July 17, 2024 Show with Dr. Tim Harmon on “Calvin’s Institutes: An In-Depth Analysis of Its Structure” (Part 2 of 2)

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But today is part two of a two -day discussion we are having with Dr.

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Tim Harmon. I really loved every minute of yesterday's discussion of part one of the subject,

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Calvin's Institutes, an in -depth analysis of its structure, and we are continuing that topic today.

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Dr. Tim Harmon is vice president of academics and chief administrative officer, provost, and fellow of theology at New St.

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Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio, Dr.

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Tim Harmon. Thank you. Wonderful to be here again with you today. And if anybody wants to know more about New St.

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Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, go to nsa .edu, nsa .edu,

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and also please make sure you listen to part one of our interview that we conducted yesterday.

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Dr. Harmon gives a more detailed explanation of New St. Andrews, and he also gives a summary of his salvation testimony in addition to opening up the discussion for this very important topic on Calvin's Institutes.

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Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address again if they'd like to join us with their own questions. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the

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USA. And Dr. Harmon, if you want to just give a very brief recap, because people can always listen to the recording of part one to get the full details on what we discussed yesterday, but if you want to give us a brief recap before we resume this discussion.

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Sure, sounds good. So yesterday we talked through Calvin the man. We talked about his place in history and the events that led to his composing his

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Institutes or instruction, or you could say catechism in Christian religion.

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Calvin was a Frenchman at that time. He was aware of great persecution of Protestants in France.

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He was motivated not just to provide a compendium of doctrine to help

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Christians read the Bible better in general, but more specifically, he wanted to demonstrate to those persecuting

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Protestants that Protestants are simply holding fast to the main line of Christian doctrine throughout church history.

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And so kind of with those twin goals, number one, to provide an aid to the reading of Scripture, and number two, to provide a defense of the

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Protestant faith. He then undertakes this task. He starts it quite early in the first edition, 1536.

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He's still a young man, continues to work on this for about 25 years until the final

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Latin edition of the Institutes is published in 1559, a much expanded and reorganized work, and that is the final edition that we have today, along with the

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French edition that was published in 1560. Anything else in there that you'd like me to touch on by way of introduction?

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Well, maybe we could just clarify one thing that is the subject of debate between Christians.

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Does Calvin's Institutes contain what we have come to know as the five points of Calvinism?

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Now I know the TULIP acronym, or acrostic,

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I always forget which one to use, but the TULIP was actually a response to the five points of Arminians, five points of Arminianism during the remonstrance, a response to the remonstrance in the early 17th century by the

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Dutch Reformed Church, and the Arminians rose up within the Dutch Reformed Church with their protest known as the

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Remonstrance, and so we know that you will not find

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TULIP in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian religion, but are the concepts of all five points in there?

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Yeah, I think the concepts are clearly found in Calvin's writings. Those present at the

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Synod of Dort, they are simply trying to draw on that Calvinistic tradition and Calvin's own thought in order to respond to a controversy in their day.

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So I think that those five points are certainly part of Calvin's conceptual framework, even though you're correct, there are no five points of Calvinism articulated in Calvin's own writings.

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Great. Well, you can continue now with what you most want to emphasize as far as the structure of this very historic and vital document.

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Great. Yeah, well, I thought it would be, having talked about the background of the

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Institutes about Calvin and the kind of man that he was, and talking more generally about the structure, to walk through the work as a whole, kind of tracing what

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I see to be his main line of argument. But before doing so, I do want to commend what

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I have found to be a helpful resource, which is the analysis of the Institutes by Ford Lewis Battles.

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He provides, if anyone's interested in studying the Institutes further, he provides what he calls a detailed analytic outline of the work.

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And so you're able to turn to the section that you're reading in the Institutes and look at the outline that he's provided.

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And I think that really helps in understanding the logic of a section. Calvin, much like Augustine, within the framework of a somewhat systematic work, will often digress.

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We've talked about Calvin being Augustinian, and this is one way in which Calvin is Augustinian, because he'll be articulating a biblical truth, and then he will digress to address a situation that he's facing in his day, might not be a situation that we're facing as well, but something in his day that he feels that he needs to address, and he kind of steps aside and does that.

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And because of that, at times it can be difficult to trace his line of argument.

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So I think Battles is helpful as a resource in doing that. And there are two comments that Battles makes in the introduction to this work that I think are worth mentioning before even starting to walk through his line of argument.

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And the first of these is that while seeking to provide what he sees as a coherent account, a coherent summary of the whole of biblical teaching,

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Calvin is not merely trying to provide a compendium of doctrinal truths.

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And he doesn't even see himself as providing the final word. So at the end, for example, of the preface to the 1560

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French edition, which is the last edition that he publishes, he writes the following. He says,

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I urge the reader to have recourse to scripture in order to weigh the testimonies I adduce from it.

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So he's challenging the reader. You've heard my take on scripture, and it does bear authority.

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It bears weight both through logical argumentation and through his drawing upon church history.

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But at the same time, he ultimately is bringing the reader back to scripture. And what he wants to do is he wants to pave an onramp.

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And he uses that language of a path or an onramp for a life of careful biblical reading, testing what they've heard from everyone, including

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Calvin, against scripture itself so that they may live in keeping with God's will, experience his blessing, and, and I think this is an important point, see the establishment of the kingdom of God.

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So it's not just that they would rightly understand biblical truths, but taking it on Calvin's word, that they would be brought back to scripture, that bringing, being brought to scripture, that would result in a change in how they're living, and in so doing that they would experience

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God's blessing and ultimately see the establishment of the kingdom of God. So I think you have to keep all that in view when you're thinking about what

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Calvin is trying to provide. Yeah, what you just said, said in regard to one of the intentions of Calvin, to change how people were living.

