Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight I'm going to be delivering the third message in the series of messages entitled The Myth of Christian America. The title of tonight's message is Geneva: The Seedbed of American Christianity. It is one of the great ironies of American history that one of the men who had the most influence on the founding and growth of America never set foot here. In fact, he was a Frenchman living in Switzerland, and he died 43 years before the founding of Jamestown.
His name was Jean Calvin, better known to us in its Anglicized form, John Calvin. Calvin had been educated in the best universities in France, and he had actually studied to become a lawyer. He's generally thought of today as a theologian, but Calvin had no formal theological training other than what everyone received at universities at that time. While John Calvin was away at university on his studies, his father, who was moderately wealthy, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
Apparently, this was because he was sympathetic to Reformation doctrines, which were rapidly spreading throughout all of Europe. His father's excommunication no doubt played a role in John Calvin's rejection of Roman Catholicism soon after. Now, during his university studies, Calvin was fascinated by the Greco-Roman philosophy known as Stoicism. At the height of the Roman Empire, Stoicism had become the dominant philosophy of educated Romans.
In fact, it's the philosophy that the early Christians so often bumped heads with with the Romans. The Stoic philosophy teaches that everything in the universe is predestined. They taught that each of us has been given a role to play by fate or Providence, whatever you want to call it, and we have no choice in the matter. However, we can choose to either play our role well, or play it poorly. For the Stoics, our goal in life should be to play our part the best we can without complaining about our lot.
The Stoics also taught that we should rise above excessive emotion and particularly accept with resignation the adversities that fate or Providence has assigned to us. Today, the term " stoic " has come to mean emotional detachment, particularly to suffering or calamity.
Well, in 1532, this was during the height of Luther's Reformation, Calvin finished his commentary on the works of Seneca, who was a leading Stoic teacher, in which Calvin tried to show fundamental similarities between the philosophy of Stoicism and the teachings of Christ. In 1534, Calvin converted to Reformation theology, and he soon had to flee to Switzerland for his life. Now, at that time, Geneva, where he eventually settled, was ruled by a Catholic bishop.
However, through the help of the neighboring Protestant Canton of Bern, the citizens of Geneva were able to defeat the Catholic bishop and his armies. And then the citizens of Geneva chose to abandon Roman Catholicism. One day, Calvin happened to be passing through Geneva. He wasn't intending to stay there when he met William Farel, who was the Reformation Leader there in Geneva.
And Farel was so impressed with the keen mind and organizational abilities of Calvin that he persuaded him to move to Geneva and lead the Reformation there. Let's talk for a moment about John Calvin's doctrines. Calvin believed that he had been selected by God to bring God's Church back to the correct doctrines and practices of Christianity. He wrote and preached with this singular confidence of one who " knows " beyond doubt that what he says is coming from God.
Calvin was aware of all of the equivocating that Luther had done over the years, how he often changed his original positions, and how what he practiced often contradicted the very things he taught. And Calvin was able to learn from Luther's mistakes. So in contrast to Luther, Calvin's teachings remained consistent from the beginning of his ministry to the very day of his death.
In the year 1536, shortly before he came to Geneva, Calvin had written his first edition of his enduring theological work, entitled The Institutes of Christian Religion. And without ever changing the fundamental positions set forth in that work, Calvin continued to enlarge upon it until it had reached 80 chapters by the year 1559. It presented a complete, well-organized, theological, moral, ecclesiastical, and civic system altogether.
There was nothing to compare with that in the Lutheran camp, and certainly even less in the Anabaptist camp. Now, the most publicized aspect of Calvin's system is its teaching of predestination. Now, although Luther also taught absolute predestination, the doctrine of predestination is usually associated in most people's minds with Calvin. According to Calvin, before God ever created the earth, he determined that Adam would fall, and that all of his descendants would inherit his sin and his guilt.
However, in God's mercy, you put quotation marks around mercy, he decided to place all of Adam's descendants into two categories. He chose a very small portion of mankind to be the elect, who would be given eternal life in heaven. And he chose everyone else to be tormented forever in hell. This doctrine is sometimes known as " double predestination, " in that not only have the elect been predestined to heaven, but all of the non-elect have been predestined to hell, and nobody can change these two elections.
It's important in Calvin's system that you understand that God's decision to preordain every individual to either heaven or hell is completely arbitrary. What I mean by that is it's not based on God's foreknowledge of our faith or on how we live our lives, what kind of person we would turn out to be. In fact, according to Calvin, God only foreknows the future because he predestined everything that's going to happen. The elect have faith in God only because God gave them that faith.
