Am I broadcasting now? All right. OK. So I was thanking you for your long-suffering, your patient endurance with a long-winded fellow named Curtis. I've not seen anyone nod off. So thank you. Thank you. My students sometimes nod off. I throw chalk at them. No, not really. Not really. I will mention that Martin Luther did make the cover of Christianity Today in January, and they did a pretty good makeup job on his corpse, I thought, for this photograph. I don't know who that is playing the role, but they got it pretty well. Luther did look rather like that. And there he is in his doctoral cap and his doctoral gown as he often lectured or preached or appears in portraits from that time. So Luther in the cover of Christianity Today from January. This is the portrait that many would have seen in the publications of Luther from that time, a very different kind of portrait, eh? So this is a woodcut from the year 1520, and Luther was going to be excommunicated by the end of that year. But this is the summer of 1520, and it's the illustration of the author in a book by the scandalous title, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. Wow, what a title. It made the Pope furious. And you can imagine why. Yes, you can imagine why. So, so Luther and Luther using the public media of his own time to massively wonderful advantage. So does anyone know roughly when the printing press was invented? Okay, in the 1450s, I don't know the exact year, but in the 1450s, and good old Johannes Gutenberg, a German printer is the... Ah, you did, and he went bankrupt doing it, you know. Yeah, he went bankrupt. The first real best-selling author that any German printer had was this fellow. Martin Luther was the first best-selling author in printed literature in Germany. So yeah, publishers loved to get his stuff because it would sell. It would sell. It would sell like hotcakes. So I recited a poem this morning and some have expressed some interest in that poem, so I want to read that poem again called Faith. This was the one that was read last Sunday in Helsinki, Finland at the installation of a dear friend as a Lutheran pastor in a congregation there. So the poem is a sonnet that I wrote in honor of that event. Faith, that word lays claim to a grace both great and good, the grace by which we stand as stand we should. It links like chain our poor and mortal plight to heaven's throne till mercy yields its might and earth moves heaven by heaven's mighty gift. So Archimedes' lover even stars must lift and he bends low who is triune majesty. to gaze upon the faith that makes us free. Though mortal minds may drift with time and tide and lose clear sight of how they must confide, the one in whom we trust proves faithful ever, and he who never fails avails forever. Stand true to that word and faith unaltering proves, yet even faltering, faith shall not be moved. That's very much a lutherie poem. Is that a fine adjective, lutherie? Okay, a lutherie poem. Okay, it's Curtis, but it's my lutherie poem on the power of faith. It moves heaven by heaven's mighty gift. Where does faith come from? It comes from heaven. And it moves heaven by heaven's mighty gift. Now, last time I was in Sunday school, that is, on some of the biography of Luther, and I got as far as the speech of Luther before the Imperial Assembly. that horrible name called the Diet of Worms. You know, you think that if you're having a diet of worms, you're eating spaghetti or something. Worms, though, the German city, a prominent German city within the imperial network of the loose alliance called the Holy Roman Empire. And diet is the word for the assembly of the nobles. So the emperor is not really an emperor like Caesar Augustus was. He cannot just command. The emperor is really the glue of the weirdest, largest alliance in Western history. About 80 different princedoms and fiefs and principalities and even apparently free cities are part of this network. It is an alliance at best. And the emperor has the task of herding cats. So here's this 19-year-old boy named Charles V, whose granddaddy dies, and he's the heir to the throne. And he's installed as Holy Roman Emperor upon the election by seven other nobles. Seven nobles vote, including Luther's own prince. And the grandson is chosen. Okay, nobody else really could have been, but the grandson is chosen to become the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. And he's 20 years old when he's on that throne. and a certain rebellious monk is in the room with the nobles and commanded to recant. So Charles has problems galore. Yeah, problems galore. There's a legend about Charles that he collected mechanical clocks Okay, now you're in the 16th century. What's the technology of mechanical clocks? Often it's wooden gears, you know, and various types of springs, and the catchment mechanisms are not quite what they eventually were in Swiss watchmaking, say, 19th century, you know, where you had great accuracy at last, achieved. Charles wanted all his clocks to chime at the same hour, at the same moment. Could he get his collection of clocks to chime at the same moment? No. Could he get all of his subjects to have the same religion? No. All right, so Luther enters into Charles's awareness the very first year of his reign. And it will be a problem that he will never solve. He will retire from the emperorship after 30 years exhausted by it and gladly give it over to others. and retire back home to Spain, which he had always loved, and live the rest of his life as a monk. He'll die holding the cross that his own grandfather held at his death. That's Charles V. but he could never get unity within his empire on the matter of religion. So there is Luther then refusing to retract because to go against conscience is neither wise nor safe. The emperor promised safe passage to this monk to and from Herms, but the emperor is furious and wants to kill this man. And so a few days later, Luther departs from the town with great fear. And as he leaves the fields around the city and enters the forest, he is very fearful, because now it's dark, and who is to see? And he's suddenly surrounded by a band of armed knights wearing masks, and he thinks, oh, this is it, I'm dead. They put a sack over his head. They kidnap him. And when the sack at last comes off his head, he's in the Wartburg castle of his own prince, protected and under a kind of house arrest, safe custody, protective custody, so that he will not be assassinated. He grows a beard, dresses as a knight, takes an alias, wears a dagger, and people call him Junker Jorga, Knight George. And so for the year, he lives in the Hartburg Castle. Nine years later, I'm sorry, eight years later, he'll pen the famous hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. He never says this so much, but many think that the remembrance of the Wartburg Castle is the inspiration for that hymn, which is a paraphrase of Psalm 46. He does not do well during that year of enforced confinement. Luther is an activist and something of a social gadfly, and he loves people and loves talk and loves good Wittenberg beer. And to get, okay, his friends over a fine stein of Wittenberg beer, this is one of the finest things in the world, and he says at one point that beer is proof that God loves us. All right. So, you know, sometimes the water makes you sick, but the beer does not. Okay. Yeah, don't drink the water, but the beer is fine. So Luther will spend that year in some degree of seclusion. He'll nickname the tower room where he has kept the kingdom of the birds, because the birds come to the tower window. And he even begins to name them. He asks very quickly for his Greek and Hebrew Bibles. And it's in that tower room that he translates the Bible, the New Testament into German. So that year ended up being a very productive year. And in 1522, the New Testament is published in German. And he says, my goal in writing this translation is that milkmaids and plowboys will know more scripture than the bishops. And they did. They did. And he wrote it in good, plain German that any milkmaid would understand. Good, plain German. The German of Luther's day was more varied in dialect than the English of England in the year 1600. Think about the variety between Southern Alabama and Inverness, Scotland. Alright, think about the variety of dialect. So Luther's German translation unified German language even more than the King James Version unified English language and remains a translation in print. Okay, so 1534 for the complete Bible, the book is still in print. The King James Bible, 1611, 80 years later about. Okay, that one's still in print. But the Luther Bible is still in print and is a fine translation. So I have a copy of the Luther Bible, which I sometimes read. My German's