Calvin
Marvin Olasky on How Calvin Challenged Conventional Thinking on Government and Business | DG 2009
Interesting to hear a former communist party member speak on Calvin’s view of government and business.
Marvin Olasky, now editor of World Magazine, came to Christ after reading the New Testament in Russian.
As student of Russian, the New Testament was the only book he could find in 1974 to study the language with.
Here’s what he had to say:
5 points on Christians in Government:
1. Life in a monastery is not the best and only way to follow the will of God.
2. Christians can go to court to defend the truth.
Calvin: “As for those who strictly condemn all legal contentions, let them thereby realize they repudiate one of God’s gifts.”
3. Revenues are not for the king’s private chest, but treasuries of the entire people.
4. Christians should be able to vote for their rulers.
In Deuteronomy 1, Calvin saw that those in judgment were not only appointed by the will of Moses, but elected by the people. According to Calvin, “This is the most desirable form of liberty.”
5. Refusing to oppose monarchs when they oppress the common people is betrayal.
God has appointed the rulers to be protectors of the people’s freedom. To oppress the people is betrayal.
Calvin supported rebellion in order to preserve life in the times of a murderous monarch. Example: Calvin defended the midwives in Egypt who opposed the Pharaoh’s degree to kill all the babies.
5 points on Christians in Business
1. All honest labor, not just in churches and monasteries, glorifies God.
There is no second-class existence. We should take dominion over all creation, not just the ecclesiastical acreage. Everyone, not just priests, have a vocation that is profitable for the common good. No work done to God is secular.
2. The way to get closer to God is not through some added-on discipline.
God does not require such celebrations of disciplines. Calvin knew that requiring hard-practice beyond the hardness of life could lead to harmful pride and the wasting of talents. Why substitute unproductive and unnecessary hard practice for productive hard practice? Why stand in a freezing cold stream, when you have a child to care for?
3. There are 5 different views of the fruit of business.
a. Grudgingly work, because it gets us our daily bread, but nothing more.
b. Grudgingly work, because work gets you cash for bread and cash to support ministries and missions
c. Semi-grudging, because work also lets you witness to workers, on top of getting the cash.
d. Work, because stewardship improves on what we are given, and brings multi-generational wealth.
e. Work is more than a means to an end. Work is where individuals gain more dignity, grasp freedom, and employ creativity.
“Men were created to employ themselves to some work, ” wrote Calvin. “Any removal of work throws human life into ruin.” On that note, why retire when you are still in good health?
4. Building business and work opportunities require the proper use of credit.
In Calvin’s eyes, the priest’s use of loans at interest – usuries – were wrong. However, God is not opposed to all loans, only those taking advantage of the poor, starving man. You can not ban interest in business, because it helps the economy grow (though I am sure Calvin would have a bone to pick about our current credit policy).
5. Build businesses to employ the unemployed, instead of giving out more aid.
Best way to help the poor is not to give them spare food and clothes.
Open a business to employ those who would otherwise be unemployed. Build trade, not aid (which will be featured on the cover of the new issue of World Magazine). Everyone is created in God’s image and worthy of respect. “We cannot but behold our own face, as if in a glass, when we see the poorest stranger in the world…we see that he is our brother and our neighbor.”
Poverty is not a road to holiness. Money and material things by themselves are not evil. The love of them is evil. Pursuing a life as a beggar is not the way to holiness. Voluntary poverty arises from the wrong-headed approach of salvation by works. Poverty does not make people godly. “When men are pressed by famine, they would sooner sell their lives a hundred times that they may save themselves from hunger, no matter what the price.” Poverty and hunger can actually give Devil an opportunity.
Social Calvinism has been a strength in America.
Guest writer Daniel C. Wilson is covering the Desiring God National Conference.
Mark Talbot on Sin and Suffering in Calvin’s World | DG 2009
“The human world is a dazzling theater of God’s glory.”
How can Calvin make such a claim when the theater is marred with sin and suffering?
Mark Talbot’s answer:
“There is nothing in the course of human history that God has not tempered with his own providence to bring the best.”
Calvin’s Imperfections
Calvin was both aware of God’s providence and his own imperfections.
Calvin had a tendency to overreact. No surprise, given his extreme personal sufferings. In a recent biography, he was described as ruthless and an outstanding hater. He hated Catholic church, dominated others, intimidated, bully, and humiliated.
