Calvin and the Radical Reformation

I'm here to talk about Kelvin and the radical Reformation now for those of you that have never studied Reformation history the radical Reformation is really something that is a term that's used for the Anabaptist and maybe even more radical forms of the Reformation dr. Thigpen did a wonderful job in describing for you the unintended consequences of what happened in Luther's Reformation but to give you an example of that which we will focus on more next year when we talk about the English Reformation if you go to the say to the year 1650 which is right around the beginning of the what's called the the Puritan Commonwealth in England by that time 100 or so years after the beginning of the Reformation you find hundreds literally hundreds of break off groups all claiming by on the basis of Sola scriptura to know the true Christian faith and so there were effects of the Reformation were just multifarious and in mostly divisive but I've decided today that in order to help you to understand the importance of John Calvin that I'm not going to be able to discuss the radical Reformation that's a whole nother subject that some is Reformation historians focus their entire life on today what I want to do is to try to help you to understand this man named John Calvin and what his part and the Reformation had to do to focus upon that however is not arbitrary and not limited because I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that John Calvin might have been even more influential than Luther much of what took place in the formation of the North American continent especially in America since the early days of the colony was animated by a Calvinist theology many of the founding institutions of this country were founded by or at least populated by Calvinists and still today you see that influence for example at Princeton University although it has been secularized although it has been changed in many ways the founding of the college of new jersey as it was called in the early 19th century was by Calvinists Princeton Theological Seminary in the entirety of the 19th century and up into the first two decades of the 20th century was a Calvinist institution whether it is today while I'll leave you to judge that so where does this all begin it all begins in the Year 1509 because John Calvin or his name was pronounced in his native French Jean Calvin was born in Noel France in the 10th of July in 1509 Calvin was sent by his father to the University of Paris to study for the priesthood but quickly Calvin decided that he really needed to study law and so he changed his studies and moved to the University of Oregon and Brewers but Calvin soon returned to Paris and came under the influence of a man named Jacques Lefebvre had a table or as his name was known in Latin Farber stabile Ensis Jacques Lefebvre had for a long time been influencing many people in France to try to reform the church in various ways one of the central messages of lefebvre's preaching and teaching was that the people needed to get back to the simple gospel and if the church had become too elaborate with its rituals and its sacramental system in a way that obscured the simplicity of the gospel of Christ now he wasn't the first person to preach that in some ways the early Franciscan message could be seen in that light although where they were to take that message later on was in very different directions in 1533 when Calvin was impaired the authorities both ecclesiastical and civil decided that he that that there should be some type of a clamp down a suppressing of the Protestant sentiments that were abroad in the city of Paris Calvin decided that things were getting a little too hot and so he went moved to Basel Switzerland closer to his native country in Basel he spent three years studying theology on his own and he wrote what was to become the most significant statement one of the most significant statements of the Protestant Reformation the Institute's of the Christian religion as it was published in 1536 made a name for Calvin among the Protestant leaders in Europe and many people began to seek after him one day late in the year 1536 Calvin was spending the night in Geneva Switzerland a strong Protestant leader in the city there learned of his presence and sought him out to try to persuade him to stay in Geneva and to further the cause of the Reformation that man's name was Gil young fella or William Farrell Farrell prevailed upon Calvin to try to get him to join him in the cause of the Reformation apparently Geneva unlike some other cities in Switzerland was not a place where the Reformation had sunk very deeply there was widespread immorality within the city and church attendance was nothing to brag about but more importantly Calvin WA Farrell was having trouble convincing the City Council of Geneva to support the beliefs and practices of those who had departed from the Catholic Church now I'm not sure if this was because some of them were Catholic at heart or if they were simply pragmatist and wanted to keep things moving and working as long and you could believe whatever confession you wanted as long as you did not create any kind of civil unrest but in any case Farrell was trying to get the City Council to grant to the ministers of the city the right of excommunication over their parishioners all we know is that they flatly refused they