67 - Farel and Calvin in Geneva

One thing before we move on in church history, I have to ask for forgiveness for having skipped, missed, forgot one of the most interesting and definitional stories of the siege of Munster.

Believe it or not, there's one more. Some of you may not be able to handle anymore in regards to Munster, but if you ever do any reading on it, or if you hear anybody else lecture on it, and then you hear the story, you go, why didn't he tell us that?

So I realized, I think, later in the day that I had skipped over it, and I was like, idiot.

So it is the story of a 15 -year -old girl, 15 -year -old woman,

Hilla Fakin. H -I -L -L -E -F -E -Y -K -E -N. Hilla Fakin. She's 15 years old, and in June of 1534, she approaches

King Yan and proposes a plan to him.

And remember I told you that the primary source of reading and theology for the radicals at Munster was the

Old Testament, not the New Testament. The New Testament got pretty short shrift, and the

Old Testament was primarily what was read. And so the story of Deborah, who had delivered

Israel, and some other stories sort of conglomerated together in the mind of this young lady, and she hatched a plan to where she would deliver

Munster by leaving the city and being taken to the

Prince Bishop, and that she would kill him with a poisoned shirt.

And so the various stories were that this fine linen shirt was soaked in poison.

Another story was that it had been taken off the dead body of a man with leprosy. Maybe both.

I don't know. I don't know how she carried it. I don't know. But the idea was that she would get all dolled up, and they took her, you know, because remember by this time under King Yan, you basically had a communist system, and everybody had supposedly given their money into the central treasury and all their treasuries and stuff.

And so the central treasury had lots of nice stuff in it, and gold and jewels, stuff like that. And so evidently she was at age 15 still a beautiful, beautiful woman, and so they dolled her up big -time and put jewels on her and gave her this shirt and sent her out.

And so on June 16, 1534, she is met by the

Prince Bishop's men outside the city, and she isn't taken to him. She's taken to his high bailiff,

Dirk von Merwelt, and she tells the story, you know, why have you left, and well, such -and -such about my husband, and you would kill him if we escaped together, but if I come and I can give you access to the city, then, you know, would you spare him, and tells this whole story.

And so eventually she is taken to the Prince Bishop. The problem is that the very same night, another man escapes

Munster, who is trying to get out of Munster, and is not trying to deceive the

Prince Bishop and kill him. And he has heard of what they've done with Hilla, the young girl.

And so he comes and he decides he's going to buy his freedom by betraying her.

And so he says, hey, there's this woman that's gone out of the city, and she's carrying a gift, and this is what it's all about.

And so they take her, and they face her with these accusations.

She is then put on the wheel. She is put to the wheel. Now, I had heard about the wheel.

You can't read much of history without reading about the wheel.

But I didn't know what it was. Man, you know, you look at the killing fields of Cambodia and stuff, man is still incredibly brutal to man.

But the most cultured people could be incredibly brutal in those days.

And so to be tortured on the wheel, I thought, you on a wheel and making you spin real fast or something.

You know, like the old, remember those merry -go -rounds we used to have in the, we had one in the playground near me at my house.

And man, we got that thing going dangerously fast. I mean, you come off that thing as fast as it was going, and you'd kill yourself.

But now you can't go that fast, and so I guess you can't get, man, did we get vertigo.

I mean, we're talking throwing up vertigo, just projectile vertigo. It was bad. But it was so much fun.

And especially the big kids would come along, and we'd hold on for dear life, and they'd get that thing just about taking off.

It was just, anyway. So I thought maybe that's what it was. No. Instead, they strap you to the ground, and they're using a wheel, that big old, you know, metal, it's metal on the outside, it's got the wood on the inside spokes.

They're using a wheel to break your arms and your legs. So below the knee, above the knee, below the elbow, above the elbow.

They're just, they're just, just breaking your body up into pieces.

And then they thread you into the wheel with all your broken bones and stuff, and then hang you up on a spike on the wheel until you die, get eaten by birds.

Okay. So they've already given her the torture of the wheel. They've broken her body up, and so she has confessed to what she was, she was doing.