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This defies the slander of Calvin and Calvinism and Calvinists by those who oppose this theology, usually in ignorance of what it actually teaches, who will hurl against us the accusation that we believe in easy believism and cheap grace, that you can live like Satan your entire life unrepentantly after you make some kind of a profession, and you should be given confidence you will still go to heaven when you die just because you made a profession in the past.

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And I remember distinctly one day years ago back in the 1990s hearing

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Raoul Reese, the very well -known radio preacher, teacher, affiliated with the

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Calvary Chapel movement. I could still remember sitting there hearing him say, there are people out there who teach that you can live like the devil your whole life and you'll still go to heaven when you die.

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That's not in the Bible, man. John Calvin made that up, man. And I remember thinking, this man never read one sentence of Calvin, one sentence of the

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Puritans, one sentence of any of the Continental Reformers.

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I mean, this is ridiculous. This is even somebody with a cursory knowledge of Calvin and the

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Puritans would know that that is just a blatant lie. Yeah, that really is a straw man, and you're correct.

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You're not going to find that in Calvin at all. Now, what you will find, and I'm going to talk about this later as we walk through the Institutes, is you will find that Calvin is very concerned with providing

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Christians assurance, but that's not the same thing as easy believers. Right.

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So we'll talk more about his concern there to provide Christians with assurance, not false assurance.

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Right. But he doesn't want them to find their assurance in self, but ultimately to find their assurance in God.

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But that is not the same thing as saying it does not matter what you do, because for Calvin, he could not imagine,

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I mean, he'd be horrified if he thought that what he wrote was to be taken in such a sense that it was

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OK to simply believe the right things in a way that was disconnected from piety. Well, let me just throw out a recommendation.

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I'm not sure you're familiar with this excellent book by Dr. Joel R. Beeky, a founder and president of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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But he wrote his doctoral dissertation on assurance, and it became a and got in print in a more popular form called

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The Quest for Full Assurance, The Legacy of Calvin and His Successors.

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So I just thought I'd throw that out there. Yeah, good, good resource. So pick up where you like it.

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Yeah, so I want to pick up, I point out just one more thing that I'm taking from Battles and his introduction, which and it connects up to the prior item, which was that you have to understand that reading scripture, rightly understanding it, that cannot be disconnected from then you doing the will of God, receiving

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God's blessing and ultimately the establishment of the kingdom of God. And so the second thing that Battles asserts is that at the end of the day,

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Calvin, even though you might not find the language of the exact language of sovereignty, the sovereignty of God being something you're stumbling across on every page at the same time that Calvin's ultimately focusing on God's rule among the nations.

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And I like the way he puts that because you can have more abstract references to the sovereignty of God and assert that that's a prevailing theme in the

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Institutes. And I think that's true. But but I think it fails to capture this more concrete, as Battles puts it, royal imagery and political frame of the

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Institutes. So the sovereignty of God for Calvin is God's rule among the nations, which is much more concrete than an abstract notion of God's rule.

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And it connects up to and we're getting now into the one more comment on the organization before walking through the work.

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Battles has this phrase political frame, and one thing to take notice of is that in the final 1559 edition, which is a reorganization of prior editions, and Calvin again says,

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I'm finally satisfied in how I've organized the work. But in that edition, it begins and ends on a political note, begins and ends on a political note.

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It begins with Calvin's letter to the earthly King Francis I with an appeal that recognizes the legitimacy of his office as a civil magistrate under the rule of God.

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And then it ends in book four, chapter 20, with Calvin's famous treatment of civil government.

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So very interesting that it begins and ends with this political framing. And yesterday,

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I mentioned that the Calvin's Institute, unlike more contemporary systematic theologies, it doesn't end with a section on eschatology.

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And indeed, it contains no extended eschatology section at all. Instead, what you have are these.

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And again, we're going to come to this. There is one chapter on the resurrection, but the work as a whole is bookended by attention to the civil sphere in which we presently live.

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Battles makes this note, Calvin's theology lives in the real world and squarely faces it.

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And that's not to the neglect of the eschaton when God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

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It's not to neglect of that day when the kingship of Christ over all the nations will be manifest.

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But that's a future event. At the same time, I think the point is here is that Calvin is addressing his readers here and now living as members of the spiritual kingdom among the kingdoms of the earth.

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So there's a very practical focus in this work to help people navigate their present life situation.

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And that, again, is why Calvin digresses, because he thinks that theology has something to do with the practical situations that you're facing right now.

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Now, when you said that the Institute's does not contain any kind of thorough exegesis or discussion on eschatology, are you including, because eschatology does include this heaven, hell and the afterlife?

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Certainly those are touched upon in his section on eschatology, but it's kind of in the scope of the work as a whole.

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It's a relatively meager treatment. And I don't think that's because he, again, would want to downplay their significance, their great significance.

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He spends a lot of time on soteriology, our need for salvation in Christ.

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He certainly believes that we are in dire straits without the redemption worked in Christ.

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But I do think he wants to make his theology connect up with our present situation as we live in light of that day.

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And so his focus is a lot more on how should we live now in light of the truth of Christ rather than speculation.

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And I mentioned yesterday he's anti -speculative. Yes. I think that he's content with looking forward to that day when

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Christ will come and his kingdom as well in its fullness at Christ's return, that we will experience that blessing of a unified body and soul and a glorified human existence.

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He's happy looking forward to that reward, not knowing exactly what all the particulars are going to look like.

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Well, it sounds like, according to your vast knowledge of the Institutes, that something that would be foreign to Calvin is the idea that has been adopted by multitudes of Reformed Christians and their pastors and their churches and congregations and denominations of this total separation of the church from the political arena.

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Obviously, on the one hand, there are people, I believe, who delve into heresy when they equate political activism with the gospel as if they are really just adopting a right wing social gospel.

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Correct. But at the same time, there are many Reformed pastors that will never, ever address anything of a political nature, even if the issues can transcend politics.