We play no role in our salvation at all. And inasmuch as we humans are totally depraved, we are unable even to have faith, let alone to do anything good. Now at first glance, Calvin's doctrine of predestination sounds rather gloomy, and it might seem that very few would embrace it. However, there's a very positive side to Calvin's system. Because according to Calvin, the elect can know beyond doubt that they are of the elect.
Furthermore, if you are of the elect, which you can know for certain, you cannot possibly lose your salvation. So the secret of Calvin's success, and he was enormously successful, was that the only ones who embraced his theology were those who were certain they were of the elect. Now according to Calvin, how were the elect to interact with the world and live out their lives in human society?
Would they be the defenseless, powerless Christians of the first three centuries who turned the other cheek and wouldn't even take others to court? No, not at all. According to Calvin, there was no difference between Christ's moral teachings and the Law of Moses. Christ was merely clarifying matters that the Pharisees had obscured. Christ was also making clear that obedience to the Law had to begin inside our hearts and not be external obedience only.
Other than that, nothing had changed between Christ and Moses except the ceremonial law. Now, the one big impact that Christ's coming did bring about, according to Calvin, is that instead of God's covenant being solely with one nation, Israel, it could now be with every nation on earth. Every country could be a potential Israel. And the Canton of Geneva, where Calvin ruled, was the model for how this should work.
According to Calvin, everyone in the nation needed to be brought into this covenant with God, whether they were of the elect or not, by being baptized into it as infants. So statewide infant baptism was mandatory. And yes, Calvin therefore persecuted the Anabaptist just as had Luther. Now, according to Calvin, every nation should ideally be governed by the elect, just as Israel had ideally been governed by faithful priests and prophets and kings.
And it was the responsibility of the government to protect the Church, to establish and preserve the true Christian faith, and to regulate the lives of its citizens according to God's moral law. And again, God's moral law is the same law that we find in the Old Testament. Even the non-elect had to live by this same moral law along with the Elect. This was Calvin's system. Essentially then, every nation was in the same position as was ancient Israel.
If the nation obeyed God's law, properly worshipped Him, and supported the teaching of true doctrine, God would prosper that nation economically and militarily. He would protect them from famines, from droughts, and from epidemics. So, if a nation was experiencing economic decline, military defeats, pestilence, natural disasters, it meant that God had a quarrel with that nation and was punishing it. To keep this from happening, the state and the church needed to work in close partnership.
The state must mandate weekly church attendance for everyone. Furthermore, the local church elders or presbyters needed to closely examine the lives of all who attended their church to make certain that all were living closely within the bounds of God's Law. Although the only discipline the Church could administer was excommunication, God expected the state to punish sinners in order to keep the nation pure and to avoid his wrath.
So the outcome is no different from that of Luther and of that of the Roman Catholics. Now even though everyone had to attend church regularly, actual membership in the church was limited only to the elect. Well, you might say, OK, well then everyone claims to be of the elect. Well, it wasn't that simple.
A person claiming to be of the elect had to give a detailed testimony to the Church, demonstrating that they believed all that Calvin was teaching and that they had had a conversion in their life whereby God had called them to salvation through His grace. And that's where the practice of having to give a conversion testimony began. It's not really a New Testament practice. I'm not opposed to it particularly, but it's not something you read in the Book of Acts.
You know, Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, people repented, they got baptized. Each person didn't come up and give a testimony of their conversion or something like that. Nevertheless, the practice has been quite effective. Now, present-day evangelical testimonies usually require a testimony of a sudden conversion. You can pinpoint the day and the hour. This is exactly when it happened. Now that sort of testimony is a product of the First and Second Great Awakenings. Particularly the Second Great Awakening.
But in Calvin's day, the typical testimony described a conversion process that took place over a period of time, often over many years. I've read many of the testimonies of Calvinists, particularly Puritans of that time, and it's usually a very long process. It's not an instantaneous sudden conversion. Now, according to Calvin, God has assigned each person a vocation in life. It may be that of a prince or a pastor of a church.
Maybe God has assigned you to be a soldier or a merchant, a plowman, a servant, a housewife. And God expects each person to remain within their vocation and to excel in it. By following His vocation or calling, a Christian is serving God. In contrast, laziness and idleness are an affront to God and a drain on a nation. And since God will bless and prosper godly and hardworking citizens, wealth and prosperity are a sign of God's approval in one's life. This is, again, all according to Calvin.
