Very good. Let's pray and read Ephesians 4. Father in heaven, thank you for this day, Lord. Thank you for all good things that you give us. Thank you for enlightening your word by your spirit. Lord, please do that again today as we consider your church, the church of your Son, the church that he said the gates of hell would not prevail against. We pray that that would be true in our own study and our perseverance of these doctrines. Lord, make us humble, good, passionate servants of your word to people, to the people that you called out of this world, and make the rest of this class finish strong the next few weeks. Draw whoever you will to benefit from the life and from the wisdom that you poured into your servant, John Calvin, centuries ago. We pray that you would pour that same Holy Spirit into us to be able to use us as you will, whatever that is. So let us bless this time to our souls, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, well. Turn to Ephesians chapter 4. Read at least six verses. I have six verses here, but it might be more than that. This is a classic passage on the unity and the diversity of the church, and it is also a Trinitarian passage, you'll notice. Actually, I'm going to read I'm going to read through verse 11 simply because I might read through verse 12. Simply because the way John Calvin uses those later verses too, coming from that. So you're going to see the whole essence of the church and the government of the church, the unity and the diversity of the church in this passage. So Ephesians chapter 4 starting at verse 1. I therefore prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, daring with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. In saying he ascended, what does it mean but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ." And he goes on through verse 16. We'll get to that. But there you can see pretty much the whole... You remember Calvin's working off the Creed here. You know, it says the Apostles' Creed, but there's also language used in the Nicene Creed, and he borrows back from that language. The historic doctrine of the Church is that it is one holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints. That's one creed, or another creed says one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. So those two formulations are from the Apostles' and the Nicene Creed. And the four convictions that make up this doctrine, namely that this church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, are biblical convictions. And particularly as you look to passages like Ephesians 4, where Paul shows that the unity and the diversity of the church constitutes an invisible to visible flow. So you see that chart? I said that's everything. So on this chart, describe this for audio purposes, God is at the top, and His arrow flowing downward through the Word, going out into the sacraments and church discipline. We'll see that when Calvin talks about the marks of the church. And then this outer circle around the word sacraments and discipline, that white circle represents the elders or church government. So there you have the essence of the church and the government of the church. If you understand the essence of the church, you're going to understand the government of the church. And all the way on the left you see this pink line flowing from the invisible to the visible. So everything in the essence of the Church flows from God's creative activity, Christ's saving activity, the Holy Spirit's illuminating, regenerating activity, to the visible demonstrations, the elders taking the word on their lips, you're hearing audibly, and then you're seeing, tasting the sacraments, and then that is manifested through formative and corrective discipline. So if you understand the essence of the church, you will understand the government of the church in this. So everything is from the invisible triune God to the visible representation of the body of Christ on earth. The unity is called by Paul in that passage, the unity of the Spirit. And all the ones that he lists there are all one in the triune God. You see the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit talked about there as one. And then he talks about diversity in that same passage. And the gifts and the callings to each one are from Christ to equip the individual church bodies, the local churches, with all of their parts called ministers. Notice that each one is called a minister. Now, I'm not saying that there's not... there's also offices in the church. But there's not a hard clergy-laity distinction. One of the reform doctrines that's kind of, we don't talk about a whole lot, we should, is the priesthood of all believers. So there's no hard distinction between clergy and laity. There's office differences, but there's not a difference in the sense that every single Christian is called to ministry. So in book four of the Institutes, chapters one through seven, We see the essence of the church and its constitution. So I'm calling this Calvin's doctrine of the true and false church. But you're going to see the essence of the church and its constitution, its makeup. Both the essence of the church and its constitution are pit against the Roman errors of the same thing. The papal authorities claimed that Christ had instituted the Roman See by calling Peter into its first office as the Vicar of Christ. And a vicar is someone who stands in the place of. So that's what that means. So as such, the Church is first and foremost the visible organization under that head. So notice that. Whereas everything is going to go from the top down in the Reform view, in the Biblical view, in Rome everything is going to start with the visible, centralized manifestation. So in other words, it wouldn't be a manifestation of anything in their definition. They start their definition of the Church with the visible head and organization in Rome. So, Rome starts with nature. Christianity starts with grace. Rome represents an atheistic starting point to its ecclesiology. Christianity represents a theistic starting point to its ecclesiology. Hopefully you see that. This is flowing from everything else in systematic theology. This is a doctrine of the Church that is a theistic, supernatural doctrine of the Church. Rome's doctrine of the Church is naturalistic and atheistic. It starts from the ground. It starts from the man. It starts from nature. And you're going to see that everywhere else they move. So, in chapters 1 through 2 of Book 4, you're going to see the essence of the Church in Calvin, and in 3 through 7, you're going to see the government of the Church as he compares the biblical view to the Roman view. Here's the big idea. It's a slightly longer big idea, but it's basically that same thing. Whereas Rome defined and governed the church from the visible to the invisible, the Reformers defined and governed the church from the invisible to the visible. We use that phrase right here a lot, the invisible to the visible, that is theism, that is monotheism. If you define anything from the visible to the invisible, it's an atheistic move at that point. It doesn't mean you're a closet atheist. It simply means that at that point you have been taken captive by other worldviews. And that's something that needs to be cleansed out. So let's look at the essence of the Church first. Calvin's first chapter is called, Of the True Church, Duty of Cultivating Unity with Her as the Mother of All the Godly. So following the form of the Creed as he does, Calvin's able to take the high ground between Rome's centralized schismaticism. Now that word schism just means division. But notice that Calvin is not splitting and taking a moderate position, he is transcending both of these bad views. There's a centralized schismaticism, in other words, centralized in a place like Rome where you start to define the church over here and you break it apart. Or there's these sort of satellite or tribal or decentralized schismatic movements. Both Rome and the Anabaptists left the Catholic Church. Both Rome and the Anabaptists were schismatics. Rome was a centralized schismatic idea of the Church. The Anabaptists were a decentralized schismaticism. But Calvin takes the high ground over both of those schisms. He divides chapter 1 into the definition of the creed itself, the marks of the true church, and the necessity of cleaving to the one true church and its communion of saints. He says in chapter 1, section 1, that God secured the effectual preaching of the gospel by depositing this treasure with the church. You remember Paul in Corinthians said that we have this treasure in earthen vessels. That's going to be important because you have an invisible action happening, namely God giving his word to people, and that word is what gathers those people, makes them the communion of saints, fundamentally invisible, sovereign act of God first. So that while the grace of God is the efficient cause of salvation, God makes the church an instrumental cause. So think of the gospel as a formal cause of salvation. The grace of God is the efficient cause of salvation. But God makes the church, through the formal cause of the gospel, God makes the church an instrumental cause. So in chapter 1, section 1, he says, to those to whom he is a father, The church must also be a mother. Augustine said pretty much the same thing. He would not know God as Father unless he first knew the church as mother. That does not mean that the church is sharing part of the efficient cause of salvation. It means the church is like a nursing... it used to be a nurse. Somebody who would nurture the child. doesn't mean that they are the originator. So the mother is the nurturer, not the originator. That's the sense in which Calvin meant that. In order to show how the invisible precedes the visible through the faith of the individual believer, Calvin tries to show how the creed originally read, believe the church rather than believe in the church. That's in chapter 1, section 2, and you might think that's a curious thing to try to prove. What's the point in doing that? Well, believe in the church would mean that the church is an object of faith there, in a sense. Versus, believe the church means to believe the testimony that the church has deposited within it, which is just another way of saying believe in the gospel. So that the church is not the reference point of faith, but its servant, giving its testimony to something higher than itself. So, here is the all-important thing here, and this is the corrective to the missional movement. Ecclesiology is completely informed by Soteriology, which is completely... Hello, I never do that. Come on. It must be the purple. Oh my goodness. Wow. I didn't want to... Yeah, I know. What is that? That might take a while to get over that. Soteriology completely informs Ecclesiology. Let's draw a circle around this. Ecclesiology being the inner circle of