Calvin and Bullinger: the Reformed Tradition

in this lecture we're looking at the later Reformed Church down in the Swiss regions and its rise to become a dominant Reformed Protestant movement for the remainder of the sixteenth century and beyond and we can begin by reminding ourselves as to what has happened so far in the story as the Lutheran Reformation got going it began to more or less isolate itself from the reform movement down in Switzerland a lot of this had to do with Luther and Zwingli fighting it out at the colloquy of Marburg the two coming to no conclusion on a partnership based in large part on a number of differences in their theology the two sides had come together with a hope at least of having if anything loose political partnership that would allow either side to remain defended against the onslaught of Catholic armies should they rise up to come after the Protestant regions but in the role of ingly in the Reformed faith and his eventual death really forms the backdrop to the struggles within the Reformed faith to come to a consensus those down in Switzerland were divided across a number of different lines one of the more important ones that's underappreciated is the political and linguistic challenges of the fact that all the way up in the eastern part of Switzerland you have a predominantly german-speaking populous people like Zwingli and Bullinger teaching up in Zurich often gravitated towards an engagement with Luther and the German Lutheran movement well down in the western part down around Lake Geneva you have a rise of french-speaking wing of the reform movement that shouldn't be overplayed but you should at least realize that the differences between the German side in the French side of Switzerland during this day meant that the differences between these two sides culturally at least as well as they are different histories in their different origins meant to the early Reformed faith had to come together and find a place where they all could agree after the colloquy of Marburg when Luther and Zwingli do not come together what happens is Xing Li dies a Catholic Army comes to retake zerk this Finley is out on the battlefield and he is cut down and so is lost the first major voice in the first major figure within the reformed movement going forward what will happen in the reformed axis is this ving Lin line there in Zurich held principally by Belanger will increasingly become opposed or concerned about any relationship with the Lutheran movement others though who are reformed people like Calvin and Boots er and others will attempt to live somewhere in the middle they will reach out to Wittenberg to Luther for a while and after his death to Malak them they will attempt to draw them back towards their side in fact Calvin for as much as he's known as a bit of a prig as a bit of a snob was really the last person within the first generation of the Reformation to still be reaching out to vit and Borg in an effort to bring the two sides back together Zurich though is having really none of it they are burned and hurt you might say collectively at the way Luther treated swingley and how at zwingli's death that Luther even snidely said thus go the way of all heretics after his wing Lee's death though you have Calvin arrived on the scene Calvin had been a French humanist living in Paris predominantly throughout his life studying law which should not be seen as somehow being antithetical to theology itself the humanists study of law in this day was yet another avenue that people approached the classics in the period of antiquity but Calvin was not a scholastic trained man as Luther had been Calvin is really the younger brother throughout the entirety of the Reformation he converts sometime around 15 33 or 15 34 sometime in that range or so we doesn't quite give us a date he had been increasingly biblical and bib lettuce in his hermeneutics and eventually due to the persecutions under Francis the first whenev angelica's were being tortured and martyred for the faith which will look at more explicitly in our lecture on the Hyuga nose in the French Reformed movement this drives Calvin out of France and so around 1534 he flees attempting to head down to Strasbourg where he hoped to work with people like boots ER and a number of other eminent writers within the Protestant world it took a detour though he landed in Geneva to spend the night and it was there that Farrell an acquaintance of Calvin's through his cousin actually berated Calvin at one point asking him to stay in Geneva to help reform it Calvin had said that he's not much of a churchman and he's not a political man and he's not a reformer at which point Farrell browbeat him yelled at him and told him that he was abandoning the cause of God this was in 1536 and a lot of what fair wants is a young man who is energetic the 1536 Institute's the very first edition of what would become Calvin's magnum opus the Institute's of the Christian religion had been published and a number of people found them to be very good a good synopsis of the Christian faith the first edition was just one volume not the two vol massive tome that we see today in its English translation well Calvin relents and he stays in the city and it's important to know really a bit of Calvin's personality here Calvin to the day he died is not so much hot-blooded and angry rather he's more of a snob he's almost always smarter than everyone else in the room he had had a wildly successful and deep rich education as a humanist in Paris he had been set up to be a professor