The Influence of Calvinism on The World

I've been given the responsibility of addressing the issue of Calvinism and its influence in the world, and immediately when I saw this, I knew that I would first have to give some clarification, in fact, quite a bit of clarification. You and I, in our spheres and in our circles, are very used to using the term Calvinism and Calvinist as a kind of shorthand. But there are several ways that the term is used, and it's important for us to be clear from the outset about how we're using the term and about why we're using the term. It'll be important for our understanding of all of the lectures that will come after this one. This term really has I would argue, at least three distinct meanings in the minds of people. When you say Calvinism, it's thought of in at least three distinct ways. Firstly, people will think of Calvinism as the totality of Calvin's teaching. If you say I'm a Calvinist, that means that you accept, you follow, you adhere to the totality of Calvin's teaching. Now, very few would actually fall into this category. Almost no one falls into this category. So Usually when people are using this category, they're using this category as a form of defamation. What I mean by that is people refer to Calvinism in this way only to give a black eye to people who identify themselves as Calvinists. There are people who have written articles and entire books attempting to do this. I've had to deal with this. I know some of our other lecturers and other pastors here in the Reform Baptist movement have had to deal with this. Seems like it would be very easy for us not to have to deal with this, But when people are dishonest and their desire is to tar and feather, you have to deal with it anyway. And so it goes something like this. You say you're a Calvinist, Well, you know Calvin did X, Y and Z. If therefore you say you're a Calvinist, that means you support X, Y and Z because Calvin did it or because Calvin sent it. This is dishonest on its face. First of all, remember what I just said myself and others in the Reform Baptist movement. Why is that significant? Well, because Calvin taught infant Baptism. Now, how could I possibly mean by Calvinist that I agree with everything Calvin taught if I am a patal or if I'm a Credo Baptist and not a paidal Baptist, which means that anyone who's using Calvinism in that way is being dishonest and defamatory. Not only infant Baptism, but the idea of a state church, the idea of a state church. Again, the magisteria reformers and the magisterial reformers. We're talking about Luther and Zwingli and Calvin, these individuals who were operating on a state level, Luther with Germany and Lutheranism becoming the you know, the German Church, and of course Calvin there in Geneva. These magic sterial reformers were operating within the context of a state church. Everybody was operating within the context of a state church. That's all the world knew. That's all the world understood. You couldn't be a citizen if you weren't a member of the church. You were baptized as an infant. You didn't get, you know, a birth certificate, you got a baptismal certificate. How do I know that I'm a German? How do I know that I'm a Frenchman. How do I know that I'm you know, fill in the blank wherever. How do I know? I know because I was baptized and I have a certificate of my baptism. This church is the state church. Therefore I'm a member of this state as I am a member of this church. Well, there were not only the magisterial reformers, there were also the radical reformers. And I'm very pleased to say that we, as Baptis, fall under the category of the radical reformers. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord. Some of you didn't even know you were radicals, but you are. And one of the big issues with the radical reformers is this independence of the church from the state. Again, how can I be one who is a Calvinist and mean by that that I agree with the totality of Calvin's teaching if I reject the idea of a state church. Calvin essentially established a theocracy in Geneva. It was a very unique moment in history because he had established this theocracy in Geneva. There was legal state punishment not only for sinners, but for heretics. Some people even executed, some people even put to death. By the way, we as Baptists, would have been outlaws in Calvin's Geneva and would probably if he was, you know, if it was a good day, would probably have gone to jail if it was a bad day. Interestingly enough, the first Anabaptist martyr, and they referred to as Anabaptists in that day rebaptizers right rejecting, rejecting infant baptism, and baptizing people as professing believers. There was a unique form of execution for Anabaptists, and the unique form of execution was to be baptized to death. So people will say, you know, here you are identifying yourself as a Calvinist, and Calvin would have had you killed. Well, obviously I don't agree with him on that amen. So that's the first way the term is used, and it is dishonest on its face. There's the second way the term is used. This is the most common way that the term is used, and it is used to refer to the doctrines of Grace, also known as the Five Points of Calvinism or the tulip This idea that man is totally depraved, that is election is unconditional, that God's grace is irresistible, and that God preserves