 Welcome. So the last few of you are signing on the extra credit chapel sheet and finding spots. There are a few seats up here, some there, some there. Yeah, so look around, fill in the spaces. Thanks for coming out tonight, students and pastors. We are continuing tonight our series on commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. So students are here, some pastors are here. And we're glad that you're here to, in particular tonight, to consider John Calvin and his part of the Reformation, in particular how it still influences our world today. In a moment, Dr. Ian Clary is going to come up and introduce our speaker for tonight. But I just wanted to remind you, actually, that reminds me, Ian and Michael, would you be willing to grab hold of these and hand them out to the students? You've probably got it before, but why don't we hand them out to you and you can have another look at it. This is the schedule of events for our Reformation commemoration. And we've had a number of events already. Some of you have been to them. We've had one talk in chapel by Dr. Cotter introducing our School of Theology focus on the Reformation this year. Next, is it next week, Professor Plato, that you'll be in chapel, or is it the week following? Professor Plato, is it next week or the week after that you're speaking in chapel? Week after, OK. So he'll be continuing our focus on the solas, Sola Scriptura. But as well, next week there is an additional event, and that is our CCU history professors. We'll be having a panel discussion on the Reformation over at the library. So that'll be happening a week from today. It's actually an afternoon event. It'll be happening at 4 o'clock, or I'm sorry, 4.30 next Tuesday. So we'll be looking for that. Actually, that will also be an extra credit chapel opportunity. So you seniors who are desperately trying to fulfill your requirement, that would be another chance for you to get an extra credit chapel next Tuesday. CCU history professors at the library. Some of you were here for two weeks ago when Dr. Michael Haken spoke on women of the Reformation. For those of you that are here, you were blessed by that talk. And going forward, one thing I really want to encourage you to consider going to this weekend is this Sunday. Now that's a change. As you look at the schedule here, there's a change. Originally, this Friday was going to be a presentation of one-act student plays. These are written by students here at CCU and performed by them and with Reformation themes called Reforming Love. And that was going to be this Friday, but it had to be switched because of our homecoming activities, but it will be occurring this Sunday at 4 over in the Music Center. So please consider going to that. There's no charge for it. Of course, for your students, there never is. But 4 o'clock this Sunday, Reforming Love, it's a festival of student one-act plays based on Reformation themes. So hold on to this. Look at it. Use it for reference. We want to encourage you to be involved with these events as much as possible. Tonight's event, in particular, is, as I said, focusing on John Calvin. But we do have some other guests in the room, local pastors. And for you local pastors, before you leave tonight, make sure you get this gift from CCU. This is a book, a very new book, caught off the presses for tonight's speaker, Dr. Mark Jones. This is his new book on Faith, Hope, and Love, The Christ-Centered Way to Grow in Grace. I think you'll find this very helpful book. And if you'd like, Dr. Jones will be glad to sign it for you afterwards as well. So please, pastors who are in the room, make sure to come up front when we're done tonight and get your copy. And also meet Dr. Jones if you'd like. So I'm going to lead us in prayer now. Then Dr. Clary will introduce Dr. Jones. He's going to give his talk on Calvin and the ongoing effects of the Reformation. And then he will be glad to field any questions, probably related to the talk. But any questions you have for him tonight, he'd be glad to interact with you on that. So as he's talking and a question arises, please make note of it to yourself and then be ready to ask it when the Q and A time comes. All right, would you join me in prayer? Our Father in Heaven, we thank you for the joy of being able to come to you together because of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the chance to commemorate the amazing events that were kicked off almost exactly 500 years ago whose effects reverberate even until today. So Lord, help us as we consider the faithfulness of those who have gone before and recognize their impact on our lives to likewise have a vision to glorify you in our day and to leave a legacy for the generations that follow. So bless our time tonight. Bless our speaker, Dr. Jones tonight. Use him in each one of our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, it is awesome to see how many people have come out tonight. I'm really encouraged seeing all of your faces. It's gonna be a great discussion that we're gonna have about the life of Calvin. And I'm especially happy to have as our speaker a friend of mine, a fellow Canadian. So we're having a sort of a subtle takeover of campus here. Dr. Mark Jones. Mark is a pastor. He's a theologian and he is an author. And I think that you're gonna be in for a real treat tonight. Mark is pastor of Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church in Vancouver, Canada. He is the husband to Barb and they have four children, two boys of which are twins. So you can imagine how fun their home is. And Mark is somebody who travels the world wanting to just build up the church, teaching Christians in places as far away as China, Brazil, South Korea and his birthplace of South Africa. So Mark is the author of a number of books, the one you just saw Dr. Wind advertise here called Faith, Hope, Love, which literally has just been released. You're probably the first people to actually set eyes on it, which is pretty cool. And he's authored other books from popular to scholarly levels. Books like a kind of a classic named Knowing Christ and other works on the relationship