68 - Calvin in Strasbourg and Geneva

All right we press on we the end is the end is draweth nigh

We have for quite some time. I've lost track. What where are we? 68

Well, I'm not sure we'll make 70 It's quite possible. It's a well.

We'll pull in just south of 70 we have been studying church history we started at the beginning and Only going so far

Maybe you'll want to press on from there. There's lots more interesting stuff. I just never taught it so That's why we don't we only go so far is what

I've already taught in the past and so we I don't have any more stories from Munster to add.

Sorry. We're pretty you should be experts on Munster now I Well, I'm just able to say this particular this particular week

You may have opportunities of telling some of those stories because they'd fall into the scary story part There is once a guy named

Jan of Leiden See the little kids screaming You know be very careful how you use that information but Not we're not in the scary part.

Well. We're in the scary part for some people I'll be honest with you because We started looking at the life of John Calvin last week, and that's we're gonna be finishing up with we've already done

Luther And we've done We didn't really do Melanchthon we talked a little bit about Melanchthon a bit

But so we've done Luther and and stuff like that, so we'll be finishing up with with Calvin which then of course leads to Things after that maybe we'll do one.

Maybe we'll just make it 70 even or something like that. I don't know What we'll think about it, but anyway so last last week you remember that we had gotten

Into how in the world Calvin ended up in Geneva. He did not want to be in Geneva He had written a book called the

Institute's the Christian religion the initial Volume of which was not nearly as long as the current

Multi -volume work that you may be familiar with today There is a publication of that by the way if you're interested in seeing what the initial publication looked like but That was written when he was an

Infant in Christ shall we say and yet? It's it may have changed in depth, but not so much an outline in the end years that came after that Anyway that he had because of war been shuttled

Off through Geneva remember his encounter with Pharrell and His staying there less than two years there in Geneva at which point he and Pharrell are basically invited to leave and Basically it's because they were attempting to Bring Again this is a sacral system.

This is a church state system and Trying to bring a godly way of life to an otherwise primarily ungodly city

Just simply didn't work. It's not like they were coming up with all sorts of new rules. They were just Enforcing the rules that already existed in regards to public morality and things like that and the people did not like it

Um Calvin obviously had this much experience pastorally speaking At the start.

I mean like I said he wanted to go to Strasbourg and be a be a scholar and so to say that that first period of Public ministry was less than successful What would not be an understatement by any stretch of the imagination?

That's something to keep to keep in mind. You can write super books, but Still have issues along those lines and So After they are dismissed from Geneva Calvin's like Okay It's no war in the way.

Now. I'm getting to Strasbourg delayed by 18 months or so, but I'm getting to to Strasbourg and Strasbourg of course is under the influence of Martin Bucer.

We've talked about Bucer before he was Seems to have been a rather peace -loving man.

He he sought to You know keep the

Reformation going But that wasn't easy to do you remember what happened at the

Marburg Colloquy and Luther and Zwingli and and you know one side was trying to sort of hold things together the other side wasn't all that concerned about such things and so Bucer sort of takes

Calvin under his under his wing and Calvin is becomes a pastor of the

French flock there in Strasbourg and This is a much less

Difficult task in the sense that in a in in in a sense this congregation

Wants to be a congregation. That's that's one of the that's one of the things that was so difficult for Calvin and for anyone involved in ministry in a sacral system where you have a state church

How do you deal with a congregation that is made up of people that are sort of forced to go to church You know, they're not there of their own choice

You know, that's that's troubling that's difficult. Well, these were sort of refugees from war and things like that and They were there because they wanted to be there and it made a huge difference

There was desire for the Word of God. There was a desire for the ministry of the Word and things like that.

And so Calvin now takes to this and And finds this to be

Something that is much more Amenable to him.