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Like, for instance, the murder of unborn children is not just a political issue. I would fully agree with you.

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He definitely, and in the final section of the Institutes, when he's dealing with power, first the power of the church and then the power of the civil magistrate, he believes that these two are vitally connected to one another.

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There's no way of distinguishing these into absolutely different spheres.

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They have different functions in God's design, but the two are vitally connected and we're whole beings.

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We're whole people. Life is not bifurcated and segregated in that kind of way. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break.

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with Dr. Tim Harmon.

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This is day number two of our two -part discussion on Calvin's Institutes of the

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Christian Religion. If you have a question, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Well, please pick up where you left off, brother.

34:26

Yeah, so I think we're at a good point now to just starting to talk through the work as a whole and trace its argument.

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As was mentioned before yesterday, we talked about there being four books. These are not discrete books.

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They're meant to be read together in sequence, but you could say four larger sections. The first deals with the knowledge of God as creator, with a focus on the father.

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The second, the knowledge of God as a redeemer, with a focus on the son. The third, the way in which we receive the grace of Christ, with a focus on the spirit.

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Then finally, the fourth book has to do with life in the society of Christ. Right at the beginning, book one, we have the knowledge of God as creator.

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Both books one and two have to do with the knowledge of God. We see two ways in which

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God can be known, either as creator or redeemer. In book one, the focus is on how humans, through general revelation and without the aid of special revelation, may know

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God. Now for Calvin, due to our fallenness, we cannot know

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God as creator through general revelation in the way that we ought to, and as such, special revelation in scripture is needed.

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Book one, chapter one, opens with Calvin's famous words. He says this, nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts, the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

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So wisdom for him involves two parts, knowledge of God and knowledge of self.

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Now ask yourself the question, why does he use the term wisdom in earlier versions?

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In the 1536 version, in particular, he used a term other than wisdom.

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He spoke of sacred doctrine, which if you're reading through patristics and medievals, they just use that language of sacred doctrine to refer to both scripture, scripture itself, and doctrinally what scripture teaches.

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And so he employs a pretty common term, but then he changes it in the 1539 version from sacred doctrine to the term wisdom.

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Scratch your head and ask, he doesn't tell us why he did it, but ask yourself, why did he do this?

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And perhaps it's because he's trying to underscore that it's not just the body of truths which constitute the

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Christian faith, but rather this broader category of wisdom that includes both the knowledge of the truth and then our applying that truth to our lives.

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So perhaps he wanted to kind of bring into view a broader notion of theology that was at once theoretical and practical.

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Either way, this wisdom is twofold. It involves knowledge of God and self.

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And then Calvin makes a comment on these and he says, while joined by many bonds, which one proceeds and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.

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And what he's getting at is that the knowledge of God and knowledge of self are very much interrelated.

37:54

They're mutually implicating. It says we come to know God that we come to know ourself.

38:01

And it's as we come to know ourself that we come to know God. And framing things that way at the outset or setting things up that way at the outset, it's clear that whatever kind of theology

38:14

Calvin is doing is not abstract theology disconnected from our day -to -day lives as I've talked about before.

38:23

So that's the starting point for Calvin. And then in terms of his answer to how the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self relate, he goes on to say that for us as fallen creatures, it's primarily as we come to recognize our own unhappy condition that we rightly see

38:44

God for who he is. We have to be displeased with self before we can truly aspire to the knowledge of God.

38:53

And I don't think what he's talking about here is just self -abasement in a way that doesn't recognize all the good things that God has put into our life.

39:07

God is constantly restraining evil that our original created condition is good.

39:12

But I would say more about knowing that we don't stand in a right relationship to him.

39:20

So that's the starting point. Now just to clarify a couple of things, obviously you mentioned some terms, general revelation, which is involving nature, and special revelation, which involves the

39:39

God -breathed scriptures. What in Calvin's mind and belief and teaching in the

39:46

Institutes, what can we know from Romans chapter one, which obviously many, not all, but many

39:55

Reformed Christians who consider Calvin their hero are presuppositionalists.

40:00

That's one of the texts of presuppositionalists. And so what can we truly know, or even all of mankind know, whether they are regenerate or not, from Romans chapter one?

40:18

So I think that the answer of course is different before and after the fall.

40:24

If there had been no fall, all that we needed to know of God would have been clear.

40:31

And I'll get into this in a bit when I talk about Calvin's idea of the scripture being a set of spectacles, which helps us to read the book of nature or to read the created order.

40:43

But prior to the fall, there would have not been a need for those spectacles, because our eyeballs, as you could put it, would not be defective.

40:56

So that there's been a great change that's taking place because of the fall. Because of the fall, general revelation is still operative.

41:04

God is still making himself known through every aspect of the created order, including the human being.

41:14

And Calvin talks about there being a sense of the divine that's still operative in us, where we're still, as it were, able to perceive partially, and not always correctly, that book of nature.

41:35

But the best that it's going to get us is to perceive a more general notion of a

41:43

God. So that's my understanding of his conception of what we're able to read of the book of nature, apart from those spectacles of scripture.

41:59

So that we can discern that there is a God, and we can discern some things that are true about divinity.

42:07

So we might have a fuzzy conception of some of the divine attributes. Certainly, we're not able to discern who this

42:16

God is, nor are we able to discern his triunity. Which is exactly why

42:22

Christians sought to evangelize the

42:27

Native Americans, because they definitely developed a religion from what they observed in nature.

42:36

But it was an idolatrous and false religion, and therefore they needed the specific details of God's breathed words and scripture to know the gospel, and to know the true

42:48

God who they needed to repent and follow and trust as their only hope for salvation.

42:56

Am I right? Absolutely. And I would say that something is true, or something similar is true in every culture.

