23. The Life and Times of John Calvin (part 1)

as I say Calvin was born in 1509 so Luther was about 25 years old by now Luther was a monk in fact he had just become a professor at the University of Wittenberg at the time that Calvin was born he was I'm going to give you his life in several chapters as I tend to do and so we'll think first of all of his career as a student he was born July 10th in Picardy he's a Frenchman so we probably should call his name something like Jean Calvin you know but I don't do French very well and so I'm going to go conventional here as most folks do John Calvin but he certainly was French throughout his being as DNA and throughout his career he was a great tribute a great sort of source of pride I would say to France even though at the time they didn't really appreciate it that much he was a brilliant student his father was a lawyer and was part of that rising middle class we've talked about in prior weeks his father was very successful and fairly well-to-do so you might say he was kind of upper-middle class his mother was a devout Roman Catholic and so he grew up in a fairly serious and rather academically oriented family with a deep devotional spirit to it and Calvin viewed himself as a faithful son of the church and had no idea whatsoever that he would be discussed hundreds of years later for departing from the Roman Catholic faith which he eventually did he was originally going to be studying for the priesthood that was what usually happened with very bright and precocious students they would become priests or go into some sort of religious order and that was the original plan but Calvin's father had a bit of a falling out with the church not that he left the Catholic Church but it was more of a political kind of difference that came along and so his father told Calvin when he was in his mid teenage years and in the middle of his studies that he should divert his attention academically to the study of law and so when Calvin was just in his mid teenage years having progressed pretty rapidly he entered the University of Orleans which is connected to the University of Paris one of those free universities that had come following the Crusades one of the most prestigious and Orleans was what almost like one of the department's of that University but there he studied law beginning in 1525 he however was so taken with the new learning that was really coming out through the Renaissance and the rediscovery of classical sources and classical languages and so on as many people were that he really deemed himself more appropriate for a kind of scholarly career in which he would represent part of this new kind of wave of academic interest that was going back to the original sources we've talked about that in connection to the Renaissance so he was really kind of a renaissance scholar in his own self image at this time and he was continuing his studies past law school to head in that direction his conversion to the Reformed faith took place sometime between 1529 not before that and not later than 1533 and it's hard to pin down precisely what the circumstances were he's not as he's not as self-disclosing as Luther and so we have to do a little more triangulating as we go along to get some of the pieces to fit together but we know it was sometime in this timeframe that it took place and we have a few little pieces of the puzzle here that at least start useful he was continuing his studies at the time at Mauna hue which was also connected to the University of Paris and at the time in 1529 he voiced his contempt for a movement in France that was pejoratively referred to as the gospel errs and these were people who were touched by the Lutheran Reformation and were so filled with the gospel that that was kind of the insulting name that was applied to the gospel Ertz you know if you know the history of this time you know eventually these people were called the Huguenots but at this time this is kind of the early reference to them and Calvin had nothing but disdain for these Spiller's and he thought the entire lutheran movement was a heretical movement and that it was working to damage the church and he had nothing but support for those who were trying to stamp out this Lutheran heresy and the gospel is there in France so we know that was his attitude in 1529 things got a little bit dicey err for him about that time based on a friendship that we had with a friend of his who was also a cousin of his named Peter Robert or probably pronounced Pierre or a bear but we'll go with Peter Robert the two of them were close friends Peter Robert was himself also very academically oriented brilliant and the two of them formed a fast friendship but as John Calvin and Peter Robert would interact it became a kind of subtle suspicion to some were downs inside of Calvin's soul that Peter Robert himself was tilting toward these gospel errs you know he never said it but Calvin began to detect in some of the ways that he would describe his view of them and his view of things in general and it put Calvin and a bit of a conflict of conscience because the more he became convinced of this the more he became convinced that his duty as a Roman Catholic would be to turn in his cousin report him to the authorities and he knew that if the Inquisition were launched against his friend he would likely be found guilty and would likely pay for his faith by being burned at the stake which was quite a common form of execution at the time in France for people who were associated with this gospel or movement so Calvin who loved his friend and cousin had this conflict of conscience that was being aggravated the more he talked to Peter Robert the more he was feeling this anxiety over this point Calvin's principal kind of life ethic was obedience that's what he wanted for himself that's what he believed all Christian people should embrace and so this put him in this rather ticklish position it was in the midst of this kind of crisis of conflict of conscience that he had a very interesting experience one day he'd been studying as he often did late into the night at the University and he was making his way home well after dark the streetlights