July 16, 2024 Show with Dr. Tim Harmon on “Calvin’s Institutes: An In-Depth Analysis of Its Structure” (Part 1 of 2)

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 16th day of July 2024.

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Before I introduce our guest and our topic of the day, I just want to remind all men in ministry leadership that you are invited to the free biannual

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Dr. Joe Boot, founder and president of the Ezra Institute.

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Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first -time guest today and tomorrow.

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It's one of those rare occasions on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio where we do a two -day program back to back and that is because I believe the theme is so deep it requires a two -day program.

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We have joining us for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Tim Harmon, the

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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 we are addressing today for two days in a row,

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Calvin's Institutes, an in -depth analysis of its structure, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Tim Harmon. Hello, Chris. Great to be here with you. And it's a joy to me as well and I'm sure a lot of people who are listening.

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Well, before we go into our theme, there's a couple of things we have to do. First of all, let our listeners know something about New St.

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Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. Yeah, New St. Andrews College is a classical

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Christian college in North Idaho. Our approach to education is one that draws upon the classical liberal arts and humanities.

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The college started in 1994. Originally, it involves students meeting in professors' homes and has grown over time.

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We now have enrollment of 350 students and the college just continues to grow each year.

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We offer one undergraduate degree, a degree in liberal arts and culture.

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So all our undergraduate students, we don't have majors, but really what we're trying to do in that program is to equip students to be generalists, to succeed in whatever vocation

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God has for them by giving them the skills that they need to be leaders and shapers of culture.

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And then we have currently three graduate programs as well. Well, if anybody wants more details, you can go to their website at newstandrewscollege .nsa

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.edu. NSA for New St. Andrews dot edu.

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And God willing, we will be repeating that toward the end of the program. Well, the other thing we have to take care of before entering into this very deep topic of Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion is to get your personal testimony of salvation.

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As I mentioned to you before the broadcast, whenever we have a first time guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, we always have that guest provide for our listeners a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the religious atmosphere, if any, in which they were raised and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And so I'd love to hear a summary of your story.

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Yeah. Well, Chris, I was raised in a Christian home in the Seattle, Washington area. My dad was a pastor, at least early on in my life.

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My mother had, before getting married, been a missionary to Japan. And so I was raised in a

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Christian home. And yet, as I entered into young adulthood, I found more and more that my chief desire was not to do the will of God, but rather to follow my own desires.

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And I ended up being a fairly rebellious teenager. And I kind of look back upon that now with a lot of regret and heartache.

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But that was the fact at the time. And so when I graduated from high school, I followed a path that just led me further and further away from how my parents had raised me.

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And this continued into my early 30s. But the further

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I continued in that direction, the more dissatisfied I became with my life.

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I was married at the time. My wife and I had two young boys. We didn't attend church. Perhaps in a nominal sense, we would have thought of ourselves as Christian, but we weren't following God's word.

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We weren't part of any Christian fellowship. But one week, my wife had been raised in a

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Christian home as well. One week, my wife's father asked if she could come along with him to hear a well -known pastor,

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Alistair Begg, who was a visiting speaker in a nearby church. My wife agreed to attend.

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And when she came home from that, she asked me, would you be willing to attend this church with me?

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And for some reason, I agreed. I think at the time, my thinking was, you know, I've been raised in the church.

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It might be a good thing for my kids to go to church. And so I attended for about a year with really no change in my heart, no change in my life at all.

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But one week after about a year, and in fact, I remember the date was October 31st. It was Halloween. God brought the word down upon me of all that I'd been hearing in sitting under the preaching of his word.

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And I reached out to a leader in the church. She came over to my house and we prayed together.

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I repented of my sins, felt godly sorrow for my sins. And I confessed my faith in Christ, was subsequently baptized.

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And really everything in our lives was just transformed. I had new appetites, new desires.

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One of the things that I was very excited about was reading my Bible. And as I continued to read my

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Bible, this generated a desire to attend seminary because I wanted to understand my

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Bible better. I didn't have in mind vocational ministry.

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I just I wanted to go to seminary to understand the Bible better. And I eventually did.

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And while there, I got a lot of encouragement by my professors to continue in academics.

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So I ended up doing two master's degrees and then eventually pursued a Ph .D. And then for a while, worked in the

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Portland area. I worked both in instructional and administrative roles at Western Seminary in Portland.

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I pastored a church for a number of years. And then our family, which had grown to seven, three boys and two girls, we ended up moving to Moscow, Idaho, because I'd been hired to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in theology at St.

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Andrews College. And this is now my seventh year at NSA. I currently continue to teach while, as you mentioned, serving as the college's chief academic officer.

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And when I look back on this, it's just continually amazing for me to see

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God's providential hand at work. And I can see how he was arranging situations, circumstances, the people that he brought into my life to direct me.

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And I'm so thankful that he allowed me to see the futility of trying to live on my own terms and that he's directed my life in the way that he has.

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Well, praise God. Can you tell us when your introduction to Reformed theology came about?

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And approximately how long after that did you actually come to embrace it and fall in love with it?

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So the church that we ended up attending after my wife asked me, would you go to church with me, was a church that was

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Reformed soteriologically. So it didn't embrace kind of every tenant of historic

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Reformed theology, but there was there was a Reformed leaning. And so that's what began my interest in Reformed theology.

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It continued into seminary. I really wasn't kind of convinced of where I landed.