wanted everything in the city under their control including its religious life this conflict between William Farrell and the City Council of Geneva caused Farrell to go to Calvin since he had read his Institutes of the Christian religion he realized that Calvin may be his greatest ally in trying to convince the City Council to reform the Church within Geneva and so he went and he asked Calvin will you join us here stay here in Geneva with us Calvin flatly refused because Calvin being of a quiet and scholarly disposition wanted to find an out-of-the-way place where he could lead the quiet life of a scholar away from the distractions of public life but as the standard story goes Farrell became quite indignant with Calvin and began to threaten him with divine judgment as calvin tells the story Farrell told him that God would judge him severely if in his in this hour of need he preferred his own welfare and happiness over the call of the gospel ministry and the spiritual needs of the Genevan people Calvin again as he tells the story felt as if God was speaking to him and threatening him too with eternal damnation and so he became convinced that God was indeed calling him to remain in the city and do to further the cause of the gospel as he understood and so in 1536 john calvin took up his permanent residence in the city and became easily the most articulate spokesman and pastor among the PATA stand clergy but from the very beginning from the very beginning calvin faced the same opposition from the City Council that pharrell had experienced as well he had to fight tooth and nail every day for steps of progress in the affairs of the church within the city and so as this battle went back and forth between the ministers of the city led now by Calvin and the City Council it came to a head three years later and in 1539 the City Council of Geneva expelled Ferrell and Calvin from the city Calvin sought refuge in the german-speaking city of Strasbourg which today is in eastern France where he became the pastor of a french-speaking congregation now that brings us to the moment in history that I want to focus on two for us to understand the Year 1539 is very significant in the Protestant Reformation because it was in that year that the question of church reform between the Catholics and the Calvinists came to a head and like Calvin and all Renaissance humanists of which he was one Catholic and Protestant it didn't matter they were all trained in the humanist tradition that's not secular humanism in the modern sense but Christian humanism as it was practiced in the Renaissance like all of them I will try to follow their motto bravi toss at clary toss brevity and clarity so I'll try to get right to the point and help you to understand this issue because my motivation here today is to inform to inform you about what happened during the Protestant Reformation with regard to Calvinists but as I reflect upon it I think I have a deeper motivation as well having been a Calvinist officially for 44 years I have a deep longing and yearning in my heart to see my very fine Christian brothers and sisters find the fullness of the Christian faith I want them to experience what I have experienced what I have a come to know the sacraments of which I knew very little in truth during those years the sense of the beauty of the Magisterial guidance from the leaders the bishops and may ultimately the Holy Father on the church there are many good-hearted Christian people today out there in America who are self-conscious Calvinists but many of them simply do not know they do not understand the nature of the Catholic Church and my deep desire is for them to see that in that year 15 to 39 Calvin Lynn was living in Strasbourg away from Geneva and so there was an Italian Cardinal Jacques Abbas atlatl in northern Italy who took this opportunity to write a lengthy letter to the city fathers of Geneva and who urged them to return to Mother Church Cardinal said Leto argued that the reformers were schismatic and that they had forsaken the teachings of the ancient faith Calvin even though none doubtedly he was alienated emotionally from the city of Geneva nevertheless could not let this letter pass and the City Council of Geneva sent the letter to Calvin the very man they had banned and asked him if he would reply to this letter because even though they were particularly fond of Calvin they even hated satellite Oh more and they were not they were not going for a moment to consider returning under that Roman yoke as they called it Calvin reflected he thought and he said to himself I need to put aside my personal feelings for the cause of the gospel because he perceived Cardinal satellite o--'s letter to the Geneva's as being in fact an assault upon the gospel and so he picked up his pen and he replied he agreed with the Cardinal that leaving the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church was reprehensible but he also argued that it was not they the Protestants who had done that but that it was the Catholics who had done that or the Romanist as he called them they believed Oh Calvin believed and the Protestants in general in Geneva and in Switzerland believed that they were only reviving and reaffirming what the Holy Fathers of the ancient church had taught on in theological issue that was raised in the letter Calvin says quote all we have attempted has been to renew