were lit and so on and he was walking along down a fairly dark Street toward his apartment which is about two blocks away and all of the sudden quite unexpectedly this old man came out of the alley and grabbed Calvin by the nape of the neck now Calvin was kind of a wimp you know he was fairly slight didn't have an ounce of fat on him and so you know and and not very athletic so and this this old guy just grabs him just grabs him and Yanks him up gets right in his face and says to him something like this young man have you heard of God's free gift you know Calvin's terrified what to do with this fellow he had immediately knew this had to be one of those gospel errs and he didn't want to be seen with him he didn't want to be associated with he just wanted to get away and he kind of wriggled and squirmed and finally was able to distance himself come on man Calvin windows shaken up got back to his apartment close the door and thought wow what was that and kind of forgot about it then so about a week later Calvin is going home this time in the middle of the day and as he's going down the street he looks down about a block away and he sees a crowd gathering and you know how it is when you see a crowd gathering you're sort of drawn to it what's going on and so Calvin himself curious begins to kind of meander in that direction just finding out what was going on he realizes soon enough one of those sites that was not all that uncommon in those days somebody was about to be executed for heresy by being burned at the stake and as he got a little closer he realized the man who was about to be burned was none other than that old man who had accosted him just a week earlier and Calvin stood at a distance and watched and was impressed with the equanimity of this old man no pleading for his life no tears no kind of pathetic expressions or begging for mercy he just stood there with a kind of calm repose and as the fire was lit the man began to sing a song it was a song that had been written about one year earlier you may have heard of it it's called a mighty fortress is our God and this old man still had a strong voice and without apology he began to sing a mighty fortress is our God a bulwark never failing and the flames came up around him and finally silenced his voice and Calvin was deeply deeply moved by that entire incident we don't have any reason to think that was the moment of his conversion it probably wasn't but it certainly did exacerbate the consciousness conscience that was already conflicted within him as he was appreciative of Peter Robert and yet concerned about the implications that had for his own Roman Catholic understanding and now to see this man evidencing such grace in his life in the face of this horrific death all of it stirred up a great deal of emotion and Calvin at that point and the other thing that took place about this time he was writing working on his first publication this is certainly before he was converted it was called des clemente a-- it was a commentary on Seneca the stoic philosopher of the first century was a commentary on Senecas treatment of the subject of judicial clemency Seneca had argued that he thought this ferocious form of public executions that took place in Rome crucifixions that sort of thing was actually counterproductive and Seneca was arguing that there should be someplace for judicial clemency and mercy and that that might actually have a more positive effect generally in the Roman world and Calvin was always taken with that even before his conversion Calvin was a strong opponent of this form of execution burning at the stake many people who seize on something that appears to be a black eye in the career of Calvin if you've ever heard anything about him from his critics you will have heard of the executioner Servetus in Geneva that took place years later and I've heard this statement made by people who should know better and they'll say well John Calvin burned Michael Servetus at the stake well that's not true in fact if anything Calvin argued against burning the man at the stake he was trying to argue for clemency that was always his interest we'll talk about that later but just just to kind of plant the seed here he was he was wondering about this Catholic approach to enforcing orthodoxy and all of this was stirring in his soul at this time and so it was rather complicated time for him in his again I say we don't know exactly when his conversion took place but it was sometime along this in this timeframe we know that his conversion took place at least by 1533 and we know that the conflicted state of his conscience was constantly on his mind and so these are a couple of short snippets from descriptions he himself gave of what he was going through at this time the first one reads being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had fallen and much more at that which threatened me in view of eternal death i duty-bound made it my first business to be take myself to your 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 you not to judge that fearful abandonment of your word according to its desserts from which in your wondrous goodness you have at last delivered me Calvin was sensing at this point in a sense the uselessness of all that he had done up to this time he thought his labor his focus his obedience were a basis upon which he could claim some kind of merit and now the more he thought about it the more he realized the paucity and the bankruptcy of all of that and yet he felt at the same time that he hadn't really achieved that sense of a forgiving conscience even here you still sense a little bit of that but some point along the way he describes the following quote God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one my at my early period of life having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness I was immediately inflamed with so intense and desire to make progress there in that although I did not altogether leave off other studies yet I pursued them with less ardour so somewhere along the line he caved and he describes it as a rather sudden thing although he certainly was struggling for some time and something like st. Augusta and in