of the law and the Christian faith. And then he studied thinkers of the past like English Puritans such as Thomas Goodwin. So I'm very happy to have Mark here as a friend and as a scholar and as a pastor. So brother, please come. Well, I'm very thankful for the fact that you're getting credit tonight and that Ian introduced me with what will one day be my obituary. So thank you. I was given a topic and I must confess to you immediately. I'm not a scholar. I'm a pastor who likes to dabble in these types of things. So, which is good news for you really because generally the better the scholar, the more boring the talk. So I'm gonna just aim low and given that I don't actually see a lot of scholars here tonight, I'm feeling really good about this one. The topic is Calvin's life and of course there's been biographies written, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. That'll be the only Latin you'll hear tonight on his life. And I didn't really feel like giving you a biography of Calvin's life in a sort of beginning to end with all of the key points. I thought I'd rather do the 10 points of Calvinism which you're all familiar with under Calvin's troubles. So it's kind of a depressing talk in some respects because I'm just gonna be looking at all of the sort of struggles that Calvin endured as a pastor in Geneva. And some of them are quite moving I think. Some are going to relate to perhaps events that have taken place in your own life in a sort of analogous way. And some will be very distant from you. So you know that this is the 500 year anniversary and we are most of us here who are Protestants, I suppose, are happy about this, celebrating this. And yet we have to understand that the Reformation and all that it involved came at a great cost to those who were involved in the Reformation. It was far, far from easy. And it seems to me that when God chooses to use someone in a significant way over the course of church history, he ends up putting that person through intense struggles. You might think of Moses or Job or the apostle Paul and certainly with our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, the same is true for his servants after the apostolic period. Those whom he uses in significant ways, he crushes. He seems to beat them as it were into a type of mold where he can use them where they are utterly dependent upon him. And so as we go through these 10 points of Calvin's life, I want you to consider that this is how God works when he works with his children and especially his esteemed servants. The first major problem that Calvin had to deal with in the Reformation were problems from within. And what I mean by that is among the Protestants, there were certain Protestants who went off in dangerous directions regarding their theology and you didn't have a monolithic group of reformers who all believed the same thing. You had some very intense theological debates among them and between them from the get-go. And Calvin had to deal with this. Some reformers in fact went back to Rome under increasing pressure in the towns and cities in which they lived. It was easier for them because of money, other circumstances, even preserving their own life to go back to Rome. And there was this one man called Pierre Caroli. He was, by Calvin's estimation, a very difficult man to work with. And he wavered in his theological convictions and he was appointed the chief preacher in Lausanne. That's kind of a cool Reformation piece of history. They would have a chief preacher in each city. What Tim Keller might be to New York and John MacArthur to Los Angeles and in Seattle. Well, they don't really have one anymore he left. They would have chief preachers. And you can imagine that this would arouse a type of competitive spirit among the preachers to be known as the de facto chief preacher of the city. And Caroli ended up saying that you could pray for the dead. He would come up with all sorts of weird doctrines. And this set Calvin off. Not only because he thought that his friend Pierre Vieux Ray should have been the chief preacher, but because of the false doctrine that emerged among some of the Protestants. Calvin called Caroli an ambitious man a buffoon. And when Vieux Ray left Lausanne, it was then that Caroli made accusations against Calvin and Vieux Ray, calling them Aryans, which is to call them heretics. Well, Calvin had to deal with the fact that he was being called a heretic not only by the Roman Catholic Church, but also by certain Protestants. So the first major problem he had to deal with was problems from within. The second was purity in the church because he's reforming the church, setting up the church. He wants to create a church in which there is moral purity. And in 1538, he wanted to withhold the Lord's supper from the wicked. The problem was is that Calvin often didn't get his way. And the council, the political council in Geneva says, no, no, you have to offer it to everybody who comes. Calvin didn't like that. In fact, in 1546, there was another problem he had to deal with in the church, which I call the dancing fiasco. This was among Calvin's church members. There was a wedding in which the daughter of Antoine Lect, who was a prominent citizen, they had dancing at the wedding. And this brought great disturbance. In fact, the participants were saying that they had not, in fact, danced at the wedding. But Calvin knew they had danced at the wedding. And so he waited till Sunday when they all came to church after the wedding and thundered from the pulpits about how wicked and vile they were for dancing. In fact, he said that they should build their own city with their own rules. This is part of Reformation life in Geneva. Don't dance at a wedding. And it's interesting the way they deal with problems and trying to get people to be holy and get along. In fact, if you were a husband and wife in some of these Reformation towns and cities and you were having a dispute, they would take you up into a tower and give you bread and water until you resolved your dispute. Now, I have asked my elders to build a tower for that very purpose. But can you imagine being