Do we have a biblical warrant for reflecting on the lives and ministries of past saints? Drawing from texts in Hebrews and Philippians, pastors Derek and Cliff answer that question with a resounding “Yes,” and then offer a brief introduction to John Calvin’s conversion, life, and ministry.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom podcast. I am here today with Cliff McManis. My name is Derek Brown. We are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California. And we also have the privilege of serving as professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we are going to talk about someone named John Calvin. Maybe some of you have heard of him, some of you haven’t, but we want to hopefully shed some light on his life and ministry and encourage you with his life and ministry. But before we get to that, I want to encourage you to also check out withallwisdom.org if you haven’t already. That’s where we host our podcasts, but it’s also where we host all of our articles and now we have some videos there. And these are all resources that are aimed at helping you grow in your Christian walk.
And they’re all rooted in God’s word. And we pray and hope that they are helpful to you as you walk with the Lord and also try to discern the issues of the day and also try to gain a deeper understanding of scripture and of theology, and we trust you’ll be blessed by them. Well, back to our topic. We are going to talk today over the next couple of episodes, at least two, maybe three, about a man named John Calvin. And he lived in the 16th century and he’s important to us as Christians, or at least he should be. But first we want to ask the question: why we should even be discussing a man named John Calvin? Isn’t this bordering on exalting of man and giving people undue praise when all of our focus should be on the Lord Jesus and on God the Father and on scripture?
And why would we take the time—several podcasts even—to talk about someone like John Calvin or any other Christian? So we do need to answer that question. I think it’s a fair question and it’s probably a question that Christians have had. Maybe you’ve had it before. As you’ve listened to people talk about Christians of the past or maybe you’ve read biographies, you wonder, is this even warranted by scripture? And I want to offer you a text out of the book of Hebrews to help you think about that topic or that question. The author of Hebrews says in Hebrews chapter 13, verse seven, remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. And so in the immediate context, the author of Hebrews is encouraging these Jewish believers to persevere in the faith.
And one of the ways to do that is to remember your leaders—those who spoke the word of God to you. And in the immediate context, it’s probably referring to people they knew. People that had preached the gospel to them, come into where they were at and preached to them and maybe were instrumental in their conversion and then lived near them or with them and were with them in the church. And they were to think about the way that they had preached and think about the effect that the truth of God had had on their life. And then they were to do something there—to actually imitate them. And this wasn’t idolatry to imitate them. In fact, Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 11 tells the Corinthian church to imitate him as he imitated Christ. And this call for imitation, it’s not any kind of idolatry.
I suppose it could devolve into that in certain settings, but it’s never meant to be. It’s actually one of the ways in which we grow into Christ’s likeness. God gives us his word, but then it’s very helpful to see his word and his truth lived out by people that we can see it in real time—how they honor the Lord, love the Lord, suffer for the Lord, and serve the Lord in various contexts. When we are able to see that in real time, we are encouraged, we are built up, and the scripture actually calls us to imitate the faith of those who have demonstrated authentic love for the Lord. And so with that truth and with that text, I think we do have warrant to talk about someone like John Calvin who proved himself faithful over many years and through many hardships demonstrated a real love for Christ and a love for his word and a love for the church. And we can learn from him and we can do this in a way that actually honors the Lord Jesus Christ.
He’s pleased when we do this—when we find someone in the faith and we learn from them and try to imitate them as we’ll. See, Calvin was far from perfect. He was a sinner and he would be the first one to tell you that. He would be the first one to point you to Jesus Christ and not first and foremost himself, and he would be the one to point you to the wisdom of the word of God. So we’re not going to suggest or hopefully not imply that somehow John Calvin was perfect and without error. There are places where, actually, we disagree with him and we’ll talk about those things. But by and large, he is someone to imitate, someone to learn from, and he is someone whom the Lord has given us for those reasons. And so I think as we set out on this trek of discussing the life and ministry of John Calvin, we have biblical warrant to do that.