Poverty is an indication of God's judgment on an individual or on a nation. Again, very different from the model in the early Church in the New Testament where Jesus said, " Blessed are the poor. " Under Calvin's system, it's " Blessed are the rich. " Assuming you've acquired your riches through honest, hard work, it's a sign of God's approval on your life. Outside of the German and Scandinavian states, Calvinism spread much faster than Lutheranism.
It became the dominant form of Protestantism in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and among many Englishmen. And there was a reason for this. Aside from theological differences, the difference between the Lutheran system and the Calvinistic system of church life might be likened to a homeowner who wants to build, let's say, a small greenhouse for his backyard. One approach would be he could draw up his own plans. And if he's never done this before, he's going to hope it all works out.
He could go down then to a lumber store and buy everything that he thinks he's going to need. He could cut the lumber himself and the other materials to the right size, and then construct the greenhouse. And if he's a competent carpenter or whatever, then it'll all work out in the end. The other approach, the homeowner could go to a place like, let's say, Lowe's or Home Depot and purchase a ready-made greenhouse kit, or maybe it'd be something you would order through the mail. And the kit only needs assembly.
All the wood is there, everything you need, the wood has been cut to the proper length, all you do is screw or nail it into place, and that's it. Now, which approach do you think most homeowners would choose? Well, the vast majority of us would go for the ready-made kit. So it was with Lutheranism and Calvinism. Lutheranism offered the theology of salvation by faith alone, and it actually taught the same thing as Calvin on double predestination.
But there was little else in Lutheranism in the way of a fixed plan for a person's life or for the establishment of a church. Other than you'd have a church that would be run by the state and largely under the control of the prince or king of that particular nation. In contrast, Calvinism offered a complete package for an individual, for a church, and for a nation. It was a ready-made kit, so to speak.
You just add people who are convinced they are among the elect, and you've got the plan of where you go from there. As a result, Calvinism was enormously successful, and it produced followers who were energetic, hardworking, visionary, and enormously self-assured. But it wasn't historical Christianity. It didn't look anything like the kingdom of God. In fact, Calvin and his followers operated in a way that was so often the exact opposite of how kingdom people operate.
Let's just take a brief look at life in Geneva under Calvin. As I've mentioned, Calvin came to Geneva in 1536, and he was asked to lead the Reformation there. Well, he had once set about organizing the church and the city with tremendous energy. Geneva under Calvin was a dream come true for Calvin's followers. It was a reign of terror for everybody else. Within a year after coming to Geneva, Calvin had drawn up the Geneva Catechism or Statement of Doctrine.
The City Council ordered the residents of Geneva to appear at the main church to hear the reading of Calvin's new catechism. The citizens of Geneva then had to promise to receive it as the one and only true doctrine. Anyone who failed to do so was banished from the city. Calvin essentially organized Geneva into a religious police state, where civil officers closely examined the private lives of the residents who lived in their designated section of Geneva.
He had divided the city into various sections under the control of these different civil officers. Anybody guilty of even the smallest infraction would be reported. Not only that, the officers questioned people about the conduct of their neighbors, and they even interrogated children in order to obtain information from them about their parents. Well, as can be imagined, Calvin made many enemies through his high-handed methods. However, over the years, he relentlessly smashed every instance of dissent.
Because he was certain of his calling from God, Calvin believed that no mercy should be shown to those who resisted what he was certain was the teaching of God. People were imprisoned and exiled simply for rejecting His doctrine of predestination. Others receive much worse. For example, in 1546, someone left an anonymous note on the pulpit of St. Pierre's Church in Geneva that condemned the Reformed preachers and threatened them with revenge. Well, the city government went into action immediately.
They arrested an irreverent free-thinker named Jean Gruet, purely on naked suspicion. Well, then they searched his home. However, after searching his home, they found no evidence linking him to the anonymous note. Nevertheless, when the authorities went through his private papers, they did find a few of them that contained critical remarks about Calvin. I mean, that was it. But that alone was enough to make Gruet a criminal.
So they tortured him hideously until he " confessed his crime, " and then they beheaded him, just for in his private papers saying something critical about Calvin. In the case of Jean Gruet, it was no isolated incident. People who opposed Calvin or who violated his strict code were frequently tortured, and many of them were executed. Calvin haughtily declared that the doctrines in his institutes of the Christian religion were put in his brain by God.
In fact, in 1552, he pressured the Genevan Government Council to declare that his institutes contain the pure doctrine of the gospel and could not be criticized by any citizens. Well, the most famous or infamous torture and execution under Calvin was that of Michael Servetus. Servetus was a gifted Spanish scientist and geographer. In fact, he was the first person to accurately describe the human circulatory system. Yet he was a free thinker and a man of many interests.