sent up with bread and water to resolve the dispute with your spouse? It's a very different age. Against the libertines a year later, they were those people who were renowned for their wickedness and impurity. They came to take the Lord's Supper. And they came in not simply as human beings, but as human beings carrying swords. Most of the time in early modern Reformation periods and after that, people would walk around and go to synods and theological debates with swords. Well, people would go to the Lord's Supper at church with swords. And Calvin put himself before the table, facing the drawn swords of his enemies, and said, if it is my life you desire, I am ready to die. If it is my banishment you wish, I shall exile myself. If you desire once more to save Geneva without the gospel, you can try. Calvin was willing to put his life on the line to protect the Lord's table from people who were openly wicked and unrepentant. So he had purity in the church in which he had to deal with. Another interesting event in Calvin's life was the training of new ministers. The first hurdle really for Calvin in Geneva was establishing clergy to take care of all of the different churches. Now he says many were woefully inadequate to the job. And so from about 1541 to 1546, he oversaw the transformation of the ministry in Zurich and Baal and Geneva. You had a lot of Roman Catholic priests. When the town becomes Protestant, they say, well, I guess we're Protestant now. It wasn't necessarily because their convictions had changed. It was simply because the city became Protestant. They thought, well, if we want to keep our job, so to speak, we will become Protestants. And so Calvin draws up what we call ecclesiastical ordinances and makes the initial comment that Geneva was not overly blessed with talent. In fact, not the greatest introduction to the ministers in Geneva, but listen to this. Our colleagues are rather a hindrance than a help to us. They are rude and self-conceited, have no zeal and less learning. But worst of all, I cannot trust them, even though I very much wish that I could. For in many respects, they demonstrate their opposition to us and give little indication of a sincere and trustworthy disposition. I bear with them, however. I dread factions that arise from quarrels, but no one can complain I have been too severe. I suppose rude and self-conceited, no zeal and less learning, certainly not the type of recommendation you'd want your professor giving you towards grad school. But he tried to get them paid more money, and he was sympathetic to the workload that had been placed upon them. And in fact, came around to the point where he said that their sermons were not entirely dreadful. Though the ministers often bewildered their congregations, Calvin actually was forced to preach more because the other preachers were so bad, he would just say, OK, let me take care of this. So the training of new ministers was a trial for Calvin. There's another instance of the plague in Geneva. Now, the plague in Geneva was, of course, a threat, unlike we would experience in our modern day. And it was to help the sick and dying. And what the problem was was finding ministers of courage to go and help these people when so many ministers refused because of cowardice. In fact, in 1542, a man named Pierre Blanchet, he was a man Calvin described as having a big heart, volunteered to relocate outside of the city to console and help the poor and sick. The hospital, unlike in many cities today, would be on the outskirts of the city in order to protect the people who lived in the city. And Calvin wrote to Pierre Rivet, the pestilence also begins to rage here with greater violence. And few who are at all affected by it escape its ravages. One of our colleagues was to be set apart for attendance upon the sick because Pierre Blanchet offered himself all readily acquiesced. If anything happens to him, I fear that I must take the risk upon myself. For as you observe, because we are debtors to one another, we must not be wanting to those who, more than any others, stand in need of our ministry. That's quite a courageous spirit. In May 11, later that month, Pierre Blanchet returned to the hospital to care for the sick, where he had volunteered to go. And a few weeks later, he was dead. Now the problem was how do they replace a man who so willingly goes to care for the sick and dying? And what they did was something most interesting that you would not suspect from reformed people. They drew lots. And some refused because they said God had not given them the grace to undergo such a ministry. There was a man named Mathieu de Genestan who volunteered and he also soon died. In 1564, Calvin Starr student Theodore Beza was one who was of such theological gifting they debated among the ministers whether he should be exempt from having to go. He's such a great theologian, why would we send such a great theologian or great teacher to a place where he will surely die? But in the past, Oella Campadius in Basel, Bootser in Strasbourg, Bullinger in Zurich had visited people infected with the deadly disease. And even Calvin himself had visited people who were dying from the plague. In 1568 to 71, the plague returns to Geneva and Beza ends up making impassioned speech insisting that he should be included in the lottery. He said as a minister he had to fulfill all the duties that his office required, which included chiefly the consolation of the poor and sick people. His name was added to the lottery, it wasn't drawn out and it was later scrapped but he did visit those eventually in his parish who had been infected by the plague and other types of diseases and Beza makes this point. It would be something very shameful indeed wicked to imagine a faithful pastor who abandons one of his poor sheep in the hour when he especially needs heavenly consolation. These men were, and I don't say this lightly, they were heroic in the conditions in which they worked. They dealt with training of ministers, they dealt with the plague, they dealt with opposition, they dealt with impurity within the church and they also dealt with Roman Catholic