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It really took those years in seminary for me to sort through my thinking and come to a solid conviction that the

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Reformed faith was the one that I found to be most biblically compelling. Well, praise

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God for that. And if anybody has any questions of your own, our email address, by the way, is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, city and state of residence and country of residence. If you live outside the

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USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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An example of that might be you are becoming more and more intrigued by what has become known as Reformed theology,

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Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, the doctrines of sovereign grace, the doctrines of free grace, whatever the label you have heard it being called.

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And perhaps the church where you are a member right now is adamantly opposed to these teachings.

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And you are becoming more and more inclined to believe them, but you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this point because of the ramifications that may result in you making that news public, which obviously eventually you have to do.

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But we understand we're not going to force it upon you to be public about it right now. So if you want to be anonymous, that's fine.

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And there may be other reasons, of course, that compel you to remain anonymous. So we will grant you that request.

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But if it's a general question about history, about the scriptures in regard to the institutes of the

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Christian religion, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

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Well, if you could, before you get into the structure, which is what your requested focus is, the structure of Calvin's Institutes of the

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Christian religion, otherwise nicknamed Calvin's Institutes. Please tell us something about the very documents themselves.

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From what I recall, Calvin began writing the

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Institutes of the Christian religion when he fled persecution from the

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Roman Catholic Church and was actually in hiding and began to pen these institutes.

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Perhaps I am sloppy in my memory of history, but you can tell us more about that.

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Yeah, that's correct. And would you actually mind if I backed up a little bit and kind of briefly articulated the story up to that point?

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And I want to, even before doing that, if it's all right, kind of comment on something that you mentioned.

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There's a lot of opposition today to Calvin and to Calvinism. And so Calvin is a fascinating figure because he really is a man of contradictions.

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So he speaks of himself as being a rather unsociable and shy person.

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He says that, you know, what I love is retirement, meaning not having a job, but being left to myself, able to study the scriptures.

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He says he's always inclined to peace. He says that he aims to live in private without being known.

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So what we have here is a man who isn't seeking the spotlight.

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That's when Farrell called curses upon him for wanting to remain that way.

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That's right. And so it's just interesting. I mean, one contradiction that he becomes this figure where, you know, other than Luther, no

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Protestants more well known today. I mean, another thing that most people don't know about Calvin is that he is a mediating figure.

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He's always trying to serve as a peacemaker, and he's trying to do all that he can in his power to avoid schisms within the church.

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So with Martin Luther, he tries to foster dialogue between Protestants and Catholics looking for a resolution.

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He mediates between Luther and Zwingli on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper. His theology, some have spoken of it as in his theology, desiring to find the middle way, navigating between the extremes of Rome on the one hand and the radical reformers on the other.

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And then you just look, you know, the first edition of his institute is addressed to the king of France. And I'll talk about that a little more in a second.

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But he's trying to ease tensions within France between the king and French Protestants.

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And so I just think it's so interesting that in his day, he's a mediating figure. And yet people look at him today as a polarizing one.

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So that just came to mind as you were pointing that out. And so I think a lot of the opposition toward Calvin is just a misunderstanding.

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A caricature of Calvin is not true. It's also interesting,

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I think, that he produces one of Christian history's most sophisticated and learned articulations of the

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Christian faith. And yet here's a man who never received any formal theological training. He, of course, has a vast knowledge of the scriptures and of church history.

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But he's self -taught. And a big part of his motive over time in teaching himself is he wants to be able to help the ordinary

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Christian read the Bible better. And as we'll talk about, that's one of the main motivations for the writing of the

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Institutes, is the Institutes is to be a volume that's alongside Scripture, not over top of Scripture, but as an aid to the ordinary

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Christian as they're reading through the Bible. Now, would you think it's an overstatement to say that John Calvin's Institutes of the

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Christian Religion is the most important Christian document ever written in history outside of the

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God -breathed scriptures? I think that I'd struggle with saying most important, because what

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I think is true is that God is active in every era.

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And even in times where there are many who are turning from God, there's always a remnant that remains.

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God is always active in leading his people into the truth. And so I think we have signposts along the way throughout church history of the fact that there is continuity.

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And one of Calvin's biggest arguments in the Institutes is, I'm not saying anything new.

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I am simply restating what Christians have always believed in language that is for the people of today.

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And so in terms of at a critical moment in church history, restating what

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Christians throughout time, the fundamentals of what they've believed,

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I think it probably for our era is the most important.

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Because we today kind of buy into the idea that Roman Catholicism is the one, kind of the

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Christian tradition, you might say, that claims for itself kind of the inheritance of the patristics and the medievals.

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And I think that the Institutes, perhaps better than any work that I'm aware of, refutes that claim.

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He demonstrates that the Protestants are the ones holding the main line of Christian thought throughout church history.

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And the Institutes of Christian Religion, just to give our listeners some context with a timeline.

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These even predate the Book of Concord, which comes about in existence about 35 years later.

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And of course over a century prior to the

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Three Forms of Unity, or less than a century, but almost a century before the

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Three Forms of Unity and also the Westminster Standards. Correct.

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And I do think the Institutes represent the mature and definitive articulation of Protestant theology.

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And Protestant theology comes on the scene in the early modern era, and I would say in one way or another we're all still modern.

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So for our day and age, it does represent the definitive articulation of what

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I think is the main line of Christian thought throughout church history.