fact this writing almost sounds like the confessions in which he describes the wrestling match he was going through but at some point it seems the lights came on for him and he surrendered to this Reformation faith justification by faith alone as it had been spelled out to him now by these people that he was acquainted with so we know it took place at some point along the line precise timing is not clear but we do know it was but it was by 1533 because of what happened at this moment he another close associate of his was a man named Nicholas cop Nicholas cop was quite a highly esteemed scholar himself a philosopher and he had just been elected the rector of the University of Paris which would be something like being its president it would be a very prestigious post and it was expected that people who were going to assume that kind of responsibility would give a major academic address to the faculty and to others who would come and be in attendance and so Nicholas Kopp on this occasion got up to give this rather lengthy and erudite defend address on some point of academic interest to all of the assembled faculty and so on and as he was speaking the audience and his especially the more astute faculty members became increasingly restive and you began to hear a little bit of bustling and noise and increasingly that is that there was a little bit of a crescendo to it it was increasing as he went along because it gradually dawned on people that what Nikolas cop was actually doing was giving a very erudite and academically respectable defense of Lutheran Reformation theology his see and so the faculty though this was not a Catholic school it was a free University nevertheless all of these people of course maintained their allegiance to the Catholic Church and literally Nikolas cop had to flee from the stage at the end his inaugural address became his swan song and he ran off the stage and actually escaped from Paris on horseback you see as a result of this speech that he gave people did a little research and discovered that the ghostwriter of the speech that Nikolas Cobb had delivered was none other than our friend John Calvin and so John Calvin at that point became a wanted man it's himself and so this it brings us to the third chapter of his life I'm calling Calvin the fugitive he was not able to get out of town as quickly as Nikolas cop cop almost I think expected this he had the you know the getaway car kind of waiting with the engine running outside the door so he got out of town Calvin hadn't thought ahead quite that well so Nicolas cop wound up in Basel Basel is a City of course as you know in Switzerland Switzerland at this point constituted by a multiple supporter called Ken tones like provinces was going both ways each Cantone had its own independent autonomy and could decide whether to stay with the reformation or go with the I should say stay with the Roman Catholic Church or go with the Reformation and the city of Basel kind of that city-state had decided to go with the Reformation and so Nicolas cop went to Basel which was sort of a refuge then for him and others like him but Calvin was not able to get out of town quite so quickly and actually was on the I am in France for about a year or at least for several months more or less having to hide and stay in the shadows and stay out of the public eye and so on finally however he was able to escape the following year in 1534 by dressing up as a peasant worker a very good disguise you know and he sort of shuffled out the gate along with some other people and somehow the metal detector didn't pick him up and he was able to get away and so he went to Basel as well and so John Calvin joined his friend Nicolas cop and the two of them were there for a couple of years and of course this is kind of a time of being an officially and a fugitive but then it brings us to 1536 when Calvin actually begins what you'd call his his real ministry I'm calling this Calvin the pastor that may not be quite the right word but he certainly does some pastoral ministry during this time the most important thing that happened over this couple of years is that he produced a document called the Institute's of the Christian religion now if you're familiar with the Institute's you know it's a pretty good-sized two-volume work and it may seem a little striking that a 27 year old guy who's a fairly new convert to could produce that he did produce the skeleton of it so in when he's about 27 years old this document is produced but it was a very short version of it it was more of a pamphlet a kind of short apology for the Reformation tradition and for the Reformation theology he addressed it to Francis the first who was the King of France with a lengthy kind of preface dedicating the work to him and hoping that he would have a more benign attitude toward these folks who were part of the Reformation there we don't know if the king ever saw it or took any note of it but anyway that was its stated purpose but this Institutes of the Christian religion spread like wildfire just like Luther's 95 theses had earlier swept through Europe it didn't take long for this shortened version of the Institute's to similarly sweep through Europe it was translated into multiple languages and became kind of a staple item throughout Europe of people who were associated with the Reformation it is as it was gradually developing the problem was nobody know who wrote it because Calvin wrote it anonymously he didn't have to he was in a safe place so it wasn't that he was doing it for self-protection but he was so embarrassed at how ambitious he had been earlier how much he wanted public esteem through his writings he wanted to be recognized as a great scholar and even though he was a retiring personality there was plenty of ego going on there and so his first writing the day Chlamydia he was constantly down to the publishers office how's it selling you know how's it doing is that made the New York Times bestseller listen you know he was constantly worried about it the second one he didn't want any of that so he wrote it and it was this overnight sensation and nobody knew who wrote it but they figured it out eventually but