the ancient form of the church now it would be extremely valuable for us to look at Calvin's letter to understand what animated this kind of thinking it states clearly his grievances with the Catholic Church but his main grievance was that the Roman Church or the Roman party as he called it had forsaken the teachings of ancient Christianity primarily expressed by the Apostles but also preserved in the early centuries of Christianity Calvin's goal was Renovatio or renewing the church by bringing it back to its historical roots in the Institute's of the Christian religion which knew numerous editions between 1536 and its final edition in 15:59 Calvin repeatedly sought to answer the charge of the Catholics that the Protestants were introducing novel doctrines this did not sit well with Calvin nor with most humanists because the humanist movement that began in the fifteenth century under for example Marceline's vicino in Florence and that made its way to the northern part of Europe the humanist movement was an idea of returning what they called two odd Fontes back to the film act two the fonts of antiquity it was a revival of ancient Greek and Roman literature and Calvin was a consummate Latinist but that same idea was animating humanists and the Protestants to go back to the Bible as the source of all true Christian teaching well consistent with this desire to be in tune with Calvin's with Christian antiquity Calvin almost never uses the words Catholic Church to refer to that ecclesial body of which the Pope is the head so far as I can tell Calvin always speaks of it as the Roman pontiff and his factions or simply the Roman Church or the tyranny of the papacy he reserves the term Catholic Church for the people of God throughout every age who followed the scriptures and administer their sacraments rightly and of course rightly means in his own understanding of what the Scriptures teach and how the menaced sacraments should be administered in the Institute's of the Christian religion Calvin quotes st. Cyprian the 3rd century Bishop of Carthage to say that outside the Catholic Church no one can be saved because it is the mother of all believers and with approval and pride Calvin quotes Cyprian again he cannot have God as his father who does not have the church as his mother but however on the other hand just as Calvin is sure that everyone must be a member of the Catholic Church to be saved he is just as sure that the Roman Church and its serfs a term he uses for bishops and priests is not that ancient Catholic Church he speaks of the Roman Church as accepting and fostering all kinds of falsehoods and abominations in the name of Christ and so for example from the very first edition of the Institute's in 1536 Calvin categorizes all the sacraments except baptism and the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist as false sacraments so if Calvin wanted to reform the church what was his method this is where the letter of satelite oh and Calvin's response to that letter becomes important because it shows us the concept of reform that would that they differed on it shows us how different visions of reform were eggs were exists or existed during the sixteenth century and I think you can see immediately the relevance of it today how many of you as faithful Catholic laypeople and clergy Fathers we believe that the church today needs some reform I don't see all your hands you mean you don't think the church needs reform of course it needs reform but how much agreement is there among us or among the church at large about the ways to go about that reform my brother Marcus Grodi outlined last right some of the different ways that people think it should be reformed those same that same diversity a vision about how to reform the church existed within the sixteenth century and there were Cardinals and bishops within the church at the time who never left the church who had different visions about how that should be done so what was Calvin's and how did it differ from sat letõs and I might say more broadly at least a large contingent within the Catholic Church as I have said and now in other words Calvin says all that we have attempted to do is to restore the native purity from which the sacraments had degenerated and so will to enable them to restore to resume their former dignity and add and with regard to the discipline and doctrine of the Genevan Church Calvin says we do not hesitate to appeal to the ancient church what Calvin argues throughout this letter is that it was not the Protestants who abandoned the Catholic Church but it was the Roman Church that did so with its tyrannical system of grovelling obeisance to the Pope it's elaborate rituals that had obscured the simplicity of the gospel and the sacraments and its perversion of the teaching of the early fathers so Calvin believed that one of the greatest faults of the Catholic Church was the abandonment of the Scriptures as the final appeal in the matters of religion and so Catholic into private Calvin thought that like other reformers the Scriptures should ultimately be the source from which we drive true Christian belief and he believed that that true Christian belief was more or less preserved in the early centuries of Christianity and so true reform to be a return with continuity to the church fathers now let's ask the question why did Calvin think this I think the answer is because