Happy Birthday Uncle John!

TROWEL & SWORD

Rev. John Westendorp

When we’re very young, birthdays are hugely important and parents generally help their little ones to celebrate them in style. We do come to a certain age, however, when we don’t get too excited about birthdays – and that’s about the stage I am at. I don’t really care to be reminded that I’m another year older. By the same token I’ve noticed that many who get be in their nineties again celebrate birthdays with much enthusiasm. Wow! Made it to ninety-five...! That would make a five-hundredth birthday something really worth celebrating. For us as Reformies we have such a birthday on July 10th – on that day Uncle John Calvin would have turned 500 if he was still alive.

I suspect that today there would be many voices telling us that this is a birthday worth forgetting. Western society at large has been far more interested this year in the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin than in the 500th birthday of John Calvin. There is no doubt that both men have left a huge legacy. The big question is whether it has been a good legacy. In Darwin’s case it has been a legacy that has driven much of modern science into an atheistic direction. In Calvin’s case it has been a legacy that has continued to promote a strong Christian world-and-life view.

There is much that one could write about Calvin. One could focus on Calvin the preacher or Calvin the theologian, Calvin the statesman or Calvin the pastor. Under all of those headings we could list some notable achievements. In my Catechism class last week we were talking about Calvin’s influence in the city of Geneva. I shared with the class something I had read about the Plague in Europe and how it had a less devastating effect in Geneva than some of the surrounding cities. In some places the arrival of the plague was met by religious processions through the streets to try to ward off the malicious destroyer. Calvin’s Geneva got busy and improved their sewage and waste disposal systems. My students were fascinated that this was the more Biblical way to go because in the Mosaic Law God expresses His will even concerning sewerage disposal (Deuteronomy 23:12,13). Arguably, one of Calvin’s proudest civic achievements was the building of a closed sewer system in Geneva. It is evidence of his teaching that a biblical faith has implications for all areas of life.

One of the more controversial issues today would be Calvin’s view on gender. Measured by that standard, many today would be very keen to dismiss Calvin altogether as a male chauvinist. As I write this I’ve just been catching up on a current debate on this matter. It is an issue that is especially relevant in our society with its confused views of gender that virtually wants to limit matters of gender to certain bodily appendages – or lack thereof.

Calvin could easily be accused of sexism and of treating women as inferior human beings. Feminism would have huge problems with Calvin at this point. We, on the other hand, might try to defend him by referring to him as a child of his times and one who was part of a strongly patriarchal society. It’s not quite that simple however. Many of those who have written about Calvin’s view on gender in general and on women in particular, have found Calvin somewhat ambiguous. Was he in favour of equality between the sexes or was he promoting some sort of subordination of women?

There are certain statements of Calvin that, if taken on their own would lead one to conclude that Calvin was strongly in favour of subordination. So, for example, Calvin, in a sermon on Job, says “Men are preferred to females in the human race. We know that God constituted man as the head and gave him a dignity and pre-eminence above that of the woman... It is true that the image of God is imprinted on all; but still woman is inferior to man.” Such statements would particularly rile today’s feminists. Calvin even spoke of women having the image of God to a lesser degree than men. That raises questions, not just for the feminists, but for all of us.

At the same time we find in Calvin some statements that are surprisingly broad for someone from that period of time. He upholds the honour of women in the home and their equal rights, for example, to divorce an adulterous spouse.

Dr. C.J.Carrigan (www.ontruth.com/index.html) has noted some attempts to resolve the ambiguity in Calvin on this score, and to understand how he views the respective roles of men and women. One of the more intriguing issues at this point of the debate is just what Calvin meant by ‘the image of God’ in human beings. Carrigan points out that a case can be made for Calvin viewing the ‘image of God in two different ways’. In a spiritual and general way the image of God is carried by all human beings – both male and female. Nevertheless, in the sense that man is called to give leadership in the home and is held responsible by God for the way he exercises that headship in the family, one could argue that at least in this sense men carry the image of God in a way that is not true of women. This is not an unimportant issue because at the end of the day the issue is that Christian marriages reflect something of the relationship between Jesus and His church.

Having said that Calvin in this sense does teach submission and headship, I am also impressed with the way Calvin writes about matters of gender with pastoral gentleness and care. In his explanation of the respective roles of men and women in Christian marriage in Ephesians 5, Calvin in his commentary, guards against a tyrannical interpretation of male headship. Calvin the pastor pleads for headship to be loving, Christlike leadership.

All of this has some interesting ramifications for the whole matter of character building and men’s roles in nurturing character development in the next generation.

Men have too often reneged on their leadership responsibilities. Over the years as a pastor I have had Christian women lament to me that if they don’t provide leadership in the home it just doesn’t happen. This is what has often been called the Adam Syndrome. It goes all the way back to Genesis 3 where Adam allowed his wife to face up to the devil while he stood there beside her with his thumb in his mouth.

Of course it is equally true that I have spoken to many frustrated men who have tried to give good leadership in the home but who have been thwarted in that by wives who must have suffered from a complementary Eve Syndrome, which seeks to take over and control.

I’ve found it helpful to read again Calvin’s commentary on Ephesians – both with respect to the male-female roles in marriage (Ephesians 5) and the role of fathers in the nurture of children (Ephesians 6). The point is that both of these Scripture passages are important for the Christian home. Men need to show loving spiritual leadership in a marriage and they need to show that leadership too when it comes to child-raising.

In the matter of character building in our children this becomes doubly important. Many Christian men have been unable to give spiritual leadership in the home because they neither saw it modelled in their fathers nor were they taught it and in that way prepared to provide such godly leadership in the home.

Allow me to take this one step further. This also has a huge impact on the church today. Increasingly we are finding it difficult to find suitable men to serve as elders and deacons. Is that any wonder when we have a leadership crisis in so many of our homes? Fathers ought to be busy building character in all their children. However, for their sons, that needs to include teaching them to become godly young men who can give loving leadership in their homes and loving leadership in the church of Jesus Christ.

Of course much of this is goes against the sexual egalitarianism of contemporary society. It is counter-cultural. When I understand what Calvin taught about men and women in this way then I see it as a good reason for a birthday party to celebrate Uncle John’s five-hundredth birthday.

Postscript: In closing, just a word of explanation. Some of our readers may be wondering about the label I’ve given Calvin in the heading of this article. It’s not meant to be a put down of the famous Reformer; it’s rather a term of endearment. I have learnt much from Calvin over the years. I’ve read his Institutes of the Christian Religion and I have often referred to his commentaries. I find in Calvin a kindred spirit. I belong to the same church family. I like to think of him as ‘my kindly uncle, in Christ’.

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