or a lecturer of some kind before he fled his first actual publication was a commentary on a book by Seneca ancient and important stoic philosopher from the Roman world Calvin though can be influenced and for a couple of years they're working with Ferrell in the city of Geneva Calvin really learns valuable lesson about patience and collaboration you see cash Ferrell was a hothead all the way till the end of his life he was impetuous he kind of flew by the seat of his pants and if at times if his will was set on doing something he was not about to listen to reason the case in point is at the end of Pharaohs life he quite an elderly man decided that he had fallen in love with a sixteen year old girl and the two were going to be married Calvin and others tell them that he is full that this will signal to the Catholic world that Protestants are merely excited old men who simply left the church for their own lusts but Pharaoh went ahead and married her anyway that is a bit of a microcosm of Farrell's personality he would just assume screen people down and shut them up if he felt that he was in the right the problem though is the city of Geneva was not in a good way Geneva had always been part of the Swiss regions geographically but it answered to the Duke of Savoy doubt about South there in the southern part of France it was kind of a city in between both the Swiss Germanic regions and the Catholic southern French regions well it had just only recently declared its independence and it had been annexed that is it say forcefully taken by the city of Bern which was Protestant and so in Geneva you have a populace that is used to the Catholic faith it has not been widespread clamor for Protestantism but now that it is overseen and controlled by the city of Bern the Bernese want french-speaking Protestants to lead a Reformation there they are short-handed themselves so when Calvin arrives he meets up with Farrell who had already been conscripted by the Bernese to effect a Reformation and to encourage it there in the city the city leaders of Geneva more or less wanted to go towards the Protestant direction if only at times for the sake of protection there were of course committed Protestants there within the city just like any city in the Reformation it is torn we'll along religious lines well for two straight years Calvin and Farrell and really it's principally Farrell driving Calvin to be more hard-edged just pummel people they get into fights they make stands in one case they submit demands to the city Council for Reformation within the city the problem though is the city the City Council had no right to enforce a number of these reforms that Calvin and Farrell were putting forward the city answered to the City Council of Bern and it's always been a head-scratcher by Calvin and Farrell push this issue when they're supposed to be there answering for the city of Bern anyway affecting the Reformation instead what they do is they stir up the hornet's nest a number of the things that they call for or the abolition of certain traditional practices and they want the church really to be clergy led this is one of Calvin's great fights all throughout his life he wants the pastors to be in charge of the church so for example with excommunication if someone needs to be censured or under discipline well it is traditional in these areas in these cities it always had been but the City Council run by laymen of all things had final say city councils didn't like pastors controlling everything and now they had come helter skelter into the Reformation they were not about to let these Outsiders these Frenchmen come into the city and start telling them what they can do without having some checks and balances in the end the city essentially says no when they tell them to go back to work and to stop telling the City Council what to do at which point Calvin and Farrell make a final stand that communion on Easter Sunday they decide to not give communion to anyone there who had not agreed to or bow the knee to their calls for reform in their specific outlines as to what they wanted which effectively meant that everyone they are except for Farrell and Calvin and a couple of other pastors are excommunicated they hold back from giving anyone communion at one point they even bar the pulpit so that no one can get into it and speak against this decision by them this is a hostile takeover you might say of the city of Geneva and its Church not surprisingly Calvin and Farrell are given just a couple of days to leave the city or else believe it or not at this point in 1538 Calvin now a failed pastor and by the way let that be a lesson to any of you who are training for pastoral ministry or who are pastors yourselves anyone can fail at ministry anyone can have troubles particularly when you're young and dumb and impetuous like Calvin and Farrell are here but the point is is Calvin very well could have been a nobody who failed and was forgotten for the rest of history he had come from the outside and in just two years he had nearly with feral ruined the city of Geneva forever for the Reformation there is now talk afoot in Geneva of returning to the Duchy of Savoy of returning to Catholicism even if that might mean that the Bernese military force might come after them now in the end they do not and in the end it's boot sir Martin boot sir who steps in and mentors and recovers Calvin for the Reformation a number of the folks again all throughout the Swiss regions really had no idea what to make of Calvin they'd read his 1536 Institute's and liked