his of what you need to know is that the five points of Calvinism were not developed as a system. They were developed as a response. There was another theologian by the name of Jacob Arminius. You've heard of Arminianism. The students of Arminius, several years after his death, opposed the Dutch Confession, and they put forth these five points. The students of calvin responded to those five points. So the doctrines of Grace, the tulip, the five points of Calvinism. That's not the result of Calvinists saying we have this system and we want to superimpose this system on scripture. It's the result of Calvinists saying, there is a rejection of biblical orthodoxy. We need to respond to this rejection of biblical orthodoxy. The rejection of Biblical orthodoxy came in five points. So we will respond to each of those five points in turn. Okay, but that too is not what we mean when we say Calvinism. By the way, there are also variations on this. There's some people, for example, who identify themselves as four point Calvinists, three point Calvinists, so on, and so forth. I like Charles Spurgeon's definition. He says, if anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply, he is one who says salvation is of the Lord. Amen. He is one who says salvation is of the Lord. So we don't mean that. If we don't mean that, if we don't mean the totality of Calvin's teachings, and if we don't mean just the doctrines of grace, then what are we referring to. Well, we're using Calvinism as kind of shorthand, we're using it to refer to Reform theology written large in a broad sense. We're using it to refer to that those doctrinal distinctives, to those broadest doctrinal distinctives that came out of the Reformation. So what we're referring to is Reformation doctrine. That's what we mean when we use this term, when we use this word Calvinist. Now, even so, the term is associated with John Calvin, and it's important to understand why and how the term is associated with John Calvin. It seems ironic, right, like, if we disagree with him on things, if we disagree with him on things like the relationship with the state and the church, and on baptism and on you know, membership in the church and the government of the church. We disagree with him on these things. Why do we hold this title when we're talking about the Reformation writ large? And the answer to that question lies in understanding who this man was. Briefly, he was born in France in fifteen o nine. Keep that in mind. I know, you know, many of us don't like dates. In fact, most people don't. Most people when you start talking about dates, their eyes rolled in the back of their head and they go, oh, here we go. But these dates are very important, and you'll see why they're important in a little while. He was born in fifteen nine. Now, the Protestant Reformation gets its official start in what year, fifteen seventeen? Okay, the nailing of the ninety five feces on the door of the Wittenburgh Church by Martin Luther in fifteen seventeen. Okay, that is seen as the igniting point of the Protestant Reformation. At that point, Calvin would have been how old eight? So he's a boy when this is happening. He's a Catholic boy when this is happening. He's a French Catholic boy. When all this is happening, he would college at the University of Paris. He later went on to study law at the University of Orleans. When his father died in fifteen thirty one. That's another important date, fifteen thirty one, So now he's just twenty two years old. Keep these things in mind. He's twenty two years old. Fifteen thirty one is important for another reason. Fifteen seventeen October thirty first, fifteen seventeen, that's that's when the spark is lit. That's when this Reformation is ignited. Fifteen thirty one is an important date because that's the year that we get the Augsburg Confession. The Augsburg Confession is the first of the confession is coming out of the Reformation. It is the confession of the Lutheran Church. So that's fifteen thirty one. That's when he goes to Paris to study the Bible, Greek, Hebrew theology. That year, when the Augsburg Confession is published fifteen thirty three, he's converted again. Fifteen oh nine, he's born and he's not just a French boy, but he's a French Roman Catholic boy, the Reformation is ignited when he's about eight years old. He goes off to college. And it's while he's at college, finishing university and then studying law that the Reformation is in full bloom. We have the Oggs Confession, we have this official document laying out these Reformation doctrines. And two years later he's converted to the Evangelical Faith. He's converted to the Protestant faith. And fifteen thirty three, still a young man, still in his early twenties, fifteen thirty three, so now he's about twenty four years old. He had a friend who was a rector at the University of Paris named Nicholas Copp. Nicholas Copp did a presentation on reform and the Evangelical Faith that brought controversy there in Paris. Again Paris staunchly Roman Catholic, staunchly Roman Catholic, I would say, to this day. But is not staunchly anything religious to this day unless you want to count the growing Muslim population there. But staunchly Roman Catholic at the time. And so he has to flee this lecturer shortly thereafter because of his association with his friend Calvin has to flee as well, and he leaves and