opposition. Of course we know that the Reformation was largely about the Protestants protesting the abuses that were taking place in the Roman Catholic Church at the time. And there was a sort of counter-Reformation because the Reformation had become so successful in so many parts of Europe. And there was one Roman Catholic theologian called Robert Bellarmine, Cardinal Bellarmine. And he was responding to Protestant theology. And I wonder if anybody in here knows what he called the greatest Protestant heresy. The greatest Protestant heresy was not justification by faith alone. The greatest Protestant heresy according to Bellarmine as he reads the works of Calvin and others was the doctrine of assurance. He said, how can we give people assurance that they are going to heaven? This undermines the whole purpose of the church in which they need to perform a sufficient amount of good works in order to escape the wrath to come. If you tell people that they have been justified, past tense, that they are going to heaven based upon the righteousness of Christ imputed to them, their sins are forgiven and you give them assurance that they are as saved as they will ever be, what then will become of good works? What then will become of charity and giving and all of these things? And so a major confrontation among Catholic theologians with the Protestants was not necessarily just on the doctrine of justification, but upon what does it mean to tell people that they are going to heaven versus telling people they may go to heaven? That is why Luther reacted so violently against purgatory and indulgences because it undermines the doctrine of justification. Of course they debated other doctrines like scripture and tradition, the mass, the Lord's supper, pretty much anything that they could debate, they debated. And many times Calvin looked for common ground with the Catholics, but later on in his life he became more and more fed up with them for refusing to budge that it became more antagonistic in his writings. Another problem that Calvin had to deal with were illnesses. They worked under strenuous conditions. You saw a book that I wrote and as I wrote that book I guarantee you I listened to many hours of YouTube music. I sat in a lovely heated room. Occasionally my wife would even come in with a cup of coffee and there would be times when I would look out and see the sun shining and not have to worry about people coming with swords to kill me. Most of the time I actually felt rather good physically and life was easy and good. And that may actually reveal itself in the type of writing that's produced today compared to the writing that was produced back then. You see the problem was they didn't have the laptops that we have, they didn't have the internet. Often Calvin worked from his bed, sometimes dictating commentaries by memory or sermons or whatever it was. In fact at times he was so ill he couldn't preach. And what happens when the minister is so ill that he can't preach in Geneva? Well he sits down and someone comes up and continues preaching from the text that the minister was preaching on. I suppose if I fell down ill the service would be canceled and there would be a great pandemonium in the church but there they sort of just had to get on with life. A minister's sick and falls down who's gonna come up and preach? So with Calvin in this type of context he has terrible migraines. He suffered from pleurisy. He was roombound in 1558 for several months. In 1559 he could hardly speak and spat blood. He suffered from hemorrhoids, gout, and in later years kidney stones. In 1564 he wrote graphically to the physicians of Montpellier about his struggle to pass a kidney stone that lacerated his urinary canal. In fact having listed some of his illnesses he noted how at present all of these ailments as it were in troops assail me. I thought it might be interesting to actually describe to you him dislodging a kidney stone which would remind us of the unimaginable torments endured by our early modern forefathers. Just listen to this. At present I am relieved from very acute suffering having been delivered of a stone about the size of the kernel of a hazelnut. As the retention of urine was excruciating on the advice of my physician I mounted a horse that the jolting might assist in discharging the stone. On my return home I was surprised to find that I emitted discoloured blood instead of urine. The following day the stone had forced its way from the bladder into the urethra. Hence still more tortures. For more than half an hour I attempted to relieve myself by a violent agitation of my whole body. It brought nothing but I obtained slight relief by fomentations with warm water. Meanwhile the urinary canal was so lacerated that copious discharges of blood flowed from it. It seems to me however that for the past two days I have begun to live anew since being delivered from these pains. If only Calvin had danced at the wedding. He also worked himself to death. Some doctors who've looked at his life and his mood swings and his temper and some of the things that he said and does seem to think that his adrenals were shot by the age of 35. But he had a phenomenal capacity for work. He preached twice every Lord's Day. Every other week he preached each morning at six or seven a.m. on the Old Testament. Often delivering eight sermons in a week. He preached in all about 4,000 sermons after returning to Geneva. Some of you who know about Calvin's life know that he initially went to Geneva. They kicked him out, lived a quiet scholarly life and Strasbourg loved it. Was threatened with a curse from God by his friend Pharrell if he didn't return. Said he would rather die than return to that city. Goes back, preaches and picks up years later from the exact same texts that he'd been preaching on when he left. Just kind of OCD-ish if you know what I mean. But then preaching about 170 sermons each year were other services. He did 270 weddings all without dancing and 50 baptisms. In fact, Beza tells us in his life of Calvin that the reformer lectured every third day on theology, met with Presbytery, taught in the