Soteriology. Why? Because you have to be saved before you're brought into the church. You are saved and brought into the church. You're saved and brought into the body of Christ. Outside of the body of Christ is death and damnation. Okay, so we are saved unto Christ, united to Christ, united in his body. Now, if you listen to the missiologists today, missiology and therefore a part of ecclesiology, or maybe ecclesiology should be part of missiology, is outside of soteriology, so that you can be missional first, reformed second. Because we have the gospel, this is what we all have in common, though we may have different worldviews, different formulations of it. Now that's pretty bizarre when you think about it, and I know people that say such things are not thinking. But in Systematic Theology, there is a reason why Soteriology precedes Ecclesiology. It's because you're saved, in part, unto the Church, or into the Church. That's what the Church is. They're the saved people. The Church doesn't save. That's one of the reasons why we can say that no church saves you. The Church is being saved. So salvation precedes, or the way God saves us precedes, the way that the church is. So the missiology is actually not ecclesiology. Yep, missiology is a completely different word. And the way they would argue against that is to say that God is on the missio Dei, the mission of God, is something that is fundamental to God, so that Jesus said, as the Father sent me, so I send you. Well, that's an analogy. As, thus the all-important word, as. We're not on mission in the identical way that Christ is on mission, but only in an analogous way. For example, it's the main reason Christ came. According to Mark 10.45, it's to be a ransom for many. We can't do that. There's much in what Jesus did that we are copying, but then there's other sinful things that Jesus did that we're not copying. We can't atone for people's sins. Isn't that almost to say that his soteriology has nothing to do with mission? And even in clear theology, Church has nothing to do with God's mission. Right. It's like there's other alternative parts to the mission of God that are somehow not so theological. So they've already assumed that the gospel is a different thing than the doctrine of salvation. And we've talked about that. That's one of the most perverse, underrated things that has happened in modern evangelicalism, is that the gospel is actually now divorced from the doctrines of grace. Okay, that's just one of 31 flavors. So the gospel is something different than How God saves us? Help me understand that. Okay. In particular, Calvin says in chapter 1, section 2, regard must be had both to the secret election and to the internal calling of God, because he alone, and then he quotes 2 Timothy 2.19, he alone knows those who are his. So how's Calvin defining the church at the root? By the secret election of God and the internal calling of God. Why is Calvin doing that? Oh, because he's just one of 31 Calvary's called Calvinism? No, because you're elect. That's what it means. You're chosen in Christ, Ephesians 1 says. And then you're called into this body. What's the word church mean? Ekklesia is ek and kaleo. Kaleo called, ek, out of. So election and the internal call literally form the church. Once we understand what it means for the church to be created from the invisible to the visible, In other words, the elected and called by God individuals gathered together. That's what the gathering, that's how the gathering happens. You're elected and you're called, gathered into one body. Then we can properly define the unity and the community of the church. Notice the similarity between unity and community. All of that stuff is going to be the word gathering. The word is going to do everything here. Somebody once asked Luther, in a sense, how he did it. And Luther basically said, I didn't do anything. The Word did it all. I just sat here and drank German beer and talked about it. That's literally almost what he said. The Word did it all. So if you understand how the Word gathers and creates, you'll understand how the Word defines this unity and community as well. But it's not enough to rightly understand that, the origin of the Church. But that unity and that communion that follows that has to be sought for in real life. Some other foundational elements are important for Calvin to draw out here. The church is a remnant in the world brought under one head, namely Christ. And therefore they are made into an indestructible brotherhood that is more important to true Christians than other causes and other loyalties. This indestructibility of the church, he infers this from Matthew 16. It's the first time Calvin mentions Matthew 16. Of course, he's going to come back to it when he deals with Rome. But this has to have an objective and a subjective element. We can't simply sit back and say that the unity of the church is guaranteed by Christ in order to excuse ourselves from living consistently with it. That's why Paul demands that in Ephesians 4, to walk in a way consistent, how does he say it, worthy of the calling to which you have been called, and then one of the things that's part of that is eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So, we don't create that unity, contrary to ecumenicalism. but we do maintain it. We live in a way that is consistent with it. We can't excuse ourselves from acting unified with the church, simply because Christ is the one that creates that. So having established the invisibility and the unity of the church, he then flows outward and downward to the visibility and the diversity of the church. So, when you hear the invisibility and the unity of the church, that is not a contrary idea to the visibility and the diversity of the church. But the order is going to matter here. So, you draw it like this. So, you have this unified, universal church. Fundamentally invisible I'm going to draw the invisible line this way to be creating a certain group. We already said, Paul said, that the Lord knows those who are his. So this is the invisible church right here. Within that, you have all these, so this V is going to stand for, well, I'm just going to put visible. This bigger circle is visible. Now within that universal church, you're going to have the local churches. I'm just going to define it like this. That could be confusing. Let's put it outside of the line. Because very rarely are you going to have a local church where everybody is absolutely safe. I hope so. Hopefully you can see the difference between those things. He's going to define them clearly in a little bit, but all we're showing right now is that the invisible precedes the visible. Those that are in the visible church that really are also part of the invisible church, the invisibility comes first. The visible is a demonstration of that which is invisible. Why is the visible church important? Because the display of God's glory to the world is important. So is our participation in it, for our own sakes. Calvin says in 1, section 4, hence the abandonment of the church is always fatal. for our weakness does not permit us to leave the school until we have spent our whole lives as scholars." So here's where Calvin is going to exalt the role of the preacher and the efficacy of preaching. Now he admits that there's many who, quote, in 1 section 5, who persuade themselves that they can profit sufficiently by reading and meditating in private, and thus to despise public meetings and deem preaching superfluous. Stop. In the mission movement, in the church planning movement, one of the things you hear all the time, in addition to being missional first, evangelical second, or evangelical first, missional second, reformed last, stuff like that. In addition to that, you hear in people's plans to plant churches, that we're going to be on community first, on mission, then we'll have groups, community groups, then meetings. And they'll call them meetings. And that's not new. Charismatic circles did that too, back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. They would call them meetings. Sometimes in quotes, and sometimes as a pejorative term. Meetings. They had to have meetings, by which they mean the Sunday service. If the word's there at all, that's a meeting. It's kind of this thing that we've done in the modern church. We don't really need to do it and probably shouldn't. So, there are some who despise that and deem preaching superfluous. Calvin says, we see that God, who might perfect his people in a moment, chooses not to bring them to manhood in any other way than by the education of the church. Hence it follows that all who reject the spiritual food of the soul, divinely offered to them by the hands of the Church, deserve to perish of hunger and famine." Now if we ask what's the power, what's the essential stuff that creates the Church and makes her grow, Calvin would say that the Bible gives us a two-fold answer. The Spirit is the power that does it, but the Word is the stuff. He's already talked about the relationship between the Word and Spirit in several different sections. but this is crucial to draw out in his ecclesiology. The Spirit is the power, but the Word is the stuff or the information which informs the whole life of the church from conception to final glory. So he says in 1 section 5, there is nothing on which believers set a higher value than on this aid, by which God gradually raises his people to heaven. So true believers set a higher value on nothing than this aid by which God gradually raises his people to heaven. This centrality of the Word is a perfect transition in Calvin's thought from the origin of the Church to the marks of the true Church, and then finally to the government of the Church. And why is this a perfect transition? Because if the Word informs the whole of Christian life, and if the elder's basic ministry is the ministry of the Word, then what the scriptures call rightly handling the word of truth, in 2 Timothy 2.15, is going to form the backbone of our whole doctrine of the church. Rightly handling the word of truth, the word rightly defined, the Word accurately preached, the Gospel front and center and central in the Word, is going to form a backbone to our essence of the Church, our distinguishing marks of the Church, and then a proper government of the Church. The Word accurately present and preached is going to define all of those things. So, as far as this teaching of the Word, Calvin reminds us that it is not the minister of the Spirit, this is in 1.6, not the ministry of the letter, but of the Spirit, gets that from 2 Corinthians 3, geared toward, quote, the illumination of the mind and renewal of the heart. That's going to be important, we've already seen that in Calvin. The word is geared toward the illumination of the mind and renewal of the heart. So you have an invisible word, and yes I know there's inkblots on a