He was interested in theology, and he wrote a number of theological works. One of these works written in the year 1531 was entitled " On the Errors of the Trinity. " In it, Servetus set forth a very confused, unorthodox position on the Trinity. He thought he was setting forth the true doctrine of Scripture, but it certainly was not the historic understanding of the Trinity. Well, his book eventually made its way into John Calvin's hands.
To straighten Servetus out, Calvin sent him a copy of his Institutes of the Christian religion. Again, at this time, Servetus was living in Spain. Well, Servetus read Calvin's works, and he made numerous marginal notes on the pages, different criticisms and refutations. Three of the things that he criticized were Calvin's teachings on infant baptism and predestination, and as could be expected, Calvin's explanation of the Trinity. Then Servetus sent Calvin's Institutes back to him with all of his marginal comments.
Infuriated, Calvin wrote Servetus back a heated letter. Well, over a period of time, both men sent arrogant, insulting letters to the other. Finally, Calvin ended the correspondence in 1546. At that time, Calvin wrote his friend and fellow reformer, William Farel. He said this in his letter, " Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings.
If I consent, he will come here, but I will not give my word of consent, for if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive. " What a horrible thing for a Christian to say. As wrong as Servetus was and as arrogant as he was in his own person, because somebody disagrees with you theologically and Calvin had plenty of his own errors, you decide if he ever comes to your city, he's not gonna leave alive?
Well, meanwhile, Servetus had fled the Inquisition in Spain and had taken refuge in France. And there he lived under a fictitious name. However, the Church authorities eventually caught up with him in the year 1553. He was imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Catholic authorities. But before the sentence could be carried out, Servetus escaped from prison, he left France, and he decided to take refuge in Italy.
I'm not sure why he thought Italy would be any safer than either Spain or France, but regardless, that was the decision he made. Well, on his way to Italy from France, he was crossing through Switzerland, and he decided out of curiosity to stop in Geneva and to listen to Calvin preach. Unfortunately, at the service at Calvin's Church, he was recognized and arrested.
Calvin himself personally prepared the 38 counts against Servetus, which included denying the Trinity, rejecting infant baptism, and insulting Calvin's authority. Servetus was denied the right to an attorney, being told by Calvin he could lie well enough without one. At the trial, the judge wouldn't allow Servetus to either explain what he said or defend any of the things he had written. In other words, he was essentially judged and found guilty before the trial ever started.
And the court sentenced Servetus to be burned alive. He was taken to the execution site and chained to a stake. The authorities then piled faggots of wood around him, about half of which were green, meaning they would burn slowly and make it a long, drawn out, agonizing affair. Because of the green wood, Servetus died a slow, agonizing death while the crowd watched in amusement. Now Calvin had " recommended that Servetus be executed by some means other than burning. " How sincere that was, I'm not sure.
I do know this. He refused to use his enormous influence to stop the burning. There's no way that burning could have happened without his tacit permission. In fact, several months after Servetus ' horrible death, Calvin wrote this in a letter: " Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that they allege I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed, " talking about Servetus. He continues, " Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.
" Now whoever shall argue that it's unjust to put heretics and blasphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very own guilt. In other words, you saw what I did to Servetus, just dare to criticize me. And although Servetus is the most famous victim of Calvin's murders, he wasn't the last. In 1556, the leaders of the opposition in Geneva organized a demonstration against Calvin. However, Calvin had them arrested and sentenced to death for inciting a riot. This wasn't just any ordinary death.
He had them drawn and quartered. Now drawing and quartering was considered the epitome of the most cruel punishment possible. Most countries reserved it only for extremely heinous crimes like treason against the state. What it normally consisted of was the person was first hung in such a way that their neck would not be broken as in the normal execution by hanging. Instead, they would just hang there strangling.
And then when they were nearly dead, they were cut open and all of their entrails pulled out and often then burned in front of their eyes, and then they were finally beheaded. Somehow, Calvin didn't see any contradiction between doing that and Christ's teachings. And after that, Calvin faced no further opposition from anyone. Before finishing my discussion of John Calvin, I want to talk a little bit just about Calvin and the Kingdom of God.
Unlike the systems proposed by other would-be reformers of his time, Calvin's system wasn't some abstract hypothetical blueprint for ordering the Christian life, the church, and the nation. His system was put into actual practice in numerous places: Geneva, as we've talked about, other Cantons in Switzerland. It was put into place in the Netherlands, in Scotland, in New England, and in England itself for a brief period. So we don't have to speculate how it would look like in real life.