goes to Switzerland to Geneva in fifteen thirty six. He's now at the ripe old age of twenty six twenty seven. William Perel saw this young man's intellect, saw the hand of God upon him, and persuaded him to stay, and he became the principal pastor and scholar there in Geneva, because the city of Geneva had decided to pursue reform. So he's there, and in that same year, fifteen thirty six, he first publishes the Institutes of the Christian Religion. How many of you know Calvin's Institutes? How many of you have heard of Calvin's institutes? Okay, Calvin's Institutes, all right, most of us have heard of Calvin's Institutes. Few of us have read Calvin's Institutes. Right. He would continue to revise them until fifteen fifty nine. But he first publishes the Institutes in fifteen thirty six. He came to faith when fifteen thirty three, when he was twenty four. Three years later, he's been a Christian for three years, and he publishes what would become arguably the most significant theological treatise ever written, not much older than many of you students right here today, and after having been a Christian for far fewer years than many of you here today. John Calvin died in fifteen sixty four. Fifteen sixty four, That makes him how old? Fifty five the age I am now fifty five? That's all he got. I am constantly amazed, constantly blown away at the number of years many of the reformers and many of the great Christian leaders and theologians lived, because many of them only yacht late forties, mid fifties, late fifties, and the volume of what they produced was astounding. What about his life? He married in fifteen forty He married a widow in fifteen forty. She would only live for ten years, so he would be a widower in fifteen forty nine. They had one son in fifteen forty two. That son only lived a few days. Calvin's life was marked by sickness, frailty, and suffering, which is so often the case with men so extraordinarily used of God. And it's ironic because what we want and what we ask for is we say, God, give me strength and length of days so that I may serve you, amen, give me strength and length of days, so that I may serve you. Calvin had neither, not strength, not length of days. Geneva became a haven for Reformation leaders around the world. People would go there to escape. People would also go there to sit under Calvin's teaching and be discipled and mentored. People would go there in order to learn, in order to grow, and many missionaries were sent out from there in order to spread this Reformation doctrine around the world from Geneva, which became a beacon of light not only to those who agreed, but even for those who disagreed significantly with John Calvin. But why, here's why. Largely because of the nature of his ministry, which was expositional in nature. He was an expository preacher for excellence. First by verse Again, think about it, and we'll get into this when we list those those things that the world has to be grateful for because of this movement. But think of it. People have been subjected to the Church of Rome. And having been subjected to the Church of Rome, all they had was the Latin Vulgate. They didn't have the scriptures in their own language. They had the Latin Vulgate. They had preachers, many of whom were barely literate. The priests, many of the priests were barely literate. It was almost impossible to produce in those days a literate priesthood in the numbers that the church would have needed in order to serve the mass everywhere that the Roman Catholic Church had preaching stations and churches. And now all of a sudden, the Bible's being turned loose, and this gifted expositor is preaching verse by verse. How much was Calvin committed to exposition? Well, he had an issue there in Geneva. He was actually expelled from Geneva fifteen thirty eight theological disagreements within the camp. But he was brought back, So he's gone from fifteen thirty eight to fifteen forty one, two and a half years. When he came back, he mounted the pulpit and started with the next passage, the one right after the one that he had preached two and a half years earlier. That's how committed he was to systematic exposition of the scriptures, which is why we have such extensive commentaries from Calvin. Most preachers will have a copy of Calvin's commentaries, regardless of their theological position. Most preachers, when they're looking at a biblical text, they're going to ask, what did Calvin have to say about this, whether we agree or not. And it was because of his commitment to exposition, because of his keen mind, because of his love of the scriptures. This exposition marked his ministry. And that's why his legacy is so broad and so lasting, because of his commitment to exposition and the commentaries that we have from him, and because of his insistence on the application of Scripture to every realm and area of life. And we see that in the institutes. That that's why when you talk about Reformation doctrine you largely refer to Calvin and Calvinism. We're not saying all of Calvin's teachings we're outside of the camp in many ways. Nor are we saying just the doctrines of grace. The doctrines of grace are important, Amen, The doctrines of grace are important. But it's not just the tulip that has made that doctrine. That Reformation doctrine, as exemplified by Calvin and his ministry, have such a lasting impact. What