And that would just go for any kind of biographical sketch or any kind of study we would do in the life of a past Christian. The same could go for that study as well, that it is warranted and we can learn much and we should thank God really for all the resources he’s given us that have kept these truths and these stories and these biographies…that kept them and sustained them and allowed us to access them now in the 21st century through the printing of books and the preserving of these things through books. So we’re thankful for the Lord’s preservation and providence in that and allowing us to access Calvin’s works and a little bit of his biography. Cliff, anything you want to say just about that initial thought of, can we even really do this? Is this even really legit?
Cliff: Yeah, I think it’s a good question—a real practical question—that actually a lot of people don’t ask. So pastorally, very practical. Your verse was a great one, Derek, out of Hebrews 13. I think people would be surprised at how many verses like that are in the New Testament. And as pastors and elders, we need to be reminded of them. Some cultures are better at this—of honoring men of God or pastors and faithful shepherds, I should say, than other cultures. I know that when I travel to places like India and other places, the Christians there just have tremendous high regard for the man of the cloth or the pastor or the shepherd. And that’s true in some cultures. Even here in America, the black culture and a lot of the black churches, they have great regard, at least that I’ve noticed, for the pastor or the reverend. That’s not without warrant in light of the verse he shared from Hebrews 13. I just had another one where it’s similar; it’s parallel. Paul is in Philippians, and he’s commending Timothy as a faithful man of God and leader and also he’s telling Christians to keep Timothy in mind. They’re faithful servants; they’re men of God.
And then he says this in Philippians 2: receive him then in the Lord with all joy and hold men like him in high regard. Hold men like him in high regard. Paul says the same thing in Thessalonians. He’s talking about pastors and faithful ministers of the word of God. Hold them in high regard, which doesn’t mean make him an idol, but it does give, as he says in Romans 13, due honor to who deserves that honor in that specific area in which they serve and faithful men of God, faithful pastors, and faithful shepherds should be held in high regard by Christians, whether they’re alive today or throughout church history. And John Calvin stands out, from what we know in his writings that are even with us today—he was a faithful man of God. I think it’s a good reminder for us as Christians, too, to just, when we’re talking about people and personalities and to avoid the personality cult that can be divisive.
You see, even when you go to a shepherd’s conference and you’ve got nine speakers, and the first thing a lot of the guys are talking about afterwards is, they’re criticizing the sermon. What they didn’t like about that. Oh, I don’t like that guy. I prefer this guy and I don’t like that guy and I prefer this guy. That’s so petty. That is so unbiblical to be thinking that way. That’s our human nature. I’m feeling convicted. And so we should be thinking, hold these men of God in high regard. That should be our attitude. And the same is true, I think, of Calvin. Ephesians 4:11-12 says that God has given men as gifts to the church—apostles, prophets and then pastors and teachers. John Calvin was a pastor and a teacher. He’s a gift to the church and we need to understand it accordingly. And also when we’re talking about personalities, we should be thinking whoever it is that we’re talking about and whether we’re going to critique them or compliment them. I think from a Christian point of view, first and foremost, is we should be asking: are they on our team or were they on our team? Well, I think Calvin was on our team for sure.
And another question, where is Calvin now? He’s in heaven, and I’m a Christian and someday I’m going to meet Calvin and I hope I have the right attitude when I meet him. And I hope I don’t misrepresent him or disparage him unjustly. Now I have to face him with the truth. And we can actually do that with Christians that we don’t prefer. Are they on our team? Was he a Christian? I believe he was. I think he was. Is he on our team? Yes. Is he in heaven? Yes, now he is. So we’ve got to be careful in how we talk about fellow believers.
