July 10 was the birthday of John Calvin. (That's one of the few birthdays I easily remember because it happens to be identical to my own.) Born in 1509, the Reformer had and continues to an extra­ordinary degree to have to have a role in church his­tory as the great teacher of the reformation. Rev. J. Van Harmelen in the May 12 Wachter called atten­tion to the fact that the school which Calvin opened in Geneva attracted 900 students from many coun­tries. In his lectures, as in his commentaries which were the student notes of those lectures, as well as in his Institutes, constantly reworked and amplified over 25 years, he simply tried to teach all who would listen how to study and apply the Holy Scriptures.

It is doubtful whether many historical figures have been more widely misunderstood and misrepresented, right down to the present day, than Calvin. He was and is charged with being stubborn, hard, opinionated and arrogant (sometimes por­trayed as the ruthless dictator of Geneva). What kind of man was Calvin?

Warfield's Insight⤒🔗

Benjamin B. Warfield in a remarkable little 5-page essay on "John Calvin the Theologian" (in the Ap­pendix to the Presbyterian and Reformed Publish­ing Company's volume of Warfield's writings on Cal­vin and Augustine, pp. 481 ff.) corrected some basic misunderstandings about the Reformer. He pointed out that Calvin's work was widely described as be­ing (1) speculative and (2) rationalistic, whereas it ac­tually was the exact opposite. Instead of indulging in speculative guesswork or cold deductive reason­ing,

In one word, he was distinctly a Biblical theolo­gian, or, let us say it frankly, by way of eminence, the Biblical theologian of his age. Whither the Bible took him, thither he went: where scriptural declara­tions failed him, there he stopped short.

It is this which imparts to Calvin's theological teaching the quality which is its prime character­istic and its real offense in the eyes of his critics — I mean its positiveness. There is no mistaking the note of confidence in his teaching, and it is perhaps not surprising that this note of confidence irritates his critics. They resent the air of finality he gives to his declarations, not staying to consider that he gives them this air of finality because he presents them, not as his teachings, but as the teachings of the Holy Spirit in his inspired Word." "Calvin re­fused to go beyond 'what is written' — written plainly in the book of nature or in the book of revela­tion. He insisted that we can know nothing of God, for example, except what He has chosen to make known to us in His works and Word: all beyond this is but empty fancy, which merely 'flutters' in the brain. And it was just because he refused to go one step beyond what is written that he felt so sure of his steps. He could not present the dictates of the Holy Ghost as a series of debatable propositions."¹

This perceptive observation of Warfield can be very helpful to us who in our day have to take and uncompromisingly hold positions on matters that concern the inerrancy and authority of God's Word. We are, at times called, and can expect to be called stubborn, opinionated and arrogant — "Won't you ever quit?" "Why do you have to stir up trouble?" "You think everybody has to agree with you!" "If some churches want or 'need' women deacons, or elders, or preachers, why can't you just let them free?" What the critics fail to see and do not want to see is that these present controversies are not just matters of personal inclinations, likes and dislikes, "cultural" conditioning, temperament, etc. They concern what God's Word clearly says. That may not be negotiated away in political compromises as though it only involved personal tastes or the rigid­ity or flexibility of personalities. Calvin's own im­portance and enormous influence arose, as Warfield aptly observed, not out of his personality, but out of the fact that he so single-mindedly labored to teach only what God said. To the extent that he was per­mitted to succeed in this effort, if somebody didn't like that, it was unfortunate for him. His quarrel was not with Calvin, it was with God.

But what kind of man was Calvin, the man so en­grossed in teaching the Word of God? In the large volumes of his writings, there is little information of a personal or private character. He was usually very reticent about such matters. Only in his introduction to his commentary on the Psalms is there an excep­tion to his general reticence, and it gives us in his own words a fascinating glimpse of the life of Calvin as he saw it.

Calvin's Comments on His Own Life←⤒🔗

In this introductory essay to the psalms he ob­serves that the many controversies into which the Lord had led the course of his life and "in no ordi­nary degree" helped him both to understand and to apply "to present use whatever instruction could be gathered from these divine compositions." Although he did not want to compare himself with David, he had endured many of the same kind of things that David had at the hands of the "domestic enemies of the Church."

He saw "that whatever that most illus­trious king and prophet suffered, was exhibited to me by God as an example for imitation. My condi­tion, no doubt, is much inferior to his ... But as he was taken from the sheepfold, and elevated to the rank of supreme authority; so God having taken me from my originally obscure and humble condition, has reckoned me worthy of being invested with the honourable office of a preacher and minister of the gospel. When I was as yet a very little boy, my father had destined me for the study of theology. But afterwards, when he considered that the legal profession commonly raised those who followed it to wealth, this prospect induced him suddenly to change his purpose."

And so, in obedience to his father, he devoted himself to the study of law. But God had something else in view for him.

And first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the supersti­tions of Popery to be easily extricated from so pro­found an abyss of mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected at my early period of life.

I was quite surprised to find that before a year had elapsed, all who had any desire after purer doc­trine were continually coming to me to learn, al­though I myself was as yet but a mere novice.... Be­ing of a disposition somewhat unpolished and bash­ful, which led me always to love the shade and re­tirement ... to live in seclusion without being known, God so led me about through different turn­ings and changes, that he never permitted me to rest in any place, until, in spite of my natural dis­position, he brought me forth to public notice.

