John Calvin #4: Bible Analysis

Calvin, along with Luther, emphasized the sovereignty of God in human salvation and all aspects of life. However, flaws in their thinking, such as the separation of church and state, led to problems in the Reformation. Calvin's belief in natural law and the equating of it with God's law caused confusion. The Bible teaches that man is incapable of agreeing on moral principles without God's guidance. Calvin's teachings on civil government and the enforcement of the first table of the law were important, but a cooperative effort between church and state is necessary. Overall, the Reformation needs to be continually reformed and corrected to fulfill its purpose in our time. Welcome everybody to GreatBibleReset.com. This is Oliver Woods and this is our final lesson on a biblical analysis of John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer. Calvin, along with Martin Luther, marked the rebirth of Augustinianism in the West. The sovereignty of God was reestablished as the ultimate determinative factor in the matter of human salvation and virtually everything else. Whose will is first and final? Is it man's or God's? And this is a question of vital importance because it determines who is God in the culture. Man makes choices, but ultimately God decides who will deny, who will defer, and who will decide to yield to the promptings of his sovereign spirit. There's a verse that says, the king's heart is in the hands of the Lord as the rivers of water, he turneth it whithersoever he will. So if not God, then chance rules in all areas of life. And Luther's bondage of the will is a great book, probably the greatest book on this topic that was written during this Reformation era. And so this set the stage for biblical liberty to flourish in all realms of human enterprise. It included a burst of progress in science and commerce and the arts and virtually every other aspect of human culture. However, fatal flaws in the reformers thinking have served to delay or disable, or I should say disable or delay the work in progress. For instance, Calvin's disciples in France and Scotland moved gradually away from his stand on the source of biblical civil authority in God alone. The next step was to divorce the doctrine from its biblical moorings with a system of natural rights, natural law by the likes of men like George Buchanan. In Calvin's day are men like Stephen Wolfe in Defense of Christian Nationalism in our own day. Now George Buchanan and others surmised that the natural liberty of man should be stressed above the glory of God as the purpose of government. And we have noted Calvin's unhappy dalliance with natural law. Luther and Calvin also pushed for a system of required state funding schooling. Thus they left the door wide open for state intrusion back into the church. And the church thereby gave up her vital teaching mission to the nations according to Matthew 28, 19, and 20 where Jesus said all authority on heaven and earth is given to me, go ye therefore and teach all nations. And if all authority on heaven and earth is given to Christ, there is no room for any antichrist to thwart that great commission in these last days. The folly of this was not fully seen until the 20th century. By the same stroke, giving up education to the state suppressed families. The family is given the task of education of children at verses like Ephesians 6, 4 in the New Testament or Deuteronomy 4 in the Old Testament elsewhere. So Luther and Calvin did, they did yeoman's work in recovering the lost doctrines of solo gratia, solo fide, solo Christo, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, but it must be continually reformed or revived. We're continually reforming. Their tragic strain from orthodoxy and education and law especially must be corrected to bring the reformation to fruition in our own day. Now this is how Calvin left the barn door open for the cows to get out so to speak. He said that, quote, the spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very widely separated. Okay, big problem. His faulty two kingdom theory equated the church with the kingdom of God. But Christ's kingdom extends to all of life, all of creation. There's nothing outside his present reign. That's what it says in the first chapter of Revelation, that Christ is a ruler of the kings of the earth today or in the first century. He clearly stipulates in the Great Commission, Jesus, that his followers are to make disciples of all nations, which is best understood in the Greek as cultures or ethnos, nations. He further states that all authority is given to him in heaven and earth. And so a culture is defined as a manner in which religion manifests itself in every aspect of the life of a group of people, every aspect. It's the outworking of faith. Faith or a belief system lies at the foundation of all human action and cultural activity. Thus, it's impossible to lock up the rule of Christ in a kind of a spiritual box, as Calvin attempts to do in the statement that the kingdom of Christ is very widely separated from the civil government. You know, it's like the church or the people of God are like a spiritual ghetto, widely separated from the rest of life. And so at this point, he should have told Luther to take a metaphorical hike. This led Calvin to assert that the organization or form of any commonwealth, quote, depends largely on the circumstances, end of quote. So we should see red lights flashing here, because contrary to Calvin, circumstances are to be adapted to the Word of God, rather than the Word of God to circumstances. And I think Calvin knew better. Circumstances will change in any nation so that what may seem appropriate at one point will appear as less appropriate later on. But that's where we need to rely on Bible principle. The Bible lays down specific principles, guidelines, blueprints for civil government, blueprints that any commonwealth violates at its own peril. For example, we have Korah, kind of a distant relative of the 17th century John Locke, where Korah said to Moses and Aaron, quote, you have gone far enough, Moses, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them. The Lord is in their midst. So