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Well, we're going to go to our first commercial break. And once again, if anybody wants to join us with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We'll be right back. Please don't go away.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we're now back with Dr.

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Tim Harmon, and we are discussing Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.

32:47

If you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

32:54

And just to recap, we've already brought to light that the

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Institutes of Christian Religion first were published in the 16th century, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1536, and this came into being while John Calvin was in exile and hiding from the persecution of the

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Roman Catholic Church. And anything else you want to bring up to recap and then move on to your next point would be great.

33:25

Yeah, so just to kind of briefly give a bit of the history of how the

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Institute comes about. Calvin's born in 1509. His mother dies young.

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His father was an attorney and a court bishop, and his father sends him to a local cathedral school, hoping he'd become a priest.

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And he then goes to the University of Paris, which I think is very significant.

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I mean, this is the same place that a couple hundred years before, or a few hundred years, we have figures such as Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas.

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And there are many kind of scholarly treatments of how much did Calvin know of these figures, but we do know that he did study at the

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University of Paris and he received a humanist education. And humanism is a movement oftentimes characterized with the slogan ad fontes, back to the sources.

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And so the humanists are very much interested in recovering ancient Greek and Latin literature.

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And that leads kind of that humanist impulse to go back to the sources. It leads for people like Luther and Calvin in interest in not just paying attention to what others have said about the

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Bible, but actually going back to the source itself and reading the Bible. He then is encouraged by his father to study law rather than theology, which he does at two leading colleges in France.

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He returns to Paris for about a year. And while he's there, he completes a commentary on Seneca's On Clemency.

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Which I think is significant because as a young lawyer, Calvin is promoting kind of a middle way between tyranny and revolt.

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And so it kind of informs the introduction to the Institute that Calvin addresses the

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Institute to Francis. And so I think we see some seeds of that kind of impulse, again, to find a way, if at all possible, to bring about disparate parties.

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Further, during this time, he undergoes an evangelical conversion. Now, I think one of the things that's interesting about Calvin versus Luther is that Calvin is very private about his personal life.

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So we don't have many details about his conversion story, but he does talk about going through an evangelical conversion.

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And so he converts to the Protestant faith, but he's soon forced to leave

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Paris. He has this friend, Nicholas Copp, who gives an address at the University of Paris where he's citing

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Luther. And that leads the king to call for the arrest of all

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Lutherans. And because Calvin's closely associated with Copp, he flees to a small city in southwest

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France. And I think one thing that's very significant for understanding

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Calvin's purpose in the Institute is that it's just after that that the affair of placards takes place in France, which is where you have

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Protestant protesters putting up posters in public places around Paris.

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And what this leads to is a disposition on the part of King Francis of hostility and non -tolerance toward the

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Protestants. And so there's great persecution of Calvin's Frenchmen, Calvin's people in France, who have adopted the

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Protestant position. And so it's just after that that Calvin completes the first edition.

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He's on the run. And there is some scholarly dispute as to exactly where he completes that.

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But what we do know is that it's published, as you said, in 1536. Now, other than the ancient creeds of the

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Christian faith, was there anything even close to comparable that was in existence by those that were protesting or departing from either voluntarily or otherwise from the

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Roman Catholic Church? Was there any kind of documents, confessions, creeds that predated the

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Institutes other than the ancient ones? In terms of Protestants?

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Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the original form of Calvin's Institute, he's basically just copying kind of what

38:35

Luther was doing in writing catechism. Because his original purpose in writing the

38:42

Institutes, the purpose he had in his mind was, I want to provide a catechism like Luther did to help the ordinary

38:51

Christian to better understand the Bible. And Luther, from what

38:57

I understand, although you will probably not find too many Lutheran pastors or scholars today admitting this, but from what

39:08

I understand, even though Luther was the elder of the reformers and launched his branch of the

39:19

Reformation prior to Calvin, they were still contemporaries in that their ministries overlapped and they were aware of each other.

39:29

But I have heard all my life as a Reformed Christian that Luther's teachings resembled

39:39

Calvin's far more than the teachings of Lutherans today, especially in regard to anthropology, the nature of man, and the sovereignty of God involving unconditional election.

39:55

Yeah, I think that's right. Some scholars will refer to Calvin as Luther's chief disciple, in that he is the one who is more consistently and faithfully carrying forward

40:11

Luther's thought. Yes, and I have heard—I don't know if you would concur with this—but

40:16

I have heard that it was Melanchthon who took the direction of Lutheranism into a different direction of trying to be more accommodating to the

40:30

Church of Rome after Luther's death, which is why we have such a disparity today between modern

40:38

Lutherans and Calvinists. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think another part is that you don't have real systematic treatments of either

40:48

Reformed or Lutheran theology until the 17th century. And I think one of the things that's taking place in the 17th century is they're taking, for example, things that Luther says, but he doesn't really explain exactly what he means by it, and trying to provide a logic.

41:06

And in doing so, that takes them in a direction that's far afield from Reformed thinking, from where Calvin was at.

41:16

Now, I don't think that necessarily means, just because they're trying to explain the logic of Luther, that they successfully do so.

41:25

And so, you know, one of the more well -known doctrines would be Luther's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

41:30

He wants to say dogmatically that when Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood, that is in fact the case.

41:38

And it's really in 17th century Lutheran thought that the common

41:44

Lutheran explanation today that you would find is articulated, and it's an explanation that requires an account of Christology that diverges from that of Calvin, and I think an account of Christology that diverges from the main line of Christian thought throughout

42:05

Christian history. In what way? In other words, that trying to make

42:12

Christ's body omnipresent, or something? What would be the contradiction?