page, but you have an invisible concept impressing itself, an invisible image of God, an invisible representation of God's nature, whether it's in the form of laws, typology, something directly about Christ, something about heaven, the future state, but you have a direct, invisible impress of something of the nature of God, grasped invisibly by the mind, which is invisible. The whole thing is fundamentally, first, invisible. so that it is an impression of invisible truths upon an invisible soul. It is not the animal grunting at ink blots on a page that conforms external behavior in horizontal or temporary ways. Modern Christians have this backwards. Modern Christians look at practical principles as the intelligible and simple things. They look at doctrinal formulations and logical inferences as rigid and hard things. That's not the way it used to be. That's not the way the Bible talks about it. more rules, however tangible and simpler at first, are chains that bind us. Doctrine, on the other hand, is a light to the intellect which, however unfamiliar at first, softens our hardened hearts and sets us free. John 8.32, Jesus said, the truth will set you free. So Calvin calls this, in 1.6, this intellectual obedience, he calls it a modest yoke by comparison with practical principles. This invisible light that is doctrinal is a modest yoke. It's rigid at first, it's unfamiliar at first, that's why it's unattractive at first, but it is the thing that softens our hearts and frees us. Versus practical principles, which are easy at first, give me more stuff, give me something I can sink my teeth into, those are the things that bind us in time. Now, in section seven, Calvin begins to explicitly draw out the way that the scriptures imply the distinction between an invisible and a visible church. There's overlap here, but the difference between the two is that the invisible church, and this is in 170, he's going to define both very briefly, that the invisible means the church as it really is before God. The church as it really is before God. And the visible means, quote, the whole body of mankind scattered throughout the world, who profess to worship the one God in Christ." The visible is the whole body of mankind, scattered throughout the world, who profess to worship the one God in Christ. So, think about the invisible to the visible, then that's going to set up the marks of the Church. The marks of the Church, therefore, are a visible demonstration of the invisible action of God. the Marks of the Church, which he's going to lay out, ultimately, as the Word, Sacraments, and Discipline, as the three main Marks of the Church there. But these are visible demonstrations of the invisible action of God in the form of the Gospel, in the matter of the Word, Sacrament, and Discipline, through the instrument of pastoral ministry. Let me just say that one more time. So if the Marks of the Church are visible demonstrations of the invisible reality, it comes in the form of the Gospel, in the matter of the Word, in other words, this is the visible part of it, you can see, the Word is present, sacraments properly administered, church discipline happening at some level, through the instrument of pastoral ministry. So he famously says in chapter 1, section 9, this is a great quote, have this somewhere, wherever you keep your quotes, in chapter 1, section 9, this is one of my favorite Calvin quotes because it defines my understanding of the church, he says, wherever we see the Word of God sincerely preached and heard, Wherever we see the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ, there we cannot have any doubt that the Church of God has some existence, since His promise cannot fail." You notice he anchors that in the promise of God. God has promised, God has intended, God has written in His Word and designed, and therefore it won't fail, Matthew 16, that where His Word is preached and heard, and where sacraments are administered according to the institution of Christ, the Church can't fail. That is the Church. Buildings aren't the Church's. Even gatherings, if they're gathering around something other than the Word, aren't Church's. But where the Word is preached and heard, and the sacraments administered is not working out that. We don't have any doubt that the Church of God exists. So, what does he mean by this? Let's be specific. He means a sufficiently accurate presentation of the Gospel. It doesn't mean that somebody opens up their Bible and treats it like a Ouija board and just runs their finger across it and stuff like that, or treats it like a leather-bound bag of fortune cookies and grabs a couple ones and crumples them up and flicks it that way and stuff like that and says, what does it mean to you, what does it feel to me, and stuff like that. That's not the preaching of the Word. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that you have to understand exactly every syllable the way Charles Hodge would have written it. It is a sufficiently accurate presentation of the Gospel and the Word. and the sacraments. They're gospel demonstrations. That was the formula. Now, at the same time Calvin was really stressing the word and the sacrament, other people such as Martin Boothser were stressing the regular exercise of church discipline as a third distinguishing mark. That's why I have that there. Calvin talks about it. Calvin makes a big deal about it, but he never specifically puts it in this definition right here. So, word, sacraments, and discipline as the three distinguishing marks in the Reformed tradition. Now, closely associated with both the invisible church, I didn't complete my thought there, but closely associated with it is the Universal Church, which I've already diagrammed there with that circle, that bigger circle there. And by the way, that's not just all those that are in the world right now who are truly saved, but all those throughout time. who are part of the church are part of the universal church. So he defines that in chapter 1 section 9 as the multitude collected out of all nations. Notice he doesn't say the multitude collected out of denominations. The multitude collected out of all nations. This is the one portion of the Institutes that more sectarian elements of the Reformed tradition have a bit of a reluctance toward. Because in these first two chapters of the Institutes, book four, you have a manifesto for church-planting, doctrinal-minded missionaries who have no denomination to call their own. These are the two chapters in the Institutes that makes traditional reform types squirm. Because here's where Calvin says everything we're saying. The multitude collected out of all nations. But it gets thicker. The other very relevant practical application to our day is how Calvin's thoughts here prevent us from flying off to either extreme of ecumenicalism or sectarianism. In other words, ecumenicalism, from the Greek word oikos, which means house, is the idea that you start your definition of theology, your whole theology is ecclesiocentric. Nothing is worth talking about except the unity of the Church. You define everything from the unity of the Church, rather than defining the unity of the Church from the truth of God that forms or makes the Church. On the other extreme, you have sectarianism, where only my understanding of everything in the Word can make the Church what it is, and the Donatists in the ancient world were heavy offenders of that. But anyway, Calvin gives us a third biblical perspective. Here's another one, right up there with that quote I just gave you. This is a bigger quote, but it's huge. Listen carefully to everything Calvin's saying, because here you're going to see him rejecting both ecumenicalism and sectarianism, and the way he does it is he talks about the role of essential doctrine versus non-essentials. So listen to this in chapter 1, section 12. Calvin says, when we say that the pure ministry of the word and pure celebration of the sacraments is a fit pledge and earnest so that we may safely recognize a church in every society in which both exist. Our meaning is that we are never to discard it so long as these remain, though it may otherwise team with numerous faults. No, even in the administration of the Word and sacraments, defects may creep in which ought not to alienate us from its communion. For all the heads of true doctrine are not in the same position. Some are so necessary to be known that all must hold them to be fixed and undoubted as the proper essentials of religion. For instance, that God is one, that Christ is God and the Son of God, that our salvation depends on the mercy of God and the like. Others, again which are the subject of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith." Notice that last clause, do not destroy the unity of the faith. So, what is Calvin's standard for dividing versus not dividing from other churches? How would you describe it? This is going to be the first part of a two-part question. What is Calvin's standard for when to divide and when not to divide? Essential doctrines, basically. It's a more wide category. If they have compromised essential doctrines, it's no longer a church. It may be a gathering, there may be real Christians in there, but it's not a church, and there's probably not going to be real Christians in there within 40-50 years. He doesn't say all that, but that's what he's driving at. Now, what's the standard for what's essential and what's non-essential? This is the second part of the two-part question. See that last line. Others, again, which are the subject of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith. So how does Calvin understand what an essential is? Something over which you can destroy the unity of the faith. This sounds familiar. I wrote a book about it. It's called Doctrine and Division. I didn't make it up. Calvin believes the same thing. Well, Calvin does, but that doesn't prove anything. Well, let me ask you a question, going back to Ephesians 4. Do you remember all the different seven ones? By the way, seven is the number of completion and perfection. But seriously, in this case, I think you can actually hold it to that. All those ones there in Ephesians 4, were those seven different universes? Seven different ones? Right. No. Okay? These are all aspects of the same one. That's one of the reasons why the Godhead is mentioned there. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three different gods. There are three divine persons who are one God. And just as God is one, so all the things that He makes are meant to be one. And nothing more so than His Church. When He says one faith and one body, are these two different ones? No. So if the Word, or if the faith, makes the body, and you divide the faith, you divide the body. You do not divide the faith by dividing the body. You divide the body by dividing the faith. The faith makes the body, the body doesn't make the faith. The Word makes the body, the body doesn't make the Word. The Word became flesh. This is very Christological. The body will be like Christ in this sense. If you divide the faith, you divide the body. It's like genetic engineering. If you divide the genome, if you do different things in there, you're going to have a different human product. And it's the same thing in the body of Christ. If you divide the word that makes the body, you will divide the body. In Jude 20, in Romans 16, I can't remember which verse, and I'll look for other passages that say this. Oh, Titus 3, 10-12. Heretikos. That's where we get the word heretic from. Who is division blamed on? In every case, the heretic. Not the person that defends essential doctrine. Calvin's saying here that essential doctrines make the church what it is. You divide over essentials, not secondary issues. But you do divide over essential issues, because the division has already taken place. All you are doing is pursuing faithfulness, and you let the heretics go where they will. Are you getting to denominations today or not today? Maybe not that much, because just to talk about Roman, I'll draw parallels out. I will touch on it a little bit. Right. The existence of denominations do not destroy the unity of the faith. They are not dividing as brothers by worshiping in different buildings. They can, and that would be sinful if they did, but if they simply worship differently in a different building, just like African culture, they're going to worship differently than we do. That's not a sin. The diversity of the body is not the same thing as the division of the body. Diversity is not the same thing as division. So there's nothing wrong with denominations, per se. There is something wrong with sectarianism, the idea of splitting off and considering them not a brother, which is what those Donatists did. And clearly Calvin is accusing the Anabaptists of doing that as well. These examples that he gives here is, for instance, God, Christ, Salvation. Those are three of the four that I've always heard you say, God, Christ, Scripture, Salvation. Right. He doesn't mention Scripture, right. Does he ever get into what the essentials are in any more detail? I don't think so. Now, I think you have to go through the rest of the Institutes to get that. So, for example, if he doesn't mention Scripture here, you can go back to his section on Scripture and see the sense in which he holds it as essential. That's why it's so helpful that he says, and the like, and not only that, but that last sentence is really the key sentence, do not destroy the unity of the faith. So you have to really think about what makes a doctrine destroy the unity of the faith, in that sense. So there are essentials and there are secondary doctrines. The essentials make the church what it is, so that to divide the one faith is to divide the one body of Ephesians 4. When a segment of the visible church begins to divide these essentials, the division has already occurred, and true Christians do not need to pursue division. That's a category mistake. Only doctrinal faithfulness. The division has already happened by the Bible blames the heretic. Divisive man, hereticos, is where we get the English word heresy. They mean the same thing in biblical language. So division has already happened. We are pursuing doctrinal faithfulness. We don't just up and leave churches on lesser grounds. We don't beat our chests about our superiority or disparage or think the worst of others every opportunity we get. That would be a morbid, arrogant spirit, but it is a category mistake to think that due in church, because essential doctrines are being compromised, that we are the ones that have divided with the body of Christ. The reformers were accused of the same thing. That's a category mistake. The ancient Donatist heresy was guilty over this very thing, and for them it was a matter of personal holiness. They said that everybody that wasn't more like them, really, was a heretic of holiness, in a sense. In contradicting that heresy, Calvin points out that in this age, the visible church contains a mixture of good and bad. This is in section 13. By the way, chapter 1 will be the longest section by far that we do. And he cites the parables of Matthew 13 to prove this point, that the church is going to be a mixed body of tares and wheat until the second coming. That is not our job to separate. Christ and the angels do that at the end. Calvin closes chapter 1, in sections 17 through 29, by discussing the sense in which the Church is to be holy. So if the Donatists were wrong, if other schismatics are wrong to exalt themselves as the standard of holiness, still, lest the Reformed Churches be accused of antinomianism, as the Catholic Church already did accuse them of, the Church is called holy in the Creed. And so it has to consist in something. Well, first of all, we're not being holy if the spirit in us that moves us to separate from the church where Christ upholds the church is anything less than over an accurate presentation of the gospel in words, sacrament, and discipline. He talks about the keys of the kingdom, which he's going to bring up against the Catholics later on, but its ultimate function was to loose from sin, not to bind under sin. from the invisible to the visible. How we discipline people is informed also. Everything in the church is going to be just like the general doctrine of the church. So when we read the keys of the kingdom, loosing comes before binding. Why? Because Christ is doing this. He is slow to anger, quick to have mercy. And in the Lord's Prayer, I love the way Spurgeon says it. I love it, but it's convicting. When he's expositing the Lord's Prayer and when he says, and forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors." I probably botched that already. And then Christ, after the prayer, says, if you do not forgive others, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you. And Spurgeon says that every time you say the Lord's Prayer, and we don't mean that, we are reading our death sentence. So, yeah. So in this, Invisible to visible understanding of the keys of the kingdom, loosing is primary. Binding, in other words, excommunicating would be the ultimate expression of that, is our last resort. Kind of like just war doctrine. It's a last resort and it's confirming what's already being done. When we get to church this one, we'll see that. It's a confirmation of what's already happening in heaven. So personal holiness in the church is a gospel holiness, or else it is a false doctrine. This group, the Novatians, that he's always talking about in older times, and the Anabaptists of his day, held that at regeneration the believer ascends to an evangelical life. This is in section 23. So that to the sinner who has lapsed after receiving grace, they give no hope of pardon. Against this, Calvin cites biblical examples of those who are under grace who fell for a time, like David, Abraham, and others. And the biblical analogy of Christ and the church to the bridegroom and bride, inferring that just as God drew back his wayward harlot wife, and Calvin cites a lot of passages in the Old Testament, so that is to be our heart in the church, and that is a mark of a true church, that we are always getting somebody, showing mercy, loosing, not binding. That's section one. Section two, any questions on section one at all? The biggest section by far. At least for us. Back to the beginning real quick, when you were talking about preaching being superfluous, was that you or was that... Oh, that was Calvin talking about the schismatics, Anabaptist types. Yeah, those were his words, yeah. In section... 5 maybe? Let me hold on one second. Yes, that has to be 5. So, chapter 1, section 5. Those who despise public meetings and deem preaching superfluous. Essentially because they'll do good enough, they have the spirit inside them, they can do this privately. Chapter 2 is the comparison between the false church and the true. So in 12 sections here, Calvin compares the Romish pretend church, by the way, you're not going to hear me refer to them as the Catholic church here, only because I want to divide here in the creed that the meaning of the word Catholic means universal. So I'm not going to refer to it because of what it normally denotes. So Calvin compares the Romish pretend church, I love the words Romish, papal, papus, and potpourri. Love it. Potpourri. Like it's a magical incantation, potpourri. Except I say potpourri because it's just more fun. Because it adds that magical superstition element with a little French, anyway. The Romish pretend church, which is the true church, with the true church, that is gathered by the word and which is under accusation by Rome of introducing schism. So having established that the essential invisible truths inform the existence, think of the word existence, existare means to stand out of, this is not something that exists on its own, this is something that exists made by God invisibly, out of nothing. So having established that the essential invisible truths inform the existence of the invisible church, and having distinguished between necessary divisions and uncharitable divisions, now Calvin is ready to compare notes on specifics. He cites Ephesians 2.20, that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. The word is made the whole of the foundation. in form and in material. In form because it's Christ, in the Gospel. In material because the visible manifestation right here. In preaching and through this ministry. When he talks about the Apostles and Prophets, that is the Bible's way of talking about Scripture. The Apostles and Prophets are the writers of Scripture. He's not talking about apostolic succession. But that's what the whole debate's about, so we'll keep that going. But that leaves no room for any centralized vicar of Christ on earth. Calvin also cites 1 Timothy 3.15, which, by the way, I notice is a favorite proof text of the papists, who focus on the pillar and buttress part, but they ignore the truth part, so the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth, so that Rome makes a lot about physical foundations to nothing in particular. Pillar and buttress of the truth. And they expect us to pay reverence to this relativism. That's what it is. The basic argument against apostolic succession by Calvin is that first, the Greeks also retained an unbroken succession of bishops. Yet because they separated from Rome in the 11th century, they're said to be schismatics. How does that follow if the whole argument rests on apostolic succession? Rome will claim a hierarchy, with Peter at the top, as evidenced by Jesus in Matthew 16. How then do they explain Paul's authoritative rebuke over Peter, as evidenced in Galatians 2? Calvin concludes in 2, section 2, that the pretense of secession is vain, if posterity does not retain the truth of