking ourselves, are we remaining
faithful to Scripture, are we remaining faithful to Christ, are we remaining faithful to the
Gospel of grace?
It's all about constant self-examination because of the importance of the Gospel.
The reformation continues to matter, and Calvin continues to matter as well.
In many ways he is an inspiration.
Perhaps he was, as many of his critics said, a very cold person, not the best company at
dinner party.
But it takes all sorts to build up a church, and Calvin's distinctive contribution is to
remind us and reassure us of the enormous intellectual resilience and attraction of
the Gospel.
And he challenges us to think about our faith, to understand what Christians believe and
why, so that when we are asked to defend or explain those key Christian doctrines we can
do it, and by doing so open the way to faith in the hearts of those who ask us.
And also Calvin reassures us that wherever we are at the moment, whatever it is we may
be doing, whether it is being a student or whatever, there is some way by which God is
able to work in and through us to glorify Him.
Let me end with just one very simple quotation from Scripture, which I think brings us out
very, very clearly.
And I'm looking here at Paul's letter to Philippians chapter 3, and I'm looking specifically at
verses...
Now let me look at chapter 4 actually, I think this point comes out more clearly, verses
11, 12, and 13, Philippians 4 verses 11, 12, and 13.
I have learned in whatever state I am to be content, and then it goes on and says, I
can do all things in Him who strengthens me.
And the point Paul is making simply is, I may be in prison, but maybe God's put me there
for a reason, because I can preach the gospel there, and I will be happy where I am because
God is able to take me and use me even there.
Calvin is perhaps the supreme theologian of God's providence, and part of that providence
is the way in which He's able to take us and use us.
However humble, however helpless our present situation may be.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's much more I could say, but let me end here and just give
you a chance to ask any questions.
Let's have a short time of questions, it's five past nine, let's have ten minutes of
questions, and then after that I'm very happy to stay here afterwards if you want to come
and ask any further questions.
So ten minutes questions on the floor, and then I'll stay around afterwards in case there
are further questions.
If you'd like to ask a question, just raise your hands and speak loudly.
Question was, what's his view on creation science?
Well I think that's a biggie, if I may say so, and in ten minutes I think I should be
able to say really all that much.
I mean, one of the things that Calvin deals with in his commentary on Genesis is exactly
what the text means, does it mean that God created the world in six periods of twenty-four
hours?
And actually Calvin's answer is no it doesn't, that we've got to try and see what's going
on here, and Calvin's quite clear that in this case the word day doesn't mean twenty-four
hours, it means a much more extended period of time.
And so in many ways Calvin is not particularly a sport of creation science, although there
are other points where he'd certainly point in that direction.
What Calvin is saying, though, I think that the word creation science is right, is that
the creation of the world is an expression of God's providence and sovereignty.
And that, I think, is where creation science gets something very important right.
That's why, or like I said, it's helpful at this stage, and certainly Calvin would echo
some of the themes of creation science.
Yes, certainly, Calvin on the church.
Calvin, like other Reformers, identifies two distinctive identity-giving features of
the church, which are basically the proper preaching of the Gospel and the proper administration
of the sacraments.
I think in many ways that's very, very helpful, because it's saying, look, in the end matters
like church organization, though important, aren't the absolutely important things.
The church comes into being wherever the Word of God is faithfully preached and faithfully
responded to.
And I think there's a real challenge there.