Derek: That’s a good point. That was pointed out to me a few years ago—that you can be guilty of bearing false witness against people who are dead, misrepresenting them. You’re brothers in Christ, and you’re misrepresenting them and lying about them. So just a good reminder. That’s a helpful reminder. Thank you for that encouraging and edifying reminder. Well, let’s start by talking about Calvin’s early life and where he was born. He was French, he was born in northeastern France in a place called Noyon. I hope I’m pronouncing that right. That sounds beautiful. My wife will correct me if I’m wrong. She’s pretty good at French. He was born in 1509, so right at the turn of the 16th century and like so many, he was Catholic and his dad was the church lawyer that was attached to a cathedral in Noyon. Apparently he was considered upper class. I’m not sure exactly how those metrics are considered, but that’s what I’ve understood, that he was considered upper class. This was the time when dads really kind of charted out their son’s lives. Apparently this was the same for Luther as well, but his dad planned for him to become a priest.
And so he prepared by studying at Paris University from 1523 to 1528. Well, apparently his dad had a falling out with that cathedral and decided that his son would no longer become a priest, but he would become a lawyer. And so he started his law studies in central France and he labored there to gain as much humanist knowledge as he could. And he also, at this time, in God’s providence, learned Greek. So that would come to be large in his life. Later on when Calvin’s dad died, he left his law studies and took up humanist studies at the college in Paris. And while there he mastered Hebrew and Greek again, just seeing God’s providence in his life as Hebrew and Greek will be the text that he’s working out of when he’s studying the Old and New Testament. But there he writes a book and he’s now kind of sealed his reputation as a budding humanist scholar, but at this point he has not embraced the Protestant faith.
And as it turns out, and this is kind of sad for us a little bit, at least for me, some of these guys, they just didn’t really talk about themselves at all. So we just don’t have a whole lot about his conversion. All we have is really a statement in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms about what happened to him and what brought him or how he came to faith. And it’s very, very brief. I was going to read it, it’s his own words, but anything that you wanted to say about his early life leading up to his conversion?
Cliff: A couple things that stood out to me, too, and looking at his biography, he went to college at age 12.
Derek: Oh, that’s crazy.
Cliff: Yeah, that was not uncommon. But they had a patronage, meaning people, wealthy families, paid for his schooling because they saw the prospects that he was a smart, precocious young man. Anyway, age 12, and that first college, because he went to several colleges, he transferred to a few of them. The first one at age 12 that he went to study at is actually kind of a children’s college or younger college, and it was specifically for Latin. And that was the renowned Latin instructor of the day. Cartier was his name, there in France. And so basically that’s where he mastered Latin and grammar. At least he began to, and then as you said, he transferred to a few others, studying philosophy, law and other things. So that’s one thing that just jumped out at me. You mentioned earlier that was in the days that dads charted out the course for their children, particularly their sons. I tried to chart out the course of my two sons, Derek. And so I charted them out to be professional NBA basketball players and conducted my life accordingly. And it did not happen.
Derek: But they’re fine young men.
Cliff: They are fine young men.
Derek: So that’s encouraging. Yep. So despite the fact that they’re not in the NBA
Cliff: Yep. So despite the fact that they’re not in the NBA, providence overruled all my shortsighted decisions.
Derek: Well, so like I said, we don’t have a whole lot that Calvin wrote about himself, and that is a bummer for some of us who would like to know some of those more personal, intimate details. Nevertheless, he does tell us a little bit about his conversion. I’ll just read it to you. I should say this is happening somewhere in between 1532 to 1534. From what I understand, it’s hard for scholars to pin down exactly when his conversion was, but it’s right around this time. He says, “Since I was more stubbornly addicted to the superstitions”—he has a way with words—”stubbornly addicted to the superstitions of the papacy, then to be easily pulled out from that deep swamp by a sudden conversion, God subdued my heart, too hardened for one so young, to a teachable spirit. Thus having gained some taste of true godliness, I burned with great zeal to make progress. Although I did not give up my former studies, I pursued them with less enthusiasm and a year had not passed when all who desired this pure doctrine flocked to me, newcomer and beginner though I was, in order to learn it.” So he and others are getting caught up in this reformation, and though he was a new believer, people are coming to him to hear him teach. But the way he describes his conversion, it was a sudden conversion. And I love how he describes it. God brought him into a teachable spirit and subdued his heart. Whereas before he was caught up in what he says were the superstitions of the papacy of the Catholic church. Now he’s brought to revere the very word of God and to yield to that. And that’s really all we know about his conversion. But I just love how he describes it in that way, having gained some taste of true godliness, so not outward formality that is so rife in the Catholic church, but a faith of the heart and a change of the heart and an inner love for Christ, and an understanding of justification that relieves that burden of guilt now that he’s tasted, that he burned with great zeal to make progress.