Some of the biographer’s word choices are too strong, but the fact remains: Calvin was aware that his own character was often only another obstacle in his way.
Where Calvin Placed the Fault
Calvin blamed himself for his own crankiness and stubbornness. As long as the character traits involved sin, Calvin was very careful to place the fault on himself.
Not God.
Admittedly, the Infinite God Doesn’t Fit in Our Pea Brain
Talbot didn’t shirk away from the apparent contradiction. “Man is acted upon by God, but at the same time, he himself also acts.”
Calvin Reminds Us to Remember the Limits of our Minds.
Calvin:
“We can not grasp how God wills to take place through human wills what he forbids in scripture to be done. To us, that’s an abyss we can’t understand. We must recall our own mental incapacity, and remember the light God dwells in is not without reason called inapproachable.”
Why Does the Corpse Stink? [An Imperfect Analogy]
To help us grasp the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility, Calvin provided the following analogy:
“Whence, I ask you, comes the stench of a corpse, which is broth putrefied and laud open by the heat of the sun? All men see that it is stirred up by the sun’s rays, yet not one for this reason says that the rays stink. Thus, since the matter and guilt of evil repose in a wicked man, what reason is there to think that God contracts ant defilement if he uses the service of a wicked man for his own purposes?”
No neat analogy will fail to break down. Understanding is simply beyond human mental capacity.
Talbot:
“We do not and cannot grasp how, in diverse ways, God both wills and does not will for something to take place. In spite of this ever-present danger of misunderstanding, Calvin still would not back down from the claim that God is the just cause of everything.
A Possible Good Purpose for the Sin and Suffering in Calvin’s Life
Talbot:
“Through such trials, and even the sinfulness in himself, God may have very well been teaching Calvin that in his flesh there dwelt no good thing, and he could not rely on his own industry and talents.”
My final thought in the session: What if Calvin had lived the American dream?
We can all feast on the literary fruit of Calvin’s trials. We might not be tasting those sweet writings if Calvin had been wrapped up in some version of the American dream.
Guest writer Daniel C. Wilson is covering the Desiring God National Conference.
Doug Wilson on Calvin, the Bible, and the Western World | DG 2009
Doug Wilson is sort of speaker stirs up laughter…even after he stabs you with conviction.
Wilson was in full character when speaking on John Calvin’s relationship to scripture and what that relationship did for the Western World.
Consider the following story.
A school mom named Enlightenment is teaching a class. She administers an exam to the Book of Mormon, the Qur’an, and the Bible. The Book or Mormon scores a 17. The Qur’an scores a 52. The Bible scores a 97.
We all would want to go up to the teacher and argue for the 3 points. Isn’t the Bible inerrant?
But there is a more fundamental problem. Ms. Enlightenment has no business doing the grading. The Bible is not after the 3 points from her. The Bible is after her job.
The Scriptures do not meet standards, they set standards.
They are not a possession of ours to put in the world’s balance to be weighed. But rather, the scriptures are the balances of God on which he places all the peoples and nations.
“Yet they who strive to build up firm faith by disputation are doing so backwards,” Calvin wrote, “…the testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason.”
Scripture is self-authenticating, therefore it is not needed to set it against proof and reasoning. Calvin said it is vain to fortify the Scripture by argument.
Finding reason’s proper place in the Christian’s life.
Neither Wilson nor Calvin reject human reason, but emphasize putting reason in its proper place. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge, and that order is key.
How John Calvin Mastered the Bible [an example for us to follow]
Calvin started where God tells us to start: With God stooping to reveal Himself to us. God reveals Himself by special revelation, natural world, and in personal and work of Christ.
Remember, a skepticism and unbelief do not refute God’s revelation. Blind men do not refute the existence of the sun, and deaf men are not considered a refutation of Mozart.
Next, Calvin refused to divide God from His Word, he refused to set God at odds with his word. He did not separate the Speaker from the spoken. “We owe to the scripture the same reverence we give to God, because it is from God alone, with no part of man mixed in.” (Calvin, paraphrased)
Calvin’s was devoted to scripture on the practical level, and doggedly supported it on the theological level. But how could Calvin write deep, rich commentaries on the Bible that defy modern research assets? We have more information available to us, yet we can’t get as far as Calvin did.
Why?