was it, by the way, one more worried on definitions before we look at these particular things. One thing we do is we say Calvinist. Another thing we do is we'll say reformed. And both of these are phrases that we use, and we know what we mean when we say them, and most of the people in our circles will know what we mean when we say them. But largely in our day and age, the term reformed only refers to people who hold to the doctrines of Grace, whereas technically being reformed would require you to hold not just to the doctrines of Grace, but actually to one of the confessional traditions coming out of the Reformation. Amen Covenantal, Confessional and Calvinistic often talk about the three seas, So most people use that term reformed, and they just reduce it to somebody who holds to one of those sees. The one see that they hold to is the called Calvinism that we use in as shorthand for the doctrines of Grace or the five points. So you can see how when we're trying to discuss the influence and impact of this movement, there are many ways to be misconstrued and misunderstood. Whether you say Calvinism or whether you say reformed, but I hope we're clear there on what we're talking about when we use those terms. So what are those influences, those positive influences. Let me give you a number of them. The first we've already discussed, and that is the doctrines of grace. That is the understanding of God's sovereignty in saving his people. Understanding that God is the one who does the work and gets the glory in the salvation of sinners. Total depravity. All of sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is an unrighteous, no, not even one. No one seeks after God. All we like sheep and turned astray. Each of us have turned to our own way. The heart of man is deceitfully wicked above all else who can know it. Total depravity. Total depravity doesn't mean that we're as depraved as we can be. Amen, And the only thing that you need to do in order to realize that is just watch the news. You watch the news, and almost every day on the news, somebody will do something that will show you that you're not as depraved as you can be. We could be worse, and it is only by God's grace that we're not totally Depravity refers to the idea that the effects of the fall impact every aspect of who we are, all of us. There's no sliver of us that is unfallen, whereby we could have the ability to reach for God unconditional election. It's the idea that God saves us by grace, unmerited favor. God doesn't save us because of what he foresaw in us. God doesn't save us because of anything in us, but in spite of everything in us. It's unconditional limited to you know, My favorite limited atonement verse is in Phesians Ephesians five, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her. Christ gave himself to redeem his bride, not so that he might have a chance to perhaps no particularly specifically to redeem his bride. Limited atonement. By the way, everybody believes in limited atonement. The question is not whether or not you believe the atonement is limited. The only way you can believe in unlimited atonement is to be a universalist. The difference, however, is that some people believe the atonement is limited by God. Other people believe the atonement is limited by man ay irresistible grace. Christ will have the fullness of the reward for which he died. Everyone that he died to save will be saved. Amen, Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and perseverance of the elect. He will lose none, he will lose none. He will save all whom the Father gives to him, And no one can snatch us from his hands. This magnificent Gospel of ours is one of the positive influences of this reformed worldview theology. The fact that this gospel went forth, and the fact that people from all over the world have heard and responded to this gospel. To the glory of God. The five solas Sola scriptura, solofida, so glatia, Solis christis solido gloria. These five solas this lasting impact. And because of these five solas we get the lasting impact of the authority of scripture. The authority of scripture, not the authority of a man in Rome, not the authority of a man in our particular republic, but the authority of scripture. It's interesting the British Reformation, and it's amazing to study the history of the Reformation and how it basically took place in different places in different times, but running along the same tracts. And the reason it's running along the same tracts is because of the doctrine of Sola scripture. But in the British Reformation, you see things going back and forth and back and forth, and you see Henry the Eighth, you know, wanting to get divorced so he can marry and bley in, and you see the Pope saying no right, and Henry the Eighth basically establishing the Church of England so that he can get divorced and marry the woman that he wants to marry. So he establishes the Church of England with a bunch of Roman Catholic priests who were holding to Roman Catholic doctrine. He replaces the Pope with himself as a king and with the Archbishop of Canterbury Well, and then he dies and Bloody Mary reigns and hundreds of Protestants are killed, and then we get Elizabeth who comes to the throne and the worm turns again. The interesting thing about that is like in many places, the experiences that Christians had in terms of who their clergy