Christ, which was handed down to them by their fathers, safe and uncorrupted and continue in it. In other words, as long as we're talking about secession here, let's talk about the truth of these apostles, which really does come down in an unbroken secession, and we can all point to it. If you can't point to that, how are you pointing to this other physical thing, this lesser thing? He cites Jeremiah 7-4 and Ezekiel 10-4, and he draws an excellent parallel between Rome and the presumption of the Old Testament priesthood. He was always claiming the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, about that which the Lord himself had departed from because of its idolatry and superstition. Another good argument that comes later in chapter 3, I'll just mention it here though, it really goes here. Another good argument that comes later is that of the two institutions of Jesus to the office of the Apostles, Word and Sacrament. Rome practices neither. which is pretty inconvenient for those pretending to have continued their office. The office of the Apostles is the administration of word and sacrament. Rome practices neither. Not very good secession. At the heart of this entire doctrine of the Church, again, is that the truth in the marks of the true Church is precisely the truth. In other words, who is teaching the doctrines that truly flow from God's Word. In chapter 2, section 3, he says that, in the government of the church especially, nothing is more absurd than to disregard doctrine and place secession in persons. So, citing John 10, about the shepherd and the sheep, sheep hearing his voice, and in John 18.37, Calvin says, quote, Christ has designated it with a sign. In other words, namely the hearing of his word. So he goes on to say in section four, in short, since the church is the kingdom of Christ and he reigns only by his word, and I'll finish that in my own words, therefore the preaching that gathers the elect around the true doctrine is the basic scepter and lampstand of Christ's authority. The doctrine of the apostles, not the physical proximity to the apostles. citing Augustine and Cyprian. Interestingly enough, every time you hear Calvin cite Augustine and Cyprian, especially, it is the doctrine of Augustine and a book on the church that Cyprian wrote, his famous maxim extra ecclesia nullum salus, outside of the church there is no salvation. When Cyprian said that, he meant outside of the truth. And Calvin quotes all the relevant quotes in Cyprian that it's like light emanating from God. So to break the unity of that is to break the unity of the church. Cyprian was saying the exact identical thing to us here. But it's interesting because Augustine and Cyprian are the ones that Roman Catholic authorities will quote the most from in their doctrine of the church. But citing Augustine and Cyprian on the true nature of church unity, emanating from the light of this head, it becomes clear that it is only the true church which continues undefiled and that those who deviate from that doctrinal light have gone out and divided. So according to Calvin here, it is Rome that has left the Catholic Church. And when one can no longer participate in the religious services without grossly violating their conscience, as Calvin says is the case about the math in section 9, this is not sinful division. This is just pursuing faithfulness and others are dividing with the church. Calvin does not deny that there may be genuine believers in the visible flock of Rome, and he doesn't even deny that there may be legitimate churches among them where they're preaching the Word, but his focus is on where the Word is, is where the church is. Those are the questions we have terribly relevant today when we have a phone book and internet doing our job for us when we get to a new area and we decide... and people come to me all the time and they'll have their doctrine in a row, so to speak, and they'll come to me and say, man, it's so hard to pick a church when you get to an area. Well, you've already not done your job. You should not have come to that area without picking a church. You should have come to that area to go to church. If you've not done that first, then you've set yourself and your family up for failure. So this is very, very important that we go where the word is flowing in every conversation about such things. In question, before I get to the government of the church, which is the second half of what we're doing today. Any questions on the essence of the church? Okay, the government of the church. His chapter three is, of the teachers and ministers of the church, their election and office. Now, in general principles, I'm gonna agree with Calvin, I'm gonna like what he says. In specifics, I got some problems with some stuff Calvin says here. He's a creature of his age just like all of us are, and you're gonna see that come out here. How is the church governed? The answer is by the word of God. In other words, the same informing word that creates and nourishes the church also rules the church. This is why there is to be no ultimate difference between the offices of teaching elder and ruling elder, which Calvin unfortunately falls for. So on the left here, I'm going to keep a scorecard of the things that Calvin just gets wrong precisely because they contradict his big picture. He draws a division that's still retained in the Presbyterian Reformed tradition between a teaching elder and a ruling elder. One of the things you're going to see is that for this and the congregational argument, there is not a single scripture ever cited. There's a reason for it. It's because it ain't in scripture. The exact opposite is, though. I'm going to show you what I mean by this in a second. Calvin starts out assuming a false dichotomy between a monarchy and a democracy and a church. He then reads that into the pastoral letters, and it never occurs to him that it's another possibility. Then he talks about elders. But we will get to that. So in these two subjects, Calvin is just wrong, and he's just not thinking. Yep? Are you going to address 2 Timothy 5-7? 5-7. What is that again? I remember, um, 1 Timothy 5 is quite a bit... Those who rule well be considered of double honor. 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 5. Yeah, that's exactly one of the ones I would point to, about that being no distinction. That's a great proof text. Uh, he's saying, those that are already doing this, namely this, when he's already told you, must be able to teach for any of them. Some of them... Give him money. It looks like he's actually drawing a distinction. I know he's not, but if you look at it, he's drawing a distinction there, because it says, especially those who preach the Word. Yeah. So, you can be ruling without preaching the Word. Yeah. Well, no. Yeah, gotcha. As far as preaching, but yeah, the better circle would be this. Of those who rule well, those who are teaching, some of those that are teaching. So, it's not like none of them are teaching. The verse doesn't really go there. But this has already been taught in 1 Timothy 3, 2. and Titus 1.9, that they all have to be teaching, not just be able to teach, but be teaching. In fact, when Timothy's told to go out there in chapter 2, get other men who can help you teach. So, as far as, of those that rule well, some of them are teaching. The verse specifically and explicitly contradicts what Calvin's saying. So, I know you're going to flesh this out more. How does Calvin make the distinction, and how is it different from what 1 Timothy 5 is saying here? All of it, you'll have to read specifically what he's saying. I'll draw out some of it. So I'll quote him on a couple of things. But yeah, he says it quite a lot. So just read the chapter 3 and you'll see it come out a lot. So the general part, at first he's going to get right. And that's why you can't take seriously the specific things, because it so contradicts these general parts. So the Church is governed by the Word of God. The same informing word that creates and nourishes the church also rules the church. This is why there is to be no ultimate distinction between the offices of teaching elder and ruling elder. Why? A ruling elder is ruling by what? By the teaching. By the word. And it's when you don't have that, that you have so many... So there's some shepherds that are feeding sheep and others that are, what, beating them? That's pretty much all you're left with. The shepherd has food and he's got a stick. And if the guy... the truth is they're supposed to have a stick and food, okay? But anyway... All right, now why human teachers according to Calvin? Yes, this is good. He gives two answers that have to do with humility. In the first place, Christ humbly reserves for men what he could easily do for himself. This is in chapter 3, section 1. But secondly, this is interesting, he cultivates our humility by making us fit under men like ourselves. who are very often our inferiors, whether it's in morals or in societal status or they just have quirks or whatever else. It cultivates our humility to have them, have people sit under these essentially fruit loops. That's what Calvin's saying. Calvin at this point or after that sees fit to exegete Ephesians 4.11 and he really picks this up specifically I think in section 4. But that part, this is apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Why is he doing this? He's doing this to show how all of the offices function as gifts to the construction of the church. So he says, of these, of these five, only the last two have an ordinary office in the church. In other words, today. the Lord raised up the other three at the beginning of his kingdom and still occasionally raises them up when the necessity of the time requires." So here's what he's saying and not saying. And he's not saying there's no evangelist today. Calvin's going to surprise you here. He's going to say, oh man, he's totally frustrated here. No, no, no, give him a second. He's actually going to be quite charismatic. Because he's going to say, here's those apostles. Now, by the way, he doesn't mean this the same way as charismatics do. I just mean He's not as stringent as you think he's being at first. Now, pastor, teacher. Aha! Two different offices. Teaching, ruling. We'll get back to that, though. But what he's saying at first is that these have ordinary offices in the church, in other words, the government church. He's just saying that these are not part of the government of the church. He's not saying that such gifts don't exist. Let me tell you. Calvin's view of the Apostles are closer to some Charismatic groups today than to the Reformed tradition that explicitly borrows from his ecclesiology. Citing Paul as the prototypical Apostle, he says in chapter 3 section 4, he, namely this Apostle, planted churches where the name of his Lord was unheard. They were like the first architects of the church to lay its