Watch John Calvin episode here
John Calvin, the great French reformer, stands as the most significant leader in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. Unlike Luther, Calvin dreaded quarrelling.
Though he was reluctant to speak about his personal life and avoided public attention, his long tenure as pastor in Geneva teaches us how a supposed “chance” event can change history and how humble submission to wise counsellors can lead believers aright.
–– Adapted by Tim Cantrell from Dr. Flip Buys
The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
Historian Rodney Stark describes how the early church was the first institution in the history of the world that brought people together across ethnic barriers. They were inclusive because they believed that there is one God who gathers His new people from every tribe tongue and nation. Longtime GK pastor and professor, Dr. Flip Buys, was a white Afrikaans pastor in a black church in the 1980s in Sharpeville township, home of the infamous Sharpeville massacre of 1961 (commemorated every 21 March on Human Rights Day in South Africa). He often had to drive to church services through burning tyres on the streets and police barricades.
Yet Dr. Buys powerfully testifies to the gospel’s impact in seeing black and white young people converted and learning to reconcile. He tells of how, in those tumultuous times, their church truly experienced how Christ has torn down the wall of racial division and created the “one new man” (Eph. 2:14-16). Nothing is more potent for racial harmony than a biblical vision of God as absolutely free, gracious and sovereign – a God who truly saves sinners! Whether we wear the Calvinist label or not, every Bible-believing child of God says ‘Amen’ to that testimony.
Continue reading
Michael Currid shows in Calvin and the Biblical Languages how the return to the originals languages helped spawn the Reformation. It was a recovery of the raw Word, not just a priest or pope’s interpretation of it.
No longer was the Word chained to the pulpit, but farmers and mothers and gardeners were encouraged to understand it for themselves. We have Beza, Calvin, Luther, and Knox to thank for the emphasis on studying and teaching Scripture in the original languages. With skill, Currid summarized Calvin’s monumental preaching schedule and the role in which Greek and Hebrew played.
But as St. Luke likes to say, the points over which to quibble are “not a few”. So lets get started. The first cavil reminds me of the time a seminary professor confessed why he hated to read biographies: the authors presents their subject as nearly perfect—and who can emulate that? In quoting Colladon, the author gets a bit too close to hagiography. “When lecturing, [Calvin] always had only the bare text of Scripture; and yet, see how well he ordered what he said! And it was not as if he had adequate time to prepare; for, whatever he may have wished, he simply had not the opportunity. To say the truth, he usually had less than an hour to prepare” (46-47).
Calvin preach magisterial sermons with virtually no time for preparation. And he didn’t sleep. And he worked 25 hours a day. On the one hand, we are called to labor doggedly over the original languages, but on the other we to admire the Reformer who did his sermon prep on his carriage ride to church. So which is it? Continue reading