terrible. I don't read German well or quickly or happily, but I do sometimes read German. So there is something more of the Luther story. There's much more that could be told, but I have now a different duty, which is to press into the story of John Calvin. And do you all have the handout? Did you get the handout? It looks like this. So there is one page with the beautiful self-portrait of the man. No, no. An early 20th century artist sketching Calvin in his healthier days, when he's 30-something. By the time he's in his 50s, he'll be wizened and wrinkled and emaciated because he will have been ill for 20 years. kidney stones, gout, tuberculosis, urinal tract infections. And it's probable that Calvin died of a urinary tract infection that led to a rupture and died of the blood poisoning of the rupture at age 55, 55. J.I. Packer writes that Calvin died for 20 years by inches. Worn out by hard work and illness. Calvin was so important to the city of Geneva that he even contributed to the designs for the public sewage system. How about that? He was consulted on nearly everything. He was almost never a citizen. He was made a citizen at last in the last few years of his life. Didn't have the vote for most of his life. Was endangered often. Was exiled from the city for two and a half years once. They booted him out. They all but rode him out on a rail. And then two and a half years later, they begged him to return. They begged. Calvin famously said, quote, I'd rather die a hundred times in some other way than on that cross. What's the cross? Geneva. You can still buy T-shirts at Geneva College that says something like, I'd rather die a thousand deaths than go to Geneva. But that's one by Geneva College students. Other teachers at Geneva College say, even Calvin studied at Geneva. I like that one. I like that one. All right. So now into the story, then, of John Calvin. And I'm calling this The Sum of Christian Piety. And why this title? I view the title as crucially important for understanding the man, because our common image of Calvin, which we get in textbooks in American public schools, is the aloof intellect who is cold-hearted and who has little love. That's the caricature. How many have heard or read that about this man? Okay, well, it's out there in the literature. I was reading recently a history of economics and that was the description of Calvin. in the early chapter on early economic theory. Yes, Calvin even contributed to that, to economic theory. So, John Calvin and the Sum of Christian Piety. This is a portrait by Hans Holbein, who was the most famous portrait artist in that time, and there is Calvin in his health. Oh, okay, a man of some means. He was actually middle class. His black robe representing his doctoral degree. Calvin was a doctor of, not theology, not medicine, a doctor of law, the doctor of jurisprudence. He had finished his doctoral degree at Paris and was officially Dr. Calvin, doctor of law, a lawyer. Calvin's training was law. And when I was in Geneva for the Calvin 500 road race, which I did not win. I'm sorry, the Calvin 500 celebrations in 2009, the 500th anniversary of the birth of Calvin. They called it the Calvin 500. I went on a tour of the Reformation Museum in that city, and the tour guide said that that finger pointing up, that meant, listen to me. I had to correct her. The upward finger in Renaissance portraiture never means listen to me. It means look to heaven. Yeah, but the docent at the museum said it means listen to me. This is entirely wrong. Look to heaven is what that symbol means in Renaissance portraiture, not just for Calvin, but for many, many others. Look to heaven. Don't look at me, look to heaven. Now, we're talking about the Protestant Reformation and the Reformation at 500. So here's Luther again before the Imperial Assembly with Charles in the nice round hat, the highest of all in the room, and the monk with the table now covered with his books. And what is the Reformation? Okay, it's Protestant, which means protest. It's Reformation, which means reform. And it's not the creating of a new church. How many people in all the universe have the power to start a church? Name that one person in all of history. Jesus alone can start a church. Okay. Is it possible for pastors and and laity and Christian believers to reform a church, to improve it. That's what this is. And so a movement of protest against Roman Catholic abuses and papal tyranny. And we heard something of that tyranny earlier this weekend. And the result is mainly four denominational families in Western Europe, Lutherans, the Reformed, the Anglicans, and the Anabaptists. And we'll date that Reformation event to not quite 150 years. The first public event, okay, we'll start with Luther's posting of the 95 Theses, the first public act of protest that survived. The Hussite protest did not survive. John Hus burned at the stake 1415, the Hussite warriors went to war and usually lost. They survived, but they usually lost. But the Luther movement will survive and not just survive, but eventually thrive. And what Luther began is then extended into further groups that were not so much allied with Luther, but that began with Lutheran insights. So what in the world is the word reformed? That's the Lutheran term for non-Lutheran Protestants who were allied in city-states like Geneva. So you had to have a name for the Protestants who were a lot like the Lutherans but were not Lutherans. So the Lutherans called those other guys the reformed. Okay, so they were Reformation but not Lutheran. And then in England, 1534, Henry VIII rebels because of certain marriage problems. And so we have the origin of Anglicanism. But lo and behold, within 10 years, Anglicanism declares itself reformed through the ministry of its chief bishop, Thomas Cranmer, with whom Calvin corresponded across the water by letter. They exchanged many letters. And Thomas Cranmer's theology is largely the theology of John Calvin. And the Book of Common Prayer and the 39 articles of the Church of England are a modest statement of reformed orthodoxy and reformed piety. And the major exception is that they have bishops. Okay, so Calvinism with bishops. That's Anglicanism a la Thomas Cranmer. When Edward VI's sister comes to the throne, Mary, we'll nickname her Bloody Mary, she will burn Cranmer for his Calvinism. Cranmer will burn. All right, so the fourth group then, the Anabaptists, this name they hated. Ana means again in Greek. So Anabaptists means the re-baptizers. In their view, only adult disciples were the proper subjects of baptism. And so infant baptism was no baptism at all. So they were not doing re-baptisms, they were doing proper baptisms. And as Jesus said, so they thought, upon adult disciples. Notice they did not call it believers baptism. They typically called it disciples. That is, you had to demonstrate that you truly believed, and usually you demonstrated by having had to flee. You had to flee your town because of the persecution against your faith. And those who had suffered had demonstrated discipleship and then could join in the Anabaptist communities, which became often communal. And so they were named by their opponents as Anabaptists. Does anyone know the names of some of these particular groups that are Anabaptist? Mennonites. Okay, so Menno Simons became their leading pastor by the 1540s. He had been a Catholic priest, but after a disaster at the city of Munster in which they staged a revolt, an armed revolt, and Simons' own brother was killed in that revolt, Menno Simons takes charge of the movement by sheer moral power. and manages, despite having a price on his head, to die in his own bed about 35 years later. It was amazing. He dies in his own bed. He's not burnt. Everyone was after him. But he managed to, well, God protected him. So there are four branches of the Reformation. And so on to Calvin himself. There is a portrait of Calvin as a young man in his 20s. Kind of a handsome fellow, eh? Not the greatest talent of the portrait artist, but nonetheless an interesting presentation of the intelligent, somewhat long, gothic face. So this is a typical Central France type feature. Maybe you know people who were born in Paris or Central France, Calvin's birth territory and the The elongated face is typical of French within that region, and Calvin is that. He's born in Noyon, a town, a cathedral town about 65 miles northeast of Paris. He's born July 10, 1509. So in 2009, a whole bunch of reformed folk headed to that other Geneva across the water, 500 road race, I'm sorry, celebration. And I was blessed to be part of that. I was the pinch hitter for the academic papers. If anybody was ill on the academic papers list, I was the substitute. So I had a paper on Calvin's commentary on