All right, let's go ahead and get started. We'll be talking about John Calvin's preaching ministry this afternoon. Hopefully you enjoyed lunch, and I know this is kind of like the nap slot here, where people are a little tired, had a good meal, and whatever. All right, you can see we have a fairly thick set of notes. I may end up skimming at points, but we have pictures, right? This is church history, so we have pictures for interest and such. Alright, we'll start on page one here with a large text. When most believers hear the name John Calvin today, they likely imagine a towering figure with a long gray beard, the quintessential Reformation theologian. Perhaps they think of a certain botanical acronym, or maybe they picture a thin but imposing Frenchman who baptized babies and burned heretics. These images are not completely wrong, but they're far from complete. Calvin was an important and influential theologian, but he was much more than an ivory tower theologian or dogmatician. He was first and foremost a pastor and a preacher of God's Word. Today Calvin's best known for his commentaries, his theological treatises, and his institutes of the Christian religion. Indeed, Calvin did write commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible, and many modern scholars still cite his commentaries due to the quality of his work. If you read, like, Doug Moo's commentary on Romans, he'll refer to Calvin, or Hohner's commentary on Ephesians, he'll refer to Calvin numerous times. Like Martin Luther and others, Calvin also penned occasional triuses with titles like Psychopanechia, which was a book written against soul sleep, a short trius on the Lord's Supper, a trius on relics, and the Bondage and Liberation of the Will, which unlike Luther, Luther wrote against Erasmus. Erasmus wrote a book, The Freedom of the Will. Luther responded with The Bondage of the Will in the mid-20s. Calvin was responding to someone, but it wasn't Erasmus, it was a Catholic theologian named Albert Pigius. who wrote a book on the human free will and divine grace and Calvin wrote back against that. So somewhat like Luther but 20 years later. Beginning in 1536 Calvin published the first edition of his constantly expanding Institutes and over the next few decades those Institutes would appear in increasingly larger volumes in both Latin and French. The Latin was for the Academy and for the church and the language of the church, and the French was for his fellow Francophones. So his fellow people, the people he preached to mostly, could understand the Institutes. Yet throughout his adult life, Calvin was above all else a preacher. He wrote all these other things, but he was mostly a preacher. In this workshop, I want to begin by placing Calvin in his historical context. Then we'll examine Calvin's view of Scripture before we look at both what Calvin said about preaching and then look at his actual preaching ministry itself. So we'll start by talking about Calvin the man and basically asking the question, who was John Calvin and what was his role in the Reformation? So on page two, we start very early on July 10, 1509, Calvin was born to Gerard and Jeanne Calvin in the cathedral town of Neuillon, France. This is north of Paris. So Calvin was born almost 26 years after Martin Luther and was only then eight years old when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg. So Calvin and Luther are not like exact contemporaries. They would end up reading each other's books later on in Latin. But Calvin's only eight years old when Luther kind of kicks things off by initiating this disputation, gets the ball going in the Reformation. So Calvin is very much a second-generation reformer, and he and Luther would never meet. Kevin's father was a lawyer and a member of the bishop's staff in Noyon, in this cathedral pictured here. This is a cathedral, very ancient cathedral, started in the 1100s. I mentioned there it's an example of transitional Gothic architecture. The transition from Romanesque to Gothic architecture still has some thick walls, but the arches are starting to change shapes and things like that. If you're an architecture buff, would be an interesting building to stay. Calvin was a brilliant young man. His father made sure he received an excellent education. Calvin entered the University of Paris at the age of 14 to study for the priesthood, as his father whined. Also studying in Paris at that time were two other notable students, Francis Xavier and Ignatius Loyola. Yes, these are the guys who would end up co-founding the Jesuit Order and strong Catholic apologists, really, very active in the Counter-Reformation of the mid-century. Incidentally, Calvin's first biographer, a man who knew Calvin, Theodore Beza, said that Calvin started preaching sometime in his 20s. Occasionally would preach in, for instance, his dad's hometown and perhaps a few other villages. but Calvin's still a good Catholic at this point. After Calvin had completed four years of study in Paris, his father had some kind of falling out with the Bishop of Noyon and was excommunicated from the church. Gerard then urged his son to abandon studies toward the priesthood and instead pursue a legal career which would be more lucrative. Calvin dutifully transferred from Paris to the University of Orleans in 1528 in order to study law, and at the time that university was a center of humanistic studies studying ancient documents, writings from antiquity. Calvin was soon studying Greek, though, with Melchior Wollman, a known Lutheran, and this would certainly have an impact on him in the years to come. Calvin graduated from the University of Orleans in 1531 with a license to practice law. After his father's death in May of 31, Calvin decided to pursue further studies in classical literature in Paris. His first book, published in 1532, was a commentary on Seneca's book, De Clementia. This was a pretty standard way of kind of earning your academic teeth. You would write a commentary on an ancient book. Seneca was actually born almost at the exact same time as Jesus, a few years BC, and would live longer, die in his 60s, but was essentially a, he was a Stoic philosopher who lived in the first century. And Calvin, he wrote, De Clementia was a book written, addressed to the Emperor Nero, urging clemency, as the title suggests. And Calvin wrote a commentary on that, which would kind of set the pattern for how he would write his commentaries. The method he develops in writing this early commentary on non-biblical, in fact, non-Christian source would be the same method he would use as he picked up books of the Bible and began to write commentaries on them. 1533, Nicholas Copp, newly appointed rector at the University of Paris and a friend of Calvin's, gave a speech which bore some resemblance to the teachings of Luther. A number of the university's officers opposed any hint of Reformation ideas in the university and things became such that Copp was forced to flee the country France. Some people thought Calvin had actually written that speech, and there's actually a pretty good argument for that. There are two copies of that speech in existence. One is in Copp's hand and is complete. It has all kinds of notes added to it. The other is much more polished and is not complete. They've lost a couple of pages, but it's in Calvin's hand. So you could argue Calvin wrote the first draft and Kopp perhaps modified that, expanded