Trailblazers - Jubilee Spring 2017

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The Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity Providing credible answers to the challenges of unbelief in our day Teaching and preaching a world-transforming Gospel message Applying biblical truth to every aspect of life

EZRA INSTITUTE FOR CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIANITY 9 Hewitt Ave. Toronto, ON M6R 1Y4

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General Editor

JOSEPH BOOT EICC Founder

JOSEPH BOOT

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Ryan Eras 4

William Wilberforce and Applied Christianity Rev. Dr. Joe Boot

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Naturalizing “Shalom”: Confessions of a Kuyperian Secularist Dr. James K.A. Smith

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The City of God: Augustine and God’s Eternal Word Ben House

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Pierre Viret, the Forgotten Giant of the Reformation R.A. Sheats

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Resource Corner

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Jubilee is the tri-annual publication of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity (EICC), a registered charitable Christian organization. The opinions expressed in Jubilee do not necessarily reflect the views of the EICC. Jubilee provides a forum for views in accord with a relevant, active, historic Christianity, though those views may on occasion differ somewhat from the EICC’s and from each other. The EICC depends on the contribution of its readers, and all gifts over $10 will be tax receipted. Permission to reprint granted on written request only.

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JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 19

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RYAN ERAS RYAN ERAS is Director of Development and Administration at the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Toronto, where he focused on bibliographic control and the history of censorship. Ryan has served in various educational and support roles, providing bibliographic research and critical editorial review for several academic publications.

He lives in Toronto with his wife Rachel and their three children, Isabelle, Joanna and Simon.

TRAILBLAZERS: RECOGNIZING GOD’S CONSTANT FAITHFULNESS

SCRIPTURE HAS MUCH TO SAY about

the Lord’s faithfulness throughout history, raising up in each generation a people for his own possession. Christians today stand at the head of a long line of God’s people; their lives, like ours, are a testimony to the Lord’s enduring covenant faithfulness (Gen. 9:12, 17:7; Deut. 7:9; Ps. 100:5; Lk. 1:50; 1 Pt. 2:9-10).

In this issue of Jubilee, we are mindful of the apostles’ words that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, the saints who have gone before us, who have run the race that we are now running (Heb. 12:1-3). It is worth observing that this race has the same finish line for each generation – Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

The racing metaphor is familiar but accurate. Indeed, our race is a relay, one generation passing the baton to the next to carry on the work of building and shaping culture to the glory of God. The stories, testimonies and profiles of our godly forebears are valuable for many reasons. They are a powerful and direct link to the past, allowing us to see major historical events and eras through the eyes of those who lived through and participated in them. Such a unique perspective serve not only to enlarge our understanding of history, it also provides insight into the character of these men and women we study.

Another common biblical metaphor for faithfulness is that of building. God does it, and repeatedly instructs his people to do it as well (cf. Gen. 1:28-30; Num. 32:24; Ezra 1:2; Luke 6:46-49).

Human beings are inescapably cultural creatures; our every action is an act of building, or cultivating, it only remains to be seen whether we are building in the service of the kingdom of God, or in opposition to it. For better and for worse we inherit the world our parents have built for us. It is instructive for us to consider particularly the impact of some of those saints of old who were concerned with building a godly social order. There are valuable lessons to be learned from the lives of these trailblazing figures. Biography – especially Christian biography – is often a detailed record of God’s steadfast love towards his

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people. Seeing the outworking of the peculiar circumstances of providence in the lives of saints before us is a reminder that history is in the hands of God, who is working all things together for his good purposes. To learn about these people and their work is to learn about their ultimate concerns: what motivated them and gave them purpose and direction? What caused them to spend their lives in work that was often unpopular and even dangerous?

Biography and autobiography also serve to humanize the people we normally see only at a great distance of years or in the inconstant light of popular opinion. It is comforting to know that these people lived in a fallen world just as we do.

We can often more fully relate to someone when we learn how they, like ourselves, had to deal with all the cares, uncertainties, joys and sorrows of life under the sun (Eccl. 2:19).

On a practical level, we can often learn by their example. As we seek to be faithful to our Lord’s command to transform the raw material of creation into a God-glorifying culture, we would do well to consider the similarities and differences between the past and our own age. Seeing what faithfulness looked like in another era can prompt us to reflect more carefully on what it looks like in our own. Obstacles to Christian culture then took different forms than they do now, and so godly obedience in our own context will have a different expression, but will be in the same Godfacing direction.

Conversely, we can learn from our ancestors’ regrets and occasionally negative example; they were human, after all. Reflecting on the life experience of another is often a help in previewing our own lives, perhaps avoiding similar errors.

What did they do or fail to do that we can look out for? There is truth in the saying, popularized

by Isaac Newton, that if we have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

With this in mind, let us consider the lives of our faithful ancestors who toiled and sacrificed to see God’s kingdom come and his will done on earth as it is in heaven. One day a new generation will take our place in the work of cultural renewal; Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Editorial: Issue 18

what will be the legacy that we leave to our children? Will we give them an example worth following? May it rightly be said of us that “one generation will commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts” (Ps. 145:4).

IN THIS ISSUE

Ben House provides a brief introduction to Augustine’s City of God, the conditions which prompted its writing, and its abiding spiritual and intellectual legacy. By grounding his convictions firmly in the eternal, unchanging Word of God, Augustine provides a lasting model for Christian engagement with an apostate culture.

Rebekah Sheats considers the life of the Reformer Pierre Viret, a contemporary and friend of John Calvin, and the significant, yet under-reported, role he played in bringing reformed, biblical Christianity to early modern Europe. Viret was not only a gifted preacher in his own right, but served to equip and encourage his fellow reformers in times of great discouragement and opposition.

Rev. Dr. Joe Boot looks at the political career of William Wilberforce, whose Christian convictions could not abide the practice of the slave trade. After wrestling through initial doubts whether he could be both a Christian and a politician, Wilberforce came to recognize that civil governments, no less than any other sphere of life, are accountable to God, and that such an evil as slavery could not be overcome simply by legislation; rather, the hearts and minds of the people would have to be changed.

Dr. James K.A. Smith offers a personal testimony, how he came to be more fully informed and animated by the theology of Abraham Kuyper. His description of his own successive “conversions” to a Kuyperian worldview is instructive for us as we reflect on our own beliefs and convictions.