42:18

Correct. So, in order for Christ's material body, his body and his blood, to be in with and under the sacraments, the logic goes,

42:33

Christ at his ascension needs to become bodily omnipresent. But Lutherans know that when

42:40

Jesus is walking around the Sea of Galilee, he's not bodily omnipresent. So how do we account for Christ at one point not being bodily omnipresent, later on after the ascension becoming bodily omnipresent?

42:52

And the answer is canonic theology of self -emptying.

42:59

And I don't need to get into all the technicalities necessarily, but the idea is that at the incarnation,

43:06

Christ empties himself of certain divine attributes. But then he takes them back up at his ascension.

43:17

Okay, well, unless you have something more to say as a preface to the structure of Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion.

43:27

If you don't mind, I would like to talk a little bit about the purpose. Yeah, of course. Because it's very difficult to understand any when you don't understand why it was written.

43:37

And I've already alluded to the purpose, and it's a two -fold purpose.

43:42

So again, Calvin's original purpose, I want to provide a catechism for Protestants. I want to provide them with a, initially it was relatively brief, six chapters.

43:56

I want to provide them with a manual of doctrine that helps them to better read their

44:03

Bible. But after the affair of placards, what develops is it takes on a second purpose, which is an apologetic purpose, to make the argument that Protestants are not heretics.

44:18

They are not invaders. Their theology in no way deviates from the main line of Christian thought.

44:24

We are actually recovering the main line of Christian thought, contra the deviations and innovations that have crept into the

44:32

Romanist church. So we are the standard bearers. And so that becomes the second argument.

44:39

And hence, that explains Calvin's address in the first five different editions.

44:48

In the first through the fifth edition, he keeps this letter to King Francis at the beginning of the work.

44:57

And in that document, Calvin makes this claim that Protestants are the standard bearers.

45:08

They're carrying forward the main line of Christian truth. And so those two purposes are intertwined throughout the

45:19

Institute. On the one hand, it does serve as a handbook to be used in the reading of Scripture.

45:30

He really does want it to be something that can be used for the ordinary Christian to help in their understanding of Scripture.

45:37

That that matures somewhat as in subsequent editions, where he also wants it to be able to be used in training ministers.

45:45

So you have that purpose. Again, this other purpose, this apologetic purpose, helps to explain why on almost every page

45:53

Calvin is citing church recognized church authorities throughout

46:01

Christian history, whether in the Patriotic or Medieval era. And what Calvin is saying is that I claim the authorities as being in support of what

46:13

Protestants teach. So I go ahead.

46:19

Good. Well, I was just going to quickly say. So what? Everything that I've learned about church history over the years is that the

46:29

Roman Catholic Church, even today, is absolutely wrong that the patristic evidence strongly supports them.

46:40

I believe that it much more strongly supports the

46:47

Reformation and post -Reformation Protestantism. Not that Protestants can say the the church fathers were

46:56

Protestant, but they certainly weren't Roman Catholic. And therefore, the quote, the very famous quote by the 19th century apostate into Rome, John Henry Newman, who said to be steeped in history is to cease to be

47:21

Protestant. I find the reverse to be true. I would fully agree.

47:27

And that's the argument that Calvin, I think it's exactly the argument that Calvin is making. The reverse way to Newman.

47:35

Exactly. Right. Exactly. Yep. I think that's correct. Would it be.

47:44

Would it be worth. So I've talked about the, the, the purpose of that twofold purpose of the work.

47:55

I would it be worth it. I have to if you don't want to go there if you want to go straight to the structure.

48:01

Would it be worth kind of touching on what happens next over the time period in which he's writing the

48:08

Institute. I'm going to I'm going to follow your lead. You're the expert and we have two. We have we have two days to cover this.

48:16

So I'm following you. I want to just keep in mind that right now we have six minutes before we go to the midway break.

48:24

OK, so I will try to complete the story. This is what's going on in the background as he's writing the

48:31

Institute. And then maybe we come back from the break. I can talk to the successive additions and then the organization would that work.

48:39

Sure. OK. So how

48:48

Calvin, again, is there's persecution of Christians in France. Calvin is trying to do something to alleviate that in his

48:57

Institute to the king of France. And he first goes down to Geneva after first additions already come out at the age of 27.

49:11

He's a young man and he is intending to go to Strasbourg to to settle into a life of scholarship.

49:20

But he's forced by imperial troops to go to Geneva. And he's only planning to stay there overnight.

49:28

But as you mentioned before, that's where he meets William Perel. And he'd been working in Geneva to bring about a shift away from Roman Catholic thought toward Protestant thought.

49:44

And Calvin confronts, I mean, Pharaoh rather confronts Calvin, exhorting him to stay.

49:51

Calvin. Declines, he says things like, I'm a scholar, not administrator, and I don't even get along with people well.

50:01

And this is where, as you mentioned earlier, Pharaoh proclaims that God would would curse

50:06

Calvin's life if he doesn't stay there in Geneva and carry out God's assignment for him.

50:11

And we find that, of course, Calvin does end up staying. But. His efforts there initially aren't successful, that they're met with resistance.

50:26

He is wanting for the church to take the lead in things like worship and particularly excommunication, church discipline.

