Calvin's Institutes

in this lecture we're gonna be looking at Calvin's Institutes and the way that they shaped not only Calvin's ministry in life but also their importance but above all we're gonna look at how the Institute's fit within the world of the Reformation itself in how it uh sure din Calvin as one of the leading theologians of the first generation of the Reformation and we're gonna be brief on this we're not going to be overly long but the Institute's really deserve our attention because by the completion of their final edition in 1559 the Institute's were really an opus really a phenomenal piece of work that would go down in history as one of the greatest productions of a Protestant in the entirety of the 16th century by the time they were translated into English and into French and other languages they quickly took on a new importance amongst reform minded folks throughout Europe and in a manner of speaking that's really where Calvin's influence comes from his writing we've noted a few times that Luther's influence in particular is drawn heavily from the dynamism of his personality and the real rigorous commitment to the doctrine of justification by faith other doctrines of Luther's for those who are not Lutheran tends to sit quite lightly with people meaning not everyone likes Luke whose view of the sacraments or his view of the law or at times his view of other matters but Luther is always in the lead role as the principal Protestant reformer Calvin's writings in his ministry by contrast form a different type of engagement with the later world over the heritage of the Reformation going on after their death as Calvin's Institutes begin to be used people increasingly find it useful it helpful and clear in an attempt to understand the theology of the Reformation in particular as Latin becomes less and less familiar for folks the other vitally important books from the Reformation at times get left on the shelf many of us frankly would be unaware of bullying Gers decades or if Melanchthon slow sigh were the works of boots ER or peter martyr or any of these folks but just about everyone has heard of the institutes at some point so that's to tell us something about their importance in some ways Calvin's contribution to the reformed tradition was so large that it was only natural for some to begin calling themselves Calvinists though of course as we've seen they don't do this for some time centuries really but just because you want to put Calvin in his context does not mean that we want a lesson or reduce the influence of Calvin's institutes in particularly in the english-speaking world well how do the Institute's come about well the first edition of the Institute's was in 1536 it was actually quite a short work just six chapters in understanding why Calvin wrote this in the sources that he's using or important Calvin of course was a lawyer he was a humanist he was not trained in theology or in the classic works of systematics or of the Church Fathers themselves or at least in some respects Calvin was an amateur you might say he certainly didn't have the scholastic theological training that loser had but the 1536 Institute's serve a purpose and they have a context and we are pretty certain of which books Calvin is using as he is crafting the structure of the book itself and this is important to realize at times Calvin will use the structure provided by other books books by melanchthon or Zwingli or others and he'll cry this structure and then within it he'll write his own articulation of the various doctrines well in 1536 it seems very clear that Calvin is basing the relatively simple structure of it off of primarily the works of Luther there are a couple in particular we're not going to go into all the details but Calvin is actually using Luther's structure now he's not ripping him off he's not using all of us theology itself Calvin is always going to be an independent writer and an independent thinker but the structure is Lutheran now what most people miss in fact it's really not talked about much and secondary sources is the question of why would he use Luther well for new students to the subject they're usually a bit confused they tend to see Calvin as a ready-made antagonist to some of Luther's doctrines well he's not at this point he is actually very appreciative of Luther in fact throughout the remainder of his career all the way until his death Calvin will have enormous Lee high praise for Luther though at times he will be pretty open and sharp about his criticisms of some of the doctrines that Luther taught well why would he use Luther why would he attempt to structure the institutes in this way well the answer comes from the preface and the preface even down until today in the 1559 edition has the same preface the preface is written to Francis the first well you'll recall in our lecture on Calvin's conversion in exile that Francis had churned on the reformed or Protestant minded humanists throughout France the affair of the placards and in a number of other things had propelled Francis to really turn against those in the context of France that were taking their reform-minded humanism a bit too far well what Francis was doing if we remember the context is he wants to be the gadfly he wants to be the nuisance the mortal enemy to Charles and all throughout the 1530s Charles is attempting to tamp down and eventually to suppress fully Lutheranism now he's not able to and Lutheranism relatively thrives but you also remember that the 1530s is the time when the smoke Alda klieg is getting