Should we care today to revisit John Calvin—who he was, what he thinks—and believe that what he taught is still significant, still valuable? Yes, he still does matter.  John Calvin matters still above all because he was a teacher of truth. 

There can be no serious doubt that Calvin once mattered. Any honest historian of any point of view and of any religious conviction would agree that Calvin was one of the most important people in the history of western civilization. Not only was he a significant pastor and theologian in the sixteenth century, but the movement of which he was the principal leader led to the building of Reformed and Presbyterian churches with millions of members spread through centuries around the world. Certainly a man whose leadership, theology, and convictions can spark such a movement once mattered.

Historians from a wide range of points of view also acknowledge that Calvin not only mattered in the religious sphere and in the ecclesiastical sphere, but Calvin and Calvinism had an impact on a number of modern phenomena that we take for granted.  Calvin is certainly associated with the rise of modern education and the conviction that citizens ought to be educated and that all people ought to be able to read the Bible.  Such education was a fruit of the Reformation and Calvin.

Others have insisted that the rise of modern democracy owes at least something to the Reformed movement. One historian said of Puritanism that a Puritan was someone who would humble himself in the dust before God and would rise to put his foot on the neck of a king. Calvinists were strongly persuaded that they must serve God above men, and that began to relativize notions of superiority and aristocracy. King James I of England, who was also James VI of Scotland, once remarked as he looked at Presbyterianism in Scotland: “No bishop, no king.” If the Church is not governed by a hierarchy, certainly the political world does not need to be governed by a hierarchy either. Such Calvinist attitudes toward kings helped contribute to modern democracy.

Calvinism contributed to modern science with an empirical look at the real world. Calvin contributed to the rise of modern capitalism in part by teaching that the charging of interest on money loaned was not immoral.  He was the first Christian theologian to do so.

When we look at that list—theology, church, education, science, democracy, and capitalism—here was a man that mattered. He had a profound influence on the development of the history of the West. But does he still matter? Should we care today to revisit John Calvin—who he was, what he thinks—and believe that what he taught is still significant, still valuable?  Yes, he still does matter.  John Calvin matters still above all because he was a teacher of truth. If truth matters, then John Calvin still matters because he was one of the great teachers of truth, one of the most insightful, faithful teachers of truth, one of the best communicators of truth.  He was a teacher who had taken to heart the words of Jesus: “You will know the truth and the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Mr. Leon Panetta was interviewed on television recently when it was announced that he was going to be appointed by president-elect Obama to be the head of the CIA. In his brief remarks, Panetta commented intriguingly that in the entrance of the old CIA building were the words, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” That verse from Scripture has probably been wrenched out of context and been misused more than most verses of Scripture. Often people who are concerned about the truth and quote this verse are interested only in an abstraction about truth, or only interested in turning this verse into a poetic slogan. It sounds great: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” They seem seldom to quote the verse in context, where Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” John Calvin knew the context of that verse. He knew the only way to know the truth was to know Christ’s word. And it was because he knew Christ’s word—because he studied Christ’s word, because he treasured Christ’s word—that Calvin was such a great teacher.  John Calvin was a teacher of the truth of God’s Word.

A great teacher has two prime characteristics: first, he knows what he is talking about, and second, he can communicate what he knows. Calvin was extraordinary in both of those areas.  Calvin knew what he was talking about in part because he had a naturally brilliant mind. John Calvin received a fine education. He lived in the providence of God in a period when young scholars were able not only to become fluent in Latin, but also in Greek and Hebrew. Calvin was marvelously educated in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. That ability in language prepared him to be an extraordinarily sensitive interpreter of the Scriptures. The biblical commentaries of Calvin remain highly regarded and respected to this day.

Calvin had great natural ability of mind which he linked to hard work. Calvin really did not become a very famous man until he turned 30, and when he turned 30, he had only another 24 years yet to live. The period of his great productivity was only 24 years. He died in part because of over-work. His collected works from those 24 years fill 58 large volumes—about 600 pages each—which is most but not all of what he accomplished in those years of work and dedication. As he neared the end of his life and as ministers of the church came to visit him, knowing that his strength was ebbing away and his health was failing, they found him, unable to get out of bed, but still dictating his last commentary on Joshua to a secretary. His close friend and associate Theodore Beza pled with him to rest and to conserve his energy, and Calvin’s response was, “What? Would you have the Lord find me idle?” That was the dedication to which he gave his life; that was the will that drove him in spite of the fact that most of those 24 years he was not in particularly good health. He suffered from terrible headaches—probably from reading all the time—had a malaria-like fever and kidney stones, among other illnesses. So here was a man who was able to be a great teacher because of what he knew from his amazing studying, bringing together his natural brilliance and his will to work.