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REV. DR. JOE BOOT REV. DR. JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias for seven years as an apologist in the UK and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. A theology graduate of Birmingham Christian College, England, Joe earned his M.A. in Mission Theology from the University of Manchester and his Ph.D. in Christian Intellectual Thought from Whitefield Theological Seminary, Florida. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, Why I Still Believe and How Then Shall We Answer. His latest book, Gospel Culture, is designed to help Christians understand the scope and implications of the gospel in the twenty-first century. He is Senior Fellow of the cultural and apologetics think tanks, truthXchange, and the Centre for Cultural Leadership, both in Southern California, and Director of the Wilberforce Academy training program in the UK. Joe lives in Toronto with his wife Jenny and their three children, Naomi, Hannah and Isaac.

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WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

And Applied Christianity Wilberforce’s pursuit of a broad and uplifting vision of society elevates him far above the general ranks of politicians. But the fact that he managed to live according to his own principles, and constantly reflect his beliefs in his own character is his crowning glory.

– William Hague NOT FORGETTING THE FAITHFUL

The great question every Christian must grapple with in our time is how the powerful Word-revelation of God relates to our life in the world. The answer that we arrive at will determine not only the path of our personal life but the course of our nation’s future. William Wilberforce, one of the most important founders of modern evangelicalism, was in no doubt about the nature of that critical relation when he went into battle for the creational and redemptive Word of truth in the public life of Great Britain. However, a tragic reality upon us today is that such heroes of the faith are being routinely ignored by the church, or their scriptural motivations and principles are supressed and air-brushed out of the story. Klaas Schilder’s diagnosis of this tendency in sobering: The old saying is promptly proven right that a dying people ignores its great men.

A glorious heritage claims responsibilities for the future: individuals and nations, which have stood in first ranks, should maintain their place. As long as a people maintains its greatness, it will know its history and honor its great men. But when there is apostasy, one will rather not hear the strict exhortations of the past. In such days, people will belittle the same miracles which once had made them proud.

They will ridicule their history and despise their great men, so that the crooked and wayward children will not feel shame when

the memory and image of the great and mighty fathers beckon them…; potterers do not like to be reminded of the architecture of God’s very wise people.1

Seeking to escape this kind of shame, too many Christians have joined in with the West’s cultural-political obsession of ridiculing our history and neglecting or despising the great leaders of our past. For the most part we are actually far too ignorant of history and ambivalent, if not contemptuous, of the past. As a consequence we are in urgent need in our age of reviving the memory of great Christian leaders who modelled living faith in the power of the gospel of the kingdom.

This profound necessity is ominously evident in that the unbelieving West today has attained a level of apostasy from the Christian faith so radical that it has become self-conscious and evangelistic. We have, with eyes wide open, turned our backs on the faith that deeply influenced and nurtured the life and freedoms of Western nations for generations and made us, by grace, a blessing to others. That apostasy has spread to all sectors of society and revolutionized Western cultural life with respect to everything from human identity, marriage and family, to education and law, politics, media and art. The late American scholar Evan Runner noted in the latter third of the twentieth century: We are called upon to live out our lives in dark and terrifying times. From the time of the French Revolution on, our days have been filled with mounting confusion on all sides, with revolutions and acts of violence that seem only to increase in tempo, in range and in intensity. For more and more people life appears to lack any meaning.

Even in the churches great numbers of people have accommodated themselves Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

William Wilberforce

to secular ways of living and thinking, so that the power of Satan to deceive is mighty in the world. We can understand the words of Groen Van Prinsterer, who said, “Modern society, with all its excellences, having fallen into bondage to the theory of unbelief, is increasingly being seduced into a systematic denial of the living God.”2

In short, the hearts of men have turned from the Lord, and a compromised, forgetful church shares significant responsibility for this situation.

WILBERFORCE AND THE HEART OF THE MATTER

The scriptures declare that “out of the heart spring the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23). It is out of the abundance of the heart that people speak and live in all the arenas of human life (Luke 6:45; Jas. 1:15). In Scripture, the heart is the religious centre or root of the human personality (Ps. 51:10; Eccl. 3:11; Jer. 17:9). All of us live coram Deo (before the face of God) and are created inescapably religious by nature, because all people must respond one way or another to the Word of God. Within the structure of God’s creation, human experience does not encounter ‘non-belief;’ indeed there is no such thing. Every person holds to a belief of some kind or another whether it be Islamic, pagan, secular, or Christian, and everybody acts in terms of those convictions.

The orientation of the heart thus affects all our daily activities. Materially, of course, Christians and non-Christians are not doing different things — rather, they are doing the same things differently, because a different directing principle is at work. The result is that a directional antithesis emerges in all of life’s activities. Whilst fallen and unregenerate people are in the grip of an apostate religious condition, the Christian is one whose life, in principle and in its totality, has been redirected by the regeneration of the heart. As the implications of this radical redirection are faithfully worked out, everything about the life of the Christian is changed. This glorious redirection and renewal of life is evident in the notable life of William Wilberforce. He wrote: Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

The grand characteristic mark of the true Christian…is his desiring to please God in all his thoughts, and words and actions; to take the revealed Word to be the rule of his belief and practice; to let his light shine before men; and to in all things adorn the doctrine which he professes.3

In this statement we get a sense of the religious root unity that actuated this great man’s faithfulness. He had insight into the reality that his faith, by the Word of God, must direct every as“Within the pect of his life and thought. This driving structure of God’s motive gets to the core of what transforms creation, human the Christian who has grasped their true relation to God, his Word, and their callexperience does ing to service in the world. This is why we not encounter must recover, treasure and emulate the leg‘non-belief;’ indeed acy of faithful witnesses who have blazed a there is no such trail of obedience in the reconciliation of thing. Every person all things to God (2 Cor. 5:19).

BACK TO THE FUTURE

By this reflection on our need to recover something lost, something modeled in history by faithful leaders, we are not driven to simply looking back with a naïve nostalgia to some imaginary past where we once had an overtly and robustly Christian cultural order that was radically transformed by the gospel. On the contrary, Wilberforce’s life was marked by a bitter struggle between the truth of the Word of God which actuated him and the hostility to that Word which opposed him at every turn in the corridors of power and halls of high culture.4 Thus, even in the West, a clearly and consistently Christian culture is yet to be historically realized. We might reasonably say that historically Western nations have been profoundly influenced and shaped by Christianity and have enjoyed broadly Christianized institutions. But certainly, no one in the last four generations has lived in a consistently Christian culture. Indeed, throughout our past, Western nations fell well short of a Christian culture that clearly rejected attempts at a synthesis with humanistic religion emanating from the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome.

holds to a belief of some kind or another.”