50:38

And the city council isn't quite ready to give that up yet. So this this leads

50:46

Calvin leaving, going to Strasbourg and spending three years there with Martin Bucer.

50:55

And Martin Bucer was a real mentor for him. And he he takes much of what he's learned from Bucer and implements it into his own thinking.

51:06

He gets married there. Gets married to a widow with two children. And in the background at this time, there's an

51:15

Italian Catholic cardinal, Sadaletto, who's trying to encourage Geneva to return to Catholicism. And he writes the city council letter that they don't know how to respond to.

51:26

And so they reach out to Calvin and his response wins him new respect in the city.

51:32

He's called back an appointed pastor of the Cathedral of St. Peter. He helps the city in many ways, drafting laws.

51:41

And then he dies in 1564 at age 55, which is his completed version of the

51:50

Institute had been finished about five years before that in 1559.

51:56

And by the way, it is a pretty profound document.

52:02

John Calvin's letter to Cardinal Sadaletto. And you could read it online at monergism .com.

52:11

And other sources have that that profound exchange interaction.

52:18

Do you have any other source that you want to quote for that? Let me give that some thought in terms of that that that particular change exchange.

52:33

I mean, there are many good books that from a secondary sources that from more of a historical.

52:44

In more of a historical approach, kind of go through what's taking place in that time period.

52:51

Probably one of the more shorter treatments if somebody wants something kind of accessible to read about what's what's in place in this time is a book called

53:00

The European Reformation by Carter Lindbergh. And he had there's a chapter there that kind of talks through Calvin's story and maybe in more particular, the various interactions that he's having with other figures at that time.

53:17

OK, we have to go to our midway break right now. And once again, if anybody wants to join us with your own question, our email address is

53:26

Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. I did not forget those of you who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

53:32

We will get to as many of them as possible. But if you would like to get in line and also ask a question of your own, submit it to Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com.

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Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com gives you first name at least city and state and country of residence. Please try to respond to as many of our advertisers as you can, knowing that the finances that come through these advertisers is what keep

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in existence. Don't go away. We're going to be right back. I'm Dr.

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Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharp and Zion Radio. Before I return to our discussion of John Calvin's Institutes of the

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New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, we just have some important announcements to make before we return to that conversation.

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01:12:46

Dr. Tim Harmon, on the Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. And that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:53

Give us your first name at least. City and state and country of residence. Before I have you return to the point in the conversation where you want to pick up,

01:13:05

I just want to read one of our listener questions. We have, let's see here,

01:13:16

Tito in Kingsgate, Washington, and Tito asks,

01:13:22

I have heard from the opponents to reform theology that the institutes of Christian religion actually prove that John Calvin does not believe what

01:13:34

Calvinists today claim he did, especially in regard to limited atonement.

01:13:41

Do you have any knowledge of this? Yeah, I mean, there's a whole industry, and Richard Muller, I mean,

01:13:49

I would point Tito to Richard Muller's work, because you have this whole discussion of Calvin versus the

01:13:56

Calvinists, and the question is later Calvinistic theology in continuity with Calvin's actual thought.

01:14:03

I think the short answer would be I think later reformed thought synthesizes and systematizes

01:14:13

Calvin's teaching well. That would be my personal conviction, but it's a broad discussion, and I think

01:14:24

Richard Muller's done best work on that, and that's what I would point you to.

01:14:30

Would you say that sometimes the confusion arises because you have anti -Calvinists misinterpreting

01:14:40

Calvin the way that they misinterpret the scriptures, and always claim that all always means all, and world always means every single human that ever lived, even though they do not follow that principle logically and consistently themselves?

01:14:58

I think there's certainly plenty of that. Okay, before I go to any other listener questions,

01:15:04

I want to make sure that we pick up where you left off and wanted to continue, and then we'll take more of our listener questions a little later.

01:15:11

So, if you could, pick up where you want to. Yeah, I think just briefly, kind of now given something of the background story, the context in which

01:15:23

Calvin is writing the Institutes, again, he first writes the first edition as a catechism, and by the way, that word

01:15:30

Institutes really just means it can be translated either as instruction or catechism.

01:15:36

And so he's trying to provide a catechism for Protestants, help them read their

01:15:41

Bible. The background of this is, in the background is great persecution of Protestants in France.

01:15:49

He hasn't even arrived at Geneva yet. And again, that edition, the 1536 edition, is dedicated to King Francis I because Calvin is trying to serve as the mediatorial figure in order to bring about the end of persecution in France.

01:16:10

Ultimately, it's not successful, sadly, but that is his hope. The second edition, second

01:16:18

Latin edition, we have both French and Latin editions. The second Latin edition is published in 1539.

01:16:27

And so coming not too long after that first edition, but one of the things that's interesting is that you start to see more and more

01:16:37

Augustine kind of creep into subsequent editions. And I think

01:16:44

Calvin is very reliant on Augustine's thinking, and there are many points of contact between both

01:16:57

Calvin and Augustine. You also see the influence of Busser's thoughts on predestination in that 1539 edition.

01:17:10

And you also see that he's reading John Chrysostom. And so you see the exegetical influence of John Chrysostom.

01:17:17

And he's expanded this work from six chapters to 17.

01:17:24

The next Latin edition is produced in 1543, and we see even more

01:17:31

Augustine appropriated. This is completed after Calvin had left

01:17:38

Geneva, after he'd labored as a pastor in Strasbourg, and it's expanded even more into 21 chapters.