of the culture in which he grew up he grew up in a Catholic culture and under a Catholic education which believed that there must be continuity with the past in order to reform the present his humanist and his Christian training would simply not allow him to dismiss the church fathers as if they had no relevance to the present and so the question is not whether we believe the Scriptures or the Church Fathers but which church which faith and which order represents the ancient Catholic faith is it the Calvinist belief and order or is it the Roman or what we would call the Catholic Church in the 16th century to many people the answer was not so clear many people of sincere faith were on different sides of that question but in order to understand Calvin even more deeply we must turn first of all to Cardinal Sat letõs letter to the Geneva's now it's interesting because I can't remember when I went to a Calvinist seminary whether we ever read Cardinal SATA letters letter I can't ever remember reading and I may have been assignment just entreated but but nevertheless one can understand that in a Calvinist seminary one is not particularly interested in satellite o--'s letter but we did read very assiduously Calvin's answer to Kelvin to salento to understand the nature of the Reformation argument now many years later I have gone back and I have read and translated a letter and I have looked to what Cardinal satellite who said that made Calvin say what he said in his letters here's what I find I'm going to share four things with you I'm going to share with you something of the tone of a letter the appeal of Christian unity they appeal to continuity with the ancient church and the focus upon the question of by faith alone Sola PJ first of all the tone of the letter the Cardinal begins this letter with terms of Christian affection he calls the Geneva pnes beloved brothers in christ he wishes them love and peace from God the Father from Christ the Son and from the Holy Spirit and repeatedly he calls them beloved brothers and sisters he speaks to them as brother to brother and friend to friend now you may have thought that calling non-catholic Christians as brothers and sisters in Christ was a post Vatican 2 development sorry it's already there because this is the presumption of love this is the presumption that I'm not going to judge my brothers in a personal sense all I'm going to do is to appeal to them to ask them to come closer to Christ to come to the church that Christ has founded as I read these opening lines of the letter I must confess I I felt much like a son reading a letter from a kind father who is employing his wayward son to come home the second feature of this letter about Christian unity the Cardinal in no uncertain terms calls the people of Geneva back to the unity of faith and piety which they had enjoyed whether they think they enjoyed it or not well that's another thing but he believed that they did he speaks of how dissension and schism are offensive to a true Christian spirit Cardinal satellite au recounts the foundations of the gospel of Christ as he weaves together biblical language and illusion into virtually every sentence of the letter how many of you have ever spent any time reading Christian writers from the sixteenth century Protestant and Catholic you will notice that these people practically consumed the Bible and this wasn't just Catholics or Protestants it was both the Bible just filled their thoughts and when they wrote they naturally would just make all kinds of allusions to the Bible that's what cardinal sin letter does in this letter all in the purpose of showing them that there should be nothing more distasteful to a Christian than destroying the unity of Christ Church but that's exactly the question you see how do you have that unity on what basis do you have that unity if in my first statements about the tone we saw that Cardinal sat Leto has a presumption of love in this second about Christian unity he has a presumption of truth it's exactly what John Paul the second said in autonomous sent his letter on cristiano cumin ism where John Paul says there can be no true acumen ISM or unity without truth that is what Cardinal said Leto is reminding the Geneva's of and so that brings us to the third point of Cardinal sent letters letter namely the continuity that there must be with the Christian past there is he expresses the heart the heart of introducing new currents into the church nothing should be more distasteful to a Christian than introducing something which Christ has not taught and it is essential at that faith which was once and for all delivered to the Saints should be passed on from generation to generation Calvin probably would not have disagreed with that but exactly what the content of that faith was is where their divergence occurred the fourth element as an illustration of a new doctrine Cardinal Satta Leto gives the question of by faith alone now I'm going to give you I'm going to as I discuss carne asada letters treatment of by faith alone I'm going to weave in and out of quotations from his letter he begins that section this way he says we strive for this good of our constant and perpetual salvation by faith in God and in Jesus Christ alone this is Cardinal Salado talking but when I say by faith alone I do not understand a mere belief or trust to the exclusion of love and our other duties