Selected Scriptures

March 19, 2017

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

Download the Kids’ Korner.

Or, The Tectonic Theology of John Calvin

I am a Calvinist. I asked Calvin into my heart almost twenty-four years ago, a tongue-in-cheek comment I once heard R.C. Sproul use. I didn’t grow up as a Calvinist, nor do I remember hearing that name until I was in college. More than a fun topic to argue about at Christian parties, it is a way of life. My wife and I named our only son, Calvin. I even have the bobblehead.

We—the elders and I at least—believe and teach Calvinism at TEC. The next part in the Reformed and Still Reforming series will work through the Five Points of Calvinism. We are reading Lectures on Calvinism by Abraham Kuyper with the men. Our apologetic methodology, our homiletic philosophy, our worship liturgy, and our hopeful evangelism are all informed by Calvinism.

Someone usually will ask, Why focus on a man? I’ve had enough conversations over the last two decades to know that at least three things are possible. One, it’s possible to hate talking about other men and be ignorant. Two, it’s possible to idolize other men and be ignorant. And three, it’s possible to “remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). Obeying the Bible means listening to and learning from those who teach the Bible.

Another person might ask, Why use names? It’s okay to go without names, but sometimes we can be more biblical by using extra biblical names. If a man doesn’t believe in the Trinity he is going to hell. A man doesn’t have to believe in the word “Trinity,” but he most certainly has to believe in the eternal divinity and equality of each the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit while understanding that the three Persons are one God. “Trinity” summarizes that, and quite nicely. The same is true with “Calvinism.” Calvinism is a summary of cosmological and soteriological truths, that “Whatever the LORD pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6) and “From him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:36). Calvinism asserts: God saves sinners. That is the gospel, and Calvinism is a nickname (per Spurgeon) that summarizes a God-centered gospel.

Calvin built libraries’ worth of mental categories for theology proper, for biblical exegesis, and for cosmological/worldview. Calvin himself could not have imagined the generational and tectonic shifts in the church and in governments and Western Civilization—perhaps no where else more than in the United States—that his theology would create. His views are anything but truncated, and his attack on dualism is surprisingly spiritual.

I have never thought that being a Calvinist meant believing every particular thing that Calvin taught. Nor did I realize how exhaustively universal were his teachings, or at least the implications of his understanding of God’s revelation.

Abraham Kuyper summarized Calvinism this way:

[T]he persuasion that the whole of a man’s life is to be lived in the Divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. By this decisive idea, or rather by this might fact, it has allowed itself to be controlled in every department of its entire domain. It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprang. (Lectures on Calvinism, 26)

Tectonic relates to large-scale processes, in the context of geology regarding what happens on the earth’s crust and by analogy with any considerable development. Calvin’s life and theology brought and are still causing tectonic shifts.

Calvin’s Work

John Calvin was a pastor, theologian, and writer committed to soli Deo gloria.

Calvin did not belong to the first generation of Reformers. He was born on July 10, 1509 in France. That means when Luther posted his theses in Wittenburg Calvin was eight years old. By the time Calvin enter[...]