And I’ve heard your conversion story before, Cliff, and that resonates a little bit with me. I remember just early on in my conversion, I just had a great zeal, as he says, to make progress in the faith. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I look back, and I said and did some dumb things, but I sure had a zeal. Once I really understood who God was and what the gospel was and what the word of God was, there was that zeal to make progress.
Cliff: So he was saved out of Roman Catholicism. So he was a committed Roman Catholic as his dad was totally entrenched in the Roman Catholic Church as a lay servant, but totally involved. From, based on the dates, probably saved around age 24, kind of sketchy, but in terms of the details…young guy, so similar to you and I. We were both saved out of Roman Catholicism. I was 19. We were both about the same age. And it could be one source that I had read—they said that although he is a committed Catholic, and he went to a few different universities starting at age 12 and was studying different things, one that may have been influential, they said, was when he went from the University of Orleans, which was I guess heavily Catholic and into scholasticism, then he transferred in 1529 to the University of Bourges, where there was a strain of humanism there in terms of the professors. And they think that that was where he began to get influenced in Protestantism. They don’t know exactly, but I think that’s a hunch, which means they planted some seeds that maybe came to fruition a few years later.
Derek: Yeah, that’s great. It’s encouraging. So what happened after his conversion? Well, apparently, and you can fill in some details here, too, Cliff, he had a friend named Nicolas Cop, and he was a newly appointed rector at Paris University, and he was calling for a reformation of the church. And he gave a speech that caused a bit of an uproar with traditional Catholics. And that eventually led to King Francis the first adopting some pretty serious and repressive policies towards Protestants and those who sympathize with Protestants. So Calvin and Cop had to flee from France and they fled to a Swiss Protestant city of Basel. And then from that point on, France would become a pretty dangerous place for Protestants. And King Francis even had 24 Protestants burned at the stake and tortured and imprisoned, and many others during that time, which would eventually lead to Calvin addressing that very issue in his book, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. King Francis justified his killings, claiming that, through a public letter, that these were political rebels who were intent on overthrowing the government.
So he thought it was legit for him to do what he did, and therefore Calvin thought that was utter slander against his brothers in the faith. And so he set out to respond to that, and this was his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which had an open letter to King Francis at the beginning of it. And he basically was wanting to show that Christianity was not a religion of the political rebel, but that it was a faith in Jesus Christ, which actually created excellent citizens and trusted God and trusted his word and so on. So he writes this book, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, which is just basically an outline of Christian doctrine—basic Christian doctrine. And it was then, I believe he wrote it at age 26, and he was writing it to vindicate the Protestants from King Francis’ false accusations. And it was this publication at age 26 that started to develop his reputation for being a champion of French Protestantism. Let’s see here. Oh, do you have anything to say about that initial writing of the Institutes?
Cliff: Yeah, the Institutes is one of my favorite books of all time, by the way.
Derek: Now I just want our listeners to hear this, because I think it’s important you wouldn’t call yourself—well, maybe you would—you’re not a professional Calvin scholar?
Cliff: I’m not a professional.
Derek: But you have read much of Calvin’s works. In fact, you’ve read the Institutes how many times?
Cliff: Several. I read it the first time when I was a new Christian and actually in seminary, and then read it a couple of times since then. And then I actually had to read it again for my PhD in Christian philosophy, or the philosophy of Christian religion. I didn’t want to, and I appealed and I said, I’ve read it several times. Do I need to read it again? They said yes. Not only do you have to read it, you have to write a book report on every chapter in the book. It took me about a year. So basically, it’s a hundred page typed book report of Calvin’s Institutes with basically my summary and commentary on every chapter in Calvin’s Institutes, which was incredibly fruitful and quite a blessing.