underway and there is now a political muscle behind Lutheranism at one point actually in the 1530s francis agreed to partner and to join the small cultic league which is a bit funny given Francis's anti protestant stance within his own country but again whatever you can do to pack charles off will make him just happy en francis does eventually pull out of any negotiations to join the small kodak league due in large part to the fact that it was so overwhelmingly Protestant well what's going on in this day both in Germany and in France is that because of the political muscle of Lutheranism and because of Luther's really harsh rejection of Zwingli in 1531 the political entities whenever they refer to Protestants almost always have in mind Lutheran's and by and large they also took Luther's position that the reformed perspective the Swiss perspective of people like Zwingli etc was fundamentally shuang'er or in a Baptist or part of the more radical Reformation well not surprisingly when Francis turns and begins to reject their reform minded humanists within France one of the real leverage points that is being worked out here is a sort of broad brush that is being painted across all these humanists who are now fleeing for Protestant lands as being in a Baptist that is to say there is an attempt to describe them as millenarian or apocalyptic as the same kind of folks that enacted the peasants revolt in the 1530s there was also another Anabaptist revolution in the area of moons which is the city up in the northwestern part of Germany that at one point had an Anabaptist take over and all kinds of crazy things happened forced polygamy the eradication of private property and eventually one of the leaders of this group rode out with a undermanned army believing that he had heard from the Holy Spirit that he was going to be a new Gideon and he got cut down and the city was eventually restored all these ideas are always swirling in Europe at this time to be Anabaptist was to be treasonous terrorist usurper crazy all these things are in play here we're talking about a to Baptist well what's going on here is the Lutheran line about swingley is being applied to a number of different folks throughout the Swiss regions in these Frenchmen who have fled to the Swiss regions or are now being accused of the same thing so when you look at Calvin's first edition of the Institute's the overwhelming if not the only reason for its publication is simply the fact that Calvin is saying we are not in a Baptist the opening letter is pretty extensive and argues very conclusively Calvin things that what the French Protestants now believe is not all that different from what Luther himself believed now it might make sense why he used Luther's works in order to arrange the Institute's in 1536 it also explains one of the more curious things when people first read the 1536 Institute's or they look at the table of contents perhaps is that it doesn't really follow any theological or catechesis structure in other words after having fled from France sitting back saying you know what would be a good theology book something all the Institute's and then he does imply himself to simply write a systematic theology rather the 1536 edition is born of the context of these Frenchmen attempting to let their countrymen know and in particular to let Francis the first know they are not raving lunatics but that their theology comports with the vast majority of Luther's message itself in other words the Institute's begin more out of a concern for France more out of a concern for his countrymen more as an apology you might say in terms of apologetics in the hope that Francis will hear him and will put an end to the persecutions in his homeland well then if that's the context in the impetus behind the 1536 edition of the Institute's how then do we get to this massive two-volume thing that we have now in the modern English printing of it well the answer is that Calvin changed his mind as to how he wanted to use the book maybe this is the lawyer in him maybe this is just simply the idiosyncrasies of Calvin himself but there's actually a clue as to what Calvin is doing not in the person of Luther but in the person of Melanchthon you'll recall from our lectures on Lutheranism that Melanchthon was really the systematize ur of the lutheran perspective on a number of subjects he and we commented how Melanchthon in 1521 wrote the low-side communis which really is a Lutheran version of the Institute's and just like the Institute's there was an early edition of the low-side communis that Malak that wrote and he expanded it well what recent scholars have pointed out is that melanchthon in the early to mid 15 30s it is really publishing at a pretty high rate he publishes a significant commentary on Romans and more importantly just prior to the 1536 Institute's melanchthon publishes the second edition of his low sigh and just like the Institute's Malayan has expanded it he has added sections he has developed and matured the vocabulary within it well again recent scholars have actually pointed out but this has a pretty significant impact on Calvin in 1539 Calvin published a second edition of the Institute's now he publishes this while in his exile to Strasbourg which we'll cover in one of our later lectures Calvin had failed pretty miserably in Geneva in his first attempt let that be a lesson to all you pastors sometimes even failure is okay learn your lessons and move on well once Calvin had been exiled from Geneva and he had landed in Strasbourg with boots er and he began to