Haggai ready to give. Sadly for me, but happily for everyone else, no one got sick. So I was the guy who was on deck for the Calvin 500 academic side. By the way, I am about to publish a new article on Calvin's commentaries on the prophets that will come out maybe in a week or two in print in the journal called Unio con Cristo, Union with Christ, published out of Westminster Seminary. So there's Calvin, born in north central France. His father is the accountant for the local bishop. And as the accountant for the local bishop, he is also in touch with the bishop's brother, who is the lord of the region. Lord Louis and Bishop Charles. So Louis and Charles. Okay, Louis and Charles. They rule the territory. Okay, the lord and the bishop are brothers. And Gerard Colvin is the accountant for the bishop. And so the young Jean, is educated with the sons of Louis. He's educated with nobility. Those are his classmates, the sons of the Lord. And so he grows up with aristocratic manners, even though he is middle class only by birth. He knows from childhood how to interact with high nobility. In fact, he will eventually be requested by Francis I, the king of France, to intercede by the diplomatic letter with some of Francis's opponents in Europe, Calvin as emissary for his own estranged king. Oddly enough, Calvin has a price on his head, and Francis, if he had caught him, would have arrested him and beheaded him or burned him, but okay, Calvin in Geneva becomes emissary, oddly enough, for his own king. At age 14, the local school is now done and off to Paris they go, the young men, the sons of Louis and Calvin himself, and so he's now at the University of Paris. The food is awful, by the way. The food is just awful. Calvin complains about the food decades later in letters, mentioning how terrible the food was. But he has excelled in a number of subjects. He's a brilliant young man. He's probably the best Latin stylist in his class. He thinks in Latin. He thinks in French, but he thinks also in Latin. French is the language of home, Latin the language of the university. Calvin is equally adept in both languages. And when Calvin begins to write and publish, often what he writes and publishes in Latin, he will then translate into French and publish it in French as well. Which means that Calvin is one of the first publishers, the first authors, I should say, for what will become standard written French. Calvin is one of the inventors, if you will, of standard written French. So in Calvin's youth at the University of Paris, new ideas are emerging. He arrives in August of 1523. That is the month in which the first Lutheran in Paris is burnt. Whether Calvin is there already when the burning happens or not, we do not know. We don't know the calendar day of his arrival. But August 1523 is when a Lutheran, so-called Lutheran, is burnt at the stake in Paris. And this fills the city not just with smoke, but with rumor and gossip and chat and talk over these new ideas. These ideas from Germany, these ideas from Luther. What's going on? What does all this mean? And people are buying up Luther's books including the Babylonian captivity of the church, and reading them in secret. The books are forbidden, but people buy them anyway. They are bestsellers inside France, even though they are illegal. All right, so new ideas. In 1527, Calvin is now 18 years old, and he goes to Orleans and to Bourges. He has already completed his bachelor's degree. and he is at the top of the class. And he's completed a master's degree, and so he begins the study of law. He's the age of a typical American undergrad, but he's already beginning doctoral studies in law, and at two of the greatest law schools in all of Europe, Orléans, where Joan of Arc was famously active, and Borges, and he'll go to northern Italy and hear scholars in law. Two of his professors have very different methods of the study of law, and this is important. One of his professors is a master of the memory of the law codes, going back to Roman antiquity. He can cite you, so to speak, chapter and verse on virtually any important law code, and most of the minor ones, too. He knows them all. He can cite them. He can quote them in Latin. So mastery of the content of the law codes of the tradition. The other scholar, Alcianti, is an Italian Renaissance scholar. And in Renaissance, there's a different method that grows up. In the Renaissance, we have much more interest in how texts get to be written. So the background, the conditions of authorship and of the construction of texts. So it's not just what the law says, but why it says it, who said it, and when, and what the social conditions were that elicited this construction of law. And it was much more the sense in Alciate that law was a social construct to answer particular social problems at the time the law is written. We'll call that a Renaissance method of law. The other method we'll call a medieval method of law. In the medieval method, you master the contents and you cite them because they're authoritative. In Renaissance method, you understand the reasons, the social backgrounds of authors and times and conditions. And this helps you understand why the law functioned the way it did. Calvin masters both methods. He becomes the master of both methods. And this will actually be immensely important when Calvin becomes a Protestant and begins to write on Bible and theology. Because Calvin will have a massive memory of the texts of the Bible and massive memory of the text of the Church Fathers. but he will also bring the Renaissance method to it, and he will try ardently to understand what was happening in the book of Jeremiah that led the prophet to write in such and such a way. He is a master of the social realities behind rhetoric, and he himself is one of the best rhetoricians of the Renaissance. What is rhetoric? The art of persuasion. the art of persuasion. And so that method of scholarship then teaches Calvin how to understand the origins of biblical texts. Why Paul writes the way he does, say, to the Galatians rather than to the Romans. And so Calvin brings a prodigious memory. He probably had photographic memory for a lot. In one famous story, He's an unknown Protestant theologian, and he's at a debate between Protestants and Roman Catholics. And the previous speaker was a Roman Catholic speaking about the Church Fathers and how the Protestants had neglected the teachings of the Fathers, but the Fathers had set the terms of the tradition, and to depart from the Fathers was to depart from orthodoxy. So you Protestants are heretics, obviously. You depart from the fathers. Who were the fathers? The writers of the first 500 or 600 years of Christianity. People like Augustine and Chrysostom and others. So these are the church fathers, we call them. Calvin then, without notes, stands up. This unknown young pastor, he's about 30. And extemporaneously, quoting church father after church father after church father from memory with citations of which works he's citing, he quotes them to demonstrate that Protestantism is not an innovation, but is rooted in the fathers too. And no one can answer him because he's right. He's right. All right, so there's a brilliant mind, brilliant mind. Now, 1531, going back to my timeline here, and you've got the timeline on this page, and the bold print things are the more important things in the story. So, 1531, Calvin returns to Paris after these journeys and decides that he doesn't really want to be a lawyer. He wants to be an independent scholar like Erasmus. Erasmus is the most famous scholar in Europe. Erasmus is one of the very first people in world history to make his living just by writing and publishing. Calvin wants that. He wants to be able to write, to study, and write, and publish, and to publish in the classics. He loves Roman literature. He loves the Roman moralists. He loves especially the Roman rhetoricians, people like Seneca and Quintilian, who wrote about the arts of persuasion and the moral life that must lie behind the art of persuasion. Calvin loves this more than anything else. He does publish his first book, a commentary on the Roman moralist named Seneca, no relation to the American Indians of this region. Okay, so same spelling, same name, Seneca. Seneca had written a book called De Clemencia. It means concerning clemency. Now clemency is not a term we often use today. It's still in the language. Clemency, we would usually say something like toleration. That is the political virtue of toleration. So think back to John Locke and your high school readings on American politics, and we have a treatise on toleration, that is, where you allow dissent within your republic, because without allowing dissent, there's tyranny. All right, so the degrees