Derek: I just want to point that out because there are some professional Calvin scholars that today you would actually disagree with on how they assess and interpret Calvin. And I think it’s important for our listeners to hear how well acquainted you are with Calvin’s own works in reading the primary sources.
Cliff: And I wrote a paper on Calvin for the ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) that it presented six years ago in 2017, and I had to do a lot of reading for that. And the challenge of interpreting Calvin is there’s so much to read because he wrote so much. The Institutes—that’s dense, and it’s slow reading. But people think if you’ve read the Institutes you know Calvin. No, you don’t. Now you’ve got 22 commentaries that he wrote on the Bible. He wrote commentaries on 48 books of the Bible. Had he lived longer, he probably would’ve done them all. And they’re energetically based exposition from the original Greek and Hebrew. They’re masterpieces. You and I, we both have commentaries. I use them to this day. Incredible. So you’ve got to read Calvin’s 22 commentaries, and then he’s got seven volumes of letters that he wrote over the course of his ministry. Seven volumes. That’s also part of the body of his work.
Derek: Seven volumes of just letters?
Cliff: Yeah, seven volumes. And they’re meaty and they add another dimension to Calvin, his thinking, and his ministry that you won’t find in those 22 commentaries or in the Institutes. And they’re not even done producing those yet.
Derek: I was going to ask you, how accessible are those letters? Are they becoming more and more accessible?
Cliff: Well, there’s the seven volumes you can get on Amazon anywhere right now. I don’t think you can even get it online, but there’s more manuscripts that they’re trying to produce, so just the amount of work he produced. And so I’m familiar with most all of that. And still you feel like you don’t quite know everything you need to know.
Derek: Well, thank you for that insight, Cliff. One of my favorite stories now comes to the point where Calvin is starting to develop some desires in thinking about his future career. Calvin remained in Basel for a little over a year. Then he decided that he would reside in a place called Strasbourg. And today, that’s Strasbourg, France. But in Calvin’s time, it was a free imperial city, which means it wasn’t under the ownership of France. That didn’t come until the 17th century when France was able to take it over, but it was a free imperial city. It was on the border of France and Germany, and it was a place that was very friendly to Protestantism. So you had a pretty large group of Protestants there, and it was a place where you could study. It was a place that was friendly to the reformation, and that’s where Calvin wanted to go, and he wanted to go there and live out his days in quiet study of scripture, of theology, and of the teaching of theology.
Cliff: To be a scholar.
Derek: To be a scholar. And that’s his plan.
Cliff: Without having to deal with people.
Derek: Exactly. Just books. Just study all day, write, and maybe teach some theology. That’s what he wanted to do.
Cliff: Living the dream.
Derek: Living the dream, baby. So how did that work out? Well, so he was on his way to Strasbourg and he had to take a detour due to some military activity, and he was forced to take a detour into Geneva, Switzerland. And while he was there, a man named William Farel (he was born in 1489 and lived until 1565) was there and he heard that Calvin was in town. And so he went to Calvin and he asked him to not go up or go over to Strasbourg, but rather to stay there in Geneva and help him with the reformation in Geneva. Calvin persisted and said, I don’t want to do that. I want to go live my quiet, peaceful life in Strasbourg. And Farel, who was known to be kind of fiery and explosive, so to speak—
Cliff: I would even say hothead.
Derek: He was known to be a hothead. You might say he wasn’t having any of that. And so I’m going to read actually from a historian, and I’m going to quote the incident here from a historian and how he framed it. I smile every time I read it. So here’s Farel trying to get Calvin to stay, and here’s what the historian says. “Calvin refused. He explained to Farel that he was a shy scholar who only wanted to live a peaceful and retired life among the books, reading, studying, and writing. But Calvin’s talk about what he wanted to do with his life did not impress Farel. He became angry and accused Calvin of putting his own desires for personal peace above the urgent, spiritual needs of Geneva. Towering over the terrified Calvin, Farel called down the curse of God on the scholar’s peaceful life if Calvin did not stay and help him. Struck with awe—seeming to hear the voice of the Lord speaking from heaven through Farel—Calvin obeyed. So began John Calvin’s career as the reformer of Geneva, which would last for almost the rest of his life.”