43:07

Just by virtue of being creatures made in the image of God, and being made for the purpose of knowing

43:14

God. Even though we're fallen, God in his kindness has not allowed our humanity to be as corrupted as it possibly could be.

43:24

And so it still does operate, but not quite correctly.

43:32

But yeah, I would say that there is no culture in which there is not some perception of a

43:38

God. Some cultures do a better job of reading the book of nature than other cultures at the same time. Right.

43:43

I can remember as a young kid visiting pretty much annually my

43:50

Uncle Hans in Waitley, Massachusetts. He was a man from Germany who married my father's cousin.

43:58

And I remember we, my father and I and my brothers, would go to church somewhere in the area on Sunday.

44:08

And I asked one day when we were eating dinner in Uncle Hans's house,

44:15

I said, Uncle Hans, why don't you go to church? And he pulled open the curtains and pointed out the window to his beautiful acreage of property out in the countryside.

44:28

He said, this is my church. Now, the only thing that that did was make him accountable for his sin.

44:40

He was not going to get eternal life from that church that he was pointing to.

44:46

He only had no excuse when he met

44:51

God on judgment. And I really do hope that he repented, apart from my knowledge, and came to Christ.

44:59

I don't know that at all. But that's what we know from nature, is that we are without excuse.

45:08

Correct. Yeah. So thank you for helping to clarify there on what's meant by those terms, general and special revelation.

45:18

And as you mentioned, general, there's nothing wrong with general revelation. There's something wrong with us.

45:25

And because of that, general revelation, as good as it is, is not good enough to provide us with the knowledge of God that's necessary for salvation.

45:37

Okay. What else would you like to highlight? So picking back up, Calvin connects this idea of the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God, and how it's primarily as we come to recognize our own unhappy condition that we rightly seek

45:57

God for who he is. He connects that up to a theme that runs the course of the Institutes, which is this distinction between humility and pride.

46:07

And so really what it is you have to be, is you have to be a person of humility to really come to the proper knowledge of God.

46:17

And again, this is a very Augustinian theme. Augustine in his City of God talks about there really only being two kinds of people in the world, the elect and the reprobate.

46:27

And the elect are characterized by humility and the reprobate by pride.

46:34

So kind of starting there, he moves forward and talks about what it is to know

46:39

God and what is the purpose of knowing God. And Calvin defines the knowledge of God as in fine, what is to our advantage to know of him.

46:54

So, which is very interesting. It's not just knowing facts about God, but to truly know

47:02

God is to know that God is to our advantage. And I touched on this before.

47:13

Calvin's approach is both theoretical and practical. This becomes a big discussion later on in the 17th century, is theology just theoretical, just practical, or is it both theoretical and practical?

47:27

And the primary reformed response is that it's both at the same time.

47:33

To really know God is to know that he's for us. If you're to know

47:38

God in the proper way, as a person who has been regenerate and put their faith in God, the converse, of course,

47:50

I guess, for the person who is coming to that saving knowledge of God, there is a time where they are humbled such to know that if they do not repent of their sins, that God is against them.

48:05

Right? So there's a very personal aspect of knowing God that we find in Calvin.

48:12

Yes, and how did that contrast with the Roman Catholic religion that dominated the culture at Calvin's time?

48:23

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with the Roman Catholic conception of grace. So, in Roman Catholic conception of grace, grace was not so much about your relationship with God, that relationship in which you know, because of Christ, that God sees you in a favorable way, and you have good fellowship with God.

48:52

Grace is viewed as a substance that you receive. And while I don't think

48:58

Roman Catholics would deny that there's a personal aspect to salvation, there did come over time a view where salvation was somewhat more transactional.

49:13

So I think that's a big difference. And when you have conversations with Roman Catholics, especially if they have real knowledge of their church's official teachings, and perhaps even more especially if they're apologists,

49:33

I have personally arranged dozens of live public moderated debates on theology, most of the time with my friend

49:43

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries representing historic reformational

49:48

Protestantism, and sometimes Dr. Tony Costa as well of Toronto Baptist Seminary.

49:54

But the thing that sometimes gets past your average evangelical is when they will perhaps say to a

50:06

Catholic, a Roman Catholic, you deny grace. You don't believe grace is necessary for salvation.

50:13

They'll say, oh no, we believe grace is absolutely necessary. The word that is missing from that is alone, sola gratia.

50:22

And so therefore, there can be either trickery or—and perhaps it's not intentional, conscious trickery—but that there is a huge difference, especially obviously according to Calvin, between believing in the necessity of grace and the sufficiency of grace.

50:42

There is, and the other difference is if you have a different definition of grace, you can say, yes,

50:50

I affirm grace, but I don't affirm the same kind of grace that you're talking about. Right. Do you care to give those two different definitions that may exist between Rome and the

51:03

Reformation? Sure. So I would say for Protestants, grace has to do with God's kindly disposition toward us in Christ.

51:14

For Roman Catholics, grace is a substance. It's a created thing. It's a created thing that you receive through the sacraments.

51:26

And I guess that's where I was going in saying that can lead to a more impersonal view of one's relationship with God.

51:40

It can lead to a more transactional, impersonal idea. Well, we have to go to our midway break right now.

51:48

And if you would like to submit your own question to my guest, Dr. Tim Harmon on Calvin's Institutes of the

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give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence, and if you could

01:12:04

Dr. Harmon pick up where you would like to proceed with this conversation. Yeah, so we've talked through the beginning of book one, how

01:12:19

Calvin starts out talking about the knowledge of God and self and how they are inseparable, they are interrelated.

01:12:31

What you believe about self is going to have implications for what you believe about God, and what you believe about God is going to have implications for what you believe about self, and ultimately you need to be a person of great humility if you are going to come to a right knowledge of God.

