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发帖数: 3781 | 1 From Augustine To Calvin
There is no question that John Calvin had a great zeal for God and His
Word. As we have already seen, however, there was a serious defect in his un
derstanding of true Christianity. In many ways which colored his perspective
until his death, he still viewed the church of Christ through Roman Catholi
c eyes. One of those ways was his acceptance of the church as Constantine ha
d molded it and Augustine had cemented it: a partner of the state, with the
state enforcing orthodoxy (as the state church defined it) upon all its citi
zens. Based upon this misunderstanding, Calvin applied his legal training an
d natural brilliance to the development of a system of Christianity based up
on an extreme view of God's sovereignty which by the sheer force of its logi
c would compel kings and all mankind to conform all affairs to righteousness
. Indeed, in partnership with the church, kings and other civil rulers would
enforce Calvinistic Christianity.
Calvin has impossibly been called both an amillennialist and postmillen
ialist. Of those who believed in a thousand-year reign of Christ upon earth,
Calvin said their "fiction is too puerile to need or to deserve refutation.
" 15 As far as Calvin was concerned, Christ's kingdom began with His advent
upon earth and had been in process ever since. Rejecting the literal future
reign of Christ upon the earth through His Second Coming to establish his ea
rthly kingdom upon David's throne in Jerusalem, Calvin felt obliged to estab
lish the kingdom by his own efforts in Christ's absence.
The Bible makes it clear that one must be "born again" even to "see the
kingdom of God" (John 3:3) and that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kin
gdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50). Ignoring this biblical truth and followi
ng Augustine's error, Calvin determined (along with Guillaume Farel) to esta
blish a beachhead for the kingdom of God on earth in Geneva, Switzerland. Hi
s first attempt there ended with his expulsion from that city. Boettner ackn
owledges, "Due to an attempt of Calvin and Farel to enforce a too severe sys
tem of discipline in Geneva, it became necessary for them to leave the city
temporarily." 16
Three years later, however, facing Catholic opposition from within and
the threat of armed intervention by Roman Catholics from without, Geneva's c
ity council decided that they needed Calvin's strong measures and invited hi
m back. This time he succeeded in imposing his religion upon Geneva's citize
ns with an iron hand. His first act was to hand the city council his Ecclesi
astical Ordinances, which were adopted November 20, 1561. Stefan Zweig tells
us: One of the most momentous experiments of all time began when this lean
and harsh man entered the Cornavian Gate [of Geneva].
A State [the walled citystate of Geneva] was to be converted into a rigid me
chanism; innumerable souls, people with countless feelings and thoughts, wer
e to be compacted into an all-embracing and unique system. This was the firs
t attempt made in Europe to impose ... a uniform subordination upon an entir
e populace.
With systematic thoroughness, Calvin set to work for the realization of his
plan to convert Geneva into the first Kingdom of God on earth. It was to be
a community without corruption, disorder, vice or sin; it was to be the New
Jerusalem, a centre from which the salvation of the world would radiate ...
the whole of his life was devoted to the service of this one idea. 17 |
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