Here’s Calvin trying to explain what he wants to do, and Farel was not having any of it, and he’s calling down a curse on his so-called peaceful life that he wants. And there’s probably a lot of truth to what Farel was saying, actually, in this rebuke of Calvin. It’s not as though Calvin was wanting to do something illicit, but given the spiritual needs in Geneva and elsewhere, to seek this quiet, peaceful, scholarly life was probably not the best use of his gifts. And so I resonate with it as well, because I’m also someone who would love to just have a quiet place to study and live out my days doing that, but that’s not what God’s church needs. And so praise God for this man who had the courage and the personality to correct Calvin at this point. And then this is going to set a trajectory for Calvin’s life that will end up bearing a lot of fruit. And so we can be thankful for this detour.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s an incredible story if you think about it, because Calvin’s only in his early twenties or mid-twenties, I was going to say earlier, he was only a believer for one year when he started writing the Institutes, the first volume.
Derek: That’s remarkable.
Cliff: And then the fact that this guy has the courage to berate him, put him in his place, basically saying, you’re being selfish, and Calvin is just passing through town. He’s going to spend one night there and then be on his way to his career, his quiet life in Strasbourg, and then he decides to stay having been rebuked by this guy. This guy was known by Calvin’s cousin who actually lived there. So there was a personal family connection. So maybe there was a history there. And then also I think it says a lot about the sensitivity of Calvin’s conscience.
Derek: Yeah, good point.
Cliff: How many impetuous young men get rebuked by an older man when they’re being told, no, you’re being selfish. Your agenda—does this really benefit God, his mission and the body of Christ? And you just blow them off and you’re on your way. And he actually heeded that and stayed.
Derek: That’s incredible. That’s a good point. You find, perhaps, more often stubbornness with young men, and instead here he’s yielding. He’s soft. And that goes back to what he talked about in his conversion. He became teachable. Right here, he’s saying, like, wow, this appears to be God’s will and I’m going to yield to it. Well, Farel and Calvin wanted to make Geneva a model Protestant reformed community. And in order to accomplish this, they wanted the church to be independent of the government so that only the church, not the city council, had the authority to exercise church discipline. And this idea met with strong resistance to the point where the council banished Farel and Calvin from Geneva. So actually Calvin ends up in Strasbourg from 1938 to 1941. He got banished from Geneva.
Cliff: Can I comment on that, Derek, please? This would be good for pastors and young pastors and guys coming out of seminary to learn a lesson here. It reminds me of what I was like in my twenties. I finished seminary and I’m in my twenties—immature, impetuous, don’t have a long history or experience and wisdom, and thought I was right about everything. And that’s kind of what Calvin was like. And unfortunately, his buddy Farel was the same way. It’s the two of them. Think about it. They are now in Geneva. They think they represent the rising reformation and they’re going to go and they are foreigners to this city. They’re not even citizens of this place.
A couple of Frenchmen here in Switzerland, and they go to the city council of 20 guys which runs the place with the other council of 200 who has all the authority. So Calvin and Farel, they have no authority. And they go in there as just a couple of whipper snapper 20-year-olds, or at least Calvin is 25-26 years old, and start issuing decrees on how they need to run their city and particularly how to run their church. And then they even issue a statement saying, everybody here needs to basically take a vow and be committed to our view and structure of church life, otherwise they will be excommunicated. And the city said, forget you. And then Calvin and Farel actually held a church service and conducted themselves accordingly, and they set up communion and blessed it, and they took it themselves and they banished everybody else from taking it.
Derek: Wow. I was not aware of that.
