Many people think of John Calvin as a cold, calculating theologian. In reality, his scholarly work was driven by a pastoral desire to help Christians grow in their faith. Today, W. Robert Godfrey introduces us to the real Calvin. With your donation of any amount, request A Survey of Church History, Part 3 A.D. 1500–1600. You’ll receive W. Robert Godfrey’s teaching series on DVD, plus lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3763/survey-of-church-history Meet Today’s Teacher: W. Robert Godfrey is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and chairman of Ligonier Ministries. He is president emeritus and professor emeritus of church history at Westminster Seminary California. He is the featured teacher for many Ligonier teaching series, including the six-part series A Survey of Church History. He is author of many books, including God’s Pattern for Creation, Reformation Sketches, and An Unexpected Journey. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
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Calvin is passionate to say there are promises, promises that you can trust, and everyone who trusts those promises will be saved.
Can Christians have assurance of their salvation? What is saving faith? And how do we know that the Bible is the Word of God and is authoritative? These are just some of the questions that John Calvin and other Reformers wrestled with and brought clarity against the backdrop of the Roman Catholic Church. You're listening to the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind.
I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and I'm glad you're with us. On Saturdays, you're hearing messages from W. Robert Godfrey's monumental church history study series. So far, he has taken us back to the early church. We've seen the Middle Ages. And today, in part three of that series, we're in the time of the 16th century Reformation.
You can add this 12-message installment on the Reformation to your collection when you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. When people speak of Reformed theology, they sometimes use the shorthand or nickname Calvinism after the Reformer John Calvin. So what did Calvin believe? Here's Dr. Godfrey, the chairman of Ligonier Ministries, on the theology of John Calvin.
Well, we return in this lecture to our friend John Calvin. I hope maybe having gotten this far, you see he's a little more human and friendly than some people have made him out to be. But I want to return to this subject of certainty or assurance at the heart of Calvin's theology. I think he felt the pressure to
on the Protestant movement that the Roman Catholic Church brought to bear by its insistence that it was the absolutely reliable source of truth. Satellito, in his letter to the Genevan Church, Cardinal Satellito had made that point. He said, the church alone is inerrant. It never makes a mistake. And therefore, you can rest your soul on the church and its teaching.
Saddle Lady even went so far as to say, if the church were wrong and you believed the church, God would not hold it against you because he's commanded you to believe the church and whatever it teaches. And so they said the only safe path, the Roman Catholics said, the only safe path is to follow the church correctly. completely unwaveringly.
And Calvin wrestled theologically with the question, how do we find assurance apart from this church that is absolutely authoritative? And of course, the Protestant answer was, we find that in the Bible. But Rome says, first of all, how do you know that the And secondly, how do you know what's the right interpretation of the Bible? Now, those are fair questions.
And the Reformation as a whole answered that rather simply. They said, first of all, we believe the Bible is true. Now, the Roman Catholic Church agreed with that. The Bible is true. It is God's Word. It is God's revelation. God was successful in revealing Himself truly in His Word. Secondly, the Reformation said the Bible is sufficient.
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