why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? That sounds something like democracy. But God tends to frown on this kind of democracy as in, the next few verses, the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households and all the men who belonged to Korah went down alive into Sheol. So much for democracy, but how about a republic? Well, the Bible does point to a separation of judicial and legislative, quote, branches, or more accurately, advisory functions in Numbers 1117, where Moses appointed a senate of elders, and it's referred to as a senate in the book of Acts, to assist Moses when he was overwhelmed. And also to a vertical division of power with the Exodus 18 system of graded courts, again, when Moses was overwhelmed. And third, a representative form of government, as in Deuteronomy 113, where the choice of wise, discerning, and experienced men from your tribes were chosen, whom Moses would then appoint. And it's kind of like the people nominated the rulers, and then Moses appointed them, or perhaps in some cases, cast lots for them. Thus, we find that the Bible does prescribe a form of organization for civil government, and it's appropriate for any commonwealth independent of circumstances. And in general, it's republican in form. And there's a book on this called the Hebrew Republic, that goes into this in a lot more detail. I think it's been renamed, I can't remember the new name, but you can probably find it on Amazon, of course. But Calvin taught that the magistrate is to enforce the first table of the law, as well as the second. Now, the first table of law has reference to the first four of the Ten Commandments, that govern man's relation to God, especially the first commandment, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. So that first commandment excludes the worship of any other god in a community that is under covenant to enforce the law of God in its system of criminal justice. In other words, a Christian nation or Christian city, and it must be enforced as law. After counsel or warning, a person, after counsel or warning, a person in such a Christian nation, who is teaching others, teaching others, note, to deny the first commandment in any form, is to be excommunicated and exiled. This includes the teaching of any other religion in a Christian nation. Otherwise, it's not a Christian nation. They're not living up to their commitment to the law of God in their criminal justice system. Calvin cites as evidence the examples of good kings in scripture who restored the worship of God when it had fallen into decay. He concludes that this duty is of even greater importance than the arbitration of disputes between men, because it has to do with the primary relationship of man and God. And we see it also in the case of Nehemiah, who enforced the observance of the Sabbath after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. Although I do believe that that has been modified somewhat, the Sabbath laws have been modified somewhat in the New Testament, because they were aspects of the Jewish ceremonial law, special to Israel. But this should be a cooperative effort between church and state, not just a state. But Calvin stumbled in equating natural law and the law of God. The law of God is, of course, that which is emphatically revealed to man in the Bible concerning that which he is to believe and do. The Bible contains objective truth expressed in propositional statements, story examples, and in poetry. By way of contrast, natural law is said to consist of unchanging moral principles held in common by all men. And under natural law theory, these moral principles may be derived from man's natural reason and agreed upon by man as they reason together. So it's kind of a fundamental law that's supposed to be built into the universe that supersedes or lays the foundation for even Bible theology or biblical law. However, the Bible declares that man in his natural or carnal state is incapable of any such agreement concerning moral principles. For example, Jeremiah declares, O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man that walks to direct his steps. Jeremiah 10.23. So much for natural law. Furthermore, the New Testament agrees, there is none that understandeth. There is none that seeketh after God. So much for natural law. Thus Calvin denies the first of the five points of Calvinism, which is tulip or total depravity, and fails to take into account the total depravity of man when he declares that natural law is equivalent to the revealed law of God. And finally, Calvin went off the rail when he asserted, quote, for the statement of some that the law of God given through Moses is dishonored, when it is abrogated, and new laws preferred to it is utterly vain, end of quote. No way. On the contrary, Calvin is uncharacteristic. Calvin is uncharacteristically vain to make such an assertion. This is an incredibly bold assertion that the law of man may be substituted with impunity for the law of God. And at this point, Calvin assumes the attitude of the Pharisees, as recorded in Matthew 7, 7-9, where he said, Howbeit in vain do they worship me, said Jesus, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men. Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition, end of quote. Excuse me. Now Calvin's institutes underwent a number of revisions, and it appears that he corrected these errors later in life, notably in his commentaries on the Pentateuch and the rest of Scripture, except for the book of Revelation. However, he never made the corresponding changes, or a lot of them were left unchanged in his final version of the institutes when he had a chance to do so. Especially in chapter 20, dealing with the civil magistrate. So it's a problem you need to be aware of when you read the institutes of the Christian religion. So thanks for your participation today, and please patronize our sponsors at greatbiblereset.com where you can get a free copy of Keys to the Classics, A History of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, and a free set of resistance bands to maintain your exercise routine while traveling. So please check back next week for the next in our series of 100 of the Classical Authors of Western Civilization.