Cliff: So they got booted out. Basically, I’m saying they deserve to after two years. And so Calvin left the city there with his tail between his legs, went to Strasbourg, and then by God’s grace, he was mentored there and got tempered and matured and married and everything else. So God really grew him after that. So I just think it’s a great life lesson that you can really blow it big time because of your shortsightedness and arrogance, especially as a young guy coming out of seminary with your head full of knowledge, and blow up your first church, which is basically what he did. And God is the God of the second and third chance. And if there’s any pastors out there, you blew it. Yeah, you’re not the only one.
Derek: That’s a good reminder. You do hear stories even today, and it’s more than we wish it were, but you do hear these kinds of stories of guys coming straight out of seminary, young, blowing up churches, and Lord willing, they are able to come into a second and third chance. But you’re right, it’s a great lesson to learn from the great John Calvin. I mean, he had such a fruitful ministry afterwards, so that should also be an encouragement. So he fled to Strasbourg. He was there serving as a pastor to a large congregation of French Protestant refugees. So that’s cool there. He meets and marries in 1540, a French widow named Idelette. This wasn’t an arranged marriage, but he wasn’t really looking for marriage. He had just kind of assumed he was going to be celibate for the rest of his life. And yet here was a friend of his trying to set this up, and he does marry.
And one thing I wanted to note about his marriage was that initially he didn’t really have romantic ideals about marriage, and so he didn’t enter into it with great passion. But you’ll see that in his life, he actually, or in his marriage—it wasn’t long. She died nine years later. But in their marriage, they had a very sweet and affectionate relationship to the point where after she died after just nine years, he said, truly, mine is no common grief. I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life. So just an encouragement to folks out there who might be listening who maybe aren’t even married or you have these kind of high romantic ideals about needing to have these certain kinds of feelings before you get married. Not necessarily here. In the case of Calvin, they were married and they grew in their affection. He grew in his affection for her, and he was truly grieved when she died. Well, after that, he doesn’t remarry. And it was probably for the best, because he really gave himself to his labors. And the wife might’ve been disappointed in that because he labored so diligently.
His years in Strasbourg only lasts to 41. He’s called back to Geneva by the people there. And he moves back there to help. And there’s some details as to how that came about. He had actually written a letter, an open letter to someone named Jacopo Sadoleto who was trying to win back Genevans to Rome. And Sadoleto had written a letter in which he attacked Protestants for violating the unity of the church. And so actually Calvin responds to that letter, and I believe you can find that online. And that demonstrated that he was a very clear articulator of reformation truths. And in fact, some have said that this letter was regarded by many as the most persuasive statements of reformation principles ever given. And so they pressed the Genevans, and so they asked him to come back and to help out.
And that’s what he does. And he lives out his days in Geneva, reforming not only the church, but the city and the culture in many, many ways, which is a discussion in and of itself that I’ve taken up with our young professionals, talking about the relationship between church and state and how Christianity should influence and how we understand those things. Calvin is instructive. His views are also challenging as well. But nevertheless, great fruitful ministry, and he lives out his days in Geneva. He is fruitful, not only there in serving the church and having an influence in the very culture, but also like you said, a great literary output, producing multiple additions of his Institutes. And it started small. Now it’s big. I have two volumes sitting here. I think yours is a one volume, but it’s like 1500 pages or something.
Cliff: It started out as a pamphlet, and you can put a pamphlet in your pocket. And then through many iterations, it’s a massive tome.
Derek: Yeah. So what we’re going to take up then in the next episode, and maybe a third—we’ll see—what we’re going to take up is specifically some of Calvin’s teaching. We’re just going to hear from him. We’re going to hear some quotes from him, talk about his teaching, his doctrines, and then ask some questions. What does it mean to be a Calvinist? I think that’s an important question as well. We hope that this brief little biography of John Calvin has been helpful. We’d encourage you to come back and listen to the following episodes as we talk more about his teaching. And again, we encourage you to check out withallwisdom.org, where you’re going to find more articles and resources that are aimed at helping you grow in your Christian life, all rooted in God’s word. And until next time, keep seeking the Lord in His word.