01:17:46

And then in 1550, we have the fourth edition, and there are only minor changes between the third and the fourth.

01:17:56

There's an added numbering of paragraph divisions, but it's really not until 1559, after about 25 years of work, which is, this is his life's work.

01:18:07

And after about 25 years of work, he finally comes up with an order that he feels satisfied with.

01:18:18

He talks about having never felt satisfied with the work in previous editions. And so it comes to its culminating stage, and he's reorganized the work into four books.

01:18:29

Each book includes chapter divisions and subsections. And that takes place about five years before his death.

01:18:36

So five different editions, the 1559 edition is the final Latin edition, and then he publishes the final

01:18:42

French edition in 1560. Now, you brought up Augustine, and people who love and study

01:18:49

John Calvin know that Augustine was one of his greatest influences outside of the

01:18:56

God -breathed scriptures. And there may be confusion in the minds of people when they begin to investigate

01:19:05

Augustine because there were areas where he resembled

01:19:11

Rome more than the Reformation, which took place centuries later after him, of course.

01:19:18

But I'm assuming that you would view or agree with the

01:19:28

Princeton divine B .B. Warfield, who said that Augustine's theology of grace would have, given time, taken over and cleansed his ecclesiology.

01:19:40

Yeah, I think that's true. I'm going to say one thing.

01:19:48

I think we can be anachronistic in labeling anyone in the patristic or certainly early medieval era as being a

01:19:58

Roman Catholic, because I don't really think we have Roman Catholicism as we know it today until after the

01:20:05

Council of Trent. But I also think we have to keep in mind we want to be charitable readers, and I think we have to keep in mind

01:20:14

C .S. Lewis's principle that the reason that we read old books is not because they're necessarily better, but because the blind spots in their era are different than the blind spots in our era.

01:20:29

We see their blind spots better, and they expose our blind spots. And so with Augustine, did he have blind spots?

01:20:35

He had plenty of blind spots. But that doesn't mean we dismiss him wholesale.

01:20:42

We want to charitably read him, and we want to applaud if he gets it right, and I think his overwhelming influence is a positive influence on the church.

01:20:52

Amen. And so you could pick up whatever direction you'd like to take now. Yeah, so we've talked a little bit about the background, the history of institutes.

01:21:07

Maybe it'd be a good time now to transition to talking about the organization. Yeah, and perhaps even tell us why this is so important to you, the structure.

01:21:20

Well, in Calvin's own words, again, he's been working on this for 25 years, and it's kind of with this final move of reorganizing the work that he finally feels satisfied.

01:21:34

So we want to think that there must be something important, because the author of the work certainly seemed to think that the organization was important.

01:21:46

But do you have kind of anything else in mind in terms of maybe the importance of organization, other than understanding the organization,

01:21:54

I think, is very important for reading the work. It's a lengthy work. It's very easy to get lost in the weeds without understanding what he's trying to do.

01:22:05

Yes, I understand that completely, and that's fine. And just before you go on, would you say that Calvin's Institutes is best used as a reference manual or to read cover to cover like you would any other book?

01:22:31

I prefer at least initially reading it cover to cover.

01:22:37

Right, like most books. Because you're not going to understand the coherence of his thought if you just jump in in the middle.

01:22:45

Now, that's going to take some time for most people, but I think even kind of if you're not doing a close reading of it, even doing a reading through the entire work in order to gain familiarity of the territory is going to be really helpful.

01:23:03

So I probably would advise using it as a reference work. It's not like a commentary on scripture. His commentaries on scripture, certainly

01:23:10

I wouldn't recommend necessarily reading from cover to cover, but using those as reference works as you're reading scripture, you can see what

01:23:18

Calvin has to say about a particular verse or passage of scripture. But with the Institutes, he is trying to provide a coherent portrait of what he sees as the way in which the whole of scripture presents for us a worldview.

01:23:42

And we're not going to be able to grab onto that well without going through the work as a whole, because what he's trying to do is show how every doctrine that emerges from scripture coheres and relates to every other doctrine.

01:24:00

Okay, well, let's proceed. So, in terms of basic organization, the first thing to keep in mind is that it's organized into four books.

01:24:13

And what's interesting is that if you look at most contemporary systematic treatments of theology, they largely follow the same order that Calvin sets forth here.

01:24:29

Now there are some areas where they do not. Interestingly, he doesn't end with eschatology.

01:24:41

His eschatology section is toward the end of book three.

01:24:48

And the one thing he focuses on is the hope of resurrection. So he doesn't have an expansive eschatology section.

01:24:56

So that would be one thing that would be a bit different. But in many ways, it follows kind of the standard sequence of topics that we would use today in most systematic theologies.

01:25:06

And I'm not going to read the full titles of each book, but I do want to just kind of sketch what each book deals with.

01:25:15

So book one deals with the knowledge of God. Go ahead. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, when you're saying four books, just so our listeners know that typically the

01:25:25

Calvin's institutes are printed in two volumes, correct? Correct.

01:25:31

That is correct. Yeah. So these are not. That's a great point.

01:25:36

These are not meant to be four distinct books that can be read independently.

01:25:45

Rather, you could you could say these are four quite large chapters with subdivisions within each one.

01:25:52

So they're meant to be read together and they typically come in two volumes.

01:25:59

The McNeill battles version, which is the one that I typically use, is about in total about fifteen hundred words.