was, what their lives were going to look like, had to do with the authority of the sovereign in the state. The Reformation opposed the idea of the authority of scripture above all, the authority of scripture above all the Bible in the vernacular. The Reformation was one of these things that happened in history at an incredibly opportune time. Gudenberg had given us the printing press, and we have the opportunity to have things printed and mass produced. Martin Luther translates the Latin Vulgate into German, and he basically creates the German language. There are a bunch of tribal languages and dialects in Germany, but the German Bible, translated by Martin Luther unifies them under a single language. And it is often said that he not only gave us the German language, but he's the one who really gave us the German people, and people all over the world began to get the scriptures in their language. Imagine that you've spent your life having to go to Mass and listen to some priest say words in Latin that you don't understand unless you're a highly educated person. Most people didn't understand what was going on. You just think there's these magical incantations, and you go there. The Church has said to you that in order for you to experience salvation, that you had to receive grace through sacramentalism. In Sasserdodalism, sacramentalism is grace is dispensed through the sacraments. Sacerdotalism, the sacraments are only efficacious to the degree that they're dispensed by the priest. So you don't have the scriptures in your language, you don't know what they say. All you know is that this person is not only a person of authority, but in order for you to be saved, you have to get these sacraments from them, Baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, marriage, religious orders, confession, last rites. You know, it's interesting. There's a movie. I forget which of the movies we were watching. And sometimes when when my boys will watch war movies and I like, I like, I like war movies. And in this particular movie, man is dying and this priest runs to him, and the priest runs and there's bullets flying and all this sort of stuff, and the priest is over him and he's whispering something to him, and he's doing all you know the signs across all this stuff, and boy's like, what is that? I said, that's last rites? What? Yes? In Roman Catholicism, grace is dispensed to you from the church, and it's dispensed to you and it fills up your grace buckets so much. And then you sin and it goes back down, and then it fills up again, and you know, you go to confession and you fill it up a little bit, and you get married, you fill it up a little bit, and you know, you go to Mass and you fill it up a little bit, fill it up a little bit. When you die, it won't be full. You have to go to purgatory and work off the rest of it. But guess what your last chance is to top up last rites. That's why the priest runs so fervently to a dying man, because it's the last chance for him to put grace in the cup and lighten your sentence in purgatory. Imagine that that's been your life, and now you have the scriptures in your language, and the Scriptures as your authority, and the Gospel of Grace, which removes the mysticism and fear and tears the veil between you and God, so that you can approach Him by faith and find salvation, assurance, full and free. The priesthood of the believer an important Reformation doctrine, Not Sacramentalism and Sacerdotalism. Not you are dependent upon this man to go to God for you. You are dependent upon this man to speak incantations over you. The priesthood of the believer. Worship in your language, Worship in your language. I've had the opportunity on a number of occasions to experience worship in different parts of the world, and there are a number of them that just sort of stand out to me. And one of them is in a church in Japan, and that was the first time that I was somewhere that felt just completely foreign. I mean, a lot of places you go and you can maybe the alphabet is similar, and you know, maybe they have some of the same routes, especially if you go to you know, one of the Romance languages and where they speak, you know, Italian and a French or you know what. It's different, but it's not just completely foreign. Go to Japan that I can't make out the alphabet, I don't know the songs. Nobody looks like me. I'm this much taller than most of the people around me, right, staring and pointing. I go to church, they start singing. I have no idea what they're saying, but every once in a while I hear their word for Jesus, right, and that's all I got. Imagine if that was the only way you experience worship, and then all of a sudden, it's in your language. Can you imagine if my experience were reversed, If instead of finding myself in a place where, for the first time it was foreign, what would it be like to find yourself in a place where, for the first time, it's not foreign. Mass literacy and education first among church leaders. Remember I told you that many priests were semi literate at best. Now, also, by the way, there's the counter Reformation. So the counter Reformation is Rome's response to the Reformation. There there are groups like the Jesuits who come together, really and their mission is to respond to this Reformation, to answer the theological questions that are being raised, and to bring