We know what it looked like beyond any doubt. At the same time, we also don't have to theorize what the Kingdom of God looks like in real life. As E. Stanley Jones put it, " The Kingdom of God is Jesus walking about in sandals. " We have the life of Jesus recorded for us. We know what sort of person he was, how he treated people. We also have an extensive and clear record of how people of the kingdom lived and interacted with their society for the first three centuries of Christianity.
And I can say without any hesitation that the Kingdom of God looks nothing like Calvin's Geneva. Kingdom citizens don't torture and murder other people. They don't imprison and banish their theological opponents. No, they turned the other cheek. They loved their very enemies. And so it utterly baffles me of how so many professing Christians praise and exalt Calvin. Now the things I've been telling you aren't some secret events that few people know anything about.
Calvin himself never tried to hide any of these things. They've been widely published in countless historical books. One church historian wrote this about Calvin, " He ruled as no pope had ever ruled in Rome. Such was the rigor of his regime that it has been computed that between 1542 and 1546, 58 persons were executed and 76 sent into exile. " Probably from that statement you would assume, okay, this is some historian who doesn't like Calvin and really isn't painting a fair picture of him.
However, just a few sentences later, this same writer practically canonizes Calvin. He says, " Calvin will long be regarded as one of the world's great men. Although frail in body, he preached each day during every alternate week. Calvin's systematic theology became the best intellectual provender to nourish struggling Protestant churches everywhere, and it alone of all the rival systems produced by the Protestants may be called " universal. " I see a Christian who murders others is one of the world's great men.
What could possibly make someone say something like that? I mean, suppose for a moment that I came across a book by some modern-day Michael Servetus that presents an erroneous view of a foundational Christian doctrine, the Trinity, baptism, salvation, whatever it might be. Now let's further suppose that in my desire to correct this person's thinking, that I send him one of my books that sets forth a better presentation of the doctrine.
But instead of appreciating my book, he scribbles notes all over it, pointing out where he thinks I'm wrong. Now imagine that this present-day Mr. Servetus is traveling through Pennsylvania, and he decides on a whim to stop by my house and talk about some of these things in more detail. But instead of talking to him about these things, now imagine that my family and I, we'd tie him up, we'd take him out to my backyard, and then we'd burn him alive.
Now, if you knew that I had done a thing like that, would you still be listening to this message? Would you be praising me to others and recommending my books and recordings to them? Would you likely brush it off saying, " Well, you know, David Bercot, he has a few quirks about him, but he's really an excellent Bible expositor and a Christian thinker. " No, I don't think so. I think you'd say I was sick, bizarre, a criminal, and certainly no Christian.
Yet many of us somehow seem to have this idea that God has some great cosmic chronological chart by which He decides which horrendous sins are permissible in which century. Apparently people imagine that he sits down with his angels and he says, " Let's see, this is the 12th century, so burning heretics alive is okay. " Or, " Oh, this is the 16th century. Torturing people is permissible. " Or, " Today, this is the 21st century, so abortion and homosexuality are okay.
" Well, if you think that way, you need to think again. Because the Scriptures say, " Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. " One of the things that makes God's kingdom so special is that its laws, its morals, and its ethos never change. The world around us changes constantly, but the kingdom of God is one of the few fixed, unchanging things here on earth.
Torture was considered perfectly proper in the second century by Roman society, but Roman Christians had no trouble recognizing it as something utterly incompatible with God's kingdom. Watching men fight to the death in the arena, that was considered just, hey, nice weekend entertainment by the Romans. But Christians saw that this is something horrible. They refused to attend the games in the arena. Watching someone being put to death, they said, " It's just as bad as putting someone to death yourself.
" They didn't say, " Well, okay, this is the second century, " and society says it's okay, so it's okay to go along with these things. If what Calvin did would be considered detestable, horrible, totally unchristian today, then it was equally detestable, horrible, and unchristian in the 16th century. Jesus Christ doesn't change. Actually, the system that Calvin established might be better described as Christo Judaism rather than Christianity.
It's almost as though Jesus never came to earth, other than to die for our sins and to give us an updated theology. Calvin turned Jesus ' revolutionary sermon on the Mount into a simple asterisk attached to the Law of Moses. Nothing's changed with the coming of Christ he taught. We still avenge our wrongs through the courts of law, and we continue to butcher our enemies on the battlefields. Idolaters and witches should still be put to death, just like