Calvin knew that it was not enough to know the truth only in the mind.  The truth must also be in the heart. He wrote, “We are invited to a knowledge of God, but not such as, content with empty speculation, merely floats in the brain, but such as will be solid and fruitful, if rightly received and rooted in our hearts” (Institutes, 1.5.9).  People can have information that floats in the brain, even information about God. That information may even be true, but does it have any impact? Does it connect? Does it matter? Is it the passion of life?

Truth for the mind and heart was the knowledge that Calvin wanted to teach, and he was convinced that all Christians always need to be growing in that kind of knowledge. In his commentary on John 8:32 he wrote, “Whatever progress any of us has made in the Gospel, let him know that he needs fresh additions. The reward that Christ bestows on their perseverance is to make them more familiar with Himself. By doing so, He merely adds another gift to the former, so that no man may think that he has repaid anything by way of reward. For He who puts His Word in our hearts by His Spirit is the same who daily chastens from our minds the clouds of ignorance which obscure the brightness of the Gospel.” That is a wonderful promise, that as we study Christ’s word, we are always drawing closer to him, and that as we draw closer to him,  then the more the clouds of ignorance are dissipated, and more and more the brightness of the gospel shines in our minds and hearts. This was a living knowledge for John Calvin.

Calvin was no remote academic, even though such a life may have been initially his desire. Early in his career he had felt that he was really not cut out for the ministry. He believed that he was too shy and sometimes became too angry. He really thought his talent should lead him to be a scholar separated from the world. But the Lord called him to the ministry. And he labored as a minister faithfully because he was persuaded that Christians need to be fed the Word of God, need to grow in the Word of God, so that they can grow closer to God.

He knew that the source of all of that knowledge, the source all of that feeding, the source of any progress that we are to make in truth would come from knowing the Bible. For Calvin, the Bible was not some abstract source of authority or knowledge, but the living Word of God—a vital, necessary, daily authority in the Christian’s life. Calvin, in one of his brief autobiographical statements in his preface to his commentary on Psalms noted that as a young man he had been obstinately attached to the superstitions of the papacy. By that he meant that for a long time he resisted thinking on his own about religious questions and just stuck with what he had been taught by the medieval church, thinking that that church was authoritative, that church was a source of true knowledge, that church could be trusted. And he did not easily break with that training.  But as a young man in his twenties he did finally come to the conclusion that what the church had taught him was not reliable and true. And after that break, it was then to the Scriptures that he looked with confidence to be his authority.

Calvin exemplified in his life and work a determination to seek to bring every thought captive to Christ. That was his passion, such was his confidence in the Word of God. That is also what he wanted to teach others. To quote Calvin, “Whoever, therefore, would desire to persevere in uprightness and in integrity of life, let them learn to exercise themselves daily in the study of the word of God; for, whenever a man despises or neglects instruction, he easily falls into carelessness and stupidity, and all fear of God vanishes from his mind” (Commentary on the Psalms, on Ps. 18:22). Calvin was certain that many people tended very naturally to carelessness and stupidity. That is surely a lesson that does not need to be taught from Scripture; it is a lesson that pastors learn by experience! Calvin recognized, and we should recognize because it is even truer today, that we are surrounded by voices that are blaring lies. The only way to sort that out is to be sure that the Bible is constantly speaking to us, that the Bible is in our hearts and in our ears and in our mind so that that authority of the Word of God is a living and vital authority for us. The Bible must constantly challenge the way we look at the world, the way we look at our fellow men and women, the way we think about God and his world.

Calvin found that challenge and living authority in his study of the Bible. He was a man who certainly spent time with the Bible every day. Calvin preached probably around nine times every two weeks, lectured on the Bible to students, wrote commentaries on the Bible throughout his life—commentaries on all the books of the New Testament except Second and Third John and Revelation, and on most of the books of the Old Testament. Here is a man whose life is lived in the Bible and with the Bible, and the fruit of that was that the Bible became all the more precious to him.  There really is a building up, as Calvin put it, of “fresh additions” from the Scriptures in life and heart. The more time he spent with the Bible the more it impressed him as unavoidably true and utterly reliable.

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