as a Christian here I am persuaded that all my faults are forgiven me in the cross and blood of Christ this indeed is necessary for us and it is our first entrance into God perhaps an allusion to the cleansing waters of baptism but he says this is not enough let us also he says apply our minds and devotion to the Most High God and have a strong desire to do the things that are pleasing to him this is what the Holy Spirit will help us to do this mindset he says even if it doesn't progress to the point of actually doing good works will create an interior disposition within a person who wants to please God in every respect and it will give prompt of diligent obedience to God and everything that God asks of us by placing within us the habitus of divine righteousness the word hobby to us in Latin from which obviously we derive our word habit is a word that in in in medieval theology meant a disposition but which God places within the soul in other words what the Cardinal is saying is that true righteousness is an interior habit of our lives by which we grow day by day into the likeness of Christ and he asked the question what else could be signified by the term righteousness in Scripture than that it has good works in you and doesn't scripture say in Titus 2:14 that God sent His Son into the world to make a people acceptable for him zealous for good works and doesn't even stew a lot to 10 say that we were remade in Christ for good works there's nothing new Under the Sun see they dealt with all these questions in the 16th century so the Cardinal continues if Christ was sent that we might be made acceptable to God as we do good works and that were made for us in him then faith in God through Jesus Christ can certainly not the only trust in Christ it must also include doing good in him that he needs in his strength in his spirit and so faith is a full and rich word in Sacred Scripture and it contains not only the idea of belief or trust but also hope and diligently obeying God it must also contain love that has been made to us known to us in Christ love is the principle and the queen of all Christian virtues this is a creation of the Holy Spirit because in fact the Holy Spirit is love itself indeed God is love Calvin couldn't argue with that that's right out of first John god is love and we can neither please or be acceptable to God without love so when we say that we are saved by faith in God and Jesus Christ alone we go on to say that love is the first of all that is included in this faith this love is the principle cause of our salvation this is something that just sends Calvin into a frenzy when he says that love is the cause of our salvation in his letter in his reply to Cardinal said let o John Calvin says that the doctrine of justification by faith is much too complex to be able to deal with sufficiently but he does give us a synopsis or a summary of his understanding of justification by faith and make no mistake about it Calvin believes that this is the highest doctrine of religion the doctrine of justification by faith he agrees with Luther that the church stands or falls upon whether the doctrine of justification by faith alone has preached by the Protestants is true and he goes on to tell the honored cardinal that it is only in the Roman churches where there is crass ignorant of this doctrine now this dissonance between what is most important in the Christian religion namely justification by faith and the state of ignorance in the Roman churches agrees perfectly with Martin Luther's assessment of the Roman Church and for this reason Calvin thinks that the Roman Church has extinguished of the glory of Christ it is is as if Calvin wrote across the Catholic Church Hebrew word Ichabod the glory has departed so what is the alternative to reestablish the church on the basis of christ and the gospel so Calvin thinks so because the Roman Church wanted to lend men back to slavery now the gospel will liberate people from that tyranny Calvin is anxious to answer satellite o--'s accusation that the Calvinist theology made good works unnecessary this is extremely important because it is still true today for knowledgeable Protestant Christians if you say to them that their theology makes doing good unimportant or unnecessary they will respond no that's not true at all they will they will react against that because they have worked out an understanding between faith and works and this is what Calvin wants to answer Salado said that their theology leads to the logical conclusion that holy living is superfluous for a Christian but Calvin says no that is not the case at all but in the process he makes a distinction which is utterly and absolutely crucial for us to understand the difference between the Catholic that is the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by faith and the Calvinist doctrine of justification by faith alone in effect Calvin says that good works have no role in our justification here are his words we deny that good works have any share in our justification but we claim full authority for them in the lives of the righteous here we find Calvin expressing what language of later Calvinists would say that faith alone justifies but faith is never alone in the one justified works function in a Calvinist view of salvation as evidence of true faith but it is still the faith alone that justifies and here we begin to understand