This is important to note in response to those SPRING 2017

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who – in the face of the serious challenges confronting Christians today – would claim that recovering the culturally-engaged “World history is still example and optimistic faith of men like moving toward the Wilberforce is largely a waste of time bemorning of gospel cause old Christendom is gone. We are renewal, not falling living, many allege, in a ‘post-Christian off into the night of age,’ and so Christians should abandon their efforts at gospel-centred cultural despair and ruin” restoration in terms of Scripture and just accept that Christianity has lost the so-called ‘culture war.’ That is to say, we should recognise that we are, and will remain, just one ‘interest group’ among many reticent and humble applicants for religious accommodation. Our task is only to point to the parousia.

Leaving aside the fact that history and the lives of countless thousands of suffering slaves and their children would have been very different if Wilberforce had simply pointed them piously to the Second Coming, such people miss what William Wilberforce well understood in his scripturallyrooted hopes for the success of the gospel,5 and what the theologian Loraine Boettner has pointed out, that “[T]here has never yet been a truly Christian age, nor has so much as one nation ever been consistently Christian. The age in which we are living is still pre-Christian.” He continues, That the progress of the church through these years has been slow is due to the fact that Christians in general have not taken seriously Christ’s command.… The Great Commission is addressed not merely to ministers and missionaries, but to all Christians everywhere.… The command applies to parents rearing their children, to children in regard to their parents, to individuals in whatever relationship they stand to their neighbors or business or social champions, to those who teach in the schools, to employers and employees in their mutual relationships, to writers, to newsmen, to statesmen, to Christians in general regardless of occupation or station in life.6

If Wilberforce was right, and I believe he was, that we are still in a pre-Christian age, then world SPRING 2017

history is still moving toward the morning of gospel renewal, not falling off into the night of despair and ruin where we all may as well say, ‘forget the great Christian reformers of the past and their holy discontent with the status quo, those days of hope are over.’ Rather we must recover the faith of men like Wilberforce that declares Jesus Christ reigns as Lord and King. He governs history still in his providence and calls his people to be more than conquerors through him, teaching and making disciples of the nations by faith and obedience (Matt. 28: 16-20).

There is no doubt, as Wilberforce experienced, that a pre-Christian age means very difficult times where the battle is fierce, discouragement abounds, and people’s hearts may fail them for fear. But history awaits faithful men and women, enlivened by the Word-revelation of God and filled with his Spirit, who will go to battle for God’s glory as Christ makes darkness flee away (1 Cor. 15: 25-28). To face our times with courage we must recover a living and applied faith for all of life and for this we need godly examples to emulate. We must glance back to advance into our future.

COURAGE FOR THE CONFLICT

Wilberforce is clearly one such example. He was a man who proved that faithfulness in times of apostasy looks like courage! Many great Christians have understood the critical need for the courage to live an integral life of faith in terms of the totality of God’s Word. Such lives have regularly manifested incredible social, cultural and political fruit – the remnants of which we are still feeding on today. Wilberforce, though best remembered for his life-long battle with (and final victory over) the slave-trade – a serious crime which carries the death penalty in Scripture cf.

Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7; 1 Tim. 1:10 – was also one of the key founders of British evangelicalism who understood both the covenant Word of God and the centrality and applicability of that Word to all of life. Moreover, he grasped these vital truths in a time of great religious apostasy and rising danger for believers in Europe. It was his context that demanded courage if he was to be faithful. In his important book A Practical View Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

William Wilberforce

of Christianity, he prophetically foresaw the evils that would spill out of the French Revolution: A brood of moral vipers is now hatching, which, when they shall have attained their mischievous maturity, will go forth to poison the world. But fruitless will be all attempts to sustain, much more to revive, the fainting cause of morals, unless you can in some degree restore the prevalence of evangelical Christianity.7

Though Wilberforce viewed the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars as a permitted judgment of God upon the sins of Britain and other European nations, he clearly saw that this revolutionary thought and attendant socio-cultural decay were rooted in religious apostasy, and could not be overcome by merely military, political or social means – yet this did not lead him to sit on his hands in political and social life, quite the contrary. He rightly perceived that what was needed alongside undaunted and faithful action, was a concurrent renewal of a total and radical faith in Christ applied in one’s life. Merely claiming to be ‘religious’ and have a personal faith or morality was not enough for Christians who wanted to serve God with faith and courage in challenging days: We should cease to be deceived by superficial appearances, and to confound the Gospel of Christ with the systems of philosophers; we should become impressed with that weighty truth, so much forgotten, and never to be too strongly insisted on, that Christianity calls on us, as we value our immortal souls, not merely in general, to be religious, and moral, but specially to believe the doctrines, and imbibe the principles, and practice the precepts of Christ.… [Christianity] is spoken of as light from darkness, as release from prison, as deliverance from captivity, as life from death.… And short as is the form of prayer taught us by our blessed savior, the more general extension of the kingdom of Christ constitutes one of its leading petitions.8

Thus Wilberforce’s approach was practical or apEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

plied whilst recognizing that the doctrine of grace is the cardinal point on which Christianity turns.

Biographer Garth Lean notes that for Wilberforce, “it was not enough to profess Christianity, to go to church on Sundays and to “To face our times live a decent life.… Christianity must be with courage we allowed to pervade and penetrate every 9 corner of a Christian’s existence.” The must recover a steep decline away from a vital and apliving and applied plied scriptural faith was very apparent faith for all of life in Wilberforce’s age, hence his relentless and for this we need emphasis upon it. It is astonishing to godly examples to read Bishop J. C. Ryle, writing descripemulate.” tively of Wilberforce’s debauched era. He observes: England seems barren of all that is really good. How such a state of things can have arisen in a land of free bibles and professing Protestantism is almost past comprehension. Christianity seems to lie as one dead. Morality, however much exalted in pulpits, is thoroughly trampled under foot in the streets. There is darkness in the court, the Parliament, and the bar – darkness in country, and darkness in town – darkness among rich and darkness among poor – a gross, thick, religious and moral darkness – a darkness that might be felt.