He does get to do some of his scholarship But he's not living in an ivory tower because during this time in Strasbourg the plague

Comes into the city and ever since you know, we we talked did a whole lesson on the plague

That was a real uplifting lesson but it was a tremendously

You know, it's called the great mortality they did not call it the black death back then and they called the great mortality and I Mentioned then that the numbers in modern studies have gone up from when

I was in school To where in many places many cities as much as three -quarters of the population was wiped out most of the estimates have gone up to close to 50 % around around many of those areas and And But it didn't it didn't just disappear

It it would it would stop in an area But then it could come back.

It's not like you could build up an immunity to it or something like that and So what would generally happen when the plague would come into a city?

If you had the means to get out of the city by now, you know

This is 200 years after the first initial real Influx of what we would call bubonic plague

There are other things I mean smallpox and things like that were called plague as well And sometimes we're not sure which was which especially the farther back you get there were there were periods of time for example in North Africa back in the

Third fourth fifth centuries where plagues would come through what kind of a plague was it? Some just simply from descriptions, it's sort of hard to necessarily tell but especially in Europe now 200 years had passed and people had figured out the best way to survive when the plague hits is to get out of built up urban areas and get as far away from other people as possible and So if you had the money and the capacity to do so You got out of town and maybe you might have a summer home out in the hills or something like that and If you were one of the rich people, that's what you would do and very often

What we would call loosely the medical people would do the same thing

They knew this better than others. And so they're you know, they're gone and We know doctors

He says as he looks back toward one in the back they they got out of town so What what would ministers do

Well faithful ministers generally risk themselves in ministering to the people of their of their flock and this is what

Calvin did as well and so he certainly increased the

Esteem that he had in the eyes of his people Do the fact that he fearlessly?

ministered to the sick and and stayed there in the city and during the plague and Continued his his work at that particular point in time and so There there seems

It would seem You know we could speculate that the young scholar who showed up in Geneva and had to be feralized

To stay there is growing maturing. I mean, he's still very young but he's growing maturing and this is a specific time of growth for him

But like I said, he's not just sitting around idly There is some very important stuff that happens while he is in Strasbourg and one that I would

Recommend to your reading if you are interested in such things while Once Calvin and Pharrell have left

Geneva the Roman Catholic Bishop of Geneva Sadaletto is seeking to bring

Geneva back into the Roman Catholic fold and And Very quickly the people of Geneva recognized

We don't really have anybody that can respond to this we kicked them all out

We got rid of the ministers and the ministers that are left really aren't up to responding to a erudite

Bishop such as Sadaletto and his his arguments and so Somewhat sheepishly a letter arrives from Geneva and it's like Yeah, you know we know we sort of parted on on bad ways and we sort of like kicked you out and stuff, but um

Would you take a look at the letter that the Roman Catholic Bishop Sadaletto has addressed to to our church and Might you find it in your heart?

Maybe help us out here and Calvin does and I remember years and years ago 19 oh wow one was this maybe the very early 90s

There was a well -known church historian by name Heiko Obermann who taught down at the

U of A and I think he just wanted to get out of European weather.

And so why else would you end up in Tucson? But He there there was a serious program of church history study down there and so I Was I graduated fuller and so I was seriously considering it as a possibility down there.

And so I remember going down and One evening there was a doctoral seminar at Dr.

Obermann's house in Pretty much northern Tucson and though it was very enjoyable to to attend and the whole discussion was on this letter the letter that Calvin wrote in response to Sadaletto in defense the

Reformation For the people at Geneva and it's not super long and that's why you know it may be as well known as it is, but It is a classic defense of the

Reformation over against a very erudite Roman Catholic prelate and so it's

It's good stuff. And so it's S -a -d -o -l -e -t -o if you want to look it up Sadaletto and It's very very interesting reading to read

Calvin's response to Sadaletto and his taking on the various issues and claims of authority and things like that.

