With Calvin in the Theater of God

The Glory of Christ and Everyday Life

John Piper, David Mathis, John Piper, David Mathis

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781433524462
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

John Calvin saw this world as God's theater where his glory is always on display. Just as "day and night pour forth speech, " the universe and history are not silent either; they tell the glory of God. Reflecting on over 500 years of Calvin's legacy, John Piper and this book's other contributors invite us to join Calvin in the theater of God.

Stemming from the Desiring God 2009 National Conference, this volume includes chapters by Julius Kim, Douglas Wilson, Marvin Olasky, Mark Talbot, Sam Storms, and John Piper. It touches on topics such as Calvin's life, the Christian meaning of public life, sin and suffering, the joy of the last resurrection, and Jesus Christ as the dénouement of God's story.

Editors John Piper and David Mathis, along with the contributors, make John Calvin's Christ-exalting perspective on the glory of God accessible to today's readers. Both Calvinists and other evangelicals interested in the life and work of Calvin will find these essays refreshing and instructive, leading to a robust understanding of the world as the theater of God.

1

AT WORK AND WORSHIP IN THE THEATER OF GOD:
Calvin the Man & Why I Care

Julius J. Kim

At twelve years of age, Kim Gwan Hae became a pilgrim. Born into an aristocratic family in South Korea in the 1930s, Kim led a privileged life—he had the best clothes, the best food, and the best education. In fact, he did not have to go to school, but the tutors came regularly to his home. And all of his extended family lived with him, as was the custom. He and his family lived in the main house, while the relatives and cousins lived within the large compound. When I recently interviewed him, I asked him what he remembered most about his childhood. His answer surprised me.

“I don’t really remember much of my home, or my clothes, or my tutors. What I remember are my mother’s cries.”

His father, out of a sense of shame for not being able to bear more children, regularly beat his mother in drunken rage. This continued for years such that his mother’s fingers became permanently mangled from trying to stop the blows.

As he got older, unable to bear it, he would rush to his mother’s room trying desperately to keep his father from beating his mother. But he only ended up getting beaten himself. This came to a climax when he turned twelve. He woke to the smell of fire burning in the home. The little house in which he and his mother now lived was on fire. He ran outside only to be confronted by his father holding the torch.

His father simply stated, “Leave now or die.”

Kim replied, “What are you talking about, Father? What are you doing? Have you gone mad?”

The extended family and the other villagers rushed to see if they could help. But as they saw Kim Gwan Hae’s father holding the torch, they could only watch, because they themselves were overcome with fear. Kim’s father was not only the police chief of the village—the largest and most intimidating man with the largest sword—but he was also the rich est man and often supported the villagers with money, food, and clothes.

Kim Gwan Hae could only watch as his mother gathered whatever she could and then came to grab his hand. With tears streaming down his face, Kim was banished from his home and was now a homeless pilgrim.

In his early twenties, John Calvin became a pilgrim. Having embraced the Protestant faith, Calvin had to flee his home and country and spent the rest of his life outside his native France. It is this pilgrim perspective that helps us understand Calvin the man and his work. Who was John Calvin? What motivated him? John Calvin was a faith-possessed pilgrim with a singular passion to know God and to make him known. In this brief introduction to the life and thought of Calvin, my goal is that you as a Christian pilgrim journeying by faith through the wilderness experiences of your life will also be able to taste and see the same grace and glory that thoroughly transformed this sixteenth-century Christian pilgrim.

TWO STOPS ON OUR JOURNEY

We will be making two stops as we journey back in time through Calvin’s life. First, we will take a look at Calvin’s education and early experiences to see how they shaped his view of and relationship to God. This stop will be called, “Knowing God: Calvin the Student and Scholar of the Word.” Calvin was a man deeply committed to knowing God, especially as he revealed himself in his Word. He was convinced that the core of our wor ship of God and work for God must be based on the Word of God. As a lifelong student of Holy Scripture, Calvin committed himself to the daily and diligent study of the Word of God, and it was in this Word that he came to know the depths of his own sin and the power of Christ for his salvation and how to live as a pilgrim in this sin-cursed world.