It may suffice to say that adultery, sexual immorality, gambling, swearing, Sabbathbreaking and drunkenness are hardly regarded vices at all. They are the fashionable practices of people in the highest ranks of society, and no one is thought the worse of for indulging in them. And what were the churches doing? Well, they exist but they could hardly be said to be alive. They do nothing; they are sound asleep…. When such is the state of things in churches and chapels, it can surprise no one to learn that the land is deluged with infidelity and scepticism.10

In such an environment Wilberforce was taken hold of by God, gripped by his Word and Spirit, and raised up to do battle for the culture of Christ – for the liberties and beauty of the gospel – that is, for the kingdom of God. This meant integrated faithful service that encompassed everySPRING 2017

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thing from personal evangelism and preaching to political and cultural reform, which he called the ‘reformation of manners.’ His courageous passion for the kingdom of God was a theological inheritance that he had received from his evangelical forebears – the Puritans – whom he keenly read throughout his life.11 One Canadian Wilberforce biographer, seeing the connection between the Puritans and Wilberforce as their vital faith and refusal to artificially divide personal piety from cultural transformation, wrote: For [Wilberforce], as for the Puritans, religion was not a set of rules but a life-force: a vision and compulsion which saw the beauty of a holy life and moved toward it, marveling at the possibilities and thrilling to the satisfaction of a god-centred life.…

[N]either the Puritans nor Wilberforce separated concern for personal holiness from concern for national holiness and national reform.12

Divorcing personal piety from the rest of one’s life in the world, personal renewal from the necessity of cultural restoration, especially in a time of apostasy, is not only to artificially divide one’s life by a false and unscriptural dichotomy, it is to trade cowardice for courage. God had prepared Wilberforce to stand fast in the eye of the storm with an undivided heart and life. We now turn to a glimpse at what that preparation looked like.

THE MAKING OF THE MAN

Wilberforce was born August 24, 1759 into a wealthy merchant family in the “Wilberforce was north of England, and like the illustritaken hold of by ous Puritan head of state Oliver CromGod, gripped by his well, attended Cambridge for a time. He Word and Spirit, was just seventeen when he arrived and had little desire at that point in his life and raised up to do for serious study. By this time he had battle for the culture lost the earnest childhood faith passed of Christ – for the to him by his aunt Hannah and uncle liberties and beauty William, with whom he had lived for a of the gospel.” while after the death of his father which occurred just before his ninth birthday.

These relatives, for whom he developed a great affection, were evangelicals personally acquainted SPRING 2017

with the great George Whitfield, under whose ministry they had been converted. However, as a result of his demise into religious skepticism he spent much of his youth in a dissolute lifestyle and fell in with a crowd at Cambridge engaged in gambling, partying and what he called “shapeless idleness.” And while he would come to regret his juvenile time-wasting, in the providence of God he did build some important and close friendships at Cambridge, in particular with Isaac Milner, who would play a key role in his conversion, and William Pitt, the future Prime Minister.

Acquitting himself reasonably well in his college exams and determining to enter political life, in 1780 the witty, eloquent and naturally gifted Wilberforce successfully stood for election in his hometown of Hull ­– aged twenty-one and still technically a student. He soon became one of the rising stars in Parliament, where his natural speaking ability was readily noticeable. William Pitt the Younger said that Wilberforce possessed “the greatest natural eloquence of all the men I ever knew.” In 1784 Wilberforce stood again for election, this time leaving the safe seat of Hull for an influential seat in Yorkshire – the largest county in England. Because of his connections, inherited wealth, personal warmth and brilliant social ability with the land-owning class, he won the seat. Thus, by the time a very wealthy and politically independent Wilberforce was twentyfive, he was a Member of Parliament for one of the most prestigious seats in the country and his good friend, William Pitt, was about to become Prime Minister. It is easy to see in hindsight how God was moving his unsuspecting servant into position.

Religiously, Wilberforce had by now adopted a kind of fashionable rationalistic Unitarianism which completely rejected orthodox Christian truth – including the divinity of Christ and the authority of Scripture. Here was a faith in a benign benevolence which made no real demands.

However, in the providence of God his old friend from Cambridge, Isaac Milner, a Christian scholar and something of an apologist (which Wilberforce discovered too late!) ended up accompanying Wilberforce on a tour of Europe. He was a competent and thoughtful man who was able to articulate the heart of Christianity in a winsome Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

William Wilberforce

manner on their journey. And so, by the summer of 1785, Wilberforce’s many intellectual doubts and objections to the Christian faith had been removed, though he had not yet surrendered his heart and life to Christ. Over the next year he gradually came to place his faith completely in Christ. Yet at the time, due to the deep influence of dualistic Greek philosophy on Christianity in the West, one of his major considerations and concerns was whether he could become a faithful evangelical Christian and yet remain in politics.

Wasn’t politics a profane and ‘secular’ vocation?

Could he really surrender to Christ and remain a politician?

Nagged by these concerns Wilberforce arranged – with some trepidation over his political future if discovered going to such an appointment – to meet with the only evangelical clergyman his wider family had some acquaintance with in London, John Newton, the former slave-trader and author of the hymn Amazing Grace. Newton was a man Wilberforce remembered from his childhood days in Wimbledon with his uncle and aunt. By God’s grace, in a conversation of incredible historical importance, Newton not only told Wilberforce he had never ceased to pray for him, he also persuaded Wilberforce that he could be a Christian and remain in politics. He later gave Wilberforce the examples of Joseph and Daniel and told him, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of his church and for the good of the nation.”13

By Easter 1786 what he called his ‘grand change’ was complete. He wrote, “the promises and offers of the gospel produced in me something of a settled peace of conscience. I devoted myself for whatever might be the term of my future life, to the service of my God and saviour.”14 William Pitt and John Newton both played a role in Wilberforce coming to see that that service needed to be in political life. He quickly set about mending some broken relationships he had in Parliament and soon after discovered the two great objects to which God had called him – the abolition of the slave trade and the moral reformation of the land.

THE POWER OF HIS LIFE AND MESSAGE

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

It should be remembered that in the 1790s Britain was in a conflict for its very life and survival. It wasn’t until she defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 that the catastrophe and prolonged hardship of war was ended. This had been no easy time to pursue abolition or domestic cultural change. And yet it was during this turbulent period of conflict that Wilberforce and his friends achieved their most important reforms. In 1797 his book, A Practical View of Christianity, was published to great ac“One of his major claim, becoming the veritable manifesto of the evangelical movement and propelling considerations their efforts across party lines and class disand concerns was tinction. It remained a bestseller for fifty whether he could years and marked a significant beginning become a faithful of the influence of evangelicalism on the evangelical upper classes. Parliamentary luminaries of Christian and the stature of Edmund Burke were deeply impacted by it. He spent much of the last yet remain in two days of his life reading it and spoke of politics.” the overwhelming comfort that it brought him. The power of Wilberforce’s book was in its sincerity, backed by a man whose life modelled a living faith at a time of national crisis.