So if you're really interested, especially in Reformation apologetics, this is one of the earliest Well, it's certainly well aside from the

Institute's. It's it's certainly an insight into how Calvin defended the

Reformation at this particular point in time Then at the same time you would think you know, he wasn't in Strasburg all that all that long

He's going to return to Geneva on September 13th 1541 so just a couple years there in Strasburg and yet Somehow he manages to write his commentary on Romans now most people who write a commentary on Romans spend many many years in that in that task it is a

Testimony to not only his clarity of thought and ability as an author I mean if you've seen his commentary on the

Bible the many many many many many volumes of commentary on the Bible you know that this is not surface level stuff and I've always felt you know,

I I sit there looking at my super high -speed MacBook Pro with 2 terabyte

SSD Drive and All my fancy word processing stuff that I can, you know

Just pull stuff in and you know quotes and stuff like that and you know searching huge electronic libraries and everything like that and Then you look at what these guys produced with candlelight and quill pens

And it makes almost all of us modern folks look like morons Okay, it really does

The level of discipline Physical discipline just sitting for that long

No air conditioning no Lights LASIK rudimentary reading glasses at best

Fleas and mosquitoes I'm Sorry Well, yeah, well, yeah that Erasmus did believe that the mosquitoes were demons but Yeah, and yet It just seems quite obvious to me that the men of this age had discipline we know nothing about and An attention span 50 times longer than anything.

We've got it is so easy to be distracted. There's so many things that distract us and Partly because you know, we we almost know everything that Calvin possessed physically and In in comparison to anybody today.

He was a popper. He had nothing But when you have almost nothing you're distracted by almost nothing and Hence we look back and it's like why doesn't why don't any of us produce this type of work as The only explanation

I can come up with is because we tend to be extremely distracted by a million things now, of course same way

You know, we're flooded with Just this tsunami of information about what's going on in the world instantly and they didn't have that You know a war could be three months

In progress before word would even get some areas. So you wouldn't even wouldn't even know yet there's an entire set of books that are

Calvin's correspondence and So he it wasn't that he was hiding someplace and didn't care he actually spent a tremendous amount of time trying to mediate disputes and He wrote a tremendous amount of epistolary literature letters to people

Long periods of time invested in that so Writes his commentary on Romans while he is there anytime you preach through Romans work through Romans that's going to Tremendously solidify your soteriology make you it's gonna force you to think through there's lots of tough material there to have to think through and where am

I going to come down on this and and It Calvin Wasn't just sitting there going.

Well, I'm the expert on all this You read his materials and he's reading commentators. He's reading the early church fathers

He knows where they are coming from and he's drawing from them and yet so preeminently biblical in his exegesis as well it's it's amazing in 1540

He marries I'd let the Burer I'd let the Burer Which one

Id e L e T T e Debured de capital

Bure I'd let the Burer she was the Widow of an

Anabaptist and Unfortunately, they are only married for nine years before her death

And We'll tell talk a little bit more about that for in a moment, but he marries

I'd let in 1540 and The number of pleas to retain return to Geneva start increasing

The the church in Geneva is in dire straits They realized they had done wrong in in driving

Calvin out they Start to realize what a treasure they actually had in him because they can't find anybody else do anything like this at all and And certainly his letter in defense of them

You know, they read it and they're like You know, we got nobody that can even come close to this and and so there's there's a great amount of pressure placed upon him

He does not want to go Geneva may be a pretty place but It's Switzerland, he's

French At least he's in a French congregation there in Strasbourg He just He knows what he's gonna be up against.

He knows there are people who wanted to come back At the same time. He knows there's lots of people there that don't want him to come back either and So he is torn but finally as I said on September 13th 1541

Calvin returns to Geneva and I think one of the coolest to be honest with you while the coolest stories in church history

Happens right here Calvin had established and he continued this in Strasbourg.

Some people think that John MacArthur started this but but he didn't And Calvin preached verse by verse.

He was an expositional preacher. He would work through texts. It's not that he wouldn't do

Topical stuff but there is a discipline in Preaching straight through a book of the

Bible when you do topical stuff He can now let's sort of skip the stuff that you're not so sure about anyways Or that might make people in the church unhappy You Know what?