conference on scripture that met every Friday. If any man was ever hemmed in by sheer activity it was John Calvin. In fact, it's hard to imagine the amount of work that he did as a theologian, as a churchman, as a pastor, as someone who people would be flocking to to get advice, who would be lying in bed and there would be lineups of people just trying to get a few minutes with him to ask questions about what they should do. Letters coming from England and other parts of Europe about how should they respond to this crisis and that crisis. The man never had a minute to it himself it seems. But he did have a domestic life. This is rather amusing story actually and probably my favorite section. During the reformation, something incredible happened. The reformers realized that marriage was a good thing. And there's all these priests and monks who are now single. And guess what? There's all these nuns who become Protestants who are single and you have a whole bunch of priests and monks and a whole bunch of nuns and it's a recipe for absolute mayhem. Now he's a young single reformer what does he do? Well, Calvin it seems did not struggle with great lusts and sexual temptations if he is to be believed. In fact, he says, I have never married before he got married and I do not know whether I ever will. If I do it it will be in order to be freer from many daily troubles and thus freer for the Lord. Lack of sexual continents would not be the reason I would point to for marrying. No one can charge me with that. But Calvin's friends loved to play matchmaker for Calvin and others. And Martin Boothser, Calvin's dear friend tried to find Calvin a wife. And Calvin ended up getting very frustrated with his friends because of the various ladies that were coming into his life as potential wives. In fact, Calvin says I am not one of those insane kind of lovers who once smitten by the first glance of a fine figure cherishes even the faults of his lover. The only beauty that seduces me is one who is chased not too fastidious, modest, thrifty, patient and hopefully she will be attentive to my health. The woman that Boothser had in mind after Calvin wrote that to him ended up vanishing surprisingly. Another woman was offered to Calvin who had a considerable dowry and she was offered to Calvin and Calvin makes this comment on this matchmaking. The relatives of that young lady of high rank are so determined that I take her to myself. I could not think of ever doing this unless the Lord has altogether demented me. I don't know what she was like. That does seem a little bit harsh. Eventually he fell in love with Edelette DeBurge who was the widow of an Anabaptist and what we know of Calvin's marriage is that he cherished his wife. Actually had a very happy marriage. A lot of sadness in their marriage with the death of children. But when you read the relationship between Calvin and how he speaks affectionately of his wife all of those comments before seem to show a man who didn't really ever understand the glories of marriage and so basically spoke as one who was ignorant. But you see the way in which he reflects upon his marriage and how he cherished her and in fact they had a nice honeymoon but it was cut short by the plague. Can you imagine? We're off to Mexico and the plague breaks out. Well that's early modern life. There's also what has been known as the Servetus Affair. Most of you in here may have heard at some point in your life if you've heard of Calvin that he killed a guy called Michael Servetus. Now it's an interesting backstory because in 1534 Calvin had actually gone to Paris to meet Servetus and in doing so risked his life in order to meet with Servetus. Now Servetus was a heretic. There's no question about that if you judge Christian orthodoxy and heresy in the early modern world was not just bad theology. It was a political danger and a moral monstrosity and if Protestants and Catholics agreed on anything it was that heretics had to be punished. They could not be tolerated. In fact the Roman Catholic Church burned an effigy of Servetus as a sort of symbolic killing of him because he had escaped from their grips. Now Servetus was publicly known as a heretic and in 1553 he appears in Geneva at a church service where Calvin was preaching. Scholars believe that Servetus basically stalked Calvin. There was no Facebook block button so Servetus had to rock up a church and that is what he did and he claimed that he was merely on his way to Naples. He was coming from near Lyon in France and anyone who does a bit of geography realizes that he clearly went out of his way to find Calvin. Now Servetus was actually detained once they found out that he was in Geneva and they asked Calvin the consistory and the council to draw up a list of charges on Servetus's life and teachings. Now Calvin had a private secretary and what ended up happening is that when Servetus was placed in jail while Calvin was writing up the charges against Servetus Calvin's secretary had to go into jail as well as a sort of bond. Now after he'd written up the charges and the council had agreed that they were condemning of Servetus his secretary was allowed to leave. Now heresy was a capital offense and in fact Calvin did not want Servetus to die. Some of Calvin's contemporaries like Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich called Servetus a demon from hell. The Geneva church had to deal with Servetus because everybody knew he'd been detained there. The Catholic church was watching what are the Protestants going to do? Other Protestant cities and villages are saying what is Geneva going to do? And it would have been suicide, theological suicide at the time for Geneva to tolerate Servetus because it would have thrown the whole Protestant movement into dispute because they are allowing heresy to flourish. It would have been a great argument against Protestantism if Servetus had not been condemned. So the council, not Calvin, condemned Servetus to die and there were two teachings of Servetus that were drawn out as the reasons why he should die and some of you might find this a little bit amusing but the first was on the