it, whatever. Theodore Beza thought that Calvin was responsible for that. So anyway, many people thought that Calvin had written that and so people went to arrest Calvin, at his university course, basically went to his dorm room to arrest him. He wasn't there, but he found out that people were after him, and so he had to flee. He actually sneaks out of Paris at that point, disguised as a farmer, which would have been an amusing thing to see, Calvin, this, you know, stayed, whatever, sneaking out of the city, trying to blend in. Calvin was converted to Protestantism in 1533 or 1534. In the preface to his commentary on the Book of Psalms, Calvin described his conversion experience. This is in, as I say, the preface to his commentary on Psalms. You have to know to go look here for Calvin's most autobiographical discussion of his life, where he discusses his life, his conversion, et cetera, the most, is in kind of a weird spot. You just have to know that it's in this preface to a certain commentary they wrote out of dozens of commentaries they wrote. So here's what he says, though, in this preface. At first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the superstitions of potpourri 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 much more hardened in such mires than might have been expected from one at my early period of life. This commentary is written in 1557. It makes it sound like Calvin's conversion was sudden and not really precipitated by internal struggles like Luther. But an earlier account of his conversion also exists which sheds greater light on his conversion experience. Writing to a Catholic cardinal named Satellito in 1539, Calvin described the turmoil he went through as he wrestled with guilt not unlike that experienced by Luther. Calvin said this, being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen and much more, At that which threatened me in the view of eternal death, I, as duty-bound, made it my first business to betake myself to thy way, condemning my past life, not without groans and tears. And now, O Lord, what remains to a wretch like me, but instead of defense, earnestly to supplicate thee not to judge according to its deserts that fearful abandonment of thy word, from which, in thy wondrous goodness, thou hast at last delivered me? So Calvin was converted here, 1533, perhaps 1534. In October of 1534, a group of French Protestants secretly posted anti-Catholic placards, basically posters, denouncing the Mass in Paris and in four other major cities in France. They even managed to get one posted on the bedroom door of King Francis, the King of France. This event knows the affair of the placards infuriated the king and led to widespread persecution of Protestants throughout France. A number of Calvin's associates would actually be burned at the stake. People that Calvin had known and were Reformation minded would end up being put to death because of this. So Calvin at this point leaves France and heads over to Basel, Switzerland or in the Swiss cantons. The age of 26, while in Basel, Calvin completed the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was published at that point in Latin, 1536. He then would publish his first French edition in 1541. He would actually go back and forth writing in Latin and then French, not always the same. He's not translating back and forth. He's actually writing the Latin edition, then he would write the French edition, Then he would write Latin, maybe another Latin edition, keep expanding this thing. It starts out as six chapters long, grows to be something that's 80 chapters long by the 1559 edition. There was actually a French edition published in 1560, but the 1559 Latin edition is considered the definitive edition of Calvin's Institutes. Calvin explained his initial motivation for writing the Institutes. He's not writing to, you know, write this grand treatise on what we might call Calvinism. He's actually trying to defend his fellow Frenchmen from persecution and explain the Christian faith very simply. He said this, it appeared to me that unless I opposed them to the utmost of my ability, my silence could not be vindicated from the charge of cowardice and treachery. This was the consideration which induced me to publish my institutes of the Christian religion. My objects were, first, to prove that these reports were false and columbinous, and thus to vindicate my brethren whose death was precious in the sight of the Lord. And next, that as the same cruelties might very soon after be exercised against many unhappy individuals, foreign nations might be touched with at least some compassion toward them and solicitude about them. When it was then published, the Institutes, it was not that copious and labored work which it now is, but only a small trius containing a summary of the principal truths of the Christian religion. And it was published with no other design than that men might know what was the faith held by those whom I saw basely and wickedly defamed by those flitigious and perdiferous flatterers. The reformers were pretty good at insulting people when they wanted to do that. There's a whole website actually of Luther's insults, if you've never seen that. There's a website that literally you just keep refreshing it, it's another insult from Luther. That's all the website is. I forget the name of it, it's a weird name, but you'd find it if you Googled that. Luther's insults, you'd find it. Well Calvin could insult people too. After visiting Paris in May of 1536, Calvin started for Strasbourg. A providential detour, though, would cause him to pass through Geneva. Calvin intended to stay in Geneva for just one night. He was going to stay in an inn there and then move on the next day, kind of like we would stop at a hotel on a long trip. Calvin found out, though, Farrell found out, rather, that Calvin was in town and would pounce on Calvin. Calvin described what happened here. So, a little before this, potpourri had been driven from Geneva, but marriage were not yet brought to a settled state, and the city was divided into unholy and dangerous factions. Farrell, 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 his 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 refused to give assistance when the necessity was so urgent." By this imprecation I was so stricken with terror that I desisted from the journey which I had undertaken." So Calvin mentions a number of times he really just wants to go off into a comfortable place, have a bunch of books, and write. That's what he's interested in doing. He doesn't want to preach, doesn't really even want to teach in a public way, wants to right at his leisure, and that is not going to be God's plan for his life. Pharaoh, at this point, pounces on him and basically compels him to stay there in Geneva. Pharaoh had been involved in rooting out Roman Catholicism in the city of Geneva, but he hadn't really rebuilt the church in a reformed way. And he's going to, Calvin's just published his Institutes, and he wants Calvin to help solidify the church there in Geneva. So this brings us to Calvin's first Geneva period. Yes, you can see it's quite short. And by the fact that I'm saying it's the first, there will be a second. Calvin's first Geneva period. In order to help give legitimacy to the reform movement in Geneva, the magistrates called for a public disputation between the Catholics and the reformers in the city. In