01:12:46

And moving on from there, Calvin in book one, he addresses the doctrines of God, creation, and providence, and the interesting thing about this whole section, theology proper, which deals with the nature of God, the doctrine of the trinity, doctrine of creation, doctrine of providence, in treating those topics there's really nothing in those sections that is particularly innovative, even while Calvin teaches these commonplaces in his own unique style.

01:13:17

But there is one section within his treatment of God, creation, and providence that stands out, and it's in chapters 11 and 12.

01:13:28

After his treatment of the divine nature, but before his treatment of the trinity of divine persons,

01:13:33

Calvin addresses this topic of idolatry, and he here coins this famous phrase that the heart is an idol factory.

01:13:46

In our fallen condition, we talked a little before that through general revelation we can discern that there is a

01:13:53

God, but without special revelation we don't know who the true God is, and so what we are inclined to do is to try to assign some kind of name to that God that we discern, but we get it wrong over and over and over again, and so we're continually producing idols, and that is our state as fallen humanity with only the availability of general revelation.

01:14:24

Okay, and okay, go ahead, I'm sorry. Go ahead, yeah. Well, I don't want you to forget where you left off.

01:14:30

I was just going to read a listener question. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, we have

01:14:35

Gavin in Half Hollow Hills, Long Island, New York, and Gavin wants to know, of course, anyone who firmly believes the theology of their own denomination or fellowship wants other people, in fact, they want everyone to embrace what they themselves believe is the truth and very important teachings, but other than the efforts to convert somebody from one frame of thought to another, like from Arminianism to Calvinism, what other motivation can you provide for non -Reformed

01:15:17

Christians to read Calvin's Institutes? A great question.

01:15:27

Number one, I would say that as Christians, we believe that we are part of the communion of saints, which transcends any one particular historical moment, and so as such,

01:15:44

I think we really ought to care about our family history, and with Calvin's Institutes being such a monumental text within our history as Christian people, even if you read

01:16:02

Calvin, you take his encouragement to take what he's taught and compare it with Scripture, and even if there are areas where you end up disagreeing with him,

01:16:12

I think in reading him, you're going to learn a lot more about your own family history, and I think that that's of great benefit and of great value, and I think furthermore, because he lives, and this connects to the

01:16:28

C .S. Lewis notion of reading older books, because their perspective is not the same as our own, so it challenges our perspective.

01:16:40

Calvin is a deep and careful thinker, but he is operating at a different time in history than we are, and so he is going to challenge your perspective, whether you end up agreeing with him or not.

01:16:53

Yes, and even to find out from the source himself what he really taught, because you may be hearing a lot of very negative and slanderous things about Calvin and Calvinism, and this would be a way to go straight to the horse's mouth, as they say, and find out what he really believed and taught, and find out what was really most important to him.

01:17:21

Absolutely, and you know, one of the things that I think is interesting is that you mentioned

01:17:29

Arminianism. I would say that classical Arminianism, kind of prior to the sonata of Dort, is actually simply an offshoot of Calvinism, and it's actually much closer to Calvin than modern -day

01:17:46

Arminianism, and so it would be interesting for somebody coming from an Arminian perspective to not only read

01:17:53

Calvin, but to move forward into the early 17th century and just see how much different classical

01:18:00

Arminianism is than modern -day Arminianism. Okay, well let me take one more question before I have you continue on with the thread that you were already on.

01:18:15

We have another Long Islander, and it is Phil from Wheatley Heights, Long Island, New York, and Phil wants to know, did

01:18:27

John Calvin, in any significant way or any way at all, change his theology after his institutes were already in print?

01:18:40

Not that I'm aware of. I mean, Calvin, like anybody else, he does say something at the introduction to, or the preface rather, to the

01:18:53

French version where he quotes Augustine and says, like Augustine, I write as I learn, and I learn as I write.

01:19:02

And so his point is that over the course of writing the Institutes, he's learning things.

01:19:08

He's maybe not affecting a wholesale change in his doctrine, but he is adding nuance to his doctrine.

01:19:16

I'm not aware that he had any significant departure from what he wrote in the Institutes in those last five years of his life, but I think

01:19:23

Calvin is somebody, I mean, I think to be a Calvinist in the spirit of Calvin is to be a person of lifelong learning, to be continually bringing back what you believe to the

01:19:34

Scriptures and refining it. And oftentimes that doesn't mean, it need not mean that you have a marked shift in your overall theology, but you're going to see new connections.

01:19:47

I mean, Scripture is, because it teaches us the infinite God, the

01:19:52

God who's infinitely knowable, its depth is endless and its breadth is endless.

01:19:59

And so we're going to continue to learn and define new things as we continue to study it.

01:20:04

And one of the slanders we should immediately refute is that the vast majority of people who call themselves

01:20:11

Calvinist do not, as we are accused of doing, worship John Calvin.

01:20:17

I'm sure there are some out there that are guilty of idolatry, just like there are independent fundamentalist

01:20:25

Baptists who are guilty of idolatry with their own anti -Calvinist pastor. But in fact,

01:20:33

Calvin himself would absolutely get nauseous and angry and furious if he knew that people were idolizing him.

01:20:46

And isn't it true that he demanded that there be no gravestone near where he was buried?

01:20:54

He was buried in an unmarked grave. Right. And that was at his request, wasn't it?

01:21:03

Whether it was or not, I don't recall. I know, in fact, he was marked in an unmarked grave, and that does seem to accord with the wish he stated many times, was that he wasn't seeking fame.

01:21:17

He wasn't seeking people to focus upon him. He wanted the focus to be on God and Christ.

01:21:23

And he saw himself as a servant of God, an instrument of what

01:21:28

God was doing in that time, and he certainly, I think he'd be mortified just people calling themselves

01:21:36

Calvinist. Right. If that meant in any way, and again, he believes the heart is an idol factory.