The rich and very difficult life of Wilberforce is a truly amazing and inspiring story that every Christian should read. The abolition of the slave trade for which he is most remembered (amongst his many other incredible achievements) would take the rest of his life, through much hardship, persecution, sickness and sorrow. John Wesley, the redoubtable Methodist preacher and reformer, understood the perseverance that Wilberforce would require, and in one of the final actions of his life, aged eighty-eight, he wrote his last ever letter to the young Wilberforce on February 24, 1791: Unless the divine Power has raised you up to be Athanasius contra mundum I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise.… Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of man and devils. But if God is for you, who can be against you.

Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power SPRING 2017

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of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.15

“Wilberforce did not accomplish these almost miraculous feats alone. The life-long friends that gathered around him, called the Clapham Sect, labored together for the kingdom of Christ.

Wilberforce was finally victorious in getting his abolition bill passed into law.

February 23, 1807 became one of the most important nights in British political history. As speeches were made that night, incredible tributes were heaped on Wilberforce as Sir Samuel Romilly contrasted the achievement of Napoleon with that of Wilberforce. After years of hostility, conflict and opposition, the house stood and applauded exuberantly as Wilberforce wept, his head in his hands.

But Wilberforce was also hugely influential in the work of gospel-centred cultural reformation in Britain. His measures included desperately-needed reform. At the political level, he pursued the revision of an inhumane penal code to reduce the number of hangings, and with royal approval established the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Royal proclamations for the encouragement of piety and suppression of vice were issued, and he challenged a corrupt church establishment by assaulting the idle ‘buck parsons,’ living off the church and wearying the people.

The impact of Wilberforce and his friends was so great that the churches began filling up again, family prayers were increasingly being held in the homes of all classes; even Princess Victoria was given an evangelical tutor by the Duke of Kent.

It is estimated that soon, around 8% of Anglican clergy were evangelical. Indeed, the social order and mission vitality of the Victorian age is impossible to imagine without Wilberforce and his evangelical faith. That faith has been considered by some scholars the most formative power behind eminent Victorians and the rock upon which the character of nineteenth-century Englishmen was founded.16 It must be stressed that Wilberforce did not accomplish these almost miraculous feats alone.

The life-long friends that gathered around him, called the Clapham Sect, labored together for the kingdom of Christ. One historian wrote that: SPRING 2017

They possessed between them an astonishing range of capacities: encyclopaedic knowledge, a capacity for research, sparkling wit and literary style, business sagacity, foreign policy expertise, legal ability, oratory and parliamentary skill. No prime minister had such a cabinet as Wilberforce could summon to his assistance.17

At one point, Wilberforce was said to be involved in over sixty different ministries; he was instrumental in founding the British and Foreign Bible Society for the distribution of Scripture, the Church Missionary Society, the Sunday School Society, and schools for the poor, and even set up the RSPCA. Through his evangelical friend Hannah Moore Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect established schools in the West Country and educated thousands of children. They began lending libraries, soup kitchens and schools for the deaf and blind. They sponsored smallpox vaccinations and campaigned for shorter working hours and better conditions in factories. They purchased the release of those in prison for debt, and helped found the National Gallery. Wilberforce visited prisons with Elizabeth Fry and he funded hospitals and endless causes for poverty relief, as well as seeking humane treatment for Native Americans and the people of India. He gave away vast swathes of his personal fortune till at the end of his life very little was left. As one historian put it so well, “William Wilberforce is proof that a man can change his times, though he cannot do it alone.”18 Yet they knew well that the kingdom of God is not simply a matter of passionate activity. As Wesley warned Wilberforce, pursuing godly cultural reformation by our own resources and strength, as though cultural action alone were sufficient, would be a great mistake ending in exhaustion and disappointment. Wilberforce understood that there would be no preservation of justice nor the growth of godly social order without a transformation of people’s hearts and minds – beginning with the individual. As Charles Colson has correctly pointed out: Wilberforce ultimately prevailed because he understood the futility of attempting to

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William Wilberforce

end a systemic evil without also changing citizens’ values and dispositions. He knew he not only had to work for justice; he also had to convince people of the need for the moral consensus that flowed from a biblical worldview.19

As Lord Hague, a politician, historian and Wilberforce biographer has noted, “Wilberforce was a legislator for almost the whole of his adult life, but central to his beliefs was the view that laws must be underpinned by a common understanding of ethics and conduct.”20 THE LEGACY OF FAITH

Wilberforce died in 1833, just days after slavery was finally abolished in every corner of the British Empire. At his funeral was a man who admired Wilberforce greatly and continued his legacy of faith and action, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who would become the champion of Britain’s industrial poor, saving the child laborers in Britain’s mines and factories. As Murray Andrew Pura writes, “He who became a moral father to his country and the conscience of England also became a father and a guiding conscience to a spiritual movement that has largely been forgotten.”21 Today we live again in frightening and difficult times. Though comparisons are very difficult, the depth of apostasy in our time surely rivals that of Wilberforce’s era, since our age is marked by a self-conscious and deliberate rejection and overturning of the Christian faith, creational order and scriptural heritage. We face today opposition and challenges on every side, with the very historic freedoms of gospel witness under increased legal threat. Wickedness so often seems to prevail in our society. However, we have no right to lose hope. The disciples confronted the seemingly impenetrable colossus of the Greco-Roman world, and understood that kingdom faithfulness was their obligation, despite the seeming impossibility of the task.

Life and truth can only prevail when a new direction in the religious root of man’s being – the heart – takes shape and his life and thinking are Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

renewed in terms of the Word of God. In his dependence on the Holy Spirit, Wilberforce’s life reveals that this transformation requires faithful service to the Word in every area of life on the part of Christians, from family life and education, to political, cultural and charitable service, to evangelism and preaching. A radical and integral faith in Christ’s complete and total Lordship requires an integral mission that leaves no area untouched by the power of the Word of God. This is Wilberforce’s legacy and the secret of his great influence.

“A radical and integral faith in Christ’s complete and total Lordship requires an integral mission that leaves no area untouched by the power of the Word of God.”