Doug Wilson offered great insight here. “Calvin’s great resource was his great familiarity with the Bible and his mastery of its contents.”
Calvin mastered the Bible by being in it daily. He treasured it, because the Word of God brought Calvin to know the God of the Word. What’s your plan for mastering the Bible?
Guest writer Daniel C. Wilson is covering the Desiring God National Conference.
Julius Kim on John Calvin the Man and Why I Care | DG 2009
Why care about the man named John Calvin?
In his message, Julius Kim put it this way: “Calvin was a faith-possessed pilgrim, with a singular passion to known God, and to make Him known.”
Calvin points us to Christ, and his practical example of living for God’s glory merits examination.
Kim conducted this examination in two parts.
1. Knowing God: Calvin the student and scholar of the Word
Calvin was convinced that the core of our worship of and work for God must be based on the Word of God.
Nothing was more important to Calvin than getting this right.
Since he believed that God has revealed Himself in his word sufficiently and clearly, Calvin wanted people to read the Bible on their own. To know God themselves. Not to have everything spoon-fed through the church. The certain church of the middle ages was replaced by the certain scripture of the reformation. To Calvin, nothing was more important than getting this right.
We functionally reject the sufficiency of Scripture
In many areas, Julius Kim says, the Bible has been functionally rejected. We pay lip service to it only. Rationalism and emotionalism have become the foundation for our certainty and experience of God. Our minds and emotions become the final judge of what is true and right.
As one scholar put it:
“The worship of the church has become a feel-good experience rather than a meeting with the Holy God of the universe. Exciting music has become the new sacrament, mediating God’s presence in our lives. Sermons have become pop psychology, moralistic exercises in self help.”
If the Word is so key, what then does it principally teach?
Calvin committed himself to the daily, diligent study of the Word of God.
And what did he find? “What the scriptures principally teach is that God alone must receive glory,” wrote Calvin. “God alone must receive glory as the Savior of His people and the Lord of His church.”
We can’t properly discuss salvation until we get this right
Calvin took it further: “Once a Christian sees the glory of God as central, then a proper discussion of salvation can follow.” We can’t properly discuss salvation in the proper context if we are sitting in the squalor of a man-centered view of the Scriptures!
Calvin:
“It is not very sound theology to confine a man’s thoughts so much to himself, and not to set before him as the prime motive of his existence zeal to show for the glory of God. For we are born first above all for God, and not for ourselves.”
2. Making God known: How Calvin’s study of God’s word shaped his ministry
Here’s the statement that pricked my heart: “It’s one thing to know God more. Another thing to make Him known.” Calvin, as the shepherd and servant of the church, was keenly aware that he was to make God known.
I think this is where the heart of Calvin the reformer shows. Calvin did not want God’s glory to be a vague, abstract idea that never influenced Christian living. I dread the thought that often I have done just that.
Guest writer Daniel C. Wilson is covering the Desiring God National Conference.
Introducing Daniel Wilson–Blogging DG National Conference
One of the perks of running this blog is the people I meet.
People like Al Hartman who consistently, gently, wisely and patiently taught me how to speak to unbelievers.
Richard DeVeau and his creative, Christ-like spirit that I cherish.
John Payne and his perennial encouragement on Facebook that kept me out of the pits when I thought no one else was listening.
Don Dudley and his quick-draw comment slinging and unwavering endorsement of my blog on his blog.
And then there’s Daniel Wilson.
Daniel is a young college student who I first met while he was struggling to keep his head above the secular waters. We talked through a handful of emails, but it wasn’t long before he impressed me deeply with his maturity, wisdom and humility.
So, when I heard that Daniel was going to the Desiring God National Conference I asked him if he’d blog it for me.
He graciously accepted.
For those of us who can’t go, that means Daniel will keep the pulse for us throughout the weekend.
We’ll hear summaries on sessions by Julius Kim. Doug Wilson. Marvin Olasky. Mark Talbot. Sam Storms. And of course, John Piper.
A few other things not to be missed is the movie Collision summary, the follow-up discussion between Piper and Doug Wilson and the panel session.
I look forward to Daniel’s commentary.
Daniel, can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. You rock. Relax. Be yourself. And, most importantly, have fun.
One more thing: Share this blog with people you know who can’t make it to the conference. Let’s support Daniel, DG, Calvin and Christ.
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