01:21:43

Anything can be made an idol, and I think he was aware of the fact that that included him, that included church leaders. And going back to the question where you said you're not aware of any significant departure or perhaps even any departure from what he wrote in the

01:21:59

Institutes after that later in his life, that would make him very different than the moving target known as Martin Luther, wouldn't it?

01:22:08

Because Martin Luther didn't have the luxury of having Protestant documents before him, and he was on a process.

01:22:17

Even Lutheran scholars that I have spoken with and pastors admit that, you know, when we read

01:22:23

Luther, we got to check when we're reading, when the literature we're reading was printed, because he was still gradually shedding much of his

01:22:37

Roman Catholic baggage over his lifetime. Yes. Yeah, I would concur. Well, why don't you pick up now with the other things that you most significantly want to say?

01:22:49

Yeah. So it's interesting, and I'm going to move into book two now and just highlight a couple things.

01:23:00

But when Calvin, in book two, by the way, what

01:23:07

Calvin talks about is the fall, talks about sin, and then he talks about the person and work of Christ.

01:23:14

And what's interesting is he talks about the root of the fall being unfaithfulness, a lack of faith.

01:23:21

And this lack of faithfulness spreads to all humans so that we're now all characterized by ambition, pride, and ungratefulness.

01:23:31

And we've suffered, he says, a deadly wound, and we're all born into a state of miserable servitude because we're under the rule or the dominion of sin.

01:23:42

And then he then points us to Christ, the remedy. And it's in this section that he talks about the old and new covenants, and he wants to be careful in thinking about their proper relationship.

01:23:57

He doesn't want you to overemphasize their discontinuity. At the same time, he doesn't want you to overemphasize their continuity.

01:24:05

I think one thing that he's dogmatic about is that there are not two ways of salvation.

01:24:12

Salvation is always through Christ. That was the case under the old covenant as well. The old covenant was, he says, to foster hope of salvation in Christ until his coming.

01:24:24

But here you have Calvin doing some covenant theology.

01:24:31

And so oftentimes when we think of reform theology, we think of theology. Bollinger had written on really the first treatise on covenant theology in 1534, and then

01:24:44

Calvin comes next. But we don't really have a fully developed articulation of covenant theology in Calvin.

01:24:53

We have to wait until Orsinus and Livianus later on and Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

01:25:01

But you do see him kind of dipping his toes into this idea of the covenantal architecture of scripture.

01:25:13

So that's in book two that you see that. And what's interesting, again, is when he gets into his treatment of Christ's person,

01:25:25

Calvin, as in his treatments of the doctrines of God and creation and predestination, he's relatively unoriginal.

01:25:32

He's really just trying to articulate the historic one person, two natures doctrine concluded at Chalcedon.

01:25:41

Again, doing so with his distinct voice and connecting all of this to the establishment of God's kingdom.

01:25:49

So that kind of rounds out book two and touching on some of the high spots.

01:25:58

Okay, we do have another listener question. We have

01:26:03

Margo in Atlanta, Georgia, and Margo says, there seems to be a growing rift between Reformed Christians over where to place the teachings of Thomas Aquinas in the life of the church.

01:26:23

What was Calvin's view of Thomas Aquinas, and did he ever specifically mention him in the

01:26:29

Institutes? Yeah, he specifically mentions him at a number of points, and of course, being educated at the

01:26:36

University of Paris, where Thomas Aquinas taught, that was inescapable.

01:26:41

But what's interesting is that when he, we're unsure as to whether he actually read

01:26:47

Aquinas, even though he doesn't mention him, and he'll say things, you know, Thomas says this, but when you compare what

01:26:56

Calvin's summary of Thomas is to what Thomas actually wrote, they don't quite line up, which causes many to think that he never actually read

01:27:06

Thomas, but he had learned from others about what Thomas taught, but it wasn't faithfully communicated.

01:27:12

And so there's been a lot of scholarship indicating, not in every way, of course, but there are many places, such in his doctrine of predestination, where what he's saying is very close to what

01:27:25

Thomas taught. Now, just going back a couple of steps, when you said that Calvin was educated at the

01:27:33

University of Paris, what did you mean yesterday when you said he was completely self -taught?

01:27:41

Oh, in terms of theology. So he studied the liberal arts and humanities at the University of Paris. Now, doesn't

01:27:50

Calvin, in some places in the Institutes, negatively refer to Thomas Aquinas using...

01:28:00

So correctly, and so that's... The scholastics? Yeah, he certainly is anti -scholastic.

01:28:08

I think what he particularly doesn't like about the scholastics is he finds them to be overly speculative, and he's certainly negative about Thomas Aquinas in many places, but then you have to ask yourself the question, did

01:28:22

Calvin receive what he knew of Thomas from reading

01:28:29

Thomas or from what he learned from others? And he would have known of Thomas, even if he's not studying theology at the

01:28:36

University of Paris, he would have, I mean, we would guess, would have been aware of him. Exactly where he got his understanding of Thomas is unclear, but there are times when

01:28:49

Calvin critiques Thomas, but he's critiquing a position that ought to be critiqued, but it's not the one that Thomas held.

01:28:58

Okay, well, this is sort of a related question, kinda. Bobby in Hartsdale, New York wants to know, you said earlier that John Calvin rightly believed that there is only one gospel.

01:29:14

Did he therefore not embrace, as his brothers and sisters in Christ, Roman Catholics who had the gospel of the

01:29:21

Council of Trent? Yeah, so Calvin wanted to make a distinction between local churches that were part of the

01:29:32

Roman Institutional Church and the Roman Institutional Church itself. So in book four, when he gets into his discussion of the church, he has no problem believing that there are true local churches that are within the

01:29:52

Roman Catholic ecclesial structure within that institution, right, while at the same time maintaining the institution itself was false.

01:30:05

So he is not saying that every Roman Catholic church is a false church.

01:30:12

You have to evaluate the local churches on a case -by -case basis on whether there is right preaching of the word and right administration of the sacraments.