It is clear that we are a long way from this scriptural mission today. As Pura opines, “How much of today’s evangelicalism has the purity and breadth and impetus of that first Evangelical Movement and of the largely unhonoured layman who was its greatest leader?”22 The church in our time urgently needs to be resourced by the faith and wisdom of men like Wilberforce, and this requires knowing their context, their story and their faith.

We need to then imitate this faith and thus, in our day, mark a new starting point, pursue a new scriptural direction, pray for new vigour, and find a new clarity, a new basis for thought and action rooted in the Lordship of Christ.

In this glorious service to the kingdom of God and pursuit of God’s righteousness in all things, our hope is not in human effort, but in the omnipotent working of the Holy Spirit and the power of the gospel. An aging Wilberforce reflected this confidence at the end of his life when he wrote: I must confess…that my own solid hopes for the wellbeing of my country depend not so much on her navies and armies, nor on the wisdom of her rulers, nor on the spirit of her people, but on the persuasion that she still contains many who love and obey the Gospel of Christ. I believe that their prayers may yet prevail.23

In such a hope we shall prevail because Christ Jesus is Lord, and the God of peace shall soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20).

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1

Klaas Schilder, Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh: Daily Meditations on the Bible for Reformation of Family, Church and State, Vol. 1 (Neerlandia, AB: Inheritance Publications, 2013), 102 2 Evan Runner, Walking in the Way of the Word: The Collected Writings of H. Evan Runner (Grand Rapids: Paideia Press, 2009), 168.

3 William Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity, (Glasgow: William Collins, 1833), 378.

4 See William Hague, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner (London: Harper Perennial, 2008), 428-450.

5 William Wilberforce shared the eschatological hope of most evangelicals of his day, and the Puritans who came before him, that obedience to God led to blessings both personal and national and that a period of glorious success for the gospel lay ahead in history – today typically called post-millennialism. When Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 he declared “God will bless this country” and the greatest period of blessing and success called the Victorian Age followed. For a consideration of Wilberforce’s eschatological hope and theological motivations, see Murray Andrew Pura, Vital Christianity: The Life and Spirituality of William Wilberforce (Toronto: Christian Focus, 2003), 25-26, 72, 89-91. Tragically this faith and confidence in the power of the Gospel and omnipotence of the Holy Spirit to transform lives, communities and cultures has been largely abandoned by later evangelicals who in the face of war and then the decline of the Christian faith in the West have preferred to see defeat for the gospel in history and escape from the world as the hope for the church.

6 Loraine Boettner, The Millennium (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1957).

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Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity.

Wilberforce, A Practical View of Christianity, 6-7.

9 Garth Lean, God’s Politician: William Wilberforce’s Struggle (Trowbridge, Wiltshire: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2007), 126.

10 J.C. Ryle, Christian Leaders of the 18th Century (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1978).

11 Murray Andrew Pura, Vital Christianity: The Life and Spirituality of William Wilberforce (Toronto: Christian Focus, 2003), 69.

12 Pura, Vital Christianity, 96.

13 John Newton, cited in Robert Isaac Wilberforce and Samuel Wilberforce, The Life of William Wilberforce, abridged edition [London, 1843], 48.

14 William Wilberforce, cited in Kevin Belmonte, William Wilberforce: The Friend of Humanity (Malta: Day One Publications, 2006), 43.

15 John Wesley, George Eayrs, Letters of John Wesley: A Selection of Important and New Letters with Introductions and Biographical Notes by George Eayrs (New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915), 489-490.

16 Lean, God’s Politician, 83.

17 Lean, God’s Politician, 104.

18 John Pollock, William Wilberforce: A Man who Changed his Times, (MacLean, VA: Trinity Forum, 2006), 88.

19 Charles Colson and Anne Morse, “The Wilberforce Strategy,” Christianity Today 51, no. 2 (2007): 132.

20 Hague, William Wilberforce, 514.

21 Pura, Vital Christianity, 141.

22 Pura, Vital Christianity, 141.

23 Wilberforce, A Practical View, ix.

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NATURALIZING

Shalom

:

CONFESSIONS OF

a Kuyperian secularist Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on June 28 2013 in Comment, a publication of CARDUS: www.cardus.ca. Reprinted by permission.

THE IDOL OF JUSTICE?

About a dozen years ago, I was on the campus of the University of San Francisco as a participant in “Western Conversations in Jesuit Higher Education” — an annual gathering of Jesuit universities west of the Mississippi devoted to exploring the issues of mission and identity. Though an evangelical Protestant, I was teaching at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles at the time and had been recruited to be part of the team taking up issues of liberal arts education in the Catholic tradition.

It turned out to be an opportune moment for us to be at the University of San Francisco since they were rolling out a new mission statement that same week. So here we were, professors from Jesuit universities, discussing the mission of Jesuit Catholic higher education, hosted by a Jesuit university rolling out a new articulation of their own mission. It was a case study unfolding right under our noses.

However, it didn’t take long for some of us to notice something: the mission statement seemed to have a curious blind spot. Long on talk of justice, diversity, and service, the word “God” nowhere appears in the document. “Jesus” never makes an appearance in the mission of this Jesuit university. (This is the sort of thing that led my friend, a devout Roman Catholic, to quip: “I like teaching at a Jesuit university. But I would love to teach at a Catholic university!”)

For the longest time, I thought of this as “their” problem — just one more indicator of the secularization of Catholic higher education in North Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

America. But since then I’ve come to realize that this is our problem. In strange, often unintended ways, the pursuit of “justice,” shalom, and a “holistic” gospel can have its own secularizing effect.

What begins as a gospel-motivated concern for justice can turn into a naturalized fixation on justice in which God never appears. And when that happens, “justice” becomes something else altogether — an idol, a way to effectively naturalize the gospel, flattening it to a social amelioration project in which the particularity of Jesus as the revelation of God becomes strangely absent.

Given the newfound appreciation for justice and shalom among evangelicals, we do well to see such trajectories as a cautionary tale, like a visitation from the ghost of Christmas future showing us where we could end up.

If this feels like I’m pointing my finger at others, there are three more pointed back at me. In fact, consider this (another) letter to my younger self. As a former fundamentalist, it was heirs of Abraham Kuyper who taught me the biblical vision of a holistic gospel. But I’ve come to realize that if we don’t attend to the whole Kuyper, so to speak — if we pick and choose just parts of the Kuyperian project — we can end up with an odd sort of monstrosity: what we might call, paradoxically, a “Kuyperian secularism” that naturalizes shalom.