October 1536, Calvin Farrell and Pierre Verret defeated the Catholics in a disputation which admittedly was an uneven match. Calvin was very well equipped, a brilliant guy, a lawyer, as I said, by training, and had just completed his institutes, was very well equipped to debate, and obviously the scriptures helped defend He had the Scriptures on his side, and the Catholics, for the most part, did not have the Scriptures on their side and were not very well equipped to debate. Anyway, the Reformers clearly win this debate, and the Catholics need to leave the city. In January 1537, the Geneva Small Council, the various city councils in Geneva that would have impacts on different aspects of city life, they approved the Articles Concerning the Organization of the Church, which had been proposed by Calvin and others. They proposed, how are we going to reestablish the church in Geneva if it's not subservient to the Pope, if it doesn't look toward the Pope or archbishops or whatever? What is this church going to look like, and how are we going to practice the Lord's Supper and all kinds of activities? So they put forward this document. This document essentially would become the Church Constitution of the Genevan Church. The articles laid out guidelines for the celebration of the Lord's Supper, Acts of Communication, the instruction of youth in a catechism, singing and public worship, and replacing Catholic marriage laws, among other things. Called on the secular authorities as well to enforce church rules. This is not a time when separation of church and state is much of a thing. Anabaptists would argue for that, but essentially no region in Europe at this point embraces the separation of church and state. Calvin and Farrell insisted that the townspeople subscribe to these articles. As McNeill explained, Calvin's conception of the church involved insistence upon the personal affirmation of a body of teachings by everyone who belonged to the community. Of course, at this point, everyone's being baptized. As children are born, they're being baptized and brought into the church, and so essentially everyone is in the Geneva church. Geneva's an interesting city at this point, about 13,000 inhabitants, but just tons of French refugees coming into the city, and Calvin would end up ministering to them and there would just be a lot of needs as hundreds and eventually thousands of refugees came into the city and needed care, livelihood. A number of townspeople refused to agree to these new standards, therefore Calvin and Farrell prohibited them from participating in the Lord's Supper. They needed to attend. In fact, if you didn't attend church at this point, you could be fined if you did not attend church. Now, church would soon be held multiple times throughout the week, but if you didn't attend at least once during the week, you could be fined. But they began to excommunicate people from the church. You still had to attend the services, but you couldn't partake of the Lord's Supper. Kind of a sticky situation there. The Council of 200, City Council, supported those who refused to subscribe to the articles. And the Council actually forbade Calvin and Ferrell from withholding communion from anyone, said you can't practice excommunication, can't withhold communion. Other disagreements led to the Council forbidding the ministers from preaching. Calvin has been preaching at this point, but is no longer able to. But Calvin and Pharaoh ignored that directive. They continued to exclude people, and they continued preaching. They're not supposed to preach, but they will continue to do that. Tensions continued to escalate. On April 23, 1538, Calvin and Pharaoh were banished from Geneva. Calvin later wrote, he described this scenario, he said this, by this means set at liberty and loose from the tie of my vocation, I resolved to live in a private station, free from the burden and cares of any public charge. When that most excellent servant of Christ, Martin Butzer, employing a similar kind of remonstrance and protestation as that to which Ferrell had recourse before, drew me back to a new station, alarmed by the example of Jonah, which he set before me, I still continued in the work of preaching. So Calvin, again, was hoping to go off and be able to write and read and kind of enjoy a non-private life, and Martin Buter is going to compel him to join the Reformation efforts in Strasbourg and to preach actively, especially there to, again, a French refugee church. So Calvin's Strausburg period lasts about three years here. When Calvin and Ferrell were expelled from Geneva in the spring of 1538, they left the city, headed to Zurich, where Zwingli had been. Zwingli was dead by this point, but Bollinger was kind of the key reformer in Zurich at this stage. In Zurich, Calvin and Ferrell met with other leading reformers, including Bützer, Heinrich Bollinger, During the summer of 38, Calvin traveled to Strasburg, where Butzer was the leading reformer. Butzer soon took Calvin under his wing and began to teach him how to be a pastor, and Butzer would end up being kind of Calvin's main pastoral mentor. In addition to teaching at the gymnasium, not like a basketball gymnasium, but a school, Calvin was appointed pastor of the French refugee congregation, and so he continued to preach on a regular basis. And we don't have Calvin's sermons from this period, but it's thought that he preached through the Gospel of John, the Book of Romans, and perhaps the Book of 1 Corinthians. In addition to his preaching and teaching ministry, his literary output during this time was quite extensive, wrote a number of books, some commentaries, revised the Institutes. This would be the first French edition of the Institutes would come out in 1541. While Calvin was in Strausburg, things had not been going well for the Reformation back in Geneva. From Strausburg, Calvin continued to advise leaders back in Geneva by letter. They've kicked him out, but he's still giving them advice. In fact, a Catholic cardinal, I kind of skipped over this, but a Catholic cardinal had written to the Genevan church in the absence of Calvin and had urged them to come back to the Catholic fold. And the people who were still in Geneva didn't know how to answer that, so they forwarded the letter to Calvin and said, can you please answer this for us, basically. Calvin does that. We actually have both letters. In fact, students at the seminary read those letters as a part of modern church history. But Calvin is helping people, but he has no desire to return to Geneva. However, you can see in the outline, second Geneva period. He's not going to get his way once again. Calvin did not exactly relish the idea of returning to Geneva. In a letter to Pierre Verret, he said this, I read that passage of your letter certainly not without a smile where you show so much concern about my health and recommend Geneva on that ground. Why could you not have said at the cross for it would have been far preferable to perish once for all than to be tormented again in that place of torture? So what does Calvin think of Geneva? It's a place of torture. It's not that it wasn't beautiful, it is. If you were to pull up Google Maps or whatever and look at the city of Geneva pictures online, it's beautiful. There's Lake Geneva, there are mountains, Swiss Alps are all around. It's right on the border of France, but it's a beautiful location. But it wasn't the