of dissent that are permitted is a feature of toleration. Right now, we have all kinds of talk about toleration, but it becomes intolerant. So, you know, do not tolerate those who are intolerant, and we are not tolerated, you know, because we are allegedly tyrannical in our Christian faith, allegedly. Okay, so Clemencia is the issue of the state's forbearance in enforcing its orthodoxies, allowing freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, at least to some degree, and Seneca writes that for the Roman world. Erasmus had written a commentary upon the same work 17 years before. What's Calvin doing? He's trying to out Erasmus Erasmus. He thinks the book will make his name as a scholar. He publishes that at his own expense. He goes into debt, and he can't sell the copies. Nobody wants to buy Calvin on Seneca. So he's very disappointed in that project. By the way, he does change his name because he's now working mainly in Latin. His birth name was Jean Corvin. See it there at the top of the line? Jean. Okay, French for John. Corvin. C-A-U. Well, in Latin you don't spell things like that. So it becomes Ioannis Calvinus. Ioannis Calvinus. Ioannis is Latin for John. It's from Yochanan, the Hebrew name in the Bible, which becomes Yohannes in German, and becomes Ivan in Russian, and becomes Ian in Gaelic, and it becomes John in English, and it's Jean in French. So Ioannes. And the last name now is Calvinus, because Latin names often end with U.S. I guess they're American citizens or something. They have to end with U.S. So Calvinus. Interestingly, it means the bald one. So I guess that makes me a Calvinist already. Yeah, the bald one. Okay, so Calvinus, the bald one. Remember the name of the mountain where Jesus is crucified? What's it called? Okay, so Skoll, the place of the skull. So Golgotha in Aramaic, but Calvary in Latin. Okay, the bald top. Mount Baldy, we might say for English. All right, so Calvinus, the bald one. Was he already losing his hair? We don't know, because always he's painted with a hat on. All right, so those are the early years. Now, in 1533, or maybe slightly before, we don't know when, Calvin has what he calls his sudden conversion. Calvin almost never speaks about his own personal life in his writings. He says that he's shy, and to publish about himself seems proud and sinful, maybe. He doesn't want to do it. But as I said the other night, in his preface to the commentary on the Psalms, there at last he gives us eight pages of autobiography. Why in a preface on the Psalms? Because Calvin feels a deep spiritual kinship to King David, who in many, many of the Psalms is fugitive, exile, persecuted man, fleeing King Saul, 10 years of his life living in the fringes of southern Judah. fleeing the wrath of the king. Calvin lost France because of the wrath of a king. Calvin was a man who was forbidden to return upon the cost of his life. Calvin adored France. Calvin mourned for France the rest of his life. And we should not think that Geneva was actually home for this man. The first reference to Calvin in the city records of Geneva is this, quote, a certain Frenchman was hired to lecture in New Testament, end of sentence. A certain Frenchman. All right, so Geneva in those days is not even Swiss. It's an independent city state. Geneva will join the Swiss Federation in 1815, only after the Napoleonic Wars are done. and they join the Swiss Federation lest they be overwhelmed by some future Napoleon. But the Genevans cherish their independence and they are in the higher elevation above France, you know, in the foothills of the Alps, and they are better than France. All right, so a certain Frenchman, that inferior, okay, he's been hired to lecture in New Testament. That'll happen in 1536. 1533. Now, October 31st, 1517 is the Great Reformation Day. Okay, so the 95 Theses get posted on the church door at Wittenberg, as Philip Melanchthon will tell us. But All Saints' Day is the following day on the Roman Catholic calendar, in the traditional church calendar of the West. Why is Halloween, how does Halloween get its name? The Eve of All Hallows. And what are the All Hallows? The All Hallows are all the holy ones, namely all the saints. So the Eve of All Saints' Day is the Eve of All Hallows, hence Halloween. It's not Witches' Sabbath. It's the night before the church celebrates the victory of the saints who have entered heaven triumphantly, having lived faithfully in the mortal world. You may not know this, because it's almost never in Christian preaching, but the reason that people are dressed up as spooks and witches and spirits and such on Halloween is to celebrate the flight of the powers of evil before the day that celebrated the victory of the saints. When the saints come marching in, the powers of hell flee, and that was reenacted in mockery of the devil." That's the origin of our weird trick-or-treating custom. I want to go door-to-door with my hammer and my monastic robes and say trick-or-thesis. but nobody wants to get a nail in their front door. I don't know what's wrong with those people, but better trigger thesis than trigonosis or something like that. Okay, so anyway, so November 1st, All Saints Day. Now, this was a very important day in the academic calendar in the University of Paris. This was the beginning of the academic year. And so there was an inaugural address for the new academic year. All the professors are gathered, all the students are there, the dignitaries, people from the city. you know, bishops and others, maybe civil leaders, you know, they're all there. And the particular address is to be given by a young man who was a friend of the king, who's just been appointed the rector of the university. Rector means builder. It means academic dean. He's the academic dean of the university, and he's a young man, not yet 30. He's the son of Francis I, personal physician. The physician is Guillaume Copp. The son is Nicholas Copp. And Nicholas's best friend is Ioannis Calvinus, John Calvin. So Kopp is to give the address and in the audience is the faculty of the Sorbonne. Now the Sorbonne is the chief philosophical and theological faculty in the university system at Paris, and these people are the medieval nominalists in their later phase. Thomas Aquinas is no longer the reigning power in this theology. It's William of Ockham and Gabriel Beale, long dead now, but their views are still the dominant views. And these are the fellows who said that grace is given to those who do what lies in them. That is, grace is given to those who do their best. All right, so praise the virtues of the saints because they did their best and emulate them by you doing your best and thus earning the right to further grace from God so that you may be saved. Do otherwise and you risk your own damnation. That's the teaching of the monominalists that reign at the University of Paris in the most distinguished faculty, the Sorbonne. So now Nicholas Copp is in charge of this faculty. And he's been reading Luther. And he's written a speech. We have about two-thirds of the speech in Calvin's own handwriting. Calvin was probably not the ghost writer. Some historians say this. Calvin was probably the collaborator or the consultant on the speech. And Calvin probably made a hand copy of some of the draft early on so he would have a record of it. So we have about two-thirds of Cobb's speech in Calvin's handwriting. And here's the sum of the speech. It's an exposition of Matthew 5, verse 3. Can someone read Matthew 5, verse 3? Anyone have it there? Do you have it there, David? Read Matthew 5, verse 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Wait a minute, this is All Saints Day. when you praise the saints for their victory in their virtues." That doesn't sound like that, does it? Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. To whom does heaven belong? To those who are poor, not those who are rich in spirit. In other words, we can say it this way by fine paraphrase, blessed are those who know they lack virtue, for to them God's kingdom belongs. Or to put it another way in paraphrase, blessed are those who know their need of God. The address is a sternly worded Lutheran speech. Was Nicholas Copp a brave man or a fool? Maybe a bit of both. It was at least a rash deed politically because two days later, two Franciscan monks filed charges of heresy against Nicholas Copp and against Ioannis Kelvius. The police are sent to their apartments to arrest them. Somebody tips them off. And both are able to escape Paris without being arrested. But Calvin flees so hastily that he leaves behind all kinds of incriminating papers, including that handwritten copy of Cobb's speech. Calvin flees to the south of France, lives under an assumed name, Charles d'Esperville, his alias. And there he takes refuge with a Protestant pastor who has a superb library. And Calvin applies himself to the reading of the Church Fathers in a year or so of hiding and begins the first edition of a great book. He also is on record with the first notice of his own preaching. We speak about the underground church, right? Well, Calvin's first sermon was actually literally underground in a cave. He preached in a cave outside Poitiers. We do not know any story of Calvin's ordination. There's no tale of this that survives. But Calvin clearly is operating as ordained clergy in a Protestant setting by the summer of 1534. We do not know how, but it is the fact. Some have claimed then that Calvin was never ordained. I do not believe this to be true. The man was so devoted to the good order of the church. I just believe that we have no record of it. All right, now here in 1536, we have the cover page of the first edition of one of the most famous books in world history. Do you have a copy of it out there? The Institutes of the Christian Religion? Is it on that table? Okay, the table over here? Okay. Okay, and also in the library. You can buy a copy of this book tonight, right? Oh, okay. You can steal a copy of this book tonight. Say again? Okay, all right. So I was given a copy when I was 18. And that copy is now very heavily annotated and dog-eared with all kinds of markers here and there and words in the margins. I have benefited immensely by the study of Calvin's Institutes. The first edition is brief. It's six chapters. It's about the size of the New Testament. So I've got a particular printing of the New Testament, about 400 pages. Okay, Calvin's Institute's first edition is about 400 pages, six chapters. And he calls it almost, almost, the complete sum, not of theology, but of piety. Almost the complete sum of piety. The longest chapter is the chapter on prayer. In the five editions of the Institutes that Calvin will make over the course of his life, that's the chapter that remains the longest one every time, the chapter on prayer. For Calvin, theology is in the service of something greater. What's the greater thing? the love of God. Theology serves the love of God, the life of piety. True theology supports piety. False theology undermines it or destroys it. Okay, so genuflect to the bread because you think it's Jesus and you are committing idolatry. So Calvin will have many words to say about the institution of the Lord's Supper and will expound it more brilliantly than any previous writer even more brilliantly than Luther will. And Calvin will expound the Lord's prayer in a way that will make you weep. And Calvin's persistent theme in piety is this, the call to deny oneself, self-denial, is the major rule of the Christian life, humility. Here's a proud young man of aristocratic bearing, raised with the sons of the Lord, the political Lord, raised and educated at the best university in the world, perhaps. Okay, a doctorate in law. He hobnobs with princes and writes letters for kings. He says that in rhetoric, there are three rules from antiquity given by Demosthenes. The first rule is delivery. The second rule is delivery. The third rule is delivery. If you don't talk well, it doesn't matter what you say. Delivery, delivery, delivery, the three rules of rhetoric. He says in Christianity, it's the same. The first rule is humility. The second rule is Humility. And the third rule, and the fourth rule, and the fifth rule, and the sixth rule, and the seventh rule. If there are any more rules, the rule is humility. What was that beatitude that you read? Say it again. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. God's kingdom belongs to those who are humble and who know they need God. That's the foundation of Reformation piety. And so we're not about spiritual achievements that bring us to some higher life. We are about knowing our deep need for Christ. Five Latin editions, the last one in 1559. There it's about four times its original size. So the first volume is about this big. The first edition about this big. This is my Greek New Testament. The final edition is twice this in four books, usually in two bindings. but a bit thicker than that. And so this is written originally for educated laypeople. It's not a technical work of theology. It's a work in spiritual life. And so, of course, the chapter on prayer is the longest. How many have known that Calvin was far more interested in piety than in theology? Fact. Now is Calvin one of the greatest theologians of all time? Oh yes, fact. Fact. But theology in service of something greater. The truth serves the worship of God. And there is nothing more important than that God should be worshipped well. So there's a photograph of the English version, and then two fellows, one of whom I know, Tony Lane, made an abridgment. There you get it in about 500 pages, the abridged version of Calvin's Institutes. Now, in 1536, there had been a general amnesty proclaimed for so-called heretics in France. Francis I, Roman Catholic king, persecuting king, decides, okay, the kingdom has been so disrupted by the flight of this accursed sect of the Lutherans that let me invite them back to their homes to pay their bills and settle their accounts and maybe sell their houses and leave forever or else be reconciled to Holy Mother Church and be my citizens again. Pick one. You've got six months to do it. So France, sort yourself out. Are you in or are you out? Calvin returns to Paris and pays bills. Because you've got to do that. Settles his affairs and prepares for permanent exile. He sets out for Strasbourg. an imperial city within the German realms, a city that was run by a city council of businessmen, not ruled by a prince. Now, the so-called imperial cities were much freer for religion because businessmen know that if you persecute people who come in for the wrong religion, your sales go down, right? Okay, so religious freedom and good economic practice go hand in hand. That's why Protestantism has been the friend of capitalism and capitalism the friend of Protestantism for several hundred years now. There's a reason for this. The freedom of thought, the freedom of expression, the freedom of economic life. They are natural allies. All right, so Strasbourg is an early capitalist city run by businessmen and the city council, and there's religious freedom within some limits. Calvin goes there, quote, to study and complete peace. He doesn't quite get there. There is war between Francis I and Charles V. Germans fighting French, French fighting Germans, and the war is happening on the road north to Strasbourg. So what do you do? You detour to the east by the major road that way, and it goes to Geneva. So Calvin detours to the night to Geneva and rents a suite of rooms. He's got some cash. Okay, he rents a suite of rooms, and somebody blabs that the author of the hot bestseller, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, is in town. There was a preacher in town named Guillaume Faurel. There's his woodcut, red-haired, red-bearded, fiery temper. And he preaches Reformation. He preaches Luther stuff a lot, but dissents from Luther and other things, so he is Reformed, not Lutheran. And when he hears that the author of this hot book is in town, he marches himself to the inn, finds the room, knocks on the room, is invited in by this slender, pale young man. and they sit down over a cup of wine. Pharrell begins to invite, stay, help us. He knows from the writing that this young man is brilliant, that he understands the scriptures with depth, that he teaches with authority, even though he's not yet 30. Come, help. Calvin says, no, I'm going to Strasbourg to study in complete peace. I'm going to study and publish for the Reformation. I'm called by God to study and publish. No, stay here and help. No, I'm going to strosper. After about an hour of this thing, at last, Pharrell loses his temper. and calls down the lightning strikes of divine wrath upon this young man if he will not stay and assist the work of reformation in this town." And Calvin is so terrified by Pharrell's thunderings that he says, all right, I'll stay, with trembling voice. And so Pharrell and Covain become pastors in the city of Geneva. And one of the major issues now is that the bishops had the power to excommunicate for all these centuries of time. But Geneva had disinvited its bishop in, I think, the year 1531 to join the Reformation. There is no bishop in Geneva. So who has the power to excommunicate, say, adulterers from the church, from the Lord's Supper? Who has the power to keep the sacraments of the church pure? The city council claimed that power. Okay, so a Christian city-state with a city council of businessmen, mainly, okay, we claim the power of excommunication as if we are the clergy. Calvin says, no. Only the ordained have the call from God to guard the sacraments. And he writes a document, he and Pharoah write a document on the order, the ecclesiastical order for the Church of Geneva. But it is rejected. It claims the power of excommunication for the clergy. And because the bishops had so routinely abused this power, Genevans are afraid that a Frenchman might abuse the power. and there are nearly riots in the streets. And Pharell and Colvin are shown the gates of the city, not quite ridden out on a rail, not quite tarred in feathers, not yet, not quite, not beaten up, but told never to return." 