She was now ready with calm courage to suffer her punishment, she said, knowing that was for the glory of God, that her soul would never die.

After further torture on the wheel, Hilla faced her executioner with a smile and assured him that he had no power over her.

We shall see about that, he answered, and struck off her head. So the story of Hilla attempting to kill the

Prince Bishop and break the siege with the poisoned shirt was sort of a central story that, with all the other wild stories going on, somehow

I forgot to include. And so if, if they ever do get around to making the movie, which, again,

I, I do not understand why they have not, then you will definitely,

I'm not sure who they'll cast as Hilla, but that would be a starring role, I'm sure, in, in that particular story.

So just some more amazing stuff from, from, from Munster.

Now, so having caught you up on that, and with my sincere apologies for having forgotten last time, it does seem like that was a very, very long time ago.

We have basically one last section of church history to, to cover, and that is the

Reformation in Geneva, and specifically the life and ministry of the

French reformer John Calvin. And there are many people who would assume that when we study church history, all we study is

John Calvin, which is obviously not the case at all.

But it is necessary, I think helpful, to have at least a meaningful outline in your mind of Calvin's life.

There are, it is interesting that vast majority of people never heard of Jan Mathis or Jan of Leiden or Bernard Nipperdaling or any of those people at Munster, and have barely even heard of Munster.

But all you have to do is say, Servetus, and everyone's like, ah, and start frothing in the mouth and, and twitching and things like that.

So church history has a, a way of remembering interesting aspects, and certainly

Calvin is vilified in an astounding fashion by history, but he's also greatly honored by history.

There are many in secular teaching positions who would recognize that Calvin and his writings had more influence upon the development of a constitutional republic and other concepts like that in Western thought, especially the

Puritan emphasis upon work ethic and things like that than almost anybody else.

They, if you just stand back and go, so whose, whose works were being read by the

Puritans who were influencing, you know, the development of English common law at the very time when the

United States is in formation and things like that, and it's, everybody read

Calvin. Everyone read the Institutes of the Christian Religion. Many of the major schools and schools of thought in the

English -speaking world, in Scotland, and so many Scotch -Irish came to the

United States. Great influence, either by direct reading or through social influence, came from Calvin and that book which he first publishes in 1535 called the

Institutes of the Christian Religion. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment.

So in regards to Calvin, he is born

July 10th, 1509 in Noyon, France, so he is a full -blooded

Frenchman. He is the son of a notary, so it's not a, he's not a peasant.

He's in what would be called the middle class, basically. His mother died when

Calvin was very young, and at age of 14 he was sent to Paris to study in 1523.

So the Reformation has already begun in Wittenberg, and it's in the first few years in Zurich at this point.

Like Luther, his father had decided he should go into law. There are many fathers who would like to have lawyers for sons, evidently.

I guess that's a, I guess that was the equivalent of a 401, of a good 401k in that day, was to have your kid have a good solid income like that.

His father dies in 1531, but Calvin finishes his law degree anyway. He was an excellent student, very bright and intelligent.

He publishes his first work at the ripe old age of 23 years of age, which was a commentary on Seneca, the

Roman scholar and writer and historian and so on and so forth from the ancient world.

That commentary shows excellent abilities and knowledge of language and patristics, so Latin and Greek and the early church fathers and ancient sources.

At age 23, Calvin has a command of all of these things, but there was certainly no evidence of any spiritual aspirations at this point in time.

He received a humanist education there in France, and again that term humanist being defined by the fact that Erasmus is still alive at this point in time, so ad fontes to the sources, the languages, so on and so forth.

Strong in logic, in rhetoric, Greek, Latin, and history.

Things that, they still teach logic over there at the school there,

Brother Callahan? No? Maybe the last one to get to teach it over there? That kind of the trivium, the classical education, no longer prevalent in our society by any stretch of the imagination, and if you're not taught to think and not taught to speak and express yourself, you're going to be controlled by people who will take advantage of your inability to think and who have the ability to express themselves.

Unfortunately, I think that's what we see going on around us right now. But he receives that education that is going to come out very clearly in his writings and his ministry.