01:30:23

But I also think that we're, and I think I mentioned this yesterday, we're operating at a time when even the notion of the

01:30:31

Roman Catholic Church as we conceive of it today is a bit of an anachronism, because Calvin, he's a magisterial reformer, so he's wanting to work with the civil authorities, and he's wanting, where possible, and he was doing this with Bucer, to try to build bridges with local churches that were part of that broader institutional churches to help them as much as possible and where possible to highlight where they had that commonality in the gospel.

01:31:06

But it's really only on the other side of Trent that emerges an institution wherein you have this desire to create a neat segregation between the

01:31:23

Western Church, between two various components of the Western Church. And that's where Rome formally apostatized, right?

01:31:31

Correct. And that would have been not long after Calvin's Institutes were completed, so he wouldn't have said perhaps anything specifically, and couldn't have, about Trent's declarations in the

01:31:49

Council, I mean in the Institutes, but obviously he lived beyond his Institutes.

01:31:55

Correct, yeah. So, I mean, the Council of Trent is unfolding during the time period that he's writing.

01:32:03

It concludes after the final edition of the Institutes, but Calvin is still living in an era where he is at least extending hope that there can be some correction and reconciliation.

01:32:15

Did he view the Pope as the Antichrist? Does he view the

01:32:23

Pope as the Antichrist? Did he? That's more Luther singling out.

01:32:30

He certainly believes that the entire popish system is anti -gospel.

01:32:40

Right, but he doesn't view the Pope necessarily as an eschatological figure that is a fulfillment of that term, because even in the

01:32:50

Book of Revelation that term isn't even used. There is the

01:32:56

Beast of Revelation. John, I mean, it's more Luther. Calvin is not against, as I recall, calling the

01:33:05

Pope the Antichrist, and he is embracing more of a historicist reading of Revelation.

01:33:16

Well, as we approach our final break, why don't you bring up another of the main points you wanted to address?

01:33:22

Sure. So, I want to make a comment on Book 3. Book 3 has to do with how we receive the grace of Christ with a focus on the

01:33:32

Holy Spirit, and he starts off this whole section with his order of salvation, with a focus on the need for faith, but at the end of his order of salvation, and he's talking about things like justification, the need for prayer.

01:33:51

As he comes to the end of this, it's only at that point in time that he talks about election, and then the next thing he talks about is the resurrection, and then he completes

01:34:01

Book 3. And when I first started getting into the Institutes, I would scratch my head and say, why is it after talking about the order of salvation that he moves on to talk about the doctrine of election, and then talk about the doctrine of the resurrection?

01:34:19

And, I mean, I think I have a theory at this point as to why he puts those two doctrines there.

01:34:27

And in short, it's this. I think he presents these doctrines at that point in order to address one of the ways in which many ordinary

01:34:36

Christians struggle, and that's through a lack of assurance. And so Calvin's portrait of God is as a loving father who loves his children, and in Christ we are brought to the

01:34:51

Father, and so he wants to point our confidence to both the Father's eternal plan and in the resurrection that all who have genuine faith are going to participate in.

01:35:05

So he points back to God in eternity past, choosing us so we don't need to anxiously lack assurance on the basis of self, and then he points forward to the future, to God's purpose to finally deliver us from death once for all when we participate in a resurrection like Christ.

01:35:24

So you see here Calvin's pastoral heart. Yeah, that's something that non -Calvinists very often are totally ignorant of, which is why many of them view him as some kind of a monster.

01:35:41

That's right. Now what in regard to the civil magistrate's authority and role did he actually include in the

01:35:54

Institutes involving the execution of heretics?

01:36:00

Obviously the thing that vehement anti -Calvinists most frequently point to is the execution of Michael Servetus.

01:36:09

Yeah. Most of the time they will totally get things mixed up and slander

01:36:15

Calvin as if he was the one that lit the match, but then you have perhaps others defending him far too much saying that he had nothing to do with agreeing to what happened, but if you could tell us about that.

01:36:33

Yeah. The first thing there is

01:36:40

Calvin is operating at a time where it was a commonplace for heretics to be put to death.

01:36:51

The Roman Catholic Church wanted to put him to death, Michael Servetus to death. Calvin pleaded for him not to come to Geneva because he knew that if he did and continued to teach what he was teaching, he was going to end up in hot water arrogantly.

01:37:07

Michael Servetus came to Geneva. I believe the story is he thought that Calvin wasn't going to be there, but he walks in and Calvin is there.

01:37:18

Calvin knows what's going to happen. He's arrested. He knows he's going to be put to death, but Calvin pleads that he would be beheaded rather than burned.

01:37:32

All along the way, Calvin knows that this is simply the consequence in society at that day.

01:37:42

It's nothing uniquely Protestant. It's nothing unique to Calvin. The civil magistrate is going to play a role in that.

01:37:50

It's just the way that it was. What I see him doing is operating as a mediating figure.

01:37:56

He sees what's coming down the pike, and he's writing back and forth with Michael Servetus, trying to convince him that he's wrong, then pleading for him not to come because he knows what's going to happen.

01:38:10

Didn't Servetus, unlike the picture that his advocates paint, that he was some kind of mild -mannered lamb, wasn't he calling upon for the death of Calvin?

01:38:29

Oh, I'm not sure about that. I had heard that, but perhaps whoever I heard that from was incorrect, but I've heard that and had it confirmed by other sources, meaning people.

01:38:44

Well, just his arrogance in coming to when warned not to certainly seems to indicate something to me about his character.

01:38:55

He seemed bold, set in his ways, and at the end of the day, arrogant. Okay, we have to go to our final break, and if you have a question, send it immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:39:07

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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We would hate to lose Phil, even knowing he would be in eternity with Christ. We on this earth would hate to lose such an important member of the body of Christ when we believe he has so much to do and accomplished here on this earth.