The second stop along our journey will reveal how Calvin’s study of God’s Word formed his view of God and the ministry. This stop is entitled, “Making God Known: Calvin the Shepherd and Servant of the Church and the World.” Calvin became a man passionately committed to making his God known through his work as a shepherd of the church and a servant of the world. The endless hours Calvin spent in his study of the Word had this clear purpose: to make God known through his life and ministry. Whether in a church of French refugees or a city council meeting before political leaders, Calvin committed himself to revealing the will of God as it applied to all areas of life.

KNOWING GOD: CALVIN THE STUDENT AND SCHOLAR OF THE WORD

John Calvin was a faith-possessed pilgrim with a singular passion to know God and to make him known. The passion and skill that Calvin was later to display in his writings and in his ministry developed over the course of his life. After a brief look at Calvin’s education and conversion, we will examine his major work, the Institutes, which provides us with the two main themes that Calvin would pursue as a student and scholar of the Word: the sufficiency of Scripture and submission to what the Scriptures principally taught. ¹

Education

Born into what we might call a middle- to upper-middle-class family, Calvin received the privilege of being educated in the medieval system of the trivium, or the three ways or three parts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. All of this was part of his father’s plan to prepare him, like his older brother Charles, for the priesthood. His father, however, soon had a change of heart and directed his son John to forgo his preparation for the priesthood and instead switch to a career in law. As a result, Calvin dutifully studied at prestigious schools in France for four to five years. This momentary detour provided young John not only with a sharpening of his mind, but also an introduction to the Renaissance pursuit of the ancient sources of learning. God would use this training for his own glory, as we shall soon see.

Renaissance learning captivated young John as a student of the clas sics. He especially admired the top scholars of the day known for their incisive commentaries on ancient sources. One such man was the great Renaissance scholar Erasmus. Calvin desired to follow in the footsteps of Erasmus by becoming a student of the ancient classics. Calvin’s first pub lished book was a commentary on De Clementia by the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca. Published when John was only twenty-three years old, it showed great promise and revealed Calvin to be a careful and insightful interpreter. Again, God was clearly preparing him for the great commentaries he would later write.

Conversion

As the story goes, Calvin did not remain a student and scholar of the classics. Something happened that utterly transformed his life, vision, and calling. Simply put, it was his conversion. He would come face-to-face with the Lord of glory, and he would never be the same again.

While we don’t know the exact date, it was during this season of university studies that Calvin came into a vastly new understanding of Christianity. Unfortunately, there is not much information regarding his own journey from being a loyal son of the established church to eventu ally becoming a rootless pilgrim of the Protestant movement. What we do know is that his conversion is the key event that moved him from just being a student and scholar of the classics to being a student and scholar of the Word. Now the prime motive of Calvin’s existence came to be “zeal to show forth the glory of God.”²

It appears that his conversion happened quite suddenly, surprising Calvin himself. He came to recognize the seriousness of his sin and the need to look outside himself for a solution.³ The solution came with help from the writings of the early Reformers like Luther, who many of Calvin’s friends already were reading and studying. Here he came face to-face with the depth of his own sin, the terrifying judgment of God, and the fact that the Roman Catholic Church did not have an adequate solution. So sometime during his twenties, Calvin became gripped by the power of the gospel as it was presented within the context of a church in dire need of reform.

His conversion also signaled a new period in his life—a period marked by fleeing the religious persecution of his native France. Unable to stay safely in France, Calvin became a fugitive on the run, seeking a better home. His pilgrim life had begun.

Institutes of the Christian Religion

Calvin’s conversion also marked another significant event in his life: the writing of his first major Christian book, Institutes of the Christian Religion. It was time to use all the training as a student and scholar to know God and to make him known.