anyway at the beginning this was probably the most important thing he produced right in that time for him certainly was the most important things settled down in France at the same time and he returned to France but just about the time he showed up there was a edict from the King called the Edict of Cousy and I'm not gonna go into the details but the long and short of it was it changed once again the policies in France and put Calvin in something of a an awkward position so once again he had to flee so it was only in France there briefly this time he went south and he went to Ferrara which is a little province in Italy which happened to be under the rule of a woman by the name of Renee Renee of Ferrara it may be you've never heard of her but she was one of the most important kind of quiet forces at this time and I want to do a little vignette about her not today but when we come back and but just for now I want you to know Calvin showed up in her court she was already tilting heavily toward the Reformation she formed a fast lifetime friendship with Calvin he worked in her Court for about six months as a court secretary and had a huge impact on her really solidified her understanding of the Reformation faith and she used quite a bit of political clout over the next several years to protect people both in Italy and in France who were adhering to the Reformation understanding of things and so she became quite a interesting person in her own right but Calvin is there briefly when things had settled down a bit he decided he was going to head for Strasbourg Strasbourg is in Germany it was probably one of the most important cities in Europe at that time as a kind of bastion of reformation refugees and so on and he thought that would be a place where he could probably carry on his studies more efficiently and so he decided to take off her Strasbourg and he left Ferrara and went through Switzerland on his way to Strasbourg and stopped off for the night in Geneva Motel six you know he says checks in not trying to be noticed or anything he got there late at night intended to leave the next morning and continue his journey to Strasbourg well by this time people knew that John Calvin had written the Institute's they figured that out and somebody spotted spotted John Calvin coming into town checking into the hotel and passed word on to a guy by the name of William Farrell William Farrell was the leader of the Reformation in Geneva in Geneva at the time there'd been an official decision this is in Switzerland again another con tone you know had decided to go with the Reformation William Farrell was the leader of this but it was an extraordinarily difficult and complicated situation in Geneva even though they had made the decision to go with the Reformation those people who were arriving in Geneva in many cases had extraordinarily distorted understandings of what the Reformation really stood for and the principled view that was out there that was creating the problems was a group called The Libertines and The Libertines in the name of the Reformation argued for some preposterous ideas for example they said we are justified by faith alone therefore it doesn't matter a bit how we live in fact we can prove that were justified by faith alone by living licentiousness and sexual immorality and by so doing we really take a strong stand for preach the gospel that is justification by faith alone now you know Luther would never ever ever countenance anything like that nor would Calvin nor would any responsible representative of the Reformation understanding that kind of accusation has often been made but responsible representatives of the theology of justification by faith alone repudiate it out of hand so please be clear of Paul himself was accused of that Romans chapter 3 we see evidence of that and he repudiated it and so this movement represented not only a misunderstanding of the Reformation but a slander of the Reformation and there they were in large numbers in Geneva so much so that they had virtually created a kind of red-light district in Geneva in the name of the Reformation you see so this is what William Farrell was dealing with and he needed somebody with the intellectual clout to persuade the leaders of the city and kind of the general population of the city how abhorrent this was and hopefully to lead the city in a more responsible and balanced pursuit of what the Reformation should really stand for and here came John Calvin this young genius who had produced the Institute's and so william farrell couldn't resist the temptation he goes over to the motel 6 calvin was already in bed bangs on the door Cal you know he's whoa what is this he didn't know what was going on he opens the door and there's William Ferrell who announces his presence and says that he'd like to come in and visit with John for a moment so John Calvin invites him in and they sit down and William Ferrell began pleading beseeching begging Jean Calvin to stay in Geneva don't go to Strasbourg stay here and join in the work that I'm doing to make the city of Geneva a city where the Reformation can truly flourish in the proper expression of what it really represents Calvin had three words for Farrell in your dreams said he did not want to be an upfront guy this was not his calling he said you know I am a scholar I want to do scholarly work I will write and I'm going to find a nice little cubicle with my books and my papers and I'm going to write and I'll do what I can for the Reformation for sure but I am NOT a kind of guy that's gonna be up there in the limelight and this is not my interest Farrell didn't like that answer and he kept upping the pressure and finally when Calvin made it clear in no uncertain terms that he did not intend to stay he was going to leave the next morning Farrell gave what Calvin later called Farrell's dreadful imprecation and he describes it in these words I need my glasses here so young then Farrell this is Calvin describing this incident who was working with incredible zeal to promote the gospel bent all his efforts to keep me in the city and when he realized that I was determined to study in privacy in some obscure place and saw