1538. Calvin at last arrives in Strasbourg. And I have to ask, how much time do I have? I don't really know. I didn't hear you. Oh, really? OK. We're going to go to eight? Really? Okay, all right. I get wrapped up in stories and I lose track of time and I lose track of almost everything else. I apologize. Well, that's good, okay. So in my classes, the period comes to an end and I don't know it. And someone will say, Dr. Curtis, the period ended seven minutes ago. Okay, that sometimes happens. All right, so Calvin and Pharrell are exiled and now he's able to go to Strasburg and he is gloriously happy. There's a senior pastor in Strasbourg of the German congregation, the non-Lutheran German congregation, that is Martin Bützer, who had been a Dominican monk 20 years before, and who met Luther at one of his disputations, and was converted to Protestantism by listening to Luther in dispute against a Roman Catholic theologian. So the Dominican monk becomes Protestant pastor and ends up in Strasbourg, Dr. Martin Bucer, one of the most published Reformed theologians of that generation. He's 20 years Calvin senior, and he basically adopts this young man and installs him, helps have him installed as the pastor of the church of the French exiles. in Strasbourg. There is that church, Eglise de Saint-Nicolas, the Church of Saint Nicholas, about four or five hundred people, mainly people who have fled France because of the persecutions of Protestants. Calvin is rapturously happy to at last be in Strasbourg, a happy city, a free city. And he begins to write his commentaries. His first Bible commentary is published in Strasbourg. a slender volume expounding the epistle to the Romans, published in 1540. He plans to write on the entire Bible if God will spare him. Romans will be the first of a whole parade of Bible commentaries. The last commentaries were actually published a year and a half after his death, but nonetheless from his own pen. So Joshua comes out in 1565, a posthumous commentary. How you write a commentary after you're dead, I don't have any idea. No, no, I'm sorry. The manuscript was on his desk when he died. His last lectures were on Ezekiel. He got as far as Ezekiel 20. And I guess you could say that Ezekiel killed him. Not exactly. Okay, so the Ezekiel lectures are about two-thirds of the book, about one-third of the book, Ezekiel 1 through 20. So Calvin will publish on almost all the New Testament and about two-thirds of the Old Testament. The Jeremiah commentary is brilliant and 2,000 pages long. Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible. Calvin says it was necessary because every important question is dealt with as briefly as possible. As briefly as possible. He wanted the commentary to be clear and brief, but if it didn't solve the puzzles in the book, it didn't do its job. So brevity and clarity are the standards for Calvin's commentary writing. It should be as clear as crystal, as clear as you can make it, but it must deal with every problem and explain the text. Okay, so a 2,000 page commentary on Jeremiah that is brief, brief and clear. His commentary on Isaiah is a masterpiece, just a masterpiece. I love it. His commentary on Zechariah, I'm writing about that one now. I think my next article might be Calvin on Zechariah. I love that commentary. It is so, so rich. That was published in 1559. All right, so there's Strasburg. Among the various things that Calvin does in Strasburg is get married. So here's this skinny guy who doesn't eat on time. He's so busy writing, he forgets to have lunch. So Butzer says, you need a wife. All right, so Calvin says, oh, well, all right. You can arrange it. Busser finds a fine German aristocratic lady and thinks that it's a good match. Calvin meets her and likes her. She's wise. She's beautiful. She is sweet. But she speaks no French. And Calvin speaks no German. They converse in Latin. They're fine in Latin. You've had Latin lovers, right? Okay. But Calvin can hardly imagine marrying a woman who does not speak French. The language of love, l'amour. Okay, he must have a French wife. And so, Butzer looks around again, and there's this widow that has arrived with her two children. Her husband had been Anabaptist, but she joins the French-speaking Reformed Church. And she is sweet and humble and godly and beauts her arranges that they meet and they marry. Calvin adores her. She will survive seven years and die of a fever. And Calvin will be so grieved at her death that he will never marry again. She was the love of his life. So now in 1539, and I've got about five minutes to tell this part of the story, I guess, a letter arrives in Geneva from a rather wise and influential cardinal of the Roman church named Jacopo Saduletto, Italian of noble birth, now a cardinal prince of the Roman church, and something of a Renaissance scholar. He has read Luther. He doesn't like Luther a lot, but he has read Luther at least. And Satellito writes an elegant letter saying to Genevans, come back home to Holy Mother Church and all shall be forgiven. And as your Protestant views, oh yeah, we too believe that justification is by faith. Turn a page or two in the letter and he says, oh yeah, don't forget works. Works are part of it too. But on the earlier page, okay, justification is by faith. Okay, we think so too. Oh yeah. Two pages later, don't forget works. The city council does not know what to do with this letter. The letter is published and people are reading it and they're perplexed. What do we do with this? An invitation to be reconciled to the reigning powers of the world? The Roman Catholic Church and the local kings? They send a letter to the city council at Bern, their more powerful ally, and the city council at Bern consults Pharrell, and Pharrell says, send it to Calvin. So Calvin gets the letter from Bern, and he is asked to answer it. In six days, he writes 120 pages, the reply to settlement. Both letters are published in a book in Geneva in 1539. Sattoletto's letter saying, come back to Holy Mother Rome, Calvin's reply. Calvin's reply is essentially an argument for the necessity of the reformation of the church. The Reformation is tragic, the Church is split. Yes, yes, yes, but this is necessary for the reverence of God and the life of true piety according to Holy Scripture. Rome is a tyranny against conscience and against God's own teachings. And so this letter wins the day, and Geneva says no to Rome. And they begin to write to Calvin, come back. Come back, we need you. I'd rather die a hundred times in some other way than on that cross. But again, Pharrell thunders forth in letters. He says, if you do not go, God will strike you with his curse. And Calvin writes back, I don't know why you terrify me so much with these thunderings. And at last he says, Okay, I'll go." And sadly he packs up everything, wife and children, two of her children. They had no surviving child themselves. They lost a son, stillborn. But her two children, and Calvin's brother and Calvin's brother's wife. Brother Antoine is essentially Calvin's secretary. And there they arrive in Geneva in 1541. Calvin meets with the city council and says, quote, I am your servant for life. I am your servant for life. And so Calvin then becomes the centerpiece of a ministry in Geneva of preaching and teaching and publishing, often ardently opposed, especially by the wealthy and powerful of Geneva, who at first thought they wanted him. But when their profligate lives became clear, Calvin exercised, with the church session, the power of excommunication. One wealthy man, so offended by this exercise of church discipline, in the middle of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, came down the aisle with his sword drawn, demanding to be given the sacrament. And Calvin stands in front of the table and declares, I will not give what is holy to those who are unholy. Skinny Calvin, who made me 130 pounds, facing a drawn sword. At one point in the city council meetings, the arguments are so contentious that two factions divide and draw their swords. They're about to go to war within the council meeting. Calvin is in