A CAUTIONARY TALE

Before I recount my own foray into Kuyperian secularism, let me provide some context. I’ve come to see my own story in a much bigger one, a back story told by Charles Taylor in his mammoth tome, A Secular Age. You might think of this as a tale about the Frankenstein-ish effects of the Protestant Reformation.

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DR. JAMES K.A. SMITH JAMES K.A. SMITH is a Senior Fellow with Cardus, editor-in-chief of Comment, and teaches philosophy at Calvin College. His latest book is You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Brazos, 2016). Jamie studied at Emmaus Bible College in Dubuque, Iowa; the University of Waterloo; the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto; and earned his Ph.D. at Villanova University. He is a Visiting Professor at Trinity College of the University of Toronto and has also taught at Regent College, Fuller Seminary, Calvin Theological Seminary, and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. Jamie is an award-winning author of a number of books, including Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker Academic, 2006), Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker Academic, 2009), Letters to a Young Calvinist (Brazos, 2010), and How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Eerdmans, 2014). He is currently at work on volume 3 of his Cultural Liturgies trilogy under the working title, Embodying the Kingdom: Reforming Public Theology. Jamie and his wife, Deanna, are elementary school sweethearts and have four children. They live in Grand Rapids

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Naturalizing “Shalom”

As Taylor so winsomely puts it, one of the worldchanging consequences of the Reformation was “the sanctification of ordinary “What begins as a life.”1 This was a refusal of the two-tiered Christianity in the late medieval ages that gospel-motivated extolled priests and monks and treated concern for justice butchers and bakers and candlestick can turn into a makers as if there were merely secondnaturalized fixation class citizens in the kingdom of God. on justice in which Nein! shouted the Reformers in reply. If God never appears.” all of life is lived coram Deo, before the face of God, then all vocations are holy.

Everything can and should be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31) and as an expression of gratitude to God (Col. 3:17). In sum: there will not be a single square inch in all of creation over which Christ does not say, “Mine!”2 This also transforms how we think about salvation, redemption, and restoration. On this picture, God is not just interested in “soul rescue,” saving souls from and out of the world. He is redeeming this world. Jesus announces a kingdom that is characterized by justice: for the poor, for the oppressed, for the vulnerable, for all.

The scope of God’s salvation includes the material; Christ doesn’t just redeem souls, he puts the world to rights. This is why Jesus heals bodies and feeds the crowds. And insofar as justice — shalom, flourishing — is God’s concern, it should also be ours. Christians should be “this worldly” in the best sense of the term: participating in God’s renewal and redemption of this world, and hence passionately devoted to the cause of justice.

However, Taylor points out an unintended, “Frankensteinish” turn that was the result: by unleashing a new interest and investment in “thisworldly” justice, the Reformation also unleashed the possibility that we might forget heaven. By rejecting the dualism of two-tiered Christianity, the Reformation opened the door to a naturalism that only cared about “this world.”

Taylor describes this in terms of an “eclipse” — an eclipse of a “further purpose” or a good that transcends mere human flourishing. As he puts it elsewhere, “For Christians, God wills human flourishing, but ‘thy will be done’ isn’t equivalent to ‘Let human beings flourish.’”3 In short, both

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agents and social institutions lived with a sense of a telos that was eternal — a final judgment, the beatific vision, and so on. And on Taylor’s accounting, this “higher good” was in some tension with mundane concerns about flourishing, which entailed a sense of obligation “beyond” human flourishing. In other words, this life is not “all there is” — and recognizing that means one lives this life differently. It will engender certain ascetic constraints, for example: we can’t just eat, drink, and be merry because, while tomorrow we may die, that’s not the end. After that comes the judgment.

But Taylor sees an important shift in this respect, made possible by the Reformation but really taking hold in the work of Adam Smith and John Locke, among others. Whereas, historically, the doctrine of providence assured a benign ultimate plan for the cosmos, with Locke and Smith we see a new emphasis: providence is primarily about ordering the world for mutual benefit, particularly economic benefit. Humans are seen as fundamentally engaged in an “exchange of services,” so the entire cosmos is seen anthropocentrically as the arena for this economy. What happens in the “new Providence,” then, is a “shrinking” of God’s purposes, an “economizing” of God’s own interests. So even our theism becomes humanized, immanentized, and the telos of God’s providential concern is circumscribed within immanence.

And this becomes true even of “orthodox” folk: “even people who held to orthodox beliefs were influenced by this humanizing trend; frequently the transcendent dimension of their faith became less central.”4 Because eternity is eclipsed, the this-worldly is amplified and threatens to swallow all.

SEEING OUR FUTURE IN THIS PAST

What Taylor is talking about amounts to ancient history for us. But I have to confess that it cuts pretty close to the bone for me. It’s a history that I feel like I’ve re-lived in my own lifetime, and it’s a story I see repeating itself among a younger generation.

My own rendition of this story is a “Kuyperian” variation. I was converted and nurtured in a Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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Naturalizing “Shalom”

largely dualistic stream of North American evangelicalism, complete with a robust dispensational view of the end times and a very narrow understanding of redemption. It was very much a rapture-ready, heaven-centric piety that had little, if anything, to say about how or why a Christian might care about urban planning or chemical engineering or securing clean water sources in developing nations. Why worry about justice or flourishing in a world that is going to burn up?

up being the echo chamber of our own interests. In sum, I became the strangest sort of monster: a Kuyperian secularist. My Reformed affirmation of creation slid toward a functional naturalism. My devotion to shalom became indistinguishable from the political platforms of the “progressive” party. And my valorization of the church as organism turned into a denigration of the church as institute.

So when I heard the Kuyperian gospel, so to speak, I was both blown away and a little angry.

I was introduced to a richer understanding of the biblical narrative that not only included sin and soul-rescue but also creation, culture-making, and a holistic sense of redemption that included concerns for justice. I realized that God is not only interested in immaterial souls; he is redeeming all things and renewing creation. Christ’s work also accomplishes the redemption of this world. The good news is not the announcement about an escape pod for our souls; it is the inbreaking of shalom.

Of course, this isn’t really “Kuyperian.” It’s more like a slice of Kuyper, a side of Father Abraham. It was a very selective appropriation, as if concern for shalom could be separated from the resurrection of Jesus that subjects the principalities and powers; as if culture-making could be unhooked from sanctification and liturgical formation; as if the biblical vision of justice could be detached from justification by faith. As Richard Mouw has shown in his marvelous little book, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, all of these hang together in Kuyper.