that he gained nothing by in treaty he descended to cursing and said that God would surely curse my peace if I held back from giving help at a time of such great need terrified by his words and conscious of my own timidity and cowardice I gave up my journey and attempted to apply whatever gift I had in defense of my faith so Calvin was no match for the fire of William Ferrell and he remained there in the city probably the first incident that took place which really showed the genius of Calvin took place only a couple of months later and this is called the loose on disputation loose on was another of these city-states in Switzerland that was having to decide which way we going to go go with the Roman Catholic tradition or adopt the new Reformation view and so each of these city-states there in Switzerland was having a similar kind of discussion but loosen was a major city and so the direction it went was viewed as being highly important to the overall outlook of things in Switzerland and so this dispensation was going to take place all day long on a certain occasion in which representatives of the Catholic tradition would be their experts and scholars and people representing the Reformation tradition would be there and they would have a public dispute a public debate and the leaders of luzon and the people of luzon would listen and at the end of the day decide so it was just you know kind of an open public conversation along those lines william farrell wanted very much to be there and then influence the proceedings in any way that he could and he very much wanted john calvin to be in attendance as well and so the two of them traveled together the distance to Lausanne and showed up and as the proceedings unfolded it became clear that those people representing the Reformation were truly outgunned that the those who had come representing the ref of the Roman Catholic view were superior in their scholarships superior and their academic capabilities they were more able debaters and so on and just felt like the whole mood was drifting pretty heavily toward the Roman Catholic choice and william farrell of course was increasingly frustrated by this and he wasn't able to say much that was actually influencing the proceeding and so we kept elbowing john calvin you know how it is yeah we just say something you know in Calvin's just sitting there he just wants to be quiet finally Calvin toward the end of the day when it seemed like pretty much all was lost for the Reformation Calvin did stand up he was just out in the gala and he stood up and addressed himself to this small cluster of Catholic scholars and asked him about three questions questions that were sufficiently penetrating that it became clear this guy would not be so easily dusted off and they gave a couple of answers that were actually sounded good but were not adequate and Calvin knew it and he proceeded at that point on to talk for about an hour he had no notes he spoke strictly off the top of his head quoting from memory at length church fathers major sections of Scripture and other sources showing such a ranging command of the material that he absolutely silenced those who were on the other side so that by the time he sat down which was about an hour later the whole place was in a kind of silent hush then there was a character by the name of John Tandy he was one of these Catholic scholars he was a Franciscan he was a preacher he was an enemy of the Protestant movement and he stood up and he made the following short speech quote based on what I have just heard I confess that I have sinned against the spirit and rebelled against the truth because of ignorance I have lived in error and spread wrong teaching I ask God's pardon and the forgiveness of the people of Lausanne I give up my role as a friar from now on I will follow Christ and his pure teaching alone was one of the most astonishing and dramatic moments in the early career of John Calvin and at that point it became increasingly apparent what a powerful force he was going to be for the ongoing development of this movement he returned with William Farrell to Geneva for two of the most miserable horrific years of his life later he said if anything could be hell on earth this was it it was awful and the reason it was awful was because these Thirteen's hated John Calvin they hated his principle of public decency and morality some of you who are familiar with Calvin and especially with some of the caricatures of Calvin that have come down to us mostly from his enemies may have an impression in your mind that is something like this that Calvin liked to wander through the streets of Geneva sort of like Diogenes wandered through the you know marketplace of Athens looking for an honest man you know that image of the lantern in broad daylight and Calvin was looking through Geneva looking for sinful people and looking under every rock you know and so that's that's kind of the picture people have of him like this hyper moralist who was running around trying to catch perfectly ordinary innocent people doing bad things so that he could make their lives miserable I tell you nothing could be further from the from the facts of the matter but it are it is those who wanted to kind of distort our view of him who have perpetrated that that image comes from this moment in history when you have this open licentiousness pression of a kind of highly distorted understanding of the Reformation and Calvin trying to establish the principle that the Christian faith calls us to public decency and public morality and that this kind of life will not do in such a community and that was exactly what he did and for that reason he was made the brunt of all kinds of jokes every punt every joke that was invented during those two years had John Calvin as the punchline for it on multiple occasions as he was walking down the street he was hit by the what is it the water closet pot you know that kind of thing chamber pot yeah he was in other words it was a horrific and miserable time he hated every day of it he only stayed there out of a sense of duty two years later these Libertines had had such influence in the city that they actually ran John