the next room writing. Calvin runs into the room, stands between these factions with their swords drawn and says, if there is blood to be shed, let mine be the first. Wow. Okay, the skinny guy who has no physical strength and who's ill. Brave. Brave in the love of God. So eventually Calvin wins the confidence of Genevans. And refugees are pouring into the city from all over Europe. And this becomes one of the most important features of life in Geneva. When Calvin arrived, it was 10,000 people. A modest city-state, nothing quite like Paris or London, a modest city-state. In the years of Calvin's pastorate, the population will double, 21,000 by the end of Calvin's life there, and every year thousands will arrive in the city as refugees fleeing persecution, some of them still with the blood of their murdered pastor husbands on their nightgowns as they arrive in the city. And Calvin organizes diaconal ministries to deal with thousands of refugees that arrive in the city. Typically in a year, 5,000 people will arrive and 1,000 will remain. The rest will be sent on after three or four or five months with means, with letters of introduction, with the possibility of new life elsewhere in peace. So Geneva becomes the most international city in Europe. By the way, where's the International Red Cross headquartered? Oh, where's the European center of the United Nations? Geneva. Why is Geneva this international city? Because in Calvin's time, it was the most international city in the world. People fled from all over Europe for the safety of Geneva and for the clear proclamation of the gospel. So Calvin lecturing on Bible in Latin. Okay. A couple of times a week he lectures on Bible. Who's there? The building itself seats 200 people, but there are 1,000 people listening because they've gathered at the doors and the windows and at standing room only to hear the one-hour exposition of Bible by Calvin twice a week. He must have been a spellbinder. He must have been. And there are three young men sitting in the front row transcribing every word in shorthand so that the next day a complete text can be presented to him in his morning before breakfast when he's still in bed writing letters. And he'll check the text and say, yes, I did say that. Or maybe he'll correct, no, I didn't say that way, I said it this way. And the page then reports what Calvin said. And off to the printer it will go to be published in the next set of Bible commentary. And so Calvin publishes lectures as commentary. And by 1559, Geneva has become the most important center, you ready? For the evangelization of the world. Because now Geneva is armed and ready for the gospel. People come to Geneva to be trained in gospel. People are sent from Geneva, trained in gospel, ready to minister elsewhere. And Geneva becomes the theological pastoral training ground for thousands over these years. And even the new world is in view. Calvin will send a team of missionaries to what is now Venezuela. to the mouth of the Orinoco River. There they will be massacred by Spaniards and Native American Indians. But Calvin wants, yes, even to reach the new world with the gospel. How many think of Calvin as world evangelist? But this is fact. And so we have then the story of Calvin. There's his house. They renamed the street Rue Covin, Calvin Street. It wasn't called that back then. That house is about 14 feet wide. This is not a rich man's house, but that was Calvin's house. And from a second floor office in that house, adjacent to his bedroom, he wrote letters to the kings and princes and pastors and bishops of the world, seeking to extend the gospel of Jesus Christ everywhere he could. And so that humble house, no servant, you knock on the door, Calvin himself might answer the door. Humble man serving God in this way, dying by inches for 20 years. I'll skip several things and go to this last frame here. Oh, I'm way over time, pardon me. 1564, Calvin is in his last illness. He preaches his last sermon in February. He's been carried to the church on a litter because he cannot walk. He preaches from a chair because he cannot stand. At the end of the service, he's carried out, and the congregation sings one of the non-psalms from the Genevan Psalter, which was newly published. The book has all the psalms set to music. It's the hymnal of the Genevan church. But there's a few things that are not the Psalms, and this is one of them. Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation, a light of revelation to the nations and the glory of your people Israel. What's the source of the text? It's the song of St. Simeon, in Luke chapter 2, when he sees the infant Jesus brought to the temple. Lord, at your servant now depart in peace. It's called in Latin the nuc dimittis, now let depart. The congregation sings this as Calvin is carried out of the church on his litter. Three months later, he is dead of that septic illness, worn out after 20 years. But a legacy that endures in clear evangelical gospel. I'll end right there. Thank you for your attention. Are there questions that you would like to raise? I know it's been a long night already, 6.30 we started, it's now nearly 8. Mark, how long do we have for questions by your great patience? Two or three questions, okay. So what do we need to ask to clarify? R.C. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. I know that the Spanish inquisition was consulted. In fact, they consulted Geneva. They wanted to extradite Cervetis back to Spain because he'd escaped from a Spanish prison under the Inquisition. So who is Cervetis? He's a Spanish medical doctor who also wrote theology. I'll show you the screen that I skipped because there was no time. OK, so there's a portrait of Cervetis. And he has written a book called the Restitutio. I thought I had an image of it. I guess I don't. OK. He's written a book called the Restitutio of the Christian religion. The title page is modeled on Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin and Servetus had corresponded by letter. Calvin had said to Servetus, never come here. Never come here. But one day Servetus shows up in the congregation, and he's recognized because his portrait's in his books. And he's arrested because he is an anti-Trinitarian. His restitutio book is a Unitarian treatise against the doctrine of the Trinity. So Jesus is a created power, not the native son of God, not the Trinitarian second person of the Trinity. Okay, so anti-Trinitarian, probably mentally unbalanced. He's the sort of fellow that loved attention, even if the attention was very negative. He wanted to be the center of attention, even if it meant pain. And he probably gloried in pain. So he sought persecution. When he arrives in Geneva, he seems to want to replace Calvin, because in this particular year, 1553, Calvin's position is precarious, and the opponents of Calvin are strong, and there are death threats against Calvin. He walks into the pulpit, there's a knife stuck into the wood with a note, basically, you know, leave, leave or die. Gunshots are fired at his house in the dead of night. People set their dogs on him because he insists upon Christian piety. All right, so Calvin says don't come. When he does come, the city council is the power at work, not Calvin. Calvin held no office except pastor. The city council consults the Spanish Inquisition because the Spanish Inquisition had requested extradition. Send him back to us. We'll deal with him. But the City Council wants to out-inquisit the Spanish Inquisition. They want to prove to the world that they are as ardently Trinitarian as any Roman Catholic Spaniard. So how do you do that? You burn a Unitarian. And the City Council is the power at work, not Calvin. Calvin is a witness for the prosecution. That's true. Calvin attempts to save Cervantes' life. Because Calvin will go to the prison cell with his Greek and Hebrew Bibles and with Pharrell and other pastors to seek to persuade Servetus of Trinitarian gospel. But he will fail. The last night of Servetus' life, Calvin is there in the prison cell pleading. Pleading, but not succeeding. Calvin requested the council, don't burn the man, that's inhumane. A painless death. Here's what Calvin suggests, beheading. Okay, sever the spinal cord. Don't burn the man. Servetus is burnt the next morning. His last words are these, Jesus, Son of the Most High God, have mercy on me. What does he mean by Son of the Most High God? Highest creature. And so Servetus dies proclaiming his Arian heresy. It is Calvin's worst moment, but it's the city council's deed. And Servetus is the only such person in Geneva to be put to death for heresy. There are legends that, you know, hundreds of people died this way. No, no, no, no. One. In Paris, thousands of Protestants were murdered, but