the true nature of the differences parenthetically after two doctoral degrees amassed two masters degrees and all kinds of study throughout my life I finally have come to realize that half of the game is understanding what the real questions are and incidentally in your attempt to help separated brothers and sisters to come home to the Catholic Church that is a crucial realization that they have to be asking the right questions in order to see the significance of the answers my intention today is to help you to understand a little bit better for a lot of Protestant Christians in America what the right questions are here's the difference in the Calvinists conception of salvation justification is an act of God's grace whereby he declares the sinner righteous without any reference to that person's works but since God is the one who declares a man just is also the one who changes his heart that is regeneration as Calvin is : through the work of the Holy Spirit Calvin insists that a justified man will naturally perform good works in short Calvin defends the necessity of good works but he separates good works from justification and this is the crucial thing about the doctrine of justification by faith alone for a Calvinist as for most knowledgeable Protestants justification is an act of God's grace whereas sanctification is a process of God's grace justification is a declaration by God alone sanctification or the process of becoming holier is an absolute necessity for the justified man but that increase in holiness doesn't add one iota to his justification growth and holiness and the performing of good works only proves to others and to himself that he truly has faith it doesn't make a difference in the final justification well there's two more topics I was going to talk about but I can see time just to give you a - two minute summary the other one of the other questions that they deal with in the letter that comes up over and over again had to do with the authority of church councils of ancient church councils by and large we heard from dr. Thigpen that Luther and Lutheran's rejected the authority the infallibility of ancient councils Calvin I guess the best way to characterize it would be this Calvin believed that ancient councils were venerable but not infallible by the way that's not and that's not a view that has died out that's still in the Catholic Church today but by infallible the church means that those those dogmatic decisions of ancient councils cannot be revived that they are part a part of the deposit of faith Kelvin however thought that whenever there was a conflict as he perceived it between the scriptures and an ancient council the Scriptures had to win the third topic that they deal with him the letter has to do with what is most dear to my heart the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist it was the transition from a Calvinist understanding of the Eucharist to a Catholic understanding that made me a Catholic or maybe I should say that convinced me I should become a Catholic then it was in fact the Eucharist itself not my thoughts about it that maybe au courant made me a Catholic but in this issue Calvin again is very zealous to show that his doctrine is consistent with the ancient fathers of the church and so who does he quote he quotes what Calvinists today even believe is the greatest of the ancient Saints st. Agustin now we must recognize that there are passages in the writings of st. Augustine which if interpreted in a certain light could lead to a Calvinist conclusion but I became convinced because you can see I have a lot of stake in this issue I read st. Agustin's writings on the Eucharist and I looked at every single passage that he dealt with and the conclusion that I came away with was this that even though there are isolated statements here and there that might be taken to support a Calvinist belief about the Lord's Supper when you took all of those statements into account you had to walk away with the conclusion that his doctrine was more Catholic than Calvinists or to put it another way he truly believed that Christ was present body and blood soul and divinity in the Eucharist consecrated on the altar that is something that Calvin could ever say so where did calvin go wrong i had to ask myself he went wrong in this respect he began to look at the fathers of the church selectively i want to repeat that that's where people go wrong when they read the fathers of the church selectively where they take a quotation here and one there to prove their point but it ignores the entire historical development that went on in the ancient church is this relevant today yesterday no thursday I turned on the History Channel there's a program called the rise of Christianity the historical consultant for this program was none other than John Dominic Crossan the impression that was left to the unsuspecting viewer was that the Council of Nicaea was a political victory of the Orthodox over the Aryans or they leo the first was the first one ever to leo the first by the way in the mid 50 was the first one to ever assert the authority of the see of Rome all over all the other sees or the other ancient bishoprics in the church statement after statement built upon a theory of history that is highly questionable you can read books and they're out there they're public for example professor bart airmen from the university