it they found it very careful and calm and well written but no one had really met the man and he was really young he was just about thirty years of age at this point but his track record his resume at this point was pretty poor let's say well it's at this point that boot sir steps in and he and bullying er conspire as well as a number of others to separate Farrell from Calvin everyone at this point essentially blames Farrell for the problem they actually push Farrell to go take a pasture it up in noisy tell which is a city that's french-speaking as well that had embraced the Reformation when Farrell had called for it there and so Farrell goes there and he and Calvin remained friends on a number of levels but the separation the two of them actually gives Calvin you might say room to breathe not only that but Calvin is called the city of Strasbourg where boots are himself lives he really can't make too much of the relationship between boots ER and Calvin at this point from 1538 to 1541 Calvin lives there in Strasbourg not just interacting with boots ER but the two of them actually share a garden in the old European traditional sense they live in separate houses but they have a shared plot of land between them Calvin talks at his letters about how he learned humility and theology and learned how to be a real pastor and a real churchmen you might say at boot sirs table not only that he learned the family life missus boot sir was a phenomenally winsome and friendly person and Calvin as the young bachelor sitting there his tail between his legs after his failures in Geneva was on the mend in the boot sir household one last master stroke by boot sir is they get Calvin married Calvin was enormous lien firmed by all kinds of problems we can't really go into all of them but one of the things you have to remember when you look at some of Calvin's personality quirks and traits is the guy was just sickly the reports we have for example of the number of parasites would give me the impression that the man is simply infested with disease not infrequently he gets taken down by migraines and all kinds of problems Calvin seems to have avoided marriage for some time not out of a lack of desire for it but in many ways he simply wanted to work and he didn't want to chase money power or fame through marriage and he worried that marrying a humble woman would put too much of a burden or a strain upon her to take care of him given all of his infirmities in his problems a couple of marriages are proposed to Calvin one is actually ideal the daughter of a wealthy family there and it's to Calvin's credit he says I don't need the money and I'm a little turned off by the power politics of marrying me off to one of these important families and he says no in the end Calvin marries you might say for love there was a young woman by the name of Violette who had moved to Strasbourg after the death of her husband they had actually been Anabaptist they had been part of the more extreme fringe movement which we'll look at in a later lecture and in a baptism at this point was more or less synonymous with Brad call militant apocalyptic views of the end of the world and no one frankly trusted the inner Baptist's particularly not after 1536 when there had been an uprising in northwestern Germany that had caused hundreds and hundreds of deaths and thereby tarnished the name of Anabaptism for the remainder of the sixteenth century Ayelet had been Anabaptist but through the work of boots ER in calvin and other preachers they had been one to more moderate sort of centrist position on the Reformation but she was always known as the in a baptist widow then it's again telling of Calvin's personality he did fall in love with her she was his companion for life he doesn't give as much of the so proper story that Luther and Katie Vaughn Bora give us from their letters and their interactions when people have been prone to see Calvin Ida let as sort of a sexless cold marriage but that's not the case they were both sick she was a widow she brought children with her into the marriage the Calvin married her knowing that tongues would wag that he had married an Anabaptist that his character would be called into question by people that wanted to pluck some of the courage from him for being a Protestant reformer and he was going to be slandered by all kinds of people for doing this but he decided to do it anyway and they shared a number of years together despite all the problems in the infirmities that Calvin went through until her death a number of years before his by the end of Calvin stay in Strasbourg he is a recovered man he's learned patience a lesson he frankly will have to relearn repeatedly throughout his life and he has become a married man he is now significantly more established and ready to go back to some city at some point to be a reformer in 1541 though Geneva asks for Calvin back or rather it is proposed and Geneva accepts what happened was a cardinal by the name of Santa Leto who himself was a humanist and was really more of a centrist person he wasn't hard line against the Reformers themselves he wrote a letter to the city of Geneva essentially asking them if they had buyer's remorse for having joined the Reformation he laid out a case for them to return to the church he doesn't slander them but he says look we all know there are problems but the way to fix those problems is to come back to the church and be received it was then asked around the Swiss regions who might be ideal to write a response to this and again boots ER puts Calvin forward