trinity. He denied the trinity and that makes sense. You deny the trinity, you're a heretic. The other teaching that led him to be condemned to die was the fact that he rejected infant baptism. That was quite a charge back then. So Servetus is condemned to die and those were described as his most pernicious errors and Calvin wanted Servetus to die by the sword but he did not get his way. He went to Servetus and asked for him to recant but Servetus would not recant and he ended up then being condemned to die by flames. It was a victory for Servetus over Calvin that Servetus would not give up his aberrant views on the trinity. These are some of the struggles that Calvin had to deal with in Geneva but the hardest thing about Calvin's struggles, I think and again now perhaps I'm speaking as a pastor were the struggles in his own local church getting the Geneva people to believe the gospel. For all of the illnesses that he had to endure for all the attacks from people qualifying that his theology was wrong and heretical, for all of the problems he had and finding a wife, for all of the problems he had in all manner of dealing with uninformed ministers nothing was more difficult for Calvin than getting the people in his church to believe the gospel. He had rebellious people in his church people who merely showed up but did not wish to listen and Calvin's great burden was preaching the gospel. He believed that if he simply preached God's word it would do its work. In fact, the most important thing anyone could do in Geneva was simply attend church and worship God purely and sincerely on the Lord's Day be fed by God and that would sort out the majority of their problems but he had some rebellious young men and he's preaching through Job in his congregation and he calls them petit or durez which is little pieces of garbage and so he's saying to them these young men he's calling them out and there's other people who are falling asleep and there are other people who are not even paying attention and there's other people who heckle the preacher. They would sometimes have to deal with fruit and other things being thrown at them and people would come out of services and they'd be like what did you learn and they'd say we have no idea what was going on in there. You see, reformation as far as Calvin was concerned as far as Luther's concerned as far as any minister's concerned is not something that happens overnight. It takes years and years and years of faithful preaching and Calvin put his trust in the fact that God's word would accomplish what God's word is alone able to do. He was merely an organ, an instrument used by God to fill God's people with God's truth but the hardest struggle he had was getting people who had been so immersed in Roman Catholic dogma to believe that God justifies you freely in this life apart from works. He was trying to take people who their whole life had saved up all their excess money to buy their way out of purgatory. People who had believed that if they just did this or that there might be hope for them in the life to come and he has to do a complete 180 in their thinking and get them to believe that God justifies the wicked, that God saves you and grants to you assurance that you are a child of God. Nothing I think was more difficult for Calvin than getting his people to believe the gospel. And I would say over the last 500 years nothing has been more difficult for every minister of the gospel than getting the people who sit under faithful preaching to believe in the freeness, in the grace of the gospel and what that means. And that is why the Reformation will always always be an ongoing activity until Christ returns because God's way of salvation cuts so against the grain of how we are constituted as human beings that it takes many, many years for people to finally get it. And so you have the 10 points of Calvinism, Calvin's struggles in Geneva. Well, time for questions if there are any. Raise your hand if you have a question for Dr. Jones and we'll come to you with a microphone. Dr. Jones, a question I have, you told us some interesting anecdotes from Calvin's life, things that probably many haven't heard. What's another interesting bit or anecdote or episode from Calvin's life that might surprise the students interest them? I kind of like the fact that part of his salary was getting paid in wine. I, as a Presbyterian, wish my own elders paid me in wine. And you look at his life and the things that he enjoyed and he saw a lot of beauty in God's creation but also in the gifts that God gave and the Reformation was really a whole host of things. You can't say it was about this or that. It was about a whole world's view and recapturing God's good gifts to us and I kind of like to see the side of Calvin where a lot of people think of him as this sort of dark, shadowy, difficult personality but I think he really did enjoy a good time at the appropriate time. I just, he just didn't have enough time on his hands to have too many good times. So I suppose our great service to Calvin as heirs of him would be to make up for what he missed out on. Anyone have a question? There's a hint. Did any of Calvin's contemporaries view him as tyrannical in his approach to reforming? Well, that was a charge. Contemporaries in terms of, there were a lot of contemporaries who disagreed with Calvin who were obviously Catholics and Protestants. Most of the contemporaries who thought he was tyrannical in his approach were the people where he would say, you can't dance at a wedding or you wicked evil people. Like he had a pretty high view of the Christian life and godliness and we debate things as Christians today like should Christians watch Game of Thrones? Well, Calvin, that wouldn't even enter into his thinking so you look at some of the issues he deals with and what he would say is godlessness. And it was pretty strict. I've done a bit of studies in the Puritans and some of the things they found to be less than appropriate. And I mean, it's pretty strict. So I mean, tyrannical would probably be more reserved for the libertines, people who he forbade from coming to the Lord's