of north carolina has written a book called lost Christianity's in which he contends that christianity in the ancient world was very diverse Gnostics they were and they were these people called the Orthodox and these others that were called by this name and that name and these were all legitimate forms of Christianity which were suppressed in the end our conceptions of history influence what we think about the nature of true mijin and so it is crucial that we deal with this question so I urge you take this serious hist this history seriously but I'm going to conclude with this to understand the true nature of Calvinism we need to broaden our perspectives just a bit and we need to ask ourselves the question what is the spirit which animated Calvinism and still does today I can give it to you in one word iconoclasm Calvinists are iconoclasts iconoclasm is the belief and practice of destroying all images of the divine it comes from two Greek words icon which means image and Clow or claw and the greek verb that means to break or to smash and like the iconic lists in the Brizendine east of the 8th and 9th centuries the Calvinists in the 16th century believed that the Roman Catholic Church had fostered and encouraged idolatry and this was played out in actual life in the year 1575 about 11 years after calvin died in the city of paris on the eve of st. Bartholomew's day on the eve of st. Bartholomew's day in the year 1575 Protestants entered into the Catholic churches and destroyed many if not most of the statues in the churches in Paris the next day the Catholics retaliated in what has been kind known as the infamous st. Bartholomew's Day Massacre the Catholics attempted to kill as many Protestants as they could and we studied this of course in seminary in Reformation history now remember sitting around with some of my fellow Calvinists seminarians and discussing this they like me were horrified at the behavior of the Catholics who killed Protestants over destruction of images in the churches and while not excusing the taking of human life on the part of Catholics I wondered out loud to my fellow seminarians what we Calvinists might do given the same times and attitudes had some authorities burned our Bibles or forbid our worship services I remembered the reaction of my fellow Calvinists seminarians no they said the Protestants were fully justified in destroying those images because those statues and pictures of the Saints and of Christ were idolatrous to worship those images was a clear violation of the second commandment that is in the Calvinists numbering of the commandments that's the one about don't make graven images and that response tells us something about the way a Calvinist things now few if any Calvinists today would go into Catholic churches and destroy their statues although today the truth I have heard from reliable sources about Catholic pastors getting up in the morning and finding statues and the churches destroyed but this does express a sentiment that is important that was still being advocated by Calvinists in the late 1970s you see a Calvinist believes that the more glory and honor you give to man or to objects or to created things the less honor and glory you give to God so a Calvinist thinks that all false images of God have to be broken and destroyed and that is not only physical images such as statues and icons that is mental and doctrinal images as well so to teach falsehood is idolatry for a Calvinists now this underlying sentiment that motive is what motivated Calvin's criticisms of the Catholic Church because he believed in the core of his heart that it was a false system of worship which the quote-unquote Roman party had fostered and voiced it on the people of Europe this is what led Calvin to decry the Catholic emphasis upon works as integral to salvation to him as to Lutheran if works played an active role in our salvation that would be detracting from the glory of God and would be honoring the human creature to Calvin to trust in the ancient counsels of the church as having definitive authority would be to trust in man not in God to believe that the logos the eternal son of God confined themselves to the dimensions of a communion wafer would be to limit the power and glory of Christ in fact the Roman system was an affront to God in Calvin's mind Calvin believed as do all true Calvinists derive from that man and God are in competition for glory if we glorify man we are taking glory away from God and you know what the Calvinists are half right you see sinful men affected by the scourge of concupiscence are out to take glory away from God we and our own ways believer or unbeliever small or great we attempt to place ourselves in the place of God but the Calvinists are only half right God does not see himself in competition with us the way that God overcomes our idolatrous tendencies is to entice us into a love relationship where we no longer want to be in competition with God but we want to be in cooperation with His grace and so faith and works are not in competition but they're woven together in a beautiful tapestry called holiness those works which are decried by the Apostle Paul and his letters are actions by which we attempt to gain God's favor apart from Christ it was these kind of works that Paul was condemning in Romans and Galatians but that's different than works which flow from grace and faith