Now, one of the things that we hear all the time is, you know, a modern fundamentalist will look back upon Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and say, these men were not converted.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people who would fall into what's generally called a fundamentalist camp who would not question their salvation, but there are many who do.

And one of the arguments that they make is that, well, if you don't know the day and the hour, or you accepted

Jesus into your heart, you must not be a Christian. So there are difficulties in pinpointing the exact time of Calvin's conversion, because he does not speak much of himself.

And in fact, you cannot go and visit Calvin's grave. It was his desire that he be buried in an unmarked grave.

There's an unmarked grave that tradition says may be Calvin's, but he did not want monuments and things like that.

I think he would be really ticked off by the huge statues that existed of him at various places, and would probably take a ball -peen hammer to any one of them.

But he didn't speak much of himself. In his introduction to the Psalms, now, his huge commentary on the

Bible remains one of the things that, for me, is part of Calvin's enduring legacy.

This is primarily true of the Institutes, but it really goes beyond that to so much more of his writing, especially his commentaries.

I would say that Calvin's biblical commentary remains in the top ten you would want to have for anywhere where it's extant.

He did not finish commentary. For example, he did not write a commentary on the

Book of Revelation, because he, unlike many people today, said, I really don't understand what that's saying. And he did not finish the

Old Testament. He was in the process of it. It breaks off, I think, in Ezekiel, if I died. So it's not complete, but most of it's there.

And it remains, to this day, extremely useful and relevant.

And when you read the Institutes, the highest compliment and praise

I can give to Calvin is what I have said many times, and that is that the ink still smudges on the

Institutes. And what I mean by that is when you would, before modern methodologies of printing, when you first put that ink onto the page, you have to let it dry.

Now they've developed inks that are pretty much instant transfer, and they won't smudge and things like that. But the point is that when

I say the ink still smudges, is that the Institutes sound like they were written contemporaneously with us today.

I don't know how to write in such a way that a hundred years from now it will sound like I was addressing the issues of that day.

I can't do that. But he could, and I don't know how. Does he make reference to things of his day?

Sure, but it's fascinating that even in dealing with the enthusiasts of his day, which we would identify,

I think, with the TBN crowd in a sense, it remains relevant to our day.

He didn't get into so many personal issues that time that it just grounded at that point in history, and then it becomes irrelevant 20 years later.

And I don't know how he did that. And that's why I say, you know, people are always asking, well, what commentary should

I buy on the Bible and stuff like that? And one of the best ones to have, and one that I still will default to, is

Calvin's. Now, have we advanced in our knowledge of the text and history and language since then?

Sure. But it is, in the vast majority of time, what you will find in the

Old Testament, especially for Calvin, is a whole lot better than almost anything you get today, because his is a believing commentary.

It's based upon the text and upon what it's really saying, rather than so many of the

Old Testament commentaries you have to plow through today are so taken over by modernistic speculations about when this was written, when that was written, everything else.

You can almost never get anything meaningful out of it. And so I highly recommend, if you have not obtained them, generally available, not only in, obviously, hard copy, but I think

Olive Tree has them for free. I think they are online for free. And I think they're either a free or a super -cheap module in almost any,

I would imagine, Esword probably has them, and you know,

Olive Tree and Lagos and Accordance, they're generally available electronically, as well as, they look nice on the shelf, too.

You know, if you're looking to fill that hole in the shelf or something like that, that's a good thing, too.

So I recommend them to you. But in the introduction of the Psalms, he mentions a sudden conversion that he experienced.

Many theories have been put forth. The best information, I believe, points to a period in 1534.

1534. Because in April of 1534,

Calvin visits the aged Lefebvre, a great French proto -reformer.

We don't know what he says, what Lefebvre says to him, but we know that Lefebvre, like Erasmus, had friendly feelings toward Luther and Lutheranism and the

Reformation. Immediately after that meeting in 1534, Calvin travels to Nyon.

He resigns his benefices that his father had arranged for him. Remember, benefices were a clerical payment, which was the, it was basically the mechanism of the time that was a scholarship.

It was the church's form of scholarship that would give you funds to be able to go and study someplace else.