foundations throughout the whole world. So he says just before that, that he still does this from time to time, namely apostles and prophets. There is a group in the charismatic movement, sort of a charismatic apostolic restoration movement that spills over into different other subcultures of charismatic circles. What they take this to mean from Ephesians 4, a five-fold or four-fold ministry, is that if this is the foundation of the church, that means that every church that comes into existence is a result of people right here, right now, who are apostles and prophets, planting those churches. Calvin's not going to react to something like that, which is clearly wrong. Calvin's not going to fly all the way to the other extreme and say, therefore, there's no such thing as apostolic, prophetic gifts. These offices, capital A, capital P, have closed with the closing of the canon of Scripture, because that's scripturally what, Scripture literally does say that that's what they were there for. But, that doesn't mean that there's not such a thing as an apostolic and prophetic, as an adjective, gifting today. that is there to establish the church, where there is no church right now. It's a foreign country, the Bible is not penetrated into their language yet, and so on and so forth. Or, you have this burned down post-Christian land, which is what we're going to see in Western Europe and America now. You're going to need new apostolic and prophetic giftings in America and Western Europe now. The first couple of sermons we did in Titus, when we first started, we talked about that. And we sort of did in the Titus and Pastoral Ministry class as well. We called it apostolic church planting. That's literally what has to be done in our day and age. Think about all that Calvin has said so far about the word creating the church out of the nations, not the denominations. Now think about this. Calvin is giving us a manifesto for doing what we're doing right now. What's so valuable about this section and why I think traditional reform types don't necessarily like this part of the Institutes. We can guess why that is, why this view is so attractive to the first generation of reformers and to us, and so unattractive to denominations once they become entrenched. It puts all the emphasis on exactly where the spirit in his sovereignty is anointing individuals with his word. And it steals back the emphasis from temporary hereditary privilege and money. Like all the magisterial reformers, Calvin knew that there would be a tendency in the New Evangelical movement to fall right back into the very errors that they were escaping. Naturalistic elitism would surely be one of those temptations. Now, the pastor-teacher distinction for Calvin means that teachers are those pastors who quote chapter 3, section 4. Teachers are those pastors who preside not over discipline. Okay, he's going beyond what these scriptures are talking about. Preside not over discipline, or the administration of the sacraments, or admonitions, or exhortations, but the interpretation of Scripture only. Now, how does that work for the actual people that wrote the scriptures, and were writing and telling these guys to write, and they were talking about performing the sacraments, and talking about with their authority, carry out these disciplines for the same people that they were telling them to teach certain things? So I can show you a hundred scriptures that say the exact opposite of what Calvin is saying, and he can't produce one that's saying what he's saying. Calvin is going to give a foundation both for Congregationalism and Presbyterianism, two major traditions that come out of the Reformed tradition, both of which are wrong on these questions. But Calvin is going to give them some cannon fodder here at the very beginning. But this gives birth to a divorce between the positions of teaching and ruling elder. By the way, not saying that you can't have pronounced giftings in one versus the other. But that's different than saying there are different offices. That's a problem. You're taking the people that are preaching that are most nearest to the word outside of the governing voting power of the church. That's a recipe for slavery and death. Is that what he's saying? Oh yeah, even if he's not thinking about it, that's the logical consequence of it. You have a class of elders who do the governing, ruling, discipline, in other words, all the stuff that can abuse the heck out of people and divide churches, and you put the teaching pastors who are most intimately connected to the Word, that does all those things, away from the voting, governing, administration of sacraments, counseling, so on and so forth. That's not what these verses are suggesting to do. How can they? How can he dictate it if that's part of governing? That's the problem. And he might not be thinking all this through. Don't forget, Calvin had little power where he was in Geneva. So he was already doing that by default. So notice that Calvin's reading into the scriptures in his own experience. We all do that. We all have blind spots because of that. But this is one of those places where Calvin's doing it. Calvin's power came from where it should come from, from the Word. But he then makes a false inference from that that that's the way it should be. not realizing that some of the things that were happening to him in Geneva, it was good that he was humble in submitting himself to that, but that doesn't mean it's the scriptural norm, and I think he confused things there. I hope they'll flesh this out later on the Powers of the State chapter, because Godfrey, in his biography of Calvin, talks about how there were certain things happening in Geneva, in the Geneva church, which Calvin explicitly says, in the Powers of the State section, he disagrees with. Yeah. And I hope he doesn't list that more, because a lot of people put blame on the fetus Calvin for these things happening. Right, right. Yeah, he had to choose his battles, he had to choose his battles wisely, in a sense, and so he was critical of them, and at the same time, even when you're doing that, this stuff's seeping in this way, too. Just the nature of the human nature. So Calvin cites all the usual verses that you would normally show the plurality of elders appointed at every church. He does that in chapter 3, section 7. And he also points out, correctly, that the words for bishop, presbyters, and pastors, so the words episkopos, presbyteros, and poimanos, are all synonymous. That's chapter 3, section 8. Even though he gets those two things right, he shows that these are plurality of elders in every church, and then he shows that these are synonyms. So he got everything you need to get to get this right. He nevertheless is silent on concluding that this ought to be the model of plurality of male elders in each church. Instead, it just goes over his head, he divides the church government in a given locale between teaching elders, ruling elders, and deacons. And as to the call to any office, he divides it into four heads. the who, the how, the by whom, and by what ceremony. That's chapter 3, section 11. And then he then divides, he explains what he means by that. Who should be, who is called, how are they called and confirmed, by whom, that's where he really messes up, and then by what ceremonies. Now he's speaking only of the human level here. He's assuming up front, of course, that God calls inwardly first. So as to who, he cites 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1 for the standards. As to how, by fasting and prayer, seeking divine wisdom. As to whom, Calvin falls for Congregationalism at this point, on the prior false dichotomy that Timothy and Titus were not apostles or singular bishops over that region. In other words, either they reigned solely, so Calvin kind of points to that. I won't open it up and read the section, but I think it's in section 1112 in there, where he's saying, of course Titus and Timothy didn't have a blank check to reign and rule any way they wanted to. Okay, I agree with that. Is that the only other option? Either they reigned solely or their appointments went to a general vote. That's his false dichotomy. I would suggest as a third option there. Since it doesn't occur to Calvin that there was a plurality of elders to begin with at each individual church, he doesn't consider the fact that these elders are voting. As to the last question of ceremony, Calvin recognizes the laying on of hands in the presence of the whole assembly. So that's pretty uncontroversial there. Any questions before I get to chapter four? now we're going to start really comparing the Roman and he's criticizing the Rome system. Yep? So the first point is the Roman dichotomy between teaching and ruling. The right way to look at it is ruling by teaching. And then the second one is about monarchy versus democracy. The right way of doing it is, not so many words would be, or abound. An elder representative, in a sense a representative republic if you want to call it that, but that's by way of analogy. And you're still having it confirmed to the congregation. Mark Dever, for example, in arguing for congregationalism, one of his arguments is, we just will be congregational one way or another. People will vote with their feet and leave. To which I would respond two-fold. Number one, people just don't like preaching, therefore let's give them what they want. If you want to extend that analogy to everything, you have pragmatism. And then number two, if that's really true, then so be it. The government form doesn't matter. People are going to vote with their feet either way. their feet will be congregational, we'll let their feet be congregational then. The question is, what does scripture say? It's weird that he argues like that. Yeah. Deborah, I mean. Yeah, if people are going to vote with their feet anyway, they'll vote with their feet against us if we're congregational, and they'll vote with their feet against us if we're elder-led. At what point do you draw the line and say, alright, you're actually sinning, we're not going to let you vote that way. Yeah. Now, by the way, that's Deborah's fourth argument and his totem pole of arguments for congregationalism. You almost better not even make that argument, because it's pragmatic on the surface. Of the state of the primitive church and the mode of government in use before the papacy. So in 4 and 5, Calvin is going to show how the biblical mode of church government was there from the beginning, so that it is clear that Rome is deviated from this. And then when he gets to 5, having done that, it's going to be easier to show how Rome is an abuse. to show how it was there at the beginning, so 4 and 5 I'm going to go through pretty quickly. The formal separation of Bishop from Presbyter, for example, occurred between the 2nd and the 4th century. There were dominant personalities and dominant