he gives him a shot he says go for it I need you to write this for us Calvin does he spends a number of weeks and months working on it and the book is published today in English as the reply to Stata Leto and Calvin doesn't go point by point through satellite o--'s letter and critique him or slander him rather Calvin rewrites and weaves into a larger defense the entire rationale as to why anyone would be Protestant it's by large considered one of Calvin's most influential and well-written works from his time as a reformer the Institute's of course are always cited as the high end as a lengthy analysis of his theology but for a man who's a humanist there is nothing like a reply to settle NO to show him at his best form responding with conviction and yet making a pretty airtight case as to why they felt the Reformation needed to be external to the church and no longer internal to it well in 1541 Calvin is actually restored as pastor to the city of Geneva Geneva sends an entourage up to escort him down and in actually one of the more touching moments in the Reformation period when Calvin returns he asks very explicitly that there be no red carpet no fanfare no maiya culpas from the city to try to make him feel welcome now that they had invited him back just a few years later and when he mounted the pulpit the next time the story we were told is that he flipped to the passage after the last sermon that he preached and metaphorically speaking he doesn't make a big deal this he seems to say where was I and he continues on with the sermon series through the biblical book that he had been preaching through for the remainder of his life Calvin lived in Geneva he was always always always though under the thumb of his enemies or at least at friction with them Calvin is hardly the tyrant that he has often remembered as being in the city of Geneva he has no ultimate power in the sense of being able to tell everyone what to do by and large it's the City Council always that is running the show and they can sense your Calvin they can put parameters around him there can be all kinds of reasons why they don't let Calvin's wishes be the only thing determining their steps there in the city and so it's from the context of Geneva after having been booted out once after being restored and mentored by boots er that Calvin becomes a landmark reformer for the Reformed faith however as we go into the later reform period as the century wears on what happens is is there has to be a collaboration between reformed voices throughout the Swiss regions and even beyond as we've said on a few occasions and as we're going to continue to say throughout this first section of this course it is an Akron is t'k at least historically to refer to the Reformed faith as Calvinism now I slip in and out of using that word mostly because we're used to it but from this context that I've given you right now it should be pretty clear that Calvin is not the only man determining the Reformation there in the Swiss regions buuut certain Bulaga frankly are the big dogs on the block they have embraced Calvin and they see his talent and they love the fact that he's french-speaking and he's down there in the Geneva area the real moment though when you have a coming together of the Reformed movement happens in 1549 in a manner of speaking if there's any moment where there is now we could say a United Reformed voice it's in this year good sir and Bolger never quite got along their relationship was increasingly frosty a lot of this is due to the fact that boots er had been converted to the Protestant faith by Luther himself during the heidelburgh expectation boots er was a monk and he was there in the audience and he describes it as mesmerizing as a result until the day that he died boots there was always a man to reach out to the Protestant Lutheran side even though he himself did not agree on every point bullinger of course being a disciple and the successor to singly wanted nothing to do with that and so the to really again push further and further away those who would eventually go to spend the last of his years up in England at the University of Cambridge having been called up there by Cranmer to become one of the major professors of the theology that they were attempting to instill during the rule of King Edward Peter martyr by the way another reformed figure is also installed at this time at the University of Oxford just goes to show the collaboration between the reformed world in general in the early Anglican world was pretty significant but boots are kept moving around and bullying er kept worrying that there in the Swiss regions there needed to be consensus between he and others within the reformed world but again here in 1549 bullinger and Calvin Zurich in Geneva come together and they create a document that today is called the consensus ticker enos now the consensus Tigellinus and latin just simply means the decision with a consensus of Zurich if you can believe it Tiger anus is the Latin name for the city of Zork Zork is the German name well at this point Calvin and Bolinger come together and the consensus ticker rhiness is a declaration about how they agree on the doctrine of the sacraments now this is important this is just 20 years after Zwingli and Luther failed to come to a conclusion at the Marburg colloquy but the two sides here do come together and they agree the document itself is a marvel of collaboration and give-and-take Calvin's view of the sacraments of course were close to the boot sir which is he didn't want to talk about how