The Theology of John Calvin
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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.
This is where the Reformation and Roman Catholicism parted company. Because Rome says the Bible is true, but it needs to be supplemented by holy tradition. And the Reformers said, no, the Bible is sufficient. It contains all we need to know for faith and life. for the life of good works. It doesn't tell us who we're supposed to marry. It doesn't tell us how to get an A in the chemistry test in high school. But it tells us everything we need to know about God and how to serve Him. So the Bible's true. The Bible is sufficient. And thirdly, the Reformation said the Bible is clear. This, too, is a point of contention with Rome. Rome said, well, the Bible's true, but you can't understand it. The church has to explain it to you.
If you read the Bible on your own, you may get all confused. In fact, they found when people read the Bible on their own, they tended to become Protestants. That's really confusing. And so the church says the church has to interpret the Bible for you. This became so serious that in the middle of the 16th century, the Roman Catholic Church actually forbade lay people to read the Bible.
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