We are the ones who detach and distort this into a functional “secularism.”5

You might say I finally received an understanding of Christianity that gave me “this world” back.

Again, in Kuyperian terms, here was an account of the biblical story that not only emphasized the church as institute (“churchy” church) but also the church as organism (Christians engaged in cultural creation, caretaking, and justice). Because I felt like this more robust, comprehensive understanding of the gospel had been kept a secret, I harboured a kind of bitterness and resentment toward my fundamentalist formation.

Having been given back the world, I was almost angry that my teachers had only and constantly emphasized heaven.

As a result, my Kuyperian conversion to “thisworldly” justice and culture-making began to slide into its own kind of immanence. In other words, as Taylor notes in the shifts of modernity, even believers, in the name of affirming “this world,” can unwittingly end up capitulating to a social imaginary that really values only this world.

We become encased and enclosed in our own affirmations of the “goodness of creation,” which, instead of being the theater of God’s glory, ends Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

“I became the strangest sort of monster: a Kuyperian secularist.

My Reformed affirmation of creation slid toward a functional naturalism.”

But even if you know nothing of Abraham Kuyper, many would do well to consider how we pursue justice. When we “naturalize” shalom, it is no longer shalom. For the New Jerusalem is not a product of our bottom-up efforts, as if it were constructed by us. The New Jerusalem descends from heaven (Rev. 21:2, 10). And the light of the holy city is not a “natural” accomplish“The New ment, but is the light radiating from the glory of the risen, conquering Lamb (Rev. Jerusalem is 21:22-25). not a product The holistic affirmation of the goodness of creation and the importance of “this-worldly” justice is not a substitute for heaven, as if the holistic gospel was a sanctified way to learn to be a naturalist. To the contrary, it is the very transcendence of God — in the ascension of the Son who now reigns from heaven, and in the futurity of the coming kingdom for which we pray — that disciplines and disrupts and haunts our tendency to settle for “this world.” It is the call of the Son from heaven, and the vision of the New Jerusalem descending

of

our bottom-up efforts, as if it were constructed by us. The New Jerusalem descends from heaven.”

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Naturalizing “Shalom�

from heaven, that pushes back on our illusions that we could figure this all out, that we could bring this about. Shalom is not biblical language for progressivist social amelioration. Shalom is a Christ-haunted call to long for kingdom come.

1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 179.

2 Abraham Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Eerdmans, 1998), 488).

3 Taylor, A Secular Age, 17.

4 Taylor, A Secular Age, 222.

5 Richard J. Mouw, Abraham Kuyper: a short and personal introduction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 107.

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The City of God: 17 PAGE NO.

AUGUSTINE & GOD’S ETERNAL WORD

Editor’s note: This article originally published by Chalcedon, January 30 2006. Reprinted by permission. http://chalcedon.edu/research/articles/the-cityof-god/ THE WORST OF TIMES

The famous beginning of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities says that it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. Centuries before that novel, Augustine wrote a tale of two cities that grew out of the worst of times.

The year ad 410 and the time following saw two terrible events occur. And these events occurred during a stage of the decline of the Roman Empire where bad news was common. For several centuries, the factors that would ultimately topple the empire were competing for future historical notice. Political instability was rampant; the violent death of an emperor was no longer newsworthy. Economic problems abounded. Roman currency was so debased that the Roman government would not accept it as tax revenues.

Barbarian invasions had both destabilized the frontiers and had furnished the only new blood in the empire willing to man the armies. Paul had written of human depravity most graphically in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, in the first century. Confirming evidence of such depravity was to be found in the pre-conversion lives of the recipients of that letter. And apart from the Christian community, such behaviors still abounded.

Able emperors, such as Diocletian and Constantine, had found innovative ways to divide and rule the now unmanageable Roman world. Yet, as William Butler Yeats would write of a later era, the center could not hold.1 Officially Christian, but practically multicultural and pluralistic, Rome tottered and stumbled every step of the way to dissolution.

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BEN HOUSE

THE FALL OF ROME

Then Alaric, a barbarian chieftain and leader of the Visigoths, showed up. Alaric and company represented the forces for cultural breakdown that plagued the empire. The Visigoths had broken through the eastern frontier over a century before. Romans found them inconvenient as invaders, but useful as purchasers of Roman commodities. When tensions developed in the Visigoth-held regions, Rome responded with its characteristic solution to political problems — it sent in its feared legions. Under the Emperor Valens, this Roman army stepped in, and bystanders witnessed a military shellacking. Only this time, it was the Romans who were shellacked.

In 410 Alaric led his horde to the Italian peninsula down to the very gates of Rome. What Hannibal had failed to do after fifteen years of trying, Alaric accomplished quite handily. Roman city officials met with Alaric and warned him in effect that their big brother could beat him up; meaning, there were armies en-route to protect Rome. Alaric yawned. Then they asked him what it would take to buy him a one-way ticket away from Rome. Alaric presented a list of demands that included immense amounts of gold, silver, silk cloth, and almost every other kind of valuable. “But what will we have left?” the city officials asked. “Your lives,” Alaric answered.

The city officials refused Alaric’s demands, and so he and his Visigoth army enjoyed three days of good old-fashioned barbarian pillaging and plundering. All the things the city fathers had refused him, he now took, with interest. Buildings were destroyed, people were killed, and chaos reigned. (Amazingly, the Visigoths did respect church buildings, and those hiding there for the Visigoths were, like the empire itself, nominally Christian.)2

BEN HOUSE is the author of Punic Wars & Culture Wars: Christian Essays on History and Teaching (Covenant Media Press, 2008). Ben is an administrator and teacher at Veritas Academy and an elder at Grace Covenant Church in Texarkana, Arkansas. He has thirty years’ experience as a history and literature teacher. He and his wife, Stephanie, have four children, Nicholas, Tara Jane, Nathaniel, and Caroline. Ben has written essays and book reviews for several publications, including recent articles for Faith for All of Life and Christian Culture (published by the Center for Cultural Leadership).

He has spoken at various conferences on topics related to history, literature, and Christian education.

He is an unrestrained book buyer and reader.

Conservative in politics, Reformed in theology, and Southern in literary and musical tastes, Ben is, nevertheless, quite eclectic in reading interests and selections of historical topics and perspectives.

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The City of God

The sack of Rome in 410 was earthshaking news.

Rome had not been sacked or invaded in eight hundred years. Despite the fact that the political and economic center of the empire had long since been relocated, Rome was still centrally and symbolically the heart of the empire. People of all walks of life were