“God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame,” John Calvin wrote in a rare moment of self-disclosure, “which was more burdened than might have been expected from one at my early period of life.”
The exact chronology of this “sudden conversion” has caused endless speculation among Calvin scholars. But one can trace a trajectory of a young provincial teenager going off to university in the big city. His father has high hopes for the lad: a career in law would provide the family with status and Calvin with lifelong economic security.
But then something happens. The University of Paris in the 1520s is a cauldron of exciting new ideas. Erasmus has unlocked the contents of the greek New Testament to inquiring young students. And Calvin is surrounded by restless, inquiring minds ready to throw aside the old systems in favour of a new and open-minded study of the Bible.
One of these young men is Pierre Robert, Calvin’s cousin who, like him, has come from a small town in Picardy to Paris. Pierre’s friends at the university soon nickname him Olivetanus or “midnight oil” because of an insatiable intellectual curiosity which keeps him up most of the night. Olivetanus, according to Calvin’s successor Beza, is the one from whom Calvin “first got a taste of pure religion.”
Olivetanus goes on to translate the Bible from the original into French. He asks Calvin to provide an introduction, for which Calvin writes: “those who aspire to a reputation of greatest excellence torment their minds day and night, to understand something of the human sciences, which are nothing but wind and smoke. Should we not then much more be employed and diligent in the study of this divine wisdom, which passes beyond the whole world and penetrates as far as the mysteries of God, which it has pleased Him to make known by His holy word.”
The year after he writes these words, Calvin finds himself unexpectedly in Geneva. Guillaume Farel has introduced the city to the Reformation but he needs help. Calvin “stricken with terror,” is arrested by “the hand of God from heaven,” he later recalls. It becomes apparent that his responsibility is that of preacher, a task to which he gives himself unstintingly for 26 years, interrupted only by a three-year exile in Strasbourg. Calvin is thrown out of Geneva on Easter Day 1538 but returns September 1541, picking up in his preaching from the verse at which he had stopped three years earlier: “By which I indicated that I had interrupted my office of preaching for a time rather than that I had given it up entirely.”
Calvin discovers in Geneva, in spite of all his frustrations, a city which has “an unusual hunger on the part of the common people to hear the preaching of the word of God.” Eight years after his return, the city council orders that instead of a sermon every other day, there should be one every day. “Whenever pure doctrine is offered to us,” he writes, “let us know that the teachers who speak and instruct us by their ministrations are, as it were, the hand of God, who sets food before us, as the head of a family is wont to do to His children.”
His preaching schedule is intense for a man who suffers from numerous physical ailments. There is hardly a single sermon preached without Calvin experiencing intense physical pain. He speaks twice on Sundays and once every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He speaks directly from the Hebrew or Greek, translating and explaining the text as He goes along. His delivery is “lively, passionate, intimate, direct, and clear.” First volunteers take down his words. In 1549 a secretary is hired. The output is phenomenal: that amanuensis first inscribes 189 sermons on the book of Acts. At the time of his death in 1564, Calvin was working through 1 Kings.
His first commentary, on the book of Romans, appears in 1539. Eventually he publishes them on all but three of the books of the Bible. His commentaries provide a different, more personal, insight than the Institutes (which represent only nine per cent of his total output). Many are dedicated to rulers, pleading for support, as he models his use of the Bible, making it accessible and life-changing. Here we see Calvin’s use of scripture exemplified: consistently painstaking, practical, and Jesus-centred. Four centuries later they are still in print, used by preachers who value Calvin’s insights as both true to the text and intensely applicable.
The Bible is never read and studied in a vacuum. It is Calvin who first articulates the doctrine of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Without the gracious Spirit of God engaging the mind, the preached word has no effect. To Calvin, the Spirit and the word always have to come together. Without the Spirit the word is dead and lifeless. And without the word the so-called “whispers of the Spirit” can lead the believer into wild self-delusion.
Today Western society has reverted to an ignorance of the contents of scripture greater than at any time since Calvin. Calvin’s response in his day provides a clue for what he would say to us today. He declared emphatically that “the Church is ruled by the preaching of the word.” the Christian community can only thrive (or for that matter, survive), he maintained, when the task of the preacher is honoured, the word of God boldly proclaimed, and the truth of God allowed to challenge, unsettle, and disturb the listener. There has never been a time in the history of the Canadian church when proclaiming the word should be a greater priority, the responsibility of the preacher more critical, and the engagement of the pew more demanding.
Is our church, an inheritor of John Calvin, still ruled by the preaching of the word?
