{"id":4511,"date":"2025-03-28T08:50:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T12:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4511"},"modified":"2025-03-28T08:50:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T12:50:52","slug":"calvins-institutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/28\/calvins-institutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Calvin’s Institutes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Each day this Lent we\u2019re looking at major \u201cturning points\u201d in Christian history \u2013 moments or seasons in which the story of God\u2019s people took an important and often unexpected turn. \u00a0<\/em>

No luminary in the history of Christianity has been saddled with a worse reputation than John Calvin.

For the last 500 years, Catholics and Protestants alike have portrayed him as a cold, unbending, ruthless fanatic. Portraits of Calvin, like the one above, seem to scream, \u201cThis is what the Grinch would look like if he became a 16th<\/sup> century reformer.\u201d

In 1971, historian Richard Stauffer even wrote a book called The Humanness of John Calvin<\/em>, as if the world needed evidence that he was not actually an extraterrestrial sent to muddle our brains with theological formulations.

Then we read passages like this one: \u201cThere is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.\u201d

Calvin wrote that. He also cultivated a pastor\u2019s heart, enjoyed the company of other people, and even went bowling on Sunday afternoons.

No one disputes he had a first-rate intellect. Trained as a lawyer, he applied the full arsenal of his analytical resources to his faith after he experienced a \u201csudden conversion\u201d to the teachings of the reformers in his early 20s.

In 1536, Calvin published the first edition of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, <\/em>a four-volume masterwork that displayed his grasp of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic. No theological question of any substance escaped his pen. He was only 27 years old.

Calvin spent the rest of his life updating and enlarging the Institutes<\/em>. It became the most celebrated early summary of Protestant teachings.

In addition, Calvinism, in the history of Christianity, is one of the very few modes of thought that can truthfully be called a systematic theology.

My own heritage has Calvinist foundations. When I introduce myself as a Presbyterian, it\u2019s not unusual for someone to say, \u201cSo, you believe in predestination, huh?\u201d Even though predestination plays just a small role in the Institutes<\/em> and doesn\u2019t appear until Volume III, Calvin has long been associated with it.

What exactly are we talking about?

Predestination is the Bible\u2019s teaching that the final spiritual destiny of every human being is decided by God not only before that person dies, but before that person is born. That\u2019s because salvation is God\u2019s business, not ours.\u00a0We don\u2019t choose God.\u00a0God chooses us.\u00a0Predestination declares that despite all our wishes to the contrary, we are never in control when it comes to God.\u00a0We cannot have a desire for God that is not surpassed by his desire for us.\u00a0And we cannot have a desire for God that he did not in fact put there himself.\u00a0


In case you\u2019re wondering, \u201cWho in the world could ever believe such an unfair and unjust doctrine?\u201d you might be surprised to learn that the previous paragraph is consistent with the teaching of virtually every Christian body in existence.

But then we come to a fork in the road.\u00a0On what basis<\/em> does God make such choices?\u00a0Here is where different groups cling to different answers.

Catholics traditionally believe that all human beings retain at least a tiny power to choose salvation for themselves.\u00a0Just desiring<\/em> God and wanting<\/em> to be a good person are credited to our account.\u00a0On the basis of both his grace and our merit, God grants salvation.\u00a0Most Methodists, Baptists and Pentecostals would agree.

The major figures of the Protestant Reformation, including both Luther and Calvin, strongly disagreed.\u00a0They insisted that spiritually dead people (as the apostle Paul labels us in Ephesians 2:1) are really and truly spiritually dead<\/em>. And dead people cannot resurrect themselves and go looking for God.\u00a0

God is the one who graciously plants within us a desire for his company, as well as the capacity to believe.

Shining the spotlight on God\u2019s \u201csovereignty\u201d \u2013 his absolute oversight of every aspect of the cosmos \u2013 is perhaps Calvin\u2019s most famous contribution to the development of Christian thought. It\u2019s an emphasis that is getting less and less attention in American congregations these days, since personal autonomy \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m in charge of my own life, and I get to have the last word on everything\u201d \u2013 has now become as American as apple pie.

Calvin was a scholar par excellence. In his church in Geneva, Switzerland, he often preached three times a day. He wrote a commentary on 65 of the Bible\u2019s 66 books. The only exception was Revelation. Even the greatest Christian mind of the last half millennium figured he would probably get himself into trouble by tackling the Bible\u2019s most controversial book.

Many are surprised to learn that Calvin threw himself into the goal of transforming the city of Geneva into something resembling the kingdom of God on earth.

It wasn\u2019t easy.

Geneva was a notorious party town. Few people welcomed the efforts of some Bible thumper to regulate schools, businesses, and even relationships.

The Scottish reformer John Knox, a devoted disciple of Calvin, was impressed. In his opinion, Geneva became \u201cthe most perfect school of Christ since the days of the apostles.\u201d

Others weren\u2019t so sure. From time to time, Calvin\u2019s zeal overtook his compassion. He definitely made some mistakes \u2013 at least one of which we\u2019ll tackle in a future reflection. It\u2019s safe to say that no one \u2013 not the most committed women and men in the long story of Christ\u2019s followers on earth \u2013 have been able to bring about the perfect world they so yearned to see.

Nonetheless, this one man\u2019s legacy is secure.

So, look past the grim face.

Whenever you gaze at John Calvin, you\u2019re seeing someone whose \u201call-in\u201d scholarship and devotion to God undeniably changed the course of Western history.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this Lent we\u2019re looking at major \u201cturning points\u201d in Christian history \u2013 moments or seasons in which the story of God\u2019s people took an important and often unexpected turn. \u00a0 No luminary in the history of Christianity has been saddled with a worse reputation than John Calvin. For the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[884,892,891],"class_list":["post-4511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-history","tag-gods-sovereignty-2","tag-john-calvin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4513,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions\/4513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}