01:26:11

OK. So the first book is the knowledge of God as creator.

01:26:18

The second book is the knowledge of God's redemption. The third book is the reception of God's grace in Christ.

01:26:26

And then the fourth book is life in the society of Christ. Now, I'm giving kind of shorter titles to each one of these major sections.

01:26:35

Calvin provides for the sake of hopefully. Helping you to see that that organization and many have noticed this simply seems to follow the organization of the

01:26:50

Apostles Creed. So in the knowledge of God as creator, you have this focus on God as father.

01:26:57

This is something Warfield was pointed out in the second book or second major division of the work.

01:27:03

You have knowledge of God, the son. In the third book, you you have a focus on the spirit.

01:27:11

And then in the fourth book, you have a focus on the church. And that's that's the exact organization of the

01:27:17

Apostles Creed. So many have said, you know, Calvin's trying to provide a catechism for Protestant Christians.

01:27:25

But he's borrowing that basic organizational structure from a creed that Christians have confessed for hundreds of years.

01:27:36

So not all agree with that. He doesn't explicitly say I'm using

01:27:42

Apostles Creed as kind of a spine for the writing of this work. But as I mentioned before, this is something that Warfield would be among those who would be inclined to say he's he's following the pattern of the

01:27:58

Apostles Creed. And that does seem very likely to me. OK, and that's obviously the

01:28:06

Apostles Creed universally held to creed, both

01:28:13

Catholics and Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, although they have a different variation.

01:28:20

Adhere to the Apostles Creed. And one of the reasons for the need for further creedal and confessional documents was the

01:28:32

Apostles Creed is really a bare bones document that other than other than the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

01:28:41

There is not more detail on the gospel itself. Correct. Yeah. And so Calvin Calvin, at least the way that I see it, he's expanding on that creed and helping us to understand in more detail what we mean when we confess this bare bones creed.

01:29:01

And again, he's drawn heavily on scripture to do so. He's demonstrating throughout that he's well read in what

01:29:10

Christians before him have had to say, not because what

01:29:15

Christians have traditionally said is the arbiter. But Calvin very much believes the communion of saints.

01:29:23

This is our family history. Right. And it would be improper to ignore what

01:29:28

God has been doing in ages past. And, you know, maybe using the Apostles Creed is as an organizational structure, perhaps is a way that Calvin is further underscoring that argument that he initially was making to King of France, which is, say,

01:29:47

I'm not teaching anything innovative. I'm not teaching anything new. I'm simply expanding on the main line of what

01:29:54

Christians have thought. So that's the basic the basic organizational structure.

01:30:04

I can get into more detail in talking about within each one of those major sections, which are each one of those books, how that how is thought progressive.

01:30:14

Sure. Maybe let me just grab a listener, another listener question. Yeah. And I've never heard of this city before.

01:30:23

The same as the name of Jay Gresham Machen, one of the leaders of the fundamentalist modernist controversy on the fundamentalist side and founder of the

01:30:34

Orthodox Presbyterian denomination, as well as Westminster Theological Seminary, Gresham, Oregon.

01:30:41

I didn't even know that existed before. I know exactly where that's at. Oh, really? Yeah. OK, well, we have

01:30:50

Brandy in Gresham, Oregon, who says, From what

01:30:56

I understand, Calvin never wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation. Is that true?

01:31:02

And why was he so fearful about treading the waters of delving into that book?

01:31:10

Hmm. I think that, you know, and that's an interesting comment.

01:31:17

Be kind of paired with what we see in the institutes where he does not have an expanded section on eschatology.

01:31:26

Right. He just has that one section on the resurrection.

01:31:33

Now. I'm going to offer a few guesses.

01:31:39

Right. I don't know that we can provide a conclusive answer into why he did not.

01:31:47

But I think perhaps one of the reasons he didn't do so is because of his anti speculative bent.

01:31:58

If you read through the institutes, one of the things that you notice as a recurring theme is that Calvin is allergic to speculation.

01:32:07

He wants to be confident when he feels like he can weigh in in a way where he's sure of what he's saying.

01:32:18

But when providing an answer would involve going beyond what he finds to be patently clear in Scripture, he utilizes a lot of reserve.

01:32:33

And so I do wonder if that's part of the reason why he doesn't write a commentary on Revelation.

01:32:44

Another thing. I mean, another layer here would be, you know, perhaps he just didn't have time to get around to it in his lifetime.

01:32:51

He did die at 55. And just out of curiosity, what you just said sparked a thought in my head.

01:33:00

Would that be an element of Calvin's caution in his approach to systemizing theology?

01:33:11

Where would that be an in contrast to Luther?

01:33:17

And I don't know how much of modern day Lutheranism is misinterpreting

01:33:22

Luther himself. But Lutheran Lutherans tend to attribute much of anything that that creates tension in the

01:33:33

Bible to the realm of mystery. You know, whereas just to give you an example, the fact that they believe both in justification by faith alone and baptismal regeneration, for instance.

01:33:52

Sure. Things that seem to be polar opposite things on the surface. They'll just say it's a divine mystery and they won't explain it any further.

01:34:00

Whereas Calvin would have been more cautious. Well, I still think

01:34:06

Calvin has a lot of room for that category of mystery. He likewise is going to say that there's some things we just can't.