people back into the fold, oftentimes by force. And there were wars that were fought over these things. But there was an increase in literacy among Roman Catholic priests, and an increase in literacy among all people who are ministering to God's people. There was also an increase among your everyday person as a result of this. Again, the Bible became a principal tool in many places that people used in order to learn to read and write their language. By the way, that still happens today. Oftentimes, Bible translators still to this day, will go to places in the world that don't have a written language, they live among those people, learn those people's language, and then they give those people an alphabet and a written language, teach those people how to read their language, and then translate the Bible into the language that they taught these people to read and write. I mean, how amazing is that fruit of this Reformation ideology, this Reformation ethos, this Reformation worldview, this Reformation movement that continues on. But think about how different that is. If these people just need the magic incantation, then you can just send a priest and have him do his thing in Latin. They don't understand Latin, it doesn't matter. They just need to show up. They just need to go through the motions. They just need to learn how to trust in the priest that and let me learn your language, let me write your language, Let me teach you how to read and write your language. Let me interpret the Bible into your language so that you can read the words of God himself. There was also this sense of practical application. And when I say practical application, I don't mean I almost hate to say that. I almost hate to use that term because of the way that it is used in our day. Right, practical application Ten ways to have a happy life and five ways to reduce stress. And that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about people like William Goag, who wrote a seven hundred page treatise on marriage and family, seven hundred pages expounding on the Bible's teaching to husbands and wives and mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, seven hundred pages, the Puritan paperbacks. You're familiar with the Puritan paperbacks. Basically, we have this wealth of information, this wealth of sermons and teaching from these calvinistic preachers and thinkers, addressing everything, everything, the very foundations of Western civilization. It's the fruit of this movement changing the way we think about governments, The idea of a presbytery in the Church of Scotland, which became the Presbyterian Church. The idea of congregational church government that we get from the radical reformers. These ideas that make their way into broader culture and impact the way that we think about society on the whole and the way that structured and organized. If you think about it, nations looked just like the Church of Rome. They had a monarch or a dictator of some sort who stood at the top and led until he died. Citizenship took on new meaning for the first time you had countries that had to deal with people who were citizens of their realm but not threw their baptism into the state church. And this comes all the way into the New World. It wasn't just sailors and spice merchants who were traveling the seas going to the New World. It was also Puritans, pilgrims, people taking their faith, this faith that came out of the Reformation, and also this idea of sphere sovereignty, which we'll be addressing more in earnest over the rest of our time. Today, there's some negative influences. We see the counter Reformation, where Rome becomes entrenched and in the name of reforming, basically seals its apostasy. Anti authoritarianism, anti authoritarianism again and overreaction in the other direction, anti authoritarianism. Now we see anti confessionalism. Right, no Creed but Christ, No Creed but the Bible. This kind of anti confessionalism, which is ironic because it's the fruit of this movement run a monk, the rise of the subjective, the rise of the subjective, which is even more ironic. The Reformation gives us the word of God in our language, and eventually the Word of God that we can hold in our hands. And as the Reformation moves further and farther, eventually you get to groups of people who believe that the most spiritual thing you can do is not rely on the Bible, but instead just feel your way through people ignorant of the Lord's word, waiting on a word from the Lord. This is another one of those negative aspects that we've experienced, which is why, as the reformers said, we were reformed and always reforming. Amen reformed and always reforming. We are grateful for the fruit of this movement. We're grateful for the fruit of men like John Calvin and others. We're grateful for Luther and Zingli, men O Simon's and I mean, we're grateful for these people, the ones we agree with and the ones we don't. We're grateful and we stand on their shoulders. And I think it's incredibly important for us to acknowledge that. That's why we don't run away from the term calvin Us. We know people are going to try to use it in defamatory ways. We know that right, but we want to be honest and we want to respect our elders. Amen, we didn't get here on our own. We didn't do this ourselves. By God's grace, he used many before us in order to bring us to this place. Let's pray