location, it was the people. And the people had just driven him nuts, had given him all kinds of fits while he was there, and he had no desire to return. Officials in Geneva persisted in asking Calvin to return. A number of his fellow Reformers also pushed him in that direction as well. Calvin finally agreed to return on the condition they be given greater authority in the establishment of discipline. We need to be able to excommunicate people from the church if they're living openly and morally. He arrived in the sea, September 13th, 1541. When he had left Geneva, he had been preaching through the Psalms, and when he returned, he picked up at the very next Psalm. He just literally, with virtually no introduction, no reference to the fact he'd been gone for three years, he just keeps preaching from the very next Psalm. Kind of an interesting, this is how committed he is to verse-by-verse sequential preaching. In November of 1541, Calvin submitted his Ecclesiastical Ordinances, which established the basic pattern for religious life in Geneva, which would hold for the next three centuries, into the 1800s. In this work, he outlined church government and discipline and described the duties of four church offices. Calvin's no Baptist, he has four offices, not two. The first office, first pastoral office, is literally pastors, which is what Calvin would be. So pastors, they were responsible for preaching and for administering the ordinances. Calvin preferred an oligarchic structure to church life, with multiple pastors. In fact, there were three church buildings in Geneva. St. Pierre's was the main one, and the one that Calvin preached at the most, but he would actually rotate between the three, and there were other pastors who would preach. They all worked together, they all met together, and kind of shared the pulpits of these three church buildings. So we speak about the church in Geneva, but it's actually three different buildings where people are meeting. Though if you do the math, I mentioned 13,000 people in Geneva, three buildings. These aren't buildings that are holding, you know, 4,000 people apiece. They're just not that large. They're large, but they're not that large. And so not everyone came to all the services. In Geneva, or in St. Pierre's, they had a service that would meet at five in the morning during the summers, on Sundays, and six o'clock in the where they let you sleep until 6 a.m. in the wear time. There was another service at nine o'clock, and then a service in the afternoon as well, and then we'll get back to this, but there was preaching throughout the week. Anyway, pastors. Calvin would be a pastor. Teachers. These were responsible for expounding the scriptures and teaching doctrine, especially through the course of the week, but had less pastoral leadership responsibilities. elders responsible for leading the congregation along with the pastors and teachers, and especially responsible for the care of souls. The pastors and the elders would actually meet together every Thursday to discuss discipline issues. And we have their records, which is kind of interesting. They've been published. The consistory records have been published even not that several times, but there's even a fairly recent edition of the consistory records. So you can read what were they disciplining people about as they, what were they discussing as they met together, Calvin and others. And then there were the deacons responsible for caring for the sick, the poor, the elderly, etc. They're not really a board of directors or anything in the church. The pastors and elders especially are leading the church. In June of 1559, Calvin established an academy, the Geneva Academy. This would eventually evolve into the University of Geneva, which is today, unfortunately, just a secular university, but at the time it was for training men, especially refugees from other parts of Europe, who would come to Geneva. Theodore Beza was chosen as rector of that school. Many who came to study returned to their native lands to spread the Reformation. Among these, probably one of the most famous would be John Knox of Scotland. Knox once referred to Calvin's Geneva as the most perfect school of Christ that ever was in the earth since the days of the apostles. Rather superlative there, but Knox thought very highly of the church situation in Geneva. Calvin appointed Baza to be his successor, and he mounded the pulpit in Geneva for the last time on February 6th, 1564. In a letter to French physicians just a few days later, Calvin actually had to leave the pulpit, was carried out of the pulpit, he coughed up blood during the course of this last sermon, was not healthy at all. He's only 54 years old, but he's not healthy. A few days later, he writes this letter to French doctors and says, here are some of the things he has. Arthritis, kidney stones, hemorrhoids, fever, chronic inflammation of the kidneys, severe indigestion, colic, ulcers, gout, migraine, headaches, and discharge of blood, whatever exactly is described there. This kind of sounds like the Grim Reaper shopping list. I mean he is not, Calvin is not in good shape. I mentioned I think before we started that Calvin would only eat one meal a day. Six o'clock at night he would eat a meal a day. He got no exercise except he would walk around for about 15 minutes after dinner or supper perhaps we should call it. And if he had a guest he might walk for 30 minutes and he would just like do laps inside mostly. didn't really have hobbies or other things that he was engaged in, really was a man who studied. Hence, he cranked out a lot of books in his relatively short life, 25 years or so of ministry. In his farewell address to the ministers of Geneva in April of 1564, Calvin said this, concerning my doctrine, I have taught faithfully and God has given me the grace to write. I've done this as faithfully as possible and have not corrupted a single passage of scripture nor knowingly twisted it. When I've been tempted to salty, I've withstood the temptation, always studied simplicity. I've never written anything from hatred of anyone, but have always faithfully set before me what I deem to be the glory of God. He dies May 27, 1564, and is buried actually in just a very simple coffin, unmarked grave, outside of Geneva as he wanted, and that was probably for the best in light of he knew of other men who had been dug up and had their corpses burned and things like that. Anyway, he's buried in an unmarked grave, so you cannot go visit the grave of Calvin. Calvin's contributions. His three most significant literary contributions were his commentaries. They fill basically a three-foot shelf. I've got them in my office, thin paper, and they still fill basically a three-foot shelf. Then his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which I mentioned went through a lot, 13, ultimately 13 editions, and then followed closely by his printed sermons. Calvin wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Bible, beginning with Romans in 1540, ending with the book of Joshua in 1564. Calvin criticized commentaries that were either overly long and tedious or too short to discuss every verse in a given passage. His stated goal was lucid brevity. He tried to keep doctoral discussions at his institutes exegetical discussions in his commentaries, application would end up being his sermons. And he tried not to mix. He kind of had this, you know, different kinds of responsibilities for different kinds of writing and tried not to put too much theology in the commentaries or too much exegetical work in the institutes. First published in 1536, his institutes would go through numerous revisions. There would be eight editions of the Latin text, five of the French. Over the course of more than two decades, Calvin expanded his institutes from a mere six chapters to 80 chapters spread over four books. You can see there the outline of the four books as they exist today. Multiple translations, obviously, in English today. The bottom of page seven. During his ministry in Geneva, it's been estimated that Calvin preached well over 4,000 sermons. It's hard to kind of grasp numbers sometimes. Spurgeon has a 64-volume set of the Metropolitan Tabernacle pulpit. It contains most of the sermons he preached in the Metropolitan Tabernacle. He would preach in other contexts, but it's huge. It fills three to four shelves in the seminary library. It's a huge set, 63 volumes. That set contains fewer than 3,600 sermons. So Calvin actually preached more than that set contains. So we were talking about Spurgeon a bit earlier. 3563. That is right, actually. Yes, I was just saying a little under 3,600. We have someone who is familiar with Spurgeon. Yes, that is right. That's how many sermons are in the 63 volumes. Anyway, Calvin preaches some 4,000 plus sermons. We don't know, because the records concerning his early sermons are not very good. His sermons generally lasted over an hour, and he would preach without a manuscript or any kind of notes, which might raise the question in your mind, how would we know about his preaching if he didn't even have notes himself? We'll get to that in just a minute. According to Gerald Bray, Calvin's understanding of proper biblical interpretation mirrors these three literary contributions, that is, the commentaries, the institutes, and his sermons. Here's what Gerald Bray said. For Calvin, biblical interpretation passes through three distinct but related phases. If any of these phases is omitted, the text will not be interpreted properly. The three phases are exegesis, represented by his commentaries, dogmatics, or theology, represented by his institutes, and then preaching, obviously his sermons. Exegesis is logically the first of these, because unless we understand what text means, it's impossible to apply it. Dogmatics comes next because it represents the framework in which exegesis is to be interpreted. Preaching comes last because this is meant to be the application of exegesis and dogmatics to everyday life. So Calvin begins with the scriptures, interprets the scriptures, brings scriptures together to form theology, and then applies that through preaching. So, this brings us to Calvin's view of Scripture, and answering the question, what did Calvin believe about Scripture that compelled him to spend so much of his life preaching the Word of God? He preaches, again, over 4,000 sermons. Why does he do this? What does he believe about the Bible? Calvin began every edition of the Institutes with his now famous confession, Calvin would reorganize and expand his Institutes, but this is one thing that never changed. The importance of the knowledge of God would be a major theme in Calvin's theology. Calvin believed that apart from a true knowledge of God, we can never be saved or even really know ourselves correctly. He explained it's certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face. This is so, he said, because man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's majesty. So, how can a person come to know God's majesty and therefore know himself correctly? Calvin believed in the necessity of Scripture for a true, that is, a saving knowledge of God. Calvin asserted that although God has revealed Himself in creation and in the human conscience, man's perception of this general revelation around us and in us is clouded and distorted by our sin. As a result, fallen people can perceive that God exists but cannot come to a saving knowledge of Him through nature alone. In order to truly know God, Calvin emphasized that Scripture, God's special revelation, is absolutely necessary because it provides a clear, authoritative, and direct revelation of God's will in nature, which is otherwise inaccessible. Yet even the Scriptures are closed to those who do not have eyes to see God's glory in His self-revelation. By means of what's sometimes called His spectacles analogy, Calvin explained this. He said, just as old or bleary-eyed men and those with weak vision, if you thrust before them a most beautiful volume, even if they recognize it to be some sort of writing, yet can scarcely construe two words, but with the aid of spectacles will begin to read distinctly. So, Scripture gathering up the otherwise confused knowledge of God in our minds, having dispersed our dullness, clearly shows us the true God. Calvin emphasized that the knowledge necessary for salvation is only revealed through the Word of God. While nature can lead someone to recognize the existence of a Creator, it's Scripture alone that reveals God's redemptive plan, Christ's atoning work, and the way of salvation. This is why Cowan insisted that a true saving knowledge of God can only come through the scriptures. He's not going to preach on nature or philosophy. He's going to preach the Bible. And the spirit must open the eyes of the blind to enable them to see God's majesty in his inscripturated revelation. Calvin is well-believed in the absolute authority of Scripture for all of life. Although Calvin predated the modern controversy over biblical inerrancy by several hundred years, he's sometimes been dragged into that debate, especially by those seeking historical cover for their heterodox views. I'm thinking here of things like the Rogers-McKim proposal. Guys in the late 70s who responded to the Chicago statement on inerrancy. They wrote a book in which they tried to argue that B.B. Warfield created the doctrine of inerrancy. And they even call Calvin to task and say, Calvin didn't really believe in the inerrancy of scripture, didn't use the term. And they try to pit Calvin's commentaries against his theology, basically. Which, there are a number of different topics where people do this. You could talk about the Kendall thesis, which has to do with the atonement. People look at Calvin's commentaries and go, aha, here in this particular commentary, this little passage, he says this. Calvin believed in, you know, didn't hold to a particular redemption. Trying to pit Calvin's commentaries against his Institutes, I would say, is generally not a good way to go. Calvin's Institutes is where he's bringing together the results of his exegesis. His more settled conclusions are in the Institutes. So if someone's constantly appealing to the commentaries in order to support their interpretation of Calvin, that's probably not the best way to go. They're probably kind of undermining what Calvin thought or misrepresenting Calvin if they can't find it in the Institutes or or even in sermons. Yeah? No. So his earliest edition is truly just six chapters. One is on prayer. I mean, they're not like the atonement or predestination election, things that we kind of know Calvin for. One is on the sacraments, the two, the ordinances, baptism, Lord's Supper. Another chapter is actually against the other five sacraments of the Catholic Church. So his early stuff is a very simple summary of the Christian faith and a pushback against Roman Catholicism. I am not aware of any significant ideas that changed through the various courses of the institutes. Everything that I've seen has been consistent. But sometimes people will go to the commentaries and try to find little statements that you can pull out context and go, Calvin believed this. And I would suggest that's not the best way to go. RT Kendall's kind of started that off, and others have followed suit. The adjective, there in the middle of page nine, the adjective inerrant was originally an astronomical term coined in the 1650s to distinguish fixed, that is, inerrant stars from wandering planets, and it would remain a purely scientific term for more than a century. In fact, it wasn't until the early 1800s, maybe the late 1700s, but clearly in the early 1800s, that scholars started using the English term inerrancy in the context of the debate over whether or not complete accuracy could be positive of the Christian scriptures. So Calvin lives long before inerrancy is used in any sense. He's obviously writing in French and Latin, but even earlier French and Latin versions of this word, Calvin's not involved in that. So he lives well before these debates over biblical inerrancy, but he clearly taught the divine origin, the complete trustworthiness, and therefore the absolute authority of God's Word. For example, he described scriptures being inviolable. He called it the sure and infallible record. the pure word of God, which is free from every stain or defect. He called it the certain and unerring rule and the infallible word of God." A lot of that sounds like inerrancy to me. He's seeing this as coming from God and therefore being accurate, reliable, trustworthy. He just doesn't have the word inerrancy or inerrant at this point. In his Institutes, Calvin declared, By the way, a little side note that might come to mind, Calvin does not think the Apocrypha belongs in the Bible, but he does see the 66 books of the Protestant canon as inspired as being God's Word. Luther, you may recall Luther, has questions about James and a few other books. Calvin doesn't have that. Calvin sees the 66 books and no others as God's Word. Bottom of page 9 there, similarly he argued, this then is the difference between Roman Catholic theologians and the Reformers. Our opponents locate the authority of the church outside of God's Word, but we insist that it be attached to the Word and do not allow it to be separated from it. In his commentary on 2 Timothy 3.16, Calvin said this, First, Paul commends the Scripture on account of its authority, and secondly, on account of the utility which springs from it. In order to uphold the authority of Scripture, he declares that it is divinely inspired, for if it is to be so, it is beyond all controversy that men ought to receive it with reverence. This is the principle which distinguishes our religion from all others, that we know that God has spoken to us and are fully convinced that the prophets did not speak at their own suggestion, but that being organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned from heaven to declare. Whoever then wishes to profit in the Scriptures, let him first of all lay down this as a settled point, that the Law and the Prophets are not a doctrine delivered according to the will and pleasure of men, but dictated by the Holy Spirit. We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God, because it has proceeded from Him alone and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it. Now, perhaps if you're thinking carefully there and you hear the words dictated by the Holy Spirit, you're going, oh, does Calvin hold to like a dictation theory of inspiration? No, he's just saying this is from God. He's before different theories of inspiration like that were bad around. He believes this is from God. This is not human. This is not of human origin. This is of divine origin. Because Scripture is God's self-revelation, Calvin's thought is completely trustworthy and inherently authoritative. And people need to hear the Scriptures proclaimed because they are God's revelation to mankind. Calvin also believed in the usefulness and, more importantly, in the full sufficiency of Scripture. In his sermon on this same passage, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, Calvin said this, two things are to be said here in praise of Scripture. It is inspired by God and it is useful. He further explained in this same sermon. He said, In saying that the Scripture perfectly instructs us in righteousness, the Apostle excludes anything that men may want to add. If we attend to the teaching of Scripture, we will find our righteousness there. God rules out all the rest, declaring that it is mere foolishness and smoke. The main teaching in this passage is thus, that all that is man-made is corrupt. One day we will have to appear before the judge and account for ourselves. He has already spoken, and we must not think that the truth he has given us here is not his full and final word. Calvin here, and many other places, asserted that Scripture is complete and fully sufficient, so that he who knows how to use the Scriptures properly is in want of nothing for salvation or for holy life, as he put it. All right, so Calvin's view of preaching. What does Calvin say about preaching, or what did he believe about preaching? Calvin viewed preaching as one of the main responsibilities of a pastor. He often began his sermons by referring back to the previous message. He doesn't always do this, but most of the time he refers very briefly back to the previous message, summarizes it truly in just a couple of sentences, and then continues on. Here's how he started his sermon on 2 Timothy 4, so just shortly after that passage I've been discussing. He said, what was said in the previous sermon was meant to encourage each of us to read the Holy Scripture, since it is so useful to us and since God has included in it everything necessary for our salvation. God, however, was not content simply to lay Scripture before us so that we could study it. In His infinite goodness, He devised a second means for our instruction, preaching, which expounds the teachings of Scripture. To this end, He appointed pastors in His church whose office is to teach. So although God intended people to read the scriptures, study the scriptures, He also intended them to hear preaching. Calvin viewed preaching as absolutely essential to the life of the church. He strongly believed that preaching was necessary for the building up of the church and for the salvation of souls. For example, in his commentary on Romans 10, Calvin wrote, Preaching is an instrument for effecting or causing the salvation of the faithful. And though it can do nothing without the Spirit of God, yet through His inward operation it produces the most powerful effects. So preaching is used by God to convert souls. Calvin also viewed preaching as the goal of exegesis and theology. Although he was a superb exegete and arguably an outstanding theologian, in his own sermons he was never content to simply state the meaning of a text through exegesis or to explain a fine point of doctrine. For Calvin, preaching was God's intended means of taking the fruits of exegesis and theology and applying them to life. So, for Calvin, preaching was application. If you wanted to read interpretation of scripture, yes, there was some of that in his sermons, but go to the commentaries. If you want to read his theology, go to his institutes or some of his other triesses. But if you want to see application, that's really found in his sermons. So, this brings us to Calvin's actual practice of preaching, or what was his preaching like, and also the related question, how do we know what his preaching was like if he had no notes? Let's start by answering that second question first. We don't know as much about Calvin's early preaching ministry in Geneva, that little year and a half period or so before he went to Strasbourg, and we don't know much about Strasbourg. We think we know what books he preached from, but we don't have the sermons. Calvin appears to have never used a manuscript or any kind of notes in the pulpit, even right from the start. Only a handful of his pre-1549 sermons were written down and preserved by his listeners. However, beginning in 1549, our knowledge of Calvin's preaching becomes much clearer. In 1549, the deacons in Geneva hired a French immigrant named Denis Ragonier, I'm probably butchering that, to begin recording Calvin's sermons verbatim. Ragonier was a secretary by trade, and he developed his own shorthand system that enabled him to record Calvin's sermons word for word. He actually did this very carefully, and we have some of the records. Unfortunately, some of it was lost. The story of Calvin's sermons is bizarre. includes things like negligence on the part of librarians. I hate that since I'm a librarian. But throwing away some of the stuff that Dennis Reganier wrote down, his actual notes, when we had no other copy of notes from Calvin's sermons. Anyway, there's a long story behind that. But the deacons in Geneva actually managed a charitable fund. And so they hired this guy, this Dennis Reganier, to take down Calvin's sermons. Then they published them. Calvin had nothing to do with this, actually. He felt like preaching was for the people who were there, and his preaching wasn't intended for a broader audience. So he allowed it, grudgingly, but a number of times it's mentioned he didn't really want it to be done. But it's going to help out his fellow French immigrants and such, so he allows it. And the deacons have this, they publish these sermons in order to help fund charitable efforts to help these French immigrants. What was preaching like in Calvin's day? After surveying a number of better-known late medieval sermons, here's what Gane summarized as he did this. He said, in terms of exegetical method, the salient characteristic of late medieval sermons was allegory. Confirmed by the need to justify from the Bible the current religious, social, and political system, preachers employed allegorical interpretation as a method of determining so-called deeper spiritual means of the scriptures. Interpretation of the Bible was therefore highly subjective. What the preacher was looking for was what he found, irrespective of actual meanings which could have been determined by context, language, and comparison with relayed biblical materials. Although Gane was focusing on analyzing late medieval sermons in England, Calvin's in Switzerland, the same was true of Roman Catholic preaching throughout most of Western Europe at this point. There's a lot of allegorical, moralistic preaching from short passages of scripture. Within Roman Catholic churches of the late Middle Ages, if priests or bishops were actually in residence, which frequently they weren't, frequently they were absent, they received money from a church and didn't actually show up, or sometimes hired someone to come do some of the work on their behalf, they kind of subcontracted the work. Kind of crazy, but that actually was happening through the later Middle Ages quite a bit. If they were actually in residence, lectionary preaching was the norm. That is, they would read in connection with the Mass, they would read from a lectionary, a short passage, and then they would produce a short, give a short homily on that passage, whatever that passage was. Very much tied to the church's calendar. Religious holidays, things of that sort. So they would read a prescribed scriptural passage and then give a short homily, moral exhortation based on that text. In addition to parish priests, people who were connected to a specific church, Dominican and Franciscan friars would travel around Europe preaching in the vernacular, a style known as modern sermons basically. But these were still generally thematic sermons or homilies delivered in connection with church holidays and other events. systematic exposition of the Scriptures was not common in Roman Catholic context in Calvin's days. The Reformers, and especially Calvin, would change all that. They would begin this, the process of preaching from the Scriptures, bringing out the meaning of the Scriptures, what we might call expository preaching. Calvin's preaching methodology. Throughout his ministry in Geneva, Calvin consistently preached in a style that's historically called Lectio Continua. That is, Calvin preached verse by verse through books of the Bible. So we start at 1 Timothy 1 and 1 and preach to the end of 1 Timothy chapter 6. Calvin's practice was to study a passage thoroughly and then to enter the pulpit with only the Hebrew or the Greek text of Scripture in front of him. Yes, he would carry his UBS, I mean his Erasmus text, into the pulpit and that's it, no notes, no nothing. He doesn't have his, you know, his version of BHS, the Hebrew text, whatever. He thought this was helpful to the people, actually. He had multiple reasons for doing this. One, he could. Probably most guys, seminary students, they take Greek and Hebrew, but probably most do not graduate from seminary. Connor will be the exception here. But most guys don't graduate able to bring their Greek New Testament or their Hebrew Bible up into the pulpit and preach for an hour with no notes from and translate on the fly. That's what Calvin does. Calvin translates on the fly. We have raggineers transcribing Calvin's translation of the Bible that he's doing on the spot. Kind of crazy. So Calvin doesn't manuscript his sermons. He even used notes as he preached in French for about an hour. His preparation was obviously very thorough. In fact, he once said this about the need to study before preaching. He said, if I should enter the pulpit without deigning to glance at a book and frivolously imagine to myself oh well, when I preach God will give me enough to say, and come here without troubling to read or thinking what I ought to declare, and do not carefully consider how I must apply Holy Scripture to the edification of the people, then I should be an arrogant upstart." In his sermons, Calvin covered anywhere from one to 20 verses at a time. Usually it's in the three to four verse range. That's pre-average. The 20 verses would be like historical sections of the Old Testament, things like that. But generally, it's a short, fairly short passage. Though sometimes he would spend several messages on one passage they deemed especially important for his congregation to understand. For example, he preached five sermons on First Timothy, chapter two, verses one through six, and then four on a passage just shortly after that in First Timothy three. Although Calvin did not outline his sermons, they often took the following general form. He would start with a prayer, there'd be an opening prayer, then he would review the previous sermon very briefly, and not always, occasionally he didn't, When starting a new book of the Bible, sometimes you give an overview of the book to come at that point instead of looking backward. Then he would provide exegesis and explanation of the first truth he found in the passage, and then immediately apply that truth and exhort people to obey it. Then he would move on to the next truth, explain that, and then apply it, and exhort people to obey it, and do that as many times as needed, three, four times sometimes. I didn't keep teasing that out. Then he would close with a prayer, and in the prayer, sometimes he'd be summarizing the sermon. Pastors do that today sometimes, too. So that was basically his, he wasn't very, maybe not real refined in the sense of having three points in a poem kind of thing. In fact, he never quoted other authors. He doesn't have them in front of him, but he never quotes other authors in his sermons. It's all the meaning of the text. He certainly read other authors' commentaries and such, but he doesn't quote them. Given his poor health and relatively short life, Calvin preached a remarkable number of sermons. From the time when Ragoneer began recording his sermons in 1549 until close to his death in 1564, Calvin's regular practice was to preach twice on Sundays, usually from the New Testament, and then to preach, usually from the Old Testament, every day, Monday through Saturday, of every other week, so that in the course of two weeks, he typically spoke or preached about ten times. And we know that he did that at least from 1549 on, and there's no reason to think he was starting it then. That's just when he had someone transcribing his sermons as he went along. It appears that he had been, that had been his regular practice for quite a while. So he's speaking, similar to Calvin actually, or Spurgeon, is preaching quite a bit. He's not just preaching twice a week, you know, whatever. He's preaching quite a bit. At one point, Ragnier created a catalog of Calvin's sermons, which he had written down, which included over 2,000 of his sermons. And all told, it's estimated he delivered at least 4,000, somewhere over 4,000 messages during his preaching career. Here's how one author summarized Calvin's preaching methodology. He said, in his sermons, he talked to people from start to finish. He began with a brief but lucid summary of his message on the immediately preceding passage. He then made his way through the portion of text selected in an orderly manner, highlighting words and expressions and fastening their truth on the consciences of his hearers. His concentration on the text was relentless. He despised oratorical flourishes. He never quoted other authors. His vocabulary was non-technical and both full of analogies taken from the realms of ordinary human experience and of applicatory comments to human life. It has been said that his rather plain language was heavy on the smells and tastes and sights of everyday life in city and country and was clearly observant of the smallest things in the life of his people. Just as he heard God talk to him in the Bible, so he showed it to his people in his text, talking about the truth and the tones that God had used, whether instruction or reproof, warning or appeal. Such coalescence between God's words and man's words is true preaching." So Calvin was a faithful, committed preacher of God's word in an age when solid biblical preaching was still in short supply. You know what, I have an excerpt here from one of his sermons. I really like Robert White's. There are various translations, English translations of Calvin's sermons. Robert White is my favorite translator of Calvin's work. Banner of Truth especially has published a number of Calvin's sermons on entire books of the Bible. This is one Robert White did, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. I don't think we'll take the time to read through that, though, just in case there are any questions here at the end. So we'll skip to the end, concluding thoughts. Page 15, concluding thoughts. You may want to go back, though. It gives you a taste of Calvin's actual preaching. Like Calvin, our sermons should be built on the foundation of solid exegesis and sound theology. Calvin certainly is laying the groundwork, writing his commentaries, doing theology, and his sermons are the result of that. But good sermons must also include application. Calvin was not content to just throw theology out in front of people. He always applied it. He was constantly exhorting people and showing how theology and the truth of scripture related to life. I'd say preaching isn't really preaching if it doesn't involve some level of application. There has to be some application in preaching. Or it's probably just teaching. You don't always make the distinction between preaching and teaching. But teaching can just communicate knowledge. Preaching really should be calling for change, should be applying the truth of Scripture to life. well, there's a tendency in our day to prioritize miscellaneous ministry tasks, things like visitation. I read an article recently where the people were arguing, it was going based on history. It was talking about people who would visit the entire church over the course of two or three years. The pastors would visit every member of the church. And it was calling pastors to spend a lot more time in visitation. At first, I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. Yeah, there could be some benefits to that. But I also thought, Taking time away from preaching is healthy to visit, and there are definitely times to be visiting. But I almost came away with a flavor of, let's spend less time in the study and more time in people's houses. There's good to that, but if it takes away from preaching, we need to prioritize preaching. Like Calvin, and the apostles in Acts 6, this is actually one of the passages that made me think this. Acts 6, the apostles bring on the first deacon, or the deacons, they seem to be deacons, they're not called that in the text, but in order to devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. So they give up visiting the widows in order to devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. And I think we need to prioritize the ministry of the Word as well over most other aspects of ministry. That doesn't mean you don't sit by someone's bedside while they, you know, in the final stages of life or something, but preaching must take a pastor's highest, must be among the pastor's highest priorities. And then preaching is ordained by God for the health of his church. We must not try to improve on God's plan, but rather we must seek to excel at what God has ordained while trusting him to use his word and the foolishness of preaching to change lives. I think there's a lot to be learned from Calvin's example, what Calvin said about preaching and reading Calvin's sermons. I would certainly recommend Calvin's sermons to you. As I said, many of them have been lost. Many were never recorded. Probably half of them, at least, were never recorded. And even among those that were, many were lost. But there are many hundreds that you can easily access. You can find volumes of his sermons on the Book of Micah. That was the first collection of sermons that I read of Calvin's. So I'd encourage you to read Calvin's sermons.