Paris is not remembered as a city of martyrdom. Oddly, Geneva had one heretical martyr, and Geneva is utterly remembered for this one death. It is Calvin's worst moment. That was a long answer to a hard question. But there's lots of claptrap written about this event. And what I've reported to you is the consensus of scholarship from the primary documents, which I have read. Which I have read. Another question? We have time for another question? That was a long answer, I know. OK. Another question? Who would like to ask something? Is it Al? There's a different understanding that Calvin and Luther We have record of a letter that Calvin sent Luther, but there's the sense that it never arrived. Calvin did correspond with Luther's best friend, Philip Melanchthon, and they became good friends. They met at conferences here and there, and Calvin had immense respect for Philip Melanchthon. In fact, Calvin thought that Melanchthon was the best theologian in Europe. How about that? Well, Calvin was the best theologian in Europe, but he was too humble to recognize his own skill. Melanchthon was a great theologian, but by the end of his career had become a compromising theologian. His opponents within Lutheranism actually called Philip Melanchthon a crypto-Calvinist. And this was a damning insult for Lutherans. If you're a Crypto-Calvinist, you're really not a Lutheran anymore. So that was over Philip's opinions on the Lord's Supper, which seemed not by the end to match Luther's doctrine of the Supper. Philip seems to have moved to something like Calvin's position on the Lord's Supper, which is spiritual presence, but it's not altogether clear. Yes, so Philip and Calvin corresponded. Philip dies in 1560. Calvin dies in 1564. Philip is older than Calvin by 15 years or something like that. But Calvin respected him immensely. And Philip of Lanceston had very high regard for John Calvin and really, really mourned over the fact that the South German Lutherans would never be reconciled with those Reformed folk down there in Switzerland and Geneva, they would never be reconciled. Calvin sought reconciliation, but could not get it. One more, and then I think we're done for the night. Well, maybe we're done for the night. Okay. You mentioned stereotypes. Yes. And my freshman year at a liberal arts college, I said something nice about John Calvin, and several people jumped ugly all over me. Oh, no. Don't you know that he whipped his little daughter naked through the streets of Geneva for dancing? And I found out later that his daughter, his stepdaughter, it was for adultery. He didn't do the whipping himself. It was the city council that did these kinds of deeds. Yeah. Well, there's a series of books called The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durand. Maybe you have them on your living room show. They were sold like world book encyclopedias. They were sold out of Reader's Digest advertisements all over the United States in the 1960s and following. Will and Ariel Durant were a team of historians, husband and wife. They lived into their 90s. Will Durant began as a student for the Russian Orthodox priesthood, but during his seminary read Spinoza and lost his faith and became an atheist and became a terrible historian. And in his book on the Reformation, It's absolutely terrible. You read his report of Calvin, and Calvin's murdering people by flame and sword, right and left, and killing people for adultery, and he's the dictator of Geneva. None of this is true. So what he was reading was Roman Catholic criticisms of Calvin published as propaganda in the 50 years or so after Calvin's death. And he wasn't reading the city council records of Geneva and the actual letters and correspondence and records of that own time. It wasn't until the 1960s that the city council records of Geneva were published. And that was what changed the better historians on this story. So now we have a great deal of the published record of the era of Calvin, that the minutes of the city council exist. And the story is very, very different. And in the case of married partners that were estranged and wanting divorce, okay, the usual ending of such a meeting with Calvin or the city council was you hugged and forgave each other. That's what the records show. Okay, not whipping through the streets. Calvin's sister-in-law loved to dance. Antoine's wife. and she was rebuked more than once by the city council for her dance parties. Calvin didn't approve of dancing, oh well. All right, I'll do one more, David. Go ahead, is that a hand up? In light of all this and 500 years later looking back, what would you say is the cost of not standing for these fundamentals? Oh, okay, what's the cost for not standing for these fundamental truths? Okay, I'll tell you the cost of it. Whole denominations gone haywire and faithful remnants being forced into exile in something called, well, okay, the PCA. and institutions that had once been bastions of orthodoxy, such as, can I name them? Princeton Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Austin Theological Seminary. Okay, let me name the Presbyterian seminaries, which are now hotbeds of heresy and error and incompetence. And where do you learn real theology now? In a handful of reformed seminaries that have mainly been formed in exile from their parent institutions or formed out of nothing by the sheer willpower of minorities of people within American Christendom and elsewhere in the world. Okay, so Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia is Princeton in exile. Seven faculty members stomped out in protest over a liberal majority that now ruled the school in 1929. And in this part of the world, the Presbyterian Church, USA, refuses to enforce its own ordination vows. And those who want to hold the ordination vows are forbidden to be ordained. The Will Kenyon case, 1974, which went to the General Assembly and Will Wynn lost that case. What did he want? He wanted the right not to ordain women. He didn't ask never to work with ordained women. He wanted the right just not to participate in an ordination service for a woman as pastor, which had been the Presbyterian standard. And even this tiny bit of conscience was not granted to Wynne Kenyon. And that was the decision that broke western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, because Wynne was from the Newcastle area, not far from here. And his father pastored a Presbyterian congregation in Wurtenburg, just north of Beaver Falls. That case was a Pittsburgh Presbytery case in 1973. And in 1974, the Capitol Union Presbytery, which was Washington DC area, received by transfer a minister who did not believe in the Godhead of Jesus Christ. And the moderator at that meeting was the associate pastor of the church in which I grew up, Beulah Presbyterian, on the parkway just east of Pittsburgh. He'd gone to Capitol Union for a new church and was the moderator that year. And under his moderatorship, this man was received as a minister who did not believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. All right, so let the church not enforce its piety. And especially upon its clergy. Let's not enforce it upon the clergy. And now, 40, 50 years later, where are we? Well, you told me horror stories of the General Assembly even 20, 30 years ago. And a church that no longer serves the gospel. And that will hardly tolerate you if you want to serve the gospel. A church that is no longer the church. All right, so we have the need to enforce the standards of ordination and the standards of church life. All right, I'm done haranguing on that. So is God good? Is the gospel generous? Is grace clear? And are we reconciled now, not by our own works, but by faith in Jesus Christ, who is the living demonstration of the grace of God? We are. And so let us say, thanks be to God. Mark, would you pray for us? Father, we thank you that you are indeed good, and that you have shown us your grace in your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the great good news of the gospel, those lives who bear testimony of standing for that gospel. We pray, O Lord, that you would enable your church today, your true church, to stand firm on the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for these times we've shared together. Thank you for Dr. Curtis. We pray your blessing upon each one of us, and we ask your blessing upon your church, that it would be a light in the midst of a dark world, and that it would declare the wonders of the majesty and the glory of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. in whom alone is our life. Bless us in Him, we pray this time. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you all for your patient endurance over some long hours here. I'm grateful for your kindness.