He went on to relate that when he fled from France in search of quiet "in some obscure corner," "many faithful and holy persons were burnt alive in France" and in order to excuse this atrocity, reports were being circulated that the persecuted were only "Anabaptists and seditious persons, who, by their perverse ravings and false opinions, were over­throwing not only religion but also all civil order." A sense of the urgent need that the Reformed be vin­dicated against the outrageous charge that they were only anarchistic guerillas drove Calvin to pub­lish his Institutes of the Christian Religion. At first it was "only a small ... summary of the principal truths of the Christian religion." So far was he from seeking fame as its writer, that he published it anonymously.

Still seeking privacy, Calvin recounts how he was en route to Strassburg, when he was compelled by the war situation to detour and spend a night in Geneva. His presence there was reported to Farel, the Genevan Reformer, who sought him out.

Calvin told how "Farel, who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel, immediately strained every nerve to detain me. And after having learned that my heart was set upon devoting myself to pri­vate studies, for which I wished to keep myself free from other pursuits, and finding that he gained nothing by entreaties, he proceeded to utter an im­precation that God would curse my retirement, and the tranquility of the studies which I sought, if I should withdraw and refuse to give assistance, when the necessity was so urgent." "Stricken with terror" by this imprecation, Calvin stayed.

He, as he said, felt it "to be as if God had from heaven laid his mighty hand upon me to arrest me." After some four months in the tumultuous city, "being, as I acknowl­edge, naturally of a timid, soft, and pusillanimous disposition, I was compelled to encounter these vio­lent tempests as part of my early training; and although I did not sink under them, yet I was not sustained by such greatness of mind, as not to re­joice more than it became me, when, in consequence of certain commotions, I was banished from Geneva."

He describes how, relieved from the unwelcome burdens of Geneva, he again sought rest in Strass­burg, resolving "to live in a private station, free from the burden and cares of any public charge," only to experience that "that most excellent servant of Christ, Martin Bucer, employing a similar kind of remonstrance and protestation as that to which Farel had recourse before, drew me back to a new station. Alarmed by the example of Jonas which he set before me, I still continued in the work of teach­ing. And although I always continued ... studiously avoiding celebrity; yet I was carried, I know not how, as it were by force to the Imperial assemblies, where, willing or unwilling, I was under the neces­sity of appearing before the eyes of many."

He tells how some time later, again contrary to his "desire and inclination," he had to return to Geneva.

The welfare of this church, it is true, lay so near my heart, that for its sake I would not have hesitated to lay down my life; but my timidity never­theless suggested to me many reasons for excusing myself from again willingly taking upon my shoulders so heavy a burden.

Loving quiet privacy, Calvin describes how he was thrown into one conflict after another. Against the libertines, he said,

I was under the necessity of fighting without ceasing to defend and maintain the discipline of the Church." "Because I affirm and maintain that the world is managed and governed by the secret providence of God, a multitude of pre­sumptuous men rise up against me, and allege that I represent God as the author of sin. This is so foolish a calumny, that it would of itself quickly come to nothing, did it not meet with persons who have tickled ears, and who take pleasure in feeding upon such discourse." "Others endeavour to overthrow God's eternal purpose of predestination, by which he dis­tinguishes between the reprobate and the elect; others take upon them to defend free if they were open and avowed enemies, who brought these troubles upon me, the thing might in some way be borne. But when those who shroud themselves under the name of brethren, ... those, in short, who loudly boast of being preachers of the gospel, should wage such nefarious war against me, how detestable is it?

He deplores the way in which those who op­posed his teaching about the Lord's Supper attacked him more vehemently than they did the enemies of the church even though they served a common cause with him. He concluded this unusual biographical reflection with the terse observation,

This knowledge and experience have been of much ser­vice in enabling me to understand the Psalms, so that in my meditations upon them, I did not wander, as it were, in an unknown region.

Could anything show more clearly than this per­sonal account of Calvin's experience how far the fic­tion of Calvin, the arrogant, power-hungry dictator of Geneva is from the facts of history? Many men, captives to the materialistic and humanistic pre­judices of our time which rule out any recognition of either God's providential government or the work of His Spirit and Word, misinterpret the history of the Christian church in much the same way that they do the Scriptures, and therefore attribute to personal oddities or genius what is really not the work of the men at all but the work of God with ordinary people. Recall the Apostle Paul's observations about that fact in 1 Corinthians 1:26-3:7,

God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are strong." "Neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

Although Calvin had remarkable gifts and used them with unusual diligence, he, like the Apostle, stressed the fact that what was being accomplished was not his work but the Lord's.

A closer acquaintance with Calvin's experience as well as with his writings may encourage many a bur­dened Christian in our time who is engaged in one way or another in the same struggle as he was for the gospel and for the church against what seem overwhelming and discouraging odds. The story of God's work is not the story of extraordinary human genius, but of ordinary people, sometimes even unu­sually timid ones, who by God's gracious calling "from weakness were made strong" and so "by faith conquered kingdoms" (Hebrews 11: 33, 34).²   That is the way in which the Lord worked with men in the past — and still does.