I'll be doing the service today from Acts 6 establishment of the diaconate

You know, it's important but skipped over by a lot of folks there's more interesting stuff around to get to so but he would preach verse by verse which is why the commentaries exist is because most of that was from his sermon preparation as well

And So he had been preaching verse by verse in Geneva before he was forcibly removed

And he had established the same Pattern and discipline in Strasbourg as well.

So he returns and The first time in the pulpit

Some Pierre there in Geneva People are sort of wondering

Well, are we gonna are we gonna? Are we gonna get it today? is he gonna let us have it for how we wrote him out of town on a rail and and You know really let us have it before he gets back to you know, because he that's what they were expecting

Instead He gets into the pulpit and He says turn to The next verse right after he had finished when he left

He knew exactly what the last verse he had covered there in Geneva was and he says we're picking right up where we left off two years ago and never said a word about having gotten kicked out and didn't rake everybody over the coals and just Continued on like not like it had been a vacation and just went right on I would not have remembered where in the world

I was to be perfectly honest with you There have been many times especially This past couple of years when

I've got all these two three week overseas teaching trips I've been doing multiple nations that I come back and it's like The only way

I know where I was is I go to sermon audio. It's just like sermon audio. Let's let's see the last one there

So you you could totally mess me up you got the wrong scripture references in there I'd be I'd be completely lost And sometimes

I'll fire it up and listen to it toward the end. Okay. All right. Okay. I covered that. Okay So I've got something to help me

I don't know what Calvin had but he went to the very next verse and just continued to continue on so That I think is something to to keep in mind as well now as he expected 1541 to 1555 next 14 years

Nothing but constant struggle After 1555 there is a

Sort of a I guess we should say a breakthrough and for the next nine years

Calvin has relative peace He has won the battle but it takes 14 years of Battle now we are a pampered generation

We are a pampered generation We have not only so many

Physical comforts I mean just the clothing we wear I look I sometimes look at the clothing they wore back then and think of just Just the chafing let alone

You know here in Arizona. We we've got all these clothes and stuff that are super cool and and Dry fast and so they didn't have any of that stuff

So, I mean that would have been enough to drive me to distraction but Calvin had a 27 year long headache 27 year long headache

He didn't have any Advil he didn't have a Tylenol he didn't have any aspirin He might have had some better days than other days, but basically

He had a lot of illnesses a lot of a lot of most everybody did There wasn't any wellness program you couldn't get

MRIs and and all the rest of stuff and as your body aged you know things happened and He was

Frequently ill and frequently had to teach through that and preach through that That's why

I say the the and and again look at that volume of work produced We get a headache and it's like I can't go to work today,

I can't do anything and it isn't and so You had a 27 year headache

His Opponents in this 14 -year period are just merciless You know some that some of the stuff was well, for example, some

There were a number of people who named their dogs after Calvin and so, you know, he'd be walking down the street and you know

Calvin get out of here and he's somebody's kicking up kicking a dog something like that and They would

Sneak outside of his home at night and You know fire off muskets in the middle of the night knowing he didn't sleep well anyways

There are times that he'd wake up with a musket ball embedded in the in the in the wall next to the bed

There was just there and then there were some major major major conflicts where He literally stood between the the the

Lord's table and his enemies that he had excluded from the table for their breaking of The laws of the church where they're holding swords to his throat and he won't move

There's there's a you know, there's constant intrigue and politics and Because he couldn't avoid politics.

I mean Now it is very very very often asserted

That Calvin ruled Geneva. That's simply not true and anyone who knows

History knows that that was not true He was not the

Pope He headed up the body of ministers of the church

But there was a town council and That council did not simply rubber -stamp whatever

Calvin wanted to do and neither did the other ministers So while he was extremely influential and powerful he did not run the city

He could not simply do it. He was not a citizen of Geneva Until when was

I think he was yeah 1559 1559 so he wasn't even a citizen.

