John Calvin Was Right, Too...
...well, mostly!
My religious tribe is the Reformed Tradition, which includes Presbyterians, Congregationalists, the United Church of Christ (UCC), and all of those Christian churches who find the theology of John Calvin (1509-1564) instructive. Calvin’s seminal work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, was published in 1536, barely two decades after Martin Luther’s infamous Ninety-Five Theses. It became a major exposition of Protestant theology at the very time King Henry VIII was dissolving English monasteries and the Reformation was in its infancy.
Calvin’s influence in the wider Protestant tradition has been extensive, and often misunderstood. The twin doctrines of predestination and double-predestination are confusing—and when misconstrued—often leads one to some erroneous and silly conclusions. Predestination does not mean that everything in life is predetermined, but it does have to do with God’s foreknowledge. Calvin centered his theology on the sovereignty of God, which means simply that God will do what God will do. But there is much more to Calvin’s thought.
The Synod of Dort in 1618-1619 was convened to settle some theological disputes at the beginning of the bloody Thirty Years War. Bear in mind that Calvin died three generations earlier. Out of that confab came an articulation of the basic tenets of Calvinism, among them the conviction that humans were totally depraved and therefore unable to effect their own salvation.
As distasteful as that is, I affirm that it is true. There are a few caveats, however. Just because we affirm God’s sovereignty, there is no justification for not trying to perfect ourselves and the societies we create. Calvin was a theocrat when he lived in Geneva—something we resoundingly reject in our American government—unless the Christian Nationalists begin to have greater influence. Can we count former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s nominee to become Ambassador to Israel, as one of them? I suspect so, in which case Calvinist thought becomes a cautionary tale of sorts. Calvin himself would be the first to declare that his musings were never “the Truth,” but simply one way to understand Truth.
In Mike Huckabee’s mind, the end of history will be not kind to Jews. The alignment of Christian Nationalists and Zionists is a strange confluence of classic chauvinism and theological naivete. Funny how the Christian “end-times” devotees—those who cling to the absurd, extra-biblical belief in some kind of rapture— never seem to consider the logical conclusion of a conviction that only the Christ-faithful will be saved in the end—a clear abrogation of the Old Testament notion—reaffirmed by the great 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, later in his life—that biblical Israel comprises God’s chosen people. He said this in response to those who believed it was necessary to evangelize Jews.
Christian Nationalists, Christian Dominionists, and the like are an unholy alliance that threatens the integrity of responsible and enlightened theological analysis, as well as the security of the planet.
Although Calvin put forth the doctrine of total depravity—and even though it is essentially true—we ought not slip into a notion that some people are beyond redemption. While Calvin affirmed that only God knows who is ultimately saved, the justice-minded Christian should not conclude that we ought to sit on our hands when confronted with the choice for justice. Furthermore, even though it can be said that God chooses to save some and not to save others, the latter action is not a matter of the High and Holy One doing something to the non-saved, but rather that God lets them go their own way and perhaps one day come to realize the error of their ways. I know we are in the theological weeds here!
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Calvin built upon the work and thought of Augustine of Hippo (354-430), who developed the doctrine of “original sin.” I do not much like that doctrine, and as a pastor, I would never tell a person that they were unworthy of God’s love because they had been created with built-in flaws. I have a confession to make: I have become a universalist in my old age! I affirm that God alone elects, i.e. decides who is in. And here’s my great revelation: everybody is in!
When I was being examined for ordination on the floor of the presbytery, a pastor rose to question my prepared statement of belief. I have regretted that exchange all these years.
“Are you saying,” the pastor asked, that “God might save Adolph Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer?” I paused for a moment before replying, “Yes, I guess I am.” He shook his head as he walked away from the microphone. I had planned to call him and ask him what he would have liked me to say, but he passed away from pancreatic cancer before I followed up. I regret that lack of closure, but I stand behind my conclusion that the love of God is bigger than any sense of divine justice held by any one of us.
Semper reformanda (“always being reformed”) is a Latin phrase that has become the by-word of the Reformed Tradition, first popularized by Bath in the 1940s. It is the affirmation that while God does not change, our understanding of God most certainly changes as our theological understanding matures. Any person or faith community that believes the same things about God today as they did ten years ago is not paying attention!
I have learned a great deal in my life, having been first grounded in my Reformed faith and my confidence that God remains sovereign—that God will do what God will do, and what God does is always gracious, The one thing God will never do is condemn any of God’s creatures to oblivion. I arrived where I did because I bumped up against many folks whose convictions shaped me along the way. It was all a part of working out my own salvation with fear and trembling, to paraphrase Paul.
Merci, Monsieur Calvin. You set me on a path to understanding. You were right about most things. Ecclesia reformata, secundum verbi Dei…the church reformed, always being reformed according to the word of God.
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