intellects in the main cultural centers in Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome. But the offices in local churches had not been conceived as distinct. So Calvin shows, in 4, section 2, that, quote, the ancients themselves confessed that this practice was introduced by human arrangement, according to the exigency of the times. This is clear from several statements in Jerome's writings at the turn of the 5th century, and Gregory himself, who Calvin is going to talk about a lot here, as a good example of a good pope, in spite of the fact that he doesn't agree with there being a pope, Gregory called the regular preaching of the word to a local people the chief duty of any bishop. Likewise with deacons and the use of church property for the poor. These things were all going the right way in the first few centuries on the whole. But as arguments arose over specific forms of abuse and heresies, canons were framed, in 4, section 7, canons were framed to correct these evils. And that's where lawyers play with toys, with more words, with more words comes more things for them to twist. And anywhere that external law replaces freedom of conscience, that same evil brings about the abuses and is going to abuse the written law as well. So when he gets to chapter 5, the ancient form of government utterly corrupted by the tyranny of the papacy. Having set forth the way that things were from the beginning, it is now easier to chronicle the forms of Rome as an abuse. Starting with the bishops of his own day, Calvin's day, They fail the test of life and doctrine. Remember 1 Timothy 4.16, watch your life and your doctrine. Calvin says that any of these popes, he says in chapter 5, section 1, that for a hundred years, scarcely one in a hundred has been elected who had any acquaintance with sacred doctrine. And to the test of life, he says, if morals be inquired into, we shall find few or almost none whom the ancient canons would not have judged unworthy. Then he says, but the most absurd thing of all is this, that even boys scarcely ten years of age are, by the permission of the Pope, made bishops. And I believe Leo, at the time of Luther, was made Pope when he was, if not ten, at least thirteen at the latest. Because if you have property, it's like a king. It's this hereditary passing on of privilege. As the population was robbed of the scriptures, the ordination ceremonies took on more pomp that dazzled the simple so that no criticism from the people could ever arise. In 5, section 8, he says, of the priests who are elected, some are called monks, others, seculars. Now, there is an appropriate distinction, even Sproul makes reference to this, to the sacred priesthood and what was called the secular priesthood, was because they understood that all of life was spiritual. But that's not what Calvin's talking about here. This secular priest versus a monk basically divides so monks and seculars, brings these people out to the world, these people sent to a dungeon, in other words, all the people who have the word, and actually they don't, they have it in the Latin, they read the Church Fathers, they go in to confess their sins, and these guys actually wind up running the Church. These guys are the people that are well-to-do, and the people that do well. And so the people that understand doctrine at any level are then put in the dungeon, and the people that do well in society actually run the church hierarchy. We don't do anything like that today, do we? Okay. Isn't it interesting to do a study of the medieval Roman system to see that everything they do is what modern evangelicals do, but we put a happy, commercialized Disney face on it? And so it's not the same thing. It's exactly the same thing at every point. Aside from this being nowhere in scripture or in the early church for Calvin, it is particularly ironic that those who are to be charged with ruling the people by the word are ruled themselves into a darkened monastery cell, chanting the mass to cleanse themselves of their own sins. Where the ancient church acted in simplicity and sacrifice, every office of Rome is redirected to lavishness and gluttony. He uses all these examples of people selling their... in fact, it wasn't Chrysostom, it was somebody else in It escapes me who it was. But somebody that, when things got poor enough, Rome had accumulated enough money where there was good, cool stuff being used in the church. You know, their equivalent of PowerPoint. It would just be good stuff, golden stuff for the communion and stuff like that. And when it came down to it, when there was a famine, they would sell these things and sell even the priestly garments. I forget whether it was Ambrose or whoever, to feed the poor. But you don't see stuff like that by Calvin's day. You see the exact opposite. Chapter 6 of the Primacy of the Romish Sea. I love it. Popery of the Primacy of the Romish Sea. There are two basic arguments utilized by Rome for apostolic succession. The first is that their priesthood stands, just as the Pharisees once sat, in the seat of Moses. By the way, when Jesus says, do what they say, not what they do, they sit in the seat of Moses, he wasn't complimenting the Pharisees' teaching and lifestyle. Okay, so it's funny that Rome claimed that for themselves. But the second argument is that Jesus confers this, this is a more famous argument, this apostolic secession uniquely upon Pete, who was the first pontiff of Rome. So there's an unbroken secession from Christ himself. So the first argument, Calvin answers, that the Old Testament priesthood was unique in redemptive history in that it was a type of Christ transferred to him in the New Covenant. So read the book of Hebrews. It was not transferred to the Pope. This is just one more way that Rome contradicts the heart of the gospel itself, because this is a fulfillment of the gospel story. The fulfillment of this type was with the sacrifice of the great high priest to which so much of the book of Hebrews attests. So having an easy answer to that argument, Calvin then moves on to the more complex one, namely to the claim that this priesthood of Christ was delegated in some sense to the human representative through Peter. So arguing from Matthew 16, 18 through 19, let me just read that. You know that this is obviously a crucial text in the Roman Catholic argument. And there's a lot of things that evangelicals say. Well, his name goes from Simon to Peter, and he changes it back to Simon. Simon means sand. Peter doesn't even mean rock, it means pebble. It was a play on words, and so on. And then he says, get behind me, Satan, and so on. Those are all good arguments, but they don't strike at the heart of it. Matthew 16, 18. and 19 after Jesus says to him flesh and blood is not revealed as to you, but my father who is in heaven is that I tell you you are Peter and on this rock so in the Greek it says you are pebble, but on this rock I Will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That's an argument I was alluding to there, but that's not the biggest argument You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." So, Rome obviously sees Peter and his successors as having been set as this foundation upon this rock. The rock in their mind is referring to the physical man Peter and his successors by that physical descent and having been given the keys with power to bind and loose on earth. Now why should Rome, this is part of Calvin's argument that I'm paraphrasing, why Rome should have Peter represent his successors by inference and not his fellow apostles by inference is never addressed. But at any rate, Calvin responds by saying, the first thing that must be agreed upon is the meaning of these keys, which in chapter six, section four, he calls an elegant metaphor for that unlocking of the way to heaven, which Christ accomplished for us by his work, but which we manifest by faith alone in the church. So remember that, invisible to visible flow. The keys of the kingdom refer to the unlocking of our way to heaven. It is a key to unlock, remember in Revelation, Jesus has these keys. No one can shut but Him. No one can open but Him. That's what He is transferring metaphorically to Peter. So, what is it? What is that testimony? How do we manifest that? By believing. By believing in Him. It's not talking about some physical tease or anything like that. It's a metaphor for what we are doing by faith alone here. Always have your cell phone on when you're teaching. When somebody wants to believe, we affirm on earth what is already the case in heaven. When somebody insists or persists in disbelief, this is what church discipline is. We affirm on earth what is already the case in heaven. The phrase, keys of the kingdom, is repeated in Matthew 18 toward all of the disciples. So Calvin argues in chapter 6, section 4, If the same right which was promised to one is bestowed on all, in what respect is that one superior to his colleagues? He, Peter, he excels, they say, in this, that he received both in common, both meaning Matthew 16 and in Matthew 18. and by himself what is given to others in common only." So you see the Catholic argument. They understand that the key to the kingdom passage, or phrase, is repeated in Matthew 18, and in Matthew 18 it's given to all of the disciples. Rome sees that, and they say, okay, but it's two to one here. Peter receives it by himself over here. The other disciples, what am I trying to say here? The other disciples receive it in common. So Peter receives it in common and uniquely. Score 2 for Peter, 1 for the rest of the disciples. That's the argument. Well, he cites, Calvin does, Cyprian and Augustine to show how just as the unity and diversity in Ephesians 4, there's also unity and diversity in Matthew 16 and 18, to these keys. To one, to show the disciples as a unit, that's in Matthew 16, and to each individually to show the disciples as each unique in Matthew 18. Calvin then cites two sets of New Testament passages. One kind of text from Paul and Peter where they talk about these foundations of the church being the Apostles and the Prophets in Ephesians 2, with a cornerstone being Christ, 1 Peter 2.7, 1 Corinthians 3.11, and all others as equal living stones, 1 Peter 2.3, Ephesians 2.20-22. Peter and Paul are saying that Christ is the only cornerstone and the rest of the foundations is the Word and all the other stones are equally all of the disciples." And then the other set of passages Calvin brings out are those in which Peter interacts with other apostles. And you can see it throughout Acts and Galatians 22 that he submits, Peter submits to their counsel and he submits to their rebuke in the case of Paul in Galatians 2. Moreover, Peter regards himself as a presbyter, a fellow shepherd on par with all other shepherds of local churches from his time until the second coming of Christ. Read 1 Peter chapter 5, the beginning. Fellow presbyter with them. Now even if we were to concede that Christ passed his authority on to Peter, why Rome? That's not mentioned in scripture in any way. I can see that it's 7.30 right now. Basically, the rest of what he does is he chronicles the abuses of Rome and then he shows how this came to happen in history. Through all these church councils, people accumulating more power to themselves, and throughout 7 he does an excellent job of using Gregory, known as Gregory the Great to the English-speaking world, as one of the first popes, but the last good one, who himself, a lot of great quotes, rejected the centralization of power and even called anybody that believes that there should be such a centralized priest, he called him the Antichrist. So one of the first Popes said that anybody that believes in a Pope is an Antichrist. That's kind of inconvenient if you're a Catholic. But he wasn't speaking out of cathedral. So there you have it. I don't know. That's a good question. As far as specifics, I've never seen anybody address that in particular. I'm sure they would say, and other examples have been used like that, Peter falling in the water, Peter being rebuked, saying, get behind me Satan, Peter falling in general, the rooster denying Christ and stuff like that. They'll say, well, he is a man and the Pope is a man, and they'll admit that the Pope is a sinner just like anybody else. And so it's representative that ex-cathedra authority is the Holy Spirit, just like in the councils. So if I'm a Catholic, I'm thinking like this. The best thing you can say for that argument is just like the Holy Spirit superintended the councils that were codifying Scripture, so he superintends, and he's perfectly able to do so, this particular man who's a sinner, nevertheless to speak with infallibility when he's speaking ex-cathedra, and with enough wisdom and enough providence when he's not speaking ex-cathedra. So they would say, yeah, Peter was a sinner. Now, Peter was also married, as the Scriptures say. So, that's a problem. So, for example, the Gospels talk about Jesus going to Peter's mother-in-law's house. How do you acquire a mother-in-law? Yeah. And then Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 says, you know, some of us take our wives like Peter. Peter was married. So you have not-priestly celibacy there. There's other problems too, but anyway. I had a question on that. Early on, kind of in the beginning where you're talking about invisible and universal and the truly spiritual church, the verse maintaining unity, is the maintaining that is still stewarding the invisible, right? Or is there even a... I'm thinking if people are maintaining their own walks, and they're externally beginning to show more fruit, more visible works, stuff like that, on the horizontal. Is it maintaining? What's the essence of that? The ultimate essence would be maintaining the unity of the faith. Now that includes and encompasses being charitable to people, because there's a doctrine of charity. There's a reason why you're charitable to people. Read 1st Corinthians 13, and this is just one example 1st Corinthians 13 gives you a doctrine of true Christian love so there you have if I am Keeping if I'm preserving the true sense of the faith I am one of the things I'm doing is I'm maintaining the true sense of Christian love and that will necessarily Inform how I love other Christians and don't divide with them uncharitably and stuff like that so essentially what you're doing is you're maintaining the unity of the faith and That's the essential thing you do in maintaining the unity of everything else. If you maintain the unity of the faith, by definition, you're maintaining the unity of anything else. And I can prove that. Think of anything else that you would want to maintain the unity of. I used one example of love, but think of anything else. We'll maintain the unity of discipline. We'll keep together the idea of formative discipline and corrective discipline. Okay, what do you mean by that? And you will give me a doctrine In other words, a doctrine that goes together with all the other doctrines. That's what I mean by the unity of faith. So the more systematic and biblical your systematic theology is, the more you will keep everything else unified. Because that's what systematic theology means. You're unifying more and more of the one faith. And in doing that, you will by definition be unifying every other part of life. So the emphasis is on the invisible doctrines that bring out the food visibly. It's not saying, look around and make sure that you see in the physical world a maintaining of the unity of faith. Some people will say, first Corinthians 1, Paul says make sure you're all of one mind, but the same Paul says make sure you have this mind, that Christ Jesus had in himself. You can't just take one thing. You can't just reduce what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 1 to be nice to everybody and do exactly what they tell you to do. That would contradict Paul. Paul's not being nice to the Corinthians and telling them to do whatever the heck they want to do. Read the Corinthian letters. So he can't mean that by being all of one mind. He's also saying be of the right mind. Be all of the same mind. Crazy. He can't mean that. He means be all of the right mind. When Josh asked the question about missiology being within the circle, I drew a circle with it. So you had soteriology, then you had ecclesiology, and I wrote a circle inside that saying missiology. I'm trying to get a picture in my head of how that, can you talk about that? How the structure of ecclesiology, the structure of leadership, I'm trying to connect that to how it works missiologically. Well, one of the things the Church is predicated on is their mission. They are on mission. The reason the missional types put that before ecclesiology and soteriology is that they say, well, God's on mission. He sent Jesus and Jesus told us, as the Father has sent me, so I send you. But that's an analogy. Again, we're not identically doing the exact same thing Christ did. We can't atone for people's sins. So the best thing to say is that there's a sense in which mission, not our mission, there's a sense in which God's mission comes before soteriology and ecclesiology. But that's God's mission. Our mission is not identical to God's mission. That's a mistake that the followers of John the Baptist made who separated and went off early before John the Baptist pointed to Christ instead of his disciples. They should have looked at Christ, but some of them went off and formed a heretical sect that I found out is still existent in Iraq. John the Baptist was the guy, and Jesus wasn't. But their problem was they went out, their mission went out. Yeah, mission of the church in reflection of the mission of God. but it's not the same thing as the mission of God. It's reflected, it's analogous, it's in response to, it's a shadow, yeah. So, you know, how does that, I guess, how does that look if everything is lined up like in our church? I might still have some old ideas that are still predominant, you know, mission meaning going out, out of street witnessing, which is happening, but Is it just as the Spirit gives giftings to people who have a desire to contact people? Those are the specifics of it, but this is the part that missional theology is good about, is that they will correct what's happened in the modern church is that missiology has been sort of compartmentalized, and we ship it out. What's the word for that? Outsource. Outsource, thank you. We outsource missiology to the foreign missionaries. We'd pat him on the back, give him a couple bucks, salute his courage, feel inspired, and then go to McDonald's and wouldn't do anything of the same ourselves. But the reality is, and this is what the missional crowd gets right, the whole church is on mission. The whole church is a missionary in their culture. They're more than that. They're worshipers, they're disciples, but they are that. The whole church is on mission in the place where they are, which can include sending a guy to India. but never excludes where we already are. We have been sent by God here. Even if we don't know that we have been. I guess I'm even thinking, in the church service, there's lots of souls, so there's no shit going on right there. Yeah, they would downplay that because it's a meeting. Too much proposition going on there. But that's the crowd you're dealing with. They're very much influenced by postmodern neo-Marxist thought. This is a really incomplete thought, but the fact that, as it's shown here, things flow from God to the Word to, okay, the way it's just shown there, the Word to us, I just really, I feel like that's kind of always been with the will, how the will focuses on things, like everything flows from the Word, the Word that we preach first and foremost, from the pulpit to our heart, and then by ourselves, to ourselves, to each other, but this is an incomplete thought. And then mission, I know it's supposed to flow out of that, but maybe you can elaborate on that a little bit. I mean, that's the order, right? Yeah, yeah. The Word informs the mission, just like everything else. You would hope the mission is a living, passionate thing, and so therefore, because of that, the Word is the only thing that creates life, any life that's worth having, really, the life of the whole universe. The existence of the universe is only created by the Word, so everything, yeah. There really is nothing to preach missionally, if you put mission outside of Ecclesiology and Soteriology, or before it, I should say. Yeah, yeah. What is being preached at that moment? Something that that person doesn't understand in a way that no one else can understand either, or isn't, isn't truth? Okay, yeah. It is, and especially if you're, and that's, I think that's why we have the written word, and we, and Paul says things like, I didn't shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God, because God God's passion about his mission and his word. And so in his word, he's going to give us exactly the stuff that we need to be on the mission. And what happens here is you have people that don't believe that. Because if they did, they wouldn't separate the information of the word from the passion and the practice of the mission. They separate it because they really don't believe that the one leads to the other. They really believe that to the degree that we concentrate on the accuracy of this word, we're going to be inwardly driven. We're not going to be out there moving. There's assumptions behind that, but it's disbelief. I can say that just in my life, how I see mission happening in my life is as I'm learning, maybe learning how to articulate better the doctrine of salvation and stuff to people who are still Arminian kind of thinking, I find dialogue with them and share with them It was clear to me that in that standpoint.