01:34:15

It's above our pay grade. God hasn't provided us with an answer. And it's our place to be

01:34:21

OK with that. We're talking about mystery in that sense. When he when

01:34:27

I see the anti speculative, he does not want to go beyond what he believes is clearly taught in scripture.

01:34:39

And likewise, what has been clearly taught as a main line of Christian thought throughout church history.

01:34:44

He just doesn't want to go beyond that. And so in those cases, he encourages us not to try to uphold, you know, two contrary.

01:35:01

Truth where it's contrary, you know, contrary to logic.

01:35:06

But at a certain point, we just have to admit that God has chosen to clearly reveal those things that are most needful for us for our salvation.

01:35:19

He hasn't let us in on one of the favor versus Deuteronomy 29, 29.

01:35:27

So he believes that there are the secret things of God which have not been revealed to us.

01:35:33

Yes, of course. Well, we have to go to our final commercial break. And if you have a question, you could either wait till tomorrow when we have part two of this discussion, same time and that channel.

01:35:50

But if you want it to be asked an answer today, send it in immediately because we are running out of time.

01:35:56

Senator Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:44:34

Chris Arnzen here, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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I strongly recommend a church I've been recommending as far back as the 1980s, Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland, going back to 2005.

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One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio,

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01:52:11

Thank you so much, Pastor Bill, for your generosity, your benevolence, and your love for me and for Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

01:52:20

And once again, the website for Grace Church at Franklin is gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:52:26

And keep in mind the word at is spelled out A -T. It's not the symbol. gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:52:33

Also, I want to remind you folks that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates.

01:52:40

If you are the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

01:52:46

United States, please call 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit their website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

01:52:53

1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Please tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm from Chris Arms of Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

01:53:03

And let me go to one listener question before we have you continue, Dr. Harmon. We have

01:53:10

Kirk in Laurel, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:53:44

I would say that that is a bit outside of my wheelhouse, but if we're thinking about the

01:54:02

Reformed tradition, which is the tradition downstream from Calvin, and the impact that that has on the

01:54:11

Church of England, and then thinking about the connection between the

01:54:17

Church of England and Puritanism and the impact on the United States, I mean, it would be difficult to say that Calvinistic thought did not have an impact on the founding of the

01:54:30

United States. Beyond that, I wouldn't be able to say much more. And the British did call the

01:54:37

American Revolution the Presbyterian Revolt. But just pick up where you would like to.

01:54:45

And in fact, right now, you could give a summary of what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in part one of this two -part discussion we're going to have.

01:54:56

And you have about four minutes to do so. About how many minutes, sorry? Four. Four. Well, maybe a good place to end for now, and we can come back tomorrow to the organization of the work as a whole, and then kind of zoom in a little bit on various sections of the work.

01:55:14

But you had been talking before the break. We've both been talking about Calvin's anti -speculative bent.

01:55:24

And I think it'd be helpful just to read and comment briefly on one section in the

01:55:31

Institute. This happens to be in his treatment of the doctrine of angels. But here's what he says.

01:55:37

He says this. Let us remember here as an all -religious doctrine that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety, not to speak or guess or even to seek to know concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God's word.

01:55:55

And I think that is the heartbeat of Calvin's approach. He does not want us to speak beyond, to speculate beyond what is clearly imparted to us by God's word.

01:56:10

And a little bit later, the next sentence he says, furthermore, in the reading of Scripture, we ought ceaselessly to endeavor to seek out and meditate upon those things which make for edification.

01:56:22

And I think Calvin saw a lot of the problems in his day tied to some variety of scholastic thought, medieval thought, which went beyond Scripture in such a way that promoted a lot of chaos and harm in society.

01:56:48

At the end of the day, their speculation did not lead to edification. And so he's helping us to keep in mind that the purpose for which we have been given

01:56:58

Scripture, which is ultimately to build us up in the knowledge and love of God. And then one last thing he says, let us not indulge in curiosity.

01:57:07

By curiosity, he means trying to go beyond what God has revealed, number one.

01:57:13

And number two, seeking out knowledge for the wrong end. And I think that's a good setup for tomorrow and for book one, because he starts the entire work talking about why is it that we seek knowledge?

01:57:29

How can we acquire knowledge? We don't pursue knowledge for knowledge's sake.

01:57:36

We don't do theology just for the sake of doing theology. But it all has to be tied to our end in God.

01:57:45

And so for Calvin, religion is very much experiential and theology very much has to do with coming to know the living

01:57:57

God rather than just knowing theological facts. Well, I cannot wait until tomorrow.

01:58:04

And that is not an exaggeration or hyperbole or flattery. I really love every minute of this discussion.

01:58:11

And I can't wait for part two. And I'm hoping that everybody who is listening joins us again for part two of this discussion tomorrow.

01:58:20

And I know that the website, as I said earlier on, for New St. Andrews College is

01:58:27

NSA for New St. Andrews dot edu. NSA dot edu.

01:58:33

Do you have any other websites or contact information that you care to give yourself? No, that would be the place to go.

01:58:40

If you want to get a hold of me, you can go to that website, go to the faculty page. And my email address is there.

01:58:46

You can get a hold of me that way. Great. And please let me remind you folks of our urgent need for your financial assistance.

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Please go to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio dot com. Click support. Then click. Click to donate now.

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01:59:11

And you can make your checks payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I really hate to ask my listeners for these funds, but we are in a bit of trouble and we need your help if you love the show and don't want it to disappear.

01:59:26

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater