John Calvin – the second generation reformer!
Calvin was 26 years younger than Luther and so represented the next generation of Reformers. While being hugely influenced by Luther, Calvin didn’t agree with everything the older reformer had written.
Sanctification
Luther had rediscovered Justification by faith in Christ alone as the key to salvation. He had hammered that point home – and needed to! Calvin, in addition to a clear commitment to Justification by faith also emphasised sanctification (obedience and holiness) in the life of the new believer.
The Local Church
Because of this commitment to sanctification, Calvin emphasised the role of the local church in regulating and training believers to live godly lives. This immediately raised issues of discipline within the context of the church. Calvinists have never really managed to break free from the perception that they are ‘disciplinarians’.
Unity of the Bible
Calvin was careful not to set the New Testament against the Old and stressed the continuity of the revelation of God throughout the Bible as a whole.
The Lord’s Supper
Calvin also disagreed with Luther about the nature of the Lord’s Supper. He didn’t believe that Christ was literally in the bread (Christ was, after all, literally, physically at the right hand of the Father). He also disagreed with some of Luther’s opponents, that the bread and wine were purely symbolic and nothing more.
Calvin argued that, in the taking of the bread and wine, Christ’s presence comes to us. Jesus visits us as we partake of it. Calvin used the analogy of the Spirit coming in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism.
He wrote, ‘Our Lord, wishing to give a visible appearance to his Spirit at the baptism of Christ, presented him under the form of a dove. St. John the Baptist, narrating the fact, says, that he saw the Spirit of God descending. If we look more closely, we shall find that he saw nothing but the dove, in respect that the Holy Spirit is in his essence invisible.’ (John Calvin, Short treatise on the Lord’s Supper – 1540)
In the same way, while the bread and wine are symbols, nevertheless, Christ really does come to us, and is in truly present, by faith.
The Doctrine of Election
Also, while Luther and other reformers were very clear about the sovereignty of God, and the doctrine of election, and on the nature of the freedom/bondage of the will, it was Calvin who was drawn into a defence of those doctrines of grace, more so than others.
Because the focus of debate on issues of God’s sovereignty in salvation was on John Calvin, his defense on those particular points have come to be popularly known as ‘Calvinism’.
We’ll look at that in more detail next time…
© 2009 Lex Loizides
One view they both shared, of course, was that in order to maintain public order, a city or nation-state needed one official religion (ideally the Reformed one) that embraced all members of the society.
This view (which Catholicism had also long held) was perhaps the most significant defect in their respective theologies, resulting in a continuation the the union of church and state which had existed in Europe since Constantine. In this regard, their Reformation was inherently defective.
The vision of the church as a body of believers distinct from the population at large was expressed and maintained by those at the radical end of the Reformation, many of whom were heavily persecuted by Catholic and Reformed magistrates alike, including Mr Calvin on occasion.