Calvin and William Farrell out of town it was the happiest day of Calvin's life he was so happy to be run out of town and he finally was able to complete the journey he had begun two years earlier and go to Strasbourg which is where he'd been wanting to go all along and he was there for three years and these were three of the happiest years of his life and so it was almost as if God rewarded him with a little reprieve after this time of just terrific pain and torment there in Geneva several things happened while he was here in Strasbourg he preached every Sunday at a little church which was called the st. Nicholas Church Strasbourg still there to this day some of you may have been there the building looks a little different than it did in in Calvin's day but he was a pastor and he was also influenced by a much older man who gave him a lot of counsel as to pastoral skills a man named Martin Buser Martin Busey and so they formed a fast friendship and Calvin sort of as a young man now is kind of honing his professional skills as a pastor he was a great academic he wasn't so great at bedside manner that kind of thing you know so this was where he really got some help and really distinguished himself as a very widely beloved and appreciated pastor he published at this time his second edition of the Institute's that was a growing work over the years he republished it many times each time it came out a little bigger I might mention to you on the side I read one chapter out of the Institute's every day it's just good for your soul you know you should do that I remember a Dale Brunner once saying we should read one page out of the book of confessions every day I can't tell you I do that but I plan to you know but Calvin is wonderful reading it just as good kind of it clears your head and so anyway this is the growing work and he also published a commentary on Romans at that time but maybe the most interesting thing he did at this time was he married a woman by the name of Ida let de Bourg it's interesting because he had earlier said this about marriage he said quote I who have the air of being so hostile to celibacy I am NOT still I am still not married and do not know whether I ever will be if I take a wife it will be because being better freed from numerous worries I can devote myself to the Lord so you have a little bit of a kind of an academic attitude here you know toward me not exactly like he's just as this robust desire to be married but it's like you know if it comes along it'll be fine that was sort of his attitude before he met Ida let D be your idol ed to be or had been married to an Anabaptist pastor and they had come as refugees to the city of Strasbourg now you know the Anabaptists and those in the reformed tradition didn't get along all that well but they showed up and they were protected there it was still a place where they could have some safety from essentially the Roman Catholic forces that were out to get them but over time the husband of Ida led to be or came to embrace this instruction that was being given by Calvin so impressed with the quality of his understanding and then he died the the husband died in a touch of the plague that came through on one occasion leaving Ida led to be or a widow with her two sons Calvin actually presided at the funeral services and provided pastoral ministry and then sometime later he actually began to court Ida led to Beor and they wound up getting married about that time about 1541 if you ever come across a little book entitled Ida let you should pick it up it's a story of Ida led and her career and her life written by a woman whose name is Edna Gerstner Edna Gerstner was herself the wife of John Gerstner who was a Presbyterian theologian and church history professor at the university of or at the seminary in Pittsburgh for many years for 40 years and sold this was her husband and Edna Gerstner is the one who wrote this book the dedication in the book is worth the price of the book all by itself and here's how it goes she says I dedicate this book to my beloved husband John Gerstner without whose help this book would have been much more interesting but much less accurate Oh Edna Gerstner had a wonderful story to tell about Ida let but most of it you know was sort of over the top and John had to keep kind of honing your back and bringing you back to the facts but anyway it's a wonderful book nevertheless so if you ever come across it it's worth reading alright well 15:41 John Calvin receives a visitor from the city of Geneva the visitor sits down with John and says John Calvin the City Council would like for you to come back to Geneva do you remember what Calvin said to Farrell same answer Calvin had absolutely no interest whatsoever in going back to that miserable place which stood for the most painful time of his life but once again these folks from Geneva were pleading with him they said this libertine population created so much problem that we have finally been able to basically either get them out of the town or silence them and now we are at a point where we need leadership we need the leadership that we didn't appreciate when you were there the first time will you please come back and Calvin did not want to go back but there was considerable pressure that was put on him not only by the city of Geneva but by Martin Buser his pastor friend his own wife and others believe that this was actually God's call that God was summoning him back to this ministry in Geneva and so with a great deal of misgivings right down to his toenails you know he nevertheless agreed if you want to know what happened you'll have to come back in three weeks his comment at this point was quote rather would I submit to death a hundred times then to that cross on which I had to perish daily a thousand times over but nevertheless he returned to Geneva and we'll see what happened [Music]

Channel: Bruce Gore

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Keywords: Protestant, Reformation, John, Calvin, William, Feral, Idoletter, de, Bure, Bruce, Gore

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Length: 43min 22sec (2602 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2014