Supper. But most of his contemporaries who were Protestant reformers were pretty much of the same view as him on those types of things that I guess a lot of us here wouldn't flinch to hear about dancing at a wedding but that's just like a big no-no. So mainly it were people who wanted to undermine the Reformation, not so much as contemporaries in terms of their friends. They were all pretty much staunchly against any sort of things like that. All right, I got one. Most people in this room, if they're gonna hear of him, they're either gonna hear, like you said, about the death of Servetus. The other probably big thing that you're thinking of Calvin that you're gonna know about, probably have disagreements with, is his theology of predestination and election. Is that something that's remarkable? That's something he invents? Something that we should all be scared of? You know, how do we appropriate Calvin along those lines? Yeah, if you look at his institutes of Christian religion, predestination really doesn't become a big issue to well, well, well into the four books. It's almost like he doesn't really deal with it that much in the institutes and then it comes up in his commentaries but he doesn't understand himself to be saying really anything different than the received opinion of the church. In fact, Calvin did his best to be unoriginal and by that, every time he debated with Roman Catholics and he sought to find common ground with the church in terms of what had been handed down to him, you know, basically from Augustine onwards especially, he would locate his theology in that sort of Augustinian tradition and the first generation reformers before him had basically said the same types of things and all over the map, the Protestants were of one mind on that thing. You see, the issue with predestination is it's kind of simple in one respect. The word is in the Bible, so you've gotta affirm it if you're a Bible believer. The question is, what do you mean by it and how does it work? And it was really after Calvin's time when you saw Protestants, especially with the remonstrance, Arminius start to fight back but even if you look at the Roman Catholic tradition, the Dominicans were basically of the same view on that as Calvin the Jesuits at times could be a little bit different, but generally even in the Catholic church, the majority of them wouldn't have really disagreed with Calvin on things like predestination so it wasn't really a big deal so much. Expanding upon that a little bit, could you speak a little bit into the aspect of irresistible grace? Obviously something that Calvin taught on and believed greatly and how we can reconcile and understand that to the character of God. Okay. There you go. Jesus. What we're finding out in reform theology now is that the reform theologians had a very robust doctrine of the freedom of the will and human actions and the idea of robots and God just pulling us like puppets is thoroughly discounted in scholarship and you look at the way Calvin in his commentaries and in his preaching and how he deals with individuals, the real issue for Calvin and his contemporaries was simply this, if people are truly dead in their sins, why do some believe and not others? You either have two options as far as Calvin's concerned, some people are simply more aware and make a decision upon which they see it is better for them to believe and it's purely of themselves and then they receive grace as a result of this decision or God by the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit so uses the word of God and Calvin believed very strongly in the fact that the word of God has to be preached for the spirit to work in connection with that. The word of God would become alive in someone's soul because of the work of the Holy Spirit opening their eyes to see the truth so the reason why some believe and some don't is down to the work of the Holy Spirit. As far as Calvin believed, the other option was to say that God had looked into the future, a type of Molyneus, there was a Jesuit theologian Molina who had a kind of a doctrine where God would look into the future, see who believes, then give them predestined them and give them grace so it was ultimately either down to a human response or God's secret work. That's just, those are the two major views. I don't know if there's anything else that, he was called the theologian of the Holy Spirit, Calvin, which is interesting because a lot of people again focus on things like predestination, sovereignty of God but Calvin really was known for his work on the work of the Holy Spirit. So I have a question on infant baptism. So obviously it was a really big deal back when Calvin was alive so today do you think it still applies or do you think there's really nothing to it or? Well, I mean, it's, he opens his account speaking about baptism, it's just kind of funny because he says in this age, certain frenzied spirits have raised and continue to raise great disturbance in the church on account of infant baptism. I cannot avoid to hear by way of appendix adding something to restrain their fury. Like that's just awesome. So he, to him, he's absolutely convinced and that's because as a reformer, they really believed that if the Catholics were ever right, they wanted to affirm. They didn't wanna drift from the church unless they felt they absolutely needed to. Now others came along and a Baptist and felt that further reformation was needed and they needed to depart on that point. Calvin today, like if Calvin were alive today, this is just me thinking hopefully with a bit of sanctified imagination. If he were alive today and heard of Calvinistic Baptists, he would probably freak out. I don't freak out, they're my friends. I mean, I like Ian most of the time and it's to us not really a shock but in Geneva at that time, it was a big deal to reject what they said as the commonly received doctrine of the church. So yeah, things are really different today even in terms of how we tolerate each other and I think I'm personally quite happy with the degree of toleration we have today but back then it just wasn't an option to be a Baptist in Geneva. And do I think it's legit today? Well, I hope so, I baptize my children so I'll find out in heaven. Ian already knows the answer but I'm waiting to wait till heaven, right? You just never listen. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. How many questions more should we go with John, do you think? So I know Luther had some major disagreements with Calvin. What were the major things that they disagreed with that kind of split them into different denominations? Yeah, they had differences on worship. They had differences on the Lord's supper especially. That was a major point. Calvin was much more willing to compromise what he thought was biblical compromise than Luther was. Luther was a jerk sometimes. I mean, he was as stubborn as they get whereas Calvin would even say nice things about Zwingli which Luther just thought Zwingli was of another spirit. He even said that to Zwingli to his face. So Calvin I think was trying to unite the Protestants and he was later than Luther. I mean, they were still contemporaries but a little bit later and saw things a bit differently. So worship, sacraments, there would be other areas where Calvin was probably clarifying a bit with Luther but they I think by and large were in a lot of agreement. He called them his spiritual father and had a great deal of deference to Luther. Luther was known as the guy you really owe a lot of respect to. So when even if Calvin had certain disagreements with Luther they would be tempered, extremely tempered because of a respect issue. And so Calvin dealt mainly with Melanchthon who they were much even closer together in doctrine. So yeah, the Lord's supper's the big obvious one and that one that was always gonna be for the Protestants, their major dividing point. We have time for two more questions. Now's your chance. So how did with Calvin, the bigger named reformers or Calvinists of our day, how did we get from someone who seemed so sturdy and hard and not fun to the big name guys like John Piper and other people today who affirm that the reformation or the reformed theology and Calvin theology kind of leads to Christian hedonism or Christian enjoyment, pleasure. How did we get from someone who was so not pleasurable to a theology that is a big emphasis in like pleasure and enjoyment? Yeah, let me, I mean, I gave you some of the stories but again, like everything is historically located in a time and era where Calvin appreciated beauty and you see him write on things like he loved, it's just, he was leading a reformation and he was sick all of the time. Like I'm pretty grumpy when I'm sick. You're a guy, man colds, you know, we're babies. He's being attacked spiritually, physically at times. It's kind of like you just gotta read his life and be like, okay, I'll throw you a bone that you weren't always jumping around saying, oh, God is just so glorified in me because I'm so satisfied in him. Like John Piper lives in Minneapolis in the 21st century. He sits on a toilet that flushes. He doesn't go out and dig a hole and well, I don't think he does. But you know, like you've got to kind of take into account where people are at when they lived and I think it's just a blessing God has given us in this age where we're able to stand on their shoulders all the work they did and with a great degree of freedom and liberty, enjoy a lot of things. But I'll be honest, I sometimes do wonder if we haven't maybe become a little excessive in our liberties with the things we enjoy and watch and some of the time we waste, you know, you look at Calvin's life, there wasn't a wasted life and God has honored him through the ages because of that, whereas, you know, look how much time we waste on social media and television shows that aren't exactly edifying. So yeah, I don't wanna be too hard on him and I also think it's a good time for us to examine our own lives and the things we count valuable. But yeah, he could be pretty grumpy. Anyone have a final question? Well, since I don't say a hand, Dr. Jones, do you wanna give us a final word as the students prepare to go out into the night? What do you wanna leave them with? What's your final word about John Calvin? John Calvin is in heaven. I think that's kind of important because he knew he was going to heaven and I think he would want everyone here to have that same belief before they die and while they're living that I am going to heaven and I think if we can take anything from Calvin it was that he sought to give people the assurance that God's grace really is God's grace and it should give you a confidence before God that you are his child and that you are going to heaven and people who like Calvin understand that in the context of the local church because the church is our mother if God is our father. I think that's really the most important thing we can take from his life is that Calvin is in heaven and we will be there with him one day. Before we thank Dr. Jones in just a moment Dr. Clare would you close this in prayer and then just a reminder to the pastors that are here don't leave right away come up front and we've got a gift of Dr. Jones' newest book for you you can sign it for you if you'd like and but in a moment we'll thank Dr. Jones but first Dr. Clare would you lead us in a closing prayer? Let's pray. Lord we thank you that you're the God of history you're a God who is deeply concerned with the goings on of this world and you orchestrate things to your ends and for your glory. Lord we thank you that you raise up men and women like a Calvin who will take firm stands on the gospel won't waste a minute of their lives before your face. Or thank you that we can spend an hour thinking about a man like this that you have called. Lord I pray that he would function in our lives as a great model and example of the Christian life that you would help us to want to emulate his faith as he is emulating Christ. Lord we thank you for all of the students here thank you for Dr. Jones and him coming to take the time to share these thoughts with us and Lord we pray that you would be glorified for Christ's sake. Amen. Thank Dr. Jones. You are dismissed.