Though he wanted to spend the rest of his life as a student and scholar of the classics, to sit and read for long hours studying, analyz ing, and writing, Calvin knew that it was one thing to know God more and quite another thing to make him known, especially as he became increasingly aware of the necessity for the reform of the church. With the Institutes, Calvin would transition from being a student-scholar of the world of the classics to a student-scholar of the Word of God.

First written in 1536, Institutes was his introduction to the Christian faith. In fact, this first major Christian publication not only reveals what was central to his life and ministry but also provides an outline of the major themes that Calvin would spend his life developing—key themes like the sufficiency of Scripture and the submission to the Scriptures, especially in the areas of salvation and worship.

The book was relatively short, consisting of only six chapters. But it reveals the heart of what Calvin thought was vital not only to the cause of the Reformation but more importantly for the way it prepared disciples for Christ and his church. Chapter 1 described the law and the gospel, that is, the knowledge of sin and salvation. Chapter 2 was about faith, specifically how one is justified by faith alone. Chapter 3 covered prayer and the importance of communion with God. Chapters 4 and 5 dealt with true and false sacraments, that only the Lord’s Supper and baptism were valid sacraments instituted by Christ. Lastly, chapter 6 outlined how the Christian is free in matters of religion from all human innovations since he is bound only to Scripture. ⁴

Calvin would go on to revise and expand his Institutes, but this first attempt made it abundantly clear what Calvin considered of primary importance not only for true religion but also for the reformation of false religion. “Calvin made it clear that Christ, faith, justification, the sacraments, and the Scriptures stood at the heart of his understanding of Christianity.”⁵

Why did he write the Institutes? The dedicatory letter to King Francis I of France gives us a clue. In it he appealed to the king not to listen to the lies of his enemies but to see the real purpose behind the vision for reform. Calvin was distressed because his enemies were charging that the Protestants were revolutionaries trying to overthrow the peace. These lies, according to Calvin, had caused the persecution of many of his fellow Protestants. So in order to protect Protestants, and also to present what he considered true religion, Calvin wrote the Institutes.

So, as a student and scholar of the Word of God, Calvin emphasized two main themes: the sufficiency of Scripture alone for faith and life as well as submission to what the Scriptures taught.

SOLA SCRIPTURA: SCRIPTURE ALONE

What were the key elements of his program of reform? First and fore most, Calvin argued that the Bible, and the Bible alone, was the ultimate foundation for all he believed to be true. He writes, “The Word of God, therefore, is the object and target of faith at which one ought to aim.”⁶ All Christians then must look to the Bible for all that they need for life and godliness. “We ought surely to seek from Scripture a rule for thinking and speaking. To this yardstick all thoughts of the mind and all words of the mouth must be conformed.”⁷ But the idea of the Bible’s truthfulness was not enough. Calvin and the other Reformers were well aware that those in the Roman Church agreed with them formally on this point.

Where they differed was in the areas of sufficiency and clarity. First, Calvin argued that the Bible in and of itself was sufficient as an authority for the church. Why? Because the Church of Rome contended that the Bible was not sufficient for all that the Christian needed for salvation and sanctification. Thus the church councils and customs were needed to establish true religion. On the contrary, Calvin argued that custom and tradition, though helpful, were not necessary to establish the authority of the truths of Scripture. The Bible was sufficient.

Second, Calvin spoke about the clarity of Scripture—that the Bible was clear as an authority. Rome insisted that the Bible was not only insufficient as an authority but also unclear to the masses. Therefore the church was needed to provide the correct meanings and interpretations. Against this, Calvin stated that the Bible was clear in and of itself to pro vide the necessary truths that God intended for us to know.

So, for Calvin, as with his fellow Reformers, the idea of Scripture alone as the source of religious truth was a principal element of his final vision for reform. Why is this important?

As heirs of the Reformation, do our churches today have the same confidence in the truthfulness and authority of God’s Word? How impor tant is the Word of God for our lives? In many of our church...