He couldn't even vote until the last five years of his life in Geneva and so the common and sadly commonly repeated in Secular history sources in Universities and colleges and so on so forth of Calvin Ruling over Geneva and having people burned right left and center just it's just not true.

There's there's no Historical evidence of any of that we will look at the most

The most well -known incident of an execution in Geneva here in a few minutes.

Well, yeah, we should get to it today. We'll see anyway So it is a constant struggle many many battles within as well as without There were not only

Roman Catholics reigning against him, but it is during this period of time when the issue of Predestination and election comes to the fore as well now people will say again wrongly that somehow

Because you have something called Calvinism that Calvin must originated it and Calvin would have gone. What are you talking about?

Have you read anything else? Calvin did not claim to originate anything and When Calvin addresses issues such as God's providence

God's sovereignty Doctrine election things like that His writings are not only deeply biblical.

He was fully capable in both Greek and Hebrew as well as Latin obviously, but he was a scholar of the early church and so he knew

Augustine and As we mentioned we talked about Augustine last year sometime

As B .B. Warfield put it the Reformation was inwardly considered nothing more than the victory of Augustine's doctrine of salvation

Over Augustine's doctrine or Augustine doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church

The Roman Catholics gives you could use Augustine in sacraments and church and things like that the reformers in the gospel itself and so Calvin just sees himself as a

Pauline Augustinian and Luther Had just just read the bondage of the will

Luther had strongly asserted Luther was an Augustinian so Luther had strongly asserted the sovereignty of God in salvation the existence of the elect all the rest that kind of stuff, but the difference between the two is that Luther presented that haphazardly and emotionally while Calvin is the relentlessly

Logical consistent systematizer, and that's what people detested was

There is no there's no wiggle room He just lays it out in a very compelling fashion and It doesn't leave a whole lot of a lot of space for for running about and so people are writing books against him

His Responses Again our classics of Reformation theology

There remain extremely valuable to this day though always keep in mind

I think I mentioned this last week Calvin himself said well. I know what I believe you start with the

Institutes So any other book commentaries anything else? Needs to be read in light of the the basic system

I've laid out in in the Institutes and a lot of people forget that end up reading something out here And then trying to read in the

Institutes. It's backwards from what Calvin said I figure you should let the guy who You're talking about define these things so battles galore for 14 years and personal issues as well in 1542

Calvin and Idolette have a little boy Jacques who lives for two weeks and Then passes away and Seven years later

Idolette herself dies in 1549 so Luther lost children in infancy

Calvin loses in up until modern times

It was almost always the experience of a mother to have lost a child Infant mortality was huge There were many periods in church in church history and history itself where a woman would have to have ten live births to get one through to maturity and So That that that tells us that There is a that there something has changed in the experience of humanity

It's a it's a wonderful thing that we Have such tremendous

Medical advances today, but it's had a huge impact upon Mankind as well

Because we don't think about death hence. We don't prepare for death. I would suggest to you that the modern secular mindset

Could only flourish in a day where medical advancement has allows us to Fundamentally insulate ourselves from mortality.

I don't I don't think that secularism and the you're just a cosmic accident

Mindset would be able to have the prevalence that has today back in the day

When you experienced death all around you all the time not just plagued, but just naturally and You look at all these men, and they all had gone through what we would consider today to be unusually

Stark and deep Personal losses They weren't that unusual back then

They were actually much more they were much more the common experience of mankind than they are today

So I'd let dies March 29th 19 of 1915 49

One other thing that Calvin does that again vast majority of presentations of Calvin's life or are polemical rather than historical and so much of the things that he did that do not fit the meme fit the

The narrative are skipped over Calvin Dedicated the institutes to the king of France as a plea for mercy toward the

Huguenots his fellow French Christians who would be murdered by the tens of thousands under the

French government for a very very long time So he took up the cause of many persecuted groups

Such as the Valdens Ian's He raised money for them he worked toward getting them admitted into Geneva So knowing the kind of persecution that they were facing not all that far away from Geneva itself under Roman Catholic persecution at that time

It also we also should He was tireless in writing letters in defense of these individuals and defense of these groups and seeking to get others in the

Reformation involved and Writing and if he would write to Roman Catholic prelates and and plead with them as as well.