those works are pleasing to God because they complete the faith that was his initial gift in the first place these faith filled works are a manifestation of the glory of God and so the Saint whose feast day we celebrated yesterday st. Charles Borromeo says in one of his homilies better than I could ever say it here's what he said God desires to save us so much that we are capable of desiring him excuse me God desires to save us much more than we are capable of desiring him but why should we content ourselves with the word desire all his pleasure all his joy consistent honoring us ennobling us exalting us saving us and making us happy now I must confess if such words were uttered by a twentieth century Catholic today I might be justified in claiming that this person had a self-centered image of God because people today do think that God exists only for their happiness but coming from a 16th century Saint who was dedicated in a selfless sacrifice to the glory of God and the good of the church this do I have to say derives from a profound awareness that escaped John Calvin it is an awareness that in perfecting the goods of our humanity God is glorified it's the same message that dr. Hahn last night spoke about with regard to avinash's Augustine and Aquinas it is what st. Irenaeus said that the man that man fully alive is the glory of God you see man may be attempting to take glory from God but God is not interested in taking glory from man God wants to fill us with his glory with his pleasure and indeed with his very own life and why so that in the end you and I as the liturgy says may become everlasting gifts to the Father this is the Catholic vision that God in His goodness is not a distant god whom we must please by faith but he is utter gives us his very life and in instilling his life within our souls we are able to make that journey of faith that consists of trust and reliance upon him but also working that out in every step of our lives this is the Catholic understanding of salvation and how does God do this well first of all it reminds us that we could never do this on her own that is salvation by grace that we could not do it on our own but how does he do it he gives us the greatest grace of all the gift of his divine life through the instrumentality of the sacraments as a Calvinist born raised educated preaching Calvinism for almost well 40 years in the last four were making the transition I can tell you the message of the Catholic Church the gospel of Christ as taught in the fullness of the Catholic faith is what the world NEADS and the world is yearning for that let me end with a oblique reference to something that I think might be important for you to know this past summer I was in Canada for an academic conference I was giving a talk on st. Augustine's view of science and religion I happened to meet a Lutheran friend there and we struck up a conversation and he said to me well what church do you belong to and I said well today I'm Catholic but I was a Calvinist a Presbyterian for many many years and he said well that's quite a transition and I said yes he said I'd like to hear about that so we had coffee one evening and we talked together about it but before I share with him my story he gave me a letter that was written by one of his fellow Lutheran ministers to the Bishop of his Lutheran district in this letter just in the first page of seven pages this Lutheran minister recounted the instances of ten different Lutheran theologians who have left the Lutheran Church to become either Catholic or Orthodox and after the story of each one of these theologians and these were names that people that read theology will recognize after each one the man who wrote the letter said why why why that is the question we want our separated brothers and sisters to ask why why is this happened in Protestantism and is there an answer in the fullness of faith you know it's easy for us as Catholics and it's easy for me as an adult convert to sort of fall and slip into the attitude of oh I want people to experience or I want people to see you know that the Catholics were right after all right but as I was praying the other day in front of the Blessed Sacrament that always has a way of humbling you as I was playing praying before the Blessed Sacrament I thought to myself so why do I yearn so much for my brothers and sisters to come home to the Catholic Church let me use an example from Star Wars as Darth Vader said to his son you don't know the power of the force you do not know the power of the sacraments you do not understand the divine life that is being communicated through these institutions of grace my friend do not keep these treasures to yourself share them with those around you that they may to experience what you experience every day not so that we can say oh we were right after all now I can say don't you see how gracious a loving God is don't you see how wonderful it is that a God would not only want to declare your righteous we would want to give you his divine life in your very soul because that is what heaven is and heaven begins now in that church which Christ founded that is called one Holy Catholic and apostolic you you

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

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Id: 2C0hBnsuEUA

Length: 61min 49sec (3709 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 05 2016