He resigns his benefices and almost immediately begins work on the Institutio, the institutions of the

Christian religion. There are multiple versions of the Institutes.

I'm sure you know the four -book, normally two -volume set that is available today in hardback is from, is the last

Latin edition he did in 1559. He did a later edition in French before his death in 1564, but the last official

Latin version was 1559, and most of our English translations are of that 1559 one.

So probably spring of 1534,

Calvin is exposed to the message of the

Reformation. He is going to be a less emotional and fiery but more consistent and exegetical defender of justification by faith than Luther, and that's from the earliest period.

So I would say somewhere in the spring of 1533, late winter, I'm Calvin is converted and embraces the gospel of grace.

So he's all of not quite yet 25, and so he starts working on Institutio in less than a year.

He writes the first edition. Now the first edition is only about yay big. It's still got all of the major themes and stuff, but people have done entire doctoral dissertations just on the development of the

Institutio, the institutions of the Christian religion, over Calvin's lifetime. And it's all, always keep something in mind that a friend of mine pointed me to back in seminary a long, long ago, and I've remembered it ever since then.

And that is, Calvin himself said, if you really want to know what I believe, go to the

Institutes, not to the commentaries. He did not, what he was saying is,

I do not intend the commentaries to be a systematic expression of my belief. He recognized that given that he'd be looking at a particular text in a particular context, he was not attempting to write a systematic theology in the commentaries.

And so you can go to the commentaries and come up with some interesting interpretations of Calvin, but if you really want to take

Calvin seriously, anything he says in the commentaries needs to be placed within the overarching fabric and framework of the

Institutes, because he himself said to do that. He said, if you want to know what I believe, that's where it is, and that needs to be the lens through which you read everything else.

And there is a great great deal about literature. He was a voluminous letter writer, and in later years was extremely influential in sort of accomplishing amongst the

Reformed what Marburg tried to accomplish earlier on, but failed.

Calvin moved that forward a good bit. Remember, Marburg was before Calvin's conversion.

Briefly before, but just before Calvin's conversion. Calvin is a second -generation Reformer. He really is coming on the scene after the initial work of Luther and Zwingli and others.

And so in less than a year, Calvin writes the Institutes of Christian Religion, first published in Basel, Switzerland.

And so all of a sudden, this clear, concise, compelling, well -argued scholarly defense of the

Reformed faith just appears out of nowhere, like lightning. Where'd this thing come from? Who is this guy? Never heard before.

Who is this Jean Calvin? Frenchman. Frenchman? Really? Now, Calvin puts this out, and then what does he want to do with his life?

Well, basically, what

Calvin would like to do is live in a library and write scholarly books.

He would like to live a quiet life of a scholar and do research and writing and have the freedom to do this, and that's what he wants to do.

So he figures the best place to do this is Strasbourg. Martin Bucer. Martin Bucer has, you know, established that place as a place where there's freedom and acceptance of different views and things like that.

So he wants to go to Strasbourg. One little problem.

There's a war going on between him and Strasbourg. And so he checks out

Google Maps and, you know, he gets out the cell phone and hits the directions and big old red line.

War. Can't go this way. Rerouting. And it puts him, the scary thing is there would be some people going, oh, really?

No. But he does get rerouted, just not by Google Maps.

He has to go the long way to get around the area of warfare, and instead he has to pass through the city of Geneva.

And he only intended to stay the night in Geneva. When he arrived in that city, the last thing on his mind is he was going to be spending the vast majority of the rest of his days on earth in that city.

That was not his plan. He was going to spend the night and move on in the morning.

But what happens is one of those fascinating stories of church history and the providence of God.

I don't know what the conversation was that he had with the innkeeper. Did he give a copy of his book to somebody?

I don't know. But the Reformation had already begun in Geneva, and it had begun under Pierre Farel, or Feral as some people would say.

That makes him sound a little bit wilder than he actually was, but there may be something in the name. History records

Feral as a redheaded, fiery, he was everything that Calvin was not.

Calvin's the retiring scholar, the dweeb, the nerd, the geek, whatever term you want to use.

And Feral is the fiery preacher. And somehow, don't know how, word gets to Feral that the author of that fantastic book that none of us have ever heard of before is at the inn.