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So please pray for Phil. Pray for his unwavering faith to continue to give him confidence and peace of mind and even joy in the midst of this trial.

01:51:10

And I will try to give you updates as I receive them. Well, we're now back with Dr.

01:51:16

Tim Harmon as we enter into our final segment on Calvin's Institutes of the

01:51:23

Christian Religion. And if you could highlight what you most want to be remembered by our listeners about this very vital and historic document.

01:51:33

Yeah, what really stands out to me in reading the

01:51:38

Institutes is Calvin's pastoral heart. And oftentimes, when we hear

01:51:47

Calvin spoken of today, he's spoken of as a hard and a rigid, if not a frigid sort of figure.

01:51:56

But by reading Calvin directly in his own words, you are impressed with the sense of a man that loves

01:52:04

God deeply and loves God's people deeply. And when he does have to say a hard word, he does so because he is wanting to act as an under -shepherd, caring for the flock, preserving them from error, preserving them from going astray.

01:52:24

But he can go from—just like the Apostle Paul—he can move from offering a harsh warning, especially to those who he sees as potentially leading

01:52:39

God's people astray and harming them, to immediately afterward offering a tender word unto the people of God.

01:52:50

And so, that to me, perhaps, is something that just stands out to me most about Calvin.

01:53:01

Okay, we have—in

01:53:06

Mobile, Alabama, we have Terry, who wants to know, do you have any recommendations for the best edition of Calvin's Institutes, especially if the print is large?

01:53:22

Especially if it's—the version that I prefer is the

01:53:29

McNeill Battles edition. It's published by the Westminster Press.

01:53:34

It comes in two volumes. I think the introduction and footnotes are of great value.

01:53:43

It's remained for years as kind of the standard scholarly edition.

01:53:48

But alongside that, even though it has great scholarly footnotes,

01:53:53

I think the translation is quite readable, and you can get secondhand copies of the hardbound versions for not too much online.

01:54:04

And I do—while it's not large -size print, I do find—I mean, I need reading glasses to read, but I find it to be not too difficult to read.

01:54:16

The print is definitely not too small. All righty, we have

01:54:22

Val in Highland Village, Texas, and Val says, please give me advice for the greatest pitch

01:54:34

I could possibly give to friends to pick up Calvin's Institutes, especially if I buy it for them, who are right now in the midst of theological battles with me over the issue of Calvinism.

01:54:53

Well, Chris, something you said earlier I think would perhaps be the greatest pitch is in order to really understand him and understand what you agree with or don't agree with, you need to read the man in his own words.

01:55:07

You don't want to be reading what others have said about him, but you want to experience him for yourself.

01:55:14

And perhaps that's the greatest pitch. And perhaps even throwing in, if anybody has any interest on American history, that apparently there are historians who are not even

01:55:28

Christians who believe that the teachings of Calvin had a lot to do with the foundation of America.

01:55:36

So, I mean, that might be something to entice the interest of people to find out more about him.

01:55:43

Agreed. In fact, I have a very good friend. I've said this on the show before, my friend,

01:55:49

Pastor Ed Moore of North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside, Queens. He was raised in an

01:55:54

Arminian Christian family. And while in a secular college, an atheist professor who was teaching

01:56:04

American history said one figure from history that you certainly need to know about if you want to know about the landscape of America is

01:56:17

Jonathan Edwards. And this non -Christian accurately describing and going through the teachings and writings of Jonathan Edwards, that's what the

01:56:28

Lord used to bring him to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace. That's amazing.

01:56:34

Well, I'd like you now to take several minutes just to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding the legacy of John Calvin, and in particular

01:56:46

Calvin's Institutes. Yeah, I'd say a few things in terms of just Calvin the man.

01:56:56

Here's a man who had a completely different idea for his life, what he thought he'd be dealing with his life.

01:57:04

He wanted to be left to his study. He didn't think he was a good people person.

01:57:09

He didn't think he was suited for the job. And yet this indeed was the task that God called him to and God used him in a profound way.

01:57:20

And to me, that's just a lesson that sometimes I think I have my ideas about what

01:57:26

I'd like to do, what my competencies are. But I really need to be open to the doors that God opens in my life.

01:57:35

And some of those can be challenging. Sometimes they can be scary, but God knows what he's prepared me for.

01:57:43

He knows how he's built me. He can see the end from the beginning. I cannot. And just when

01:57:50

I look at Calvin's life, it causes me to reflect on my own and see the ways in which

01:57:55

God has used me in ways that I would have never imagined. He's pushed me to do things I would have never thought

01:58:01

I could do. And so I think there's just inspiration in Calvin's life story.

01:58:08

The other thing that maybe I'd want to point out is that we think sometimes of Calvinism, Calvinistic theology, and even

01:58:21

Calvin as kind of being all about having the right Ps crossed and Is dotted in our theology.

01:58:29

And I think that's of great importance. But one of the things that I experience every time I read

01:58:34

Calvin is just how, for a compendium of doctrine, just how devotional it is.

01:58:43

And so Calvin, I think, really just directs us unto the worship of God.

01:58:49

I don't know how you can read the Institutes, and maybe you could, but for me,

01:58:55

I don't know how you can read the Institutes without just catching that devotional sense of what he's communicating and being—catching a view of the greatness of God and the greatness of his works in the world, the greatness of his plan of salvation in Christ.

01:59:15

Well, folks, don't forget to pick up your set of Calvin's Institutes, typically in two volumes.

01:59:21

Go to CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

01:59:27

And also, don't forget about the website for New St. Andrews College, where my guest is on the faculty.

01:59:34

That's NSA .edu, NSA .edu. Thank you so much, Dr. Tim Harmon, for doing an extraordinary job.

01:59:42

I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives, Jesus Christ is a far greater