Christ wasn't present in the sacrament even though he disagreed with Luther on the physical eating side of the equation Calvinists had wanted to talk about the spirits present in the sacrament Bolinger had more of this ving lien edge to him being concerned and that talking about spiritual presence was possibly a backdoor to saying something close to physical eating in some ways the Zurek line is more intensely opposed to talk of presence in the Eucharist in general though they do believe that Christ is always present by his Spirit but so in 1549 at the consensus Tigellinus the consensus of Zurich Calvin and bullinger come together and make a consensus that really ushers in the Reformed faith not identical and doctrine but rather collaborating on a common core of convictions and this is important to know again about the Reformed faith I often say I always say that they are a band of brothers this is why we don't call it Calvinism because Calvin is not the only determining voice either in the 16th century or beyond he's one of the major voices of course and in the english-speaking world the word Calvinism often is synonymous with reformed and so we just sometimes get used to that but from an historical perspective Calvin is not the only person he's the younger brother but in this case he is also not unanimous with other people in the reformed tradition on the sacraments what they agree to is a common core now what does this mean for the later reformed tradition as it carries on well it means a number of different things but the most important things to note as we look down the quarter of time and the development of the reformed voice is that it is promiscuous I always say reformed theology coming out of the Swiss regions always has a pretty United perspective on the majority of things their differences tend to be different shadings of doctrines as opposed to radically different doctrines on certain key areas different cultures different languages different leaders shaping the voice in the grammar of the reformed expression in different cities this reality in just the Swiss region is carried on all throughout Europe wherever there is reformed influence and for the remainder of the history down until today it continues to be this way there are a number of different expressions of Reformed commitments in different cities throughout Europe take John Knox in the Scottish Reformation John Knox and those who reform Scotland and created a Presbyterian form of church government love Calvin and they love the Reformed faith in fact if there's anybody in the history of the Reformed movement in the first two generations who really wants Calvin to be the lone voice the single voice that they follow its knocks knocks tends to back Geneva he spent time there when he was in exile during the reign of Mary the first but Knox and Scotland are not the only voice and they're not the only place where reformed theology takes root there are French Huguenots as we call them and as we'll look at in a later lecture they are equally reformed and they live in the country of France there is the Dutch Reformed movement that will give us later the Senate of dort which is often said wrongly to be the five points of Calvinism which more accurately should be described as the five answers to Arminianism there's also a not insignificant number of people in England and even in Germany in areas that are not dominated by Lutheranism that begin to really listen to the reformed perspective on things each of these different contexts will have slightly different shadings and over time will develop either somewhat different cultures or even largely different cultures based on the context in which they are created just compare for example Scottish Reformed Presbyterianism with the Dutch Reformed Church are they the same well in a manner of speaking sure they're reformed their quote Calvinistic they read insight in base their theology off of the insights of their forerunners in the sixteenth century but are they the same another answer could be no there are different cultures different church governments different structures they have different fights the Presbyterian world for example in Scotland never had to deal with arminianism and so you don't have as robust of answer or a concern you might say Oh widespread arminianism within their midst a lot of their fights hinge on the issue of the English crown and the independence of Scotland and its church from Anglicanism and the English church you can do this repeatedly throughout all the different pockets of places where there are reformed voices or a reformed ethos you might say in different parts of Europe so what this means is you cannot see the Reformed faith as a monolithic set of doctrines that boils down to five points or ten points or whatever else you want to say that it might be but it's rather a core set of convictions shaped by people like Bullinger boots or Calvin Peter martyr Finlay and others that carries on all throughout Europe and then all the way over into the new world

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 48,711

Rating: 4.8864355 out of 5

Keywords: Calvinism (Religion), Heinrich Bullinger (Founding Figure), Religion (TV Genre), Protestantism (Religion), Protestant Reformation (Event), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves, Church History, John Calvin (Founding Figure), Eucharist (Religious Practice), John Knox (Founding Figure), Martin Bucer

Id: Y1k6VZ2ERkM

Length: 30min 7sec (1807 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2015