And he's only gonna be there tonight. He's leaving tomorrow. So Feral makes a direct line to the inn and knocks on Calvin's door.

And I don't know if you remember the Jack Chick tracks from long ago, where like this was your life, where your whole life is splashed up on a big old screen for everybody in heaven to watch.

I don't think that's gonna happen, by the way. But if we do in heaven get to see some of this stuff, this is one encounter

I would love to watch. Because I can just see the dynamics of it in light of how both

Feral and Calvin described it years later. And they would remain friends, with stresses and strains, but they would remain friends the rest of their lives.

I think if I recall correctly, not 100 % certain of this, but if I recall correctly, Feral outlives Calvin. But basically,

Feral barges into his room and says, did you write this book? Yeah, I wrote that book.

This is fantastic. Well, thank you. Would you like me to sign it or something? And Feral basically says, look, the

Lord has begun something here in Geneva, and the Genevans are rebelling against the bishop, and they are responding to my teaching, but I know my limitations.

And this place needs discipline, and this place needs theology, and this place needs order, and it needs what

I can't give it, but you can. And so God wants you to stay here and help me.

And Calvin's like, you know, it's funny. God didn't tell me that.

And I can just see this conversation. I can just see it going back and forth and the dynamics involved.

And so eventually, Calvin tells us that Feral just, he's already got red hair, and he can get a real red face.

And Feral says, look, I've asked you where you're going.

You've told me you're going to Strasburg to be a scholar. God's church needs you here, needs you now, and God is going to damn your studies if you leave this place and go to Strasburg.

And something tells me he did not whisper that. Something tells me if this was a inn where there were other rooms around, everybody else knew what was being discussed at that point in time as well.

And so I can just see this retiring, brilliant, but somewhat backwards

Calvin, you know, sort of the Lucy Linus effect, you know, the peanuts.

Whenever Lucy yells at Linus, his hair goes straight back, you know. Well, I think that's Lucy was

Feral and Linus was Calvin. And so Calvin doesn't leave.

He stays and reluctantly takes on the role of co -minister there in Geneva for about less than two years.

Less than two years. Because it stinks.

It is a terrible time in Calvin's life.

He has zero experience, pastorally speaking. None. He's a scholar.

And maybe this is one of the reasons I have, you know, I sort of have a warm spot for Calvin.

I get him more than most might. But the combination of the fiery preaching of Feral and then

Calvin's lucid exposition and stuff, and what

Calvin insists is that they enforce the already existing rules of moral behavior for the city.

He didn't come up with new stuff. This stuff was already there, it's just that it hadn't been enforced for a long, long, long, long time.

And so Calvin is a sacralist. Been there, done that. Got the t -shirt on this subject, haven't we?

He isn't introducing the idea, well, we're gonna have a separated church and only people want to come to church, come to church, and that kind of thing.

No, it's the city has to be reformed as a whole. He's a sacralist, just like everybody else.

And so it does not take much time for he and Feral to make tremendous enemies.

Tremendous enemies there in Geneva. So even though the Reformation has started, even though they've told the bishop to take a hike,

Bishop Sadaletto, they ain't so happy with the choice that they've made.

And so Feral and Calvin spend a miserable year and three quarters in Geneva trying to establish a biblical church before they are invited strongly to exit stage left.

They are ridden out of town on a rail. And this is Calvin's first experience with pastoral ministry, is the rather recalcitrant, hard -necked

Genevans. And so when they're kicked out, guess where Calvin goes?

Well, that was took me a long time, but I'm still gonna get Strasburg. And so he heads for Strasburg, where for a few years he is going to have some of the most peaceful period of time in his life, where he is then going to gain true pastoral experience because he becomes the pastor of the

French -speaking congregation in Strasburg. And this becomes a very important and formative period in his life, and that is where we will pick up next time.

All right, let's close the word. Once again, Father, we thank you for this opportunity of looking back and seeing what you've done in the lives of those who've come before us.

We ask that you would help us to learn from these things. The more that you be with us now as we go into worship, may what is done be pleasing in your sight.