So he was very very Involved and what that meant was more and more people started coming to Geneva seeking his

Intercession and his his help in this way as well and so That's normally left out you normally don't hear that part all you hear is the imperious power -hungry

Kill them all if they don't dot their eyes and cross their t's just like me type perspective, which is

Very common out there, unfortunately Now I hate to do this

Hmm Because there's no way in four and a half minutes to do much more than just give you some background here

But I guess that's what I'll need to do Some of you may have seen the meme online where a

Calvinist and Arminian. It's it's a it's a comic book type thing and In the one the

Calvinist quotes, you know Romans 9 and the then the

Arminian quotes some verse Matthew 23 or something first Peter to a second Peter to whatever and they go back and forth and finally the

Calvinist says John 6 and the Arminian screams Servetus and then the next next one is sorry.

I got too excited there If you have ever Attempted to present

Reform theology to someone online eventually Somebody stuck their nose in and said yeah, but Calvin killed serratus, so I can't believe anything he'd ever said

Which does not demonstrate the deepest level of thought when you when you think about it because you can find somebody who's done something bad

That believes that the sky is blue. I'm still gonna believe this guy's blue, you know There's lots of people believe that the earth is round and but they're bad people

I think Hitler believed the earth is round. Therefore the earth's flat that doesn't know it doesn't make any sense So You've you've heard the name of serratus and Their entire books that have been written some secular

Lawyer wrote a book a couple years ago Fairly well -known atheist sent it to me just to You know do his thing

Over the years I remember after seminary when I was teaching church history over at Canyon Something came up somewhere about this and so I I went to the library and and I I Looked up everything that that you could find at that time.

This was years ago This is before the net but at least back then it was actually something in print can trust it a little bit more and so I've got a fair amount of information on the issue of Servetus and what took place there

We are in a position I think to understand this a little bit better because the fact

That we have consistently ever since Nicaea been tracing the development and growth of the sacral system in church history and so So many people who approach this subject today

Do so without that in the background and without a solid foundation for trying at least

To analyze the incident within its own context and instead they just transfer it to today

And it was like I just can't believe he took that kindly little Jehovah's Witness and burned him up Yeah, and that's not that's not what was going on.

That's not what happened and It's real easy to get people who think that church history has always been like it is today

To think like that. It's it's not tough to do and if what you want to do is inflame emotion and poison the well just easy to do easy to do

But we understand Sacralism we've already talked about Fritz Erba and We've talked about the

Anabaptists the peaceful Anabaptists anyways and as a result

We're looking at a second generation reformer sacralism is still How things are done?

but the foundations for the destruction of sacralism are being laid and a lot of people would say that the

Calvin was important in Doing that though that was never his intention. I'm never gonna sit there and go you know

I think Calvin was actually More for a free church, and he was just sort of you know having to bide his time and lay in seeds baloney

I don't see any evidence of that at all The problem is I think unknowingly

Against his wishes he laid the seeds for a free church in his theology

Especially in his priesthood the believer, and he's laying these things out the way that he did and things like that but no he was a sacralist and cervetus was a dangerous heretic and And Rome had already condemned cervetus as we're gonna see he escaped the night before they were gonna burn him

If they had burned him you never would have heard of him well just well maybe in some obscure ways But it's because he ends up rushing to Geneva that you end up the whole story so at least we have the background upon which to Hopefully do a good study of that the next time that we are

Together all right, we've run out of time. Let's close our time the word of prayer Father we do thank you for this time that you've given to us once again

We ask as we have asked over this year and a half That you would help us to learn from the past Be sensitive to your leading in the present

We ask that you'd be with us now as we go into worship That's all things may be done to your honor and glory we pray in Christ's name