have significantly more free time to work on his book suddenly in 1539 he comes up with a another edition of the book this time there are 17 chapters and more importantly there is a rearrangement of the order of the subjects that has been a subject of some debate which we're not going to really go into now but we need to understand that what's going on here is something significant the Institute's in 1539 begin a long process where they move from a really sort of period piece where Calvin is focused on defending himself and his brethren as not being a Baptist to now becoming something that is more of a catechism or a resource for anyone who wants to discuss theological topics in general now you have to be careful here the rise in the 19th and 20th centuries of these massive systematic theologies things like Bart's Church dogmatics has somewhat prejudiced us to believe that what Calvin's doing is something like that that he's trying to sort of summarize every teaching on the doctrine or he's trying to convey what he believes is his unique perspective on a number of different topics well that's just simply not what Calvin's doing the fact that we see it that way is really more of a result of the fact that we're unaware of what's going on around Calvin at this time well in the 1539 edition Calvin begins a wrestling process you might say where he tries to determine what is the best order to discuss theological topics and if you stop and think about it it's actually a pretty profound question how do you start to talk about the faith particularly for people who were brand new to the faith which in Calvin's day was just about everybody in terms of Protestant theology well there were two strategies that were being proposed this time by a vast number of Protestants but in particular Melanchthon and Calvin or really thinking deeply about the ways Christians approach their faith because in general there are two perspectives they thought the first is you can approach the topic through the structure of the creed that is to say you begin with God the Father and you discuss topics related to that you then move to the doctrine of the son which of course brings in all the doctrines of the cross and salvation and then you talk about the doc from the spirit which is of the Christian life and the church etc and if you look at the Institute's from 50 and 39 to 1559 they actually develop increasingly towards that structure now people sometimes scratch their head about that because they say wait the Creed is Trinitarian but the Institute's have four books how the world is this based on the Apostles Creed well the answer is found later in Calvin's ministry in the 1540s where he writes that the Creed has a four-part structure he believes God the Father God the Son God the Spirit and he said the fourth locus was the church now notice Calvin did not say Christian living Calvin is pretty committed to a negative posture of individualism for him the Christian life is in the church it's the collective life we have together the Koinonia we have together well put that aside what we're looking at now is Calvin really trying to make the structure of the Institute's creedal in for a lot of people that make sense follow the Creed the Apostles Creed has a simple structure and go through it well the problem is that's not how we learn our faith as Christians we learn our faith melanchthon and Calvin and others will say really in the middle of the entire story and Malak that in particular writes about this and it does seem to have an impact on Calvin Melanchthon and Luther in Calvin and others when they look for a way that Christians should engage their faith they were sensitive to the fact that probably a better way a better method you might say of discussing our faith is to use the book of Romans as our guide now again they're not saying the book of Romans is systematic theology but what they are saying is that the narrative structure that Paul gives us in Romans they believe might be better for Christians in terms of the evolution and the development of the doctrinal subjects related to all the scriptural teachings well just think about it romans begins first off with sin begins with the lack of the ability of all of humanity to save itself or to choose God it then proceeds through the doctrines of salvation predestination actually comes after the discussion of justification by faith which only makes sense because what Paul is saying is you were lost you were dead and sin then you were justified you came to saving faith and now in the midst of saving faith there are all these other realities that were at work in at play in your life all the way back to eternity past God's election the structure of the Christian life all the section of Romans going after the doctrine of justification is at least in terms of the order of quote/unquote systematic theology all out of order well melanchthon and calvin in particular believe that romans is more of how we to use a modern word existentially appropriate and come to knowledge of what our faith is we were lost than were found and everything else comes as a result of that well the work of Richard Muller in particular on this issue has really driven home the fact that Milan's teachings these issues though not embraced by Calvin entirely are nevertheless taken over in Calvin spins from 1539 to 1559 from the first major revision of the Institute's all the way to their end really wrestling with how to approach a creedal formula or a Creole structure of the Institute's and yet also taken him account the fact that that is not how we approach our faith existentially or personally that in fact we approach the subject of our faith only after justification is experienced in the life of the believer not to put too fine a point on this but really what's going on here is the kind of thing you would see debated today whenever people are debating the difference between biblical theology and systematic theology but we have to be careful here because Calvin is not in the modern sense of the word a system ax Titian he is not attempting to say everything about everything he is not attempting to answer all the questions of the Christian life all the way until their final publication Calvin is adamant the Institute's are to stand as a book that is a reference source for Christians of all kinds but but in particular those who were training for pastoral ministry but that they were only a guide to the overall sweep of Protestant theology that they were insufficient on their own Calvin will stress repeatedly that biblical commentary biblical exegesis is the primary place for understanding our theology Calvin will drive this home pretty significantly a systematic or a more catechesis structure of the Institutes of the way that we approach our faith is required it's necessary it's discipleship you ask questions like who is Jesus they do you have to sum up the faith in a creedal structure to the Institute's made sense the Calvin Calvin was very keen to say stick to the scriptures go to the exegesis there in the Institute's form kind of a later secondary order of the consideration of the faith when someone says what does this text me and you exegete that text Calvin will say but when someone says what does this text mean in the context of everything the Bible teaches well in that case you need Calvin believes something like the Institute's as a reference source not as a dictionary or encyclopedia not in that sense of a reference but a source or a place where you can go it really engaged with a more comprehensive look at the overall sweep of certain doctrines in the end the 1559 addition to the Institute's Calvin believes and he tells us actually this in a new preface that he writes for the 1559 edition that finally he says he feels that he's come to a proper ordering of things now historians particularly in the nineteen to twentieth centuries have gotten this so wrong and it's not because they're dumb it's because they were contextual people as well the 19th and 20th centuries loved abstract systematic theology more enlightenment focused systematic theology they also were enamored by something that they called the central dogma thesis which is this idea that everybody has one core Dogma one core doctrine that drives everything else and it's no wonder that Calvin's doctrine of quote predestination or something else always comes to the foreground as the one thing Calvin really cares about above all else well that idea of a central dogma has been exploded by historians over the last two or three generations but when Calvin says that he feels that the structure is finally in place in 1559 what he means by that is that he finally believes that he's found a balance between catechesis or Friedel appropriations of our theology that goes through the structures in terms of God Father Son and church but they also believes that in the end he has taken into account the more or way that we come to the discussion of our faith namely as a post justification reality existential II for us and so people have noticed you read through the Institute's it looks like it's following the Apostles Creed at times until some stray doctrine seems to show up in one book or the other in what Calvin is usually doing in those cases is he's not waiting for some opportune moment that the Apostles Creed brings something up to talk about something but rather in the context of relying on the order or the method of Romans of biblical theology Calvin will stop at times and fill the need to explain implications of doctrines or ideas or biblical teaching as they arise from the more organic natural flow of the narrative of Scripture itself it's so in 1559 Calvin believed that he had received a death of a balance that he was finally happy with the Institute's well in the end the Institute's are profound they're in various Latin translations Calvin himself personally oversaw the translation of the institutes into French in fact the Institute's themselves once they were translated were instrumental one of the core developers of what would become modern French as it transitions out of the early modern or the late medieval dialects of French so influence will work Alvin's Institutes but they even shaped the language and not surprisingly in the english-speaking world after they were translated just after Calvin's lifetime they have come down all the way till today as one of the most important texts of the Reformation okay that's it next when we were looking at Calvin in Geneva as a pastor how he screwed it up and got himself kicked out and threatened with death

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: John Calvin (Founding Figure), Institutes Of The Christian Religion (Book), Religion (TV Genre), Calvinism (Religion), Protestantism (Religion), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Protestant Reformation (Event), Geneva (City/Town/Village), Heinrich Bullinger, Huldrych Zwingli (Founding Figure), Martin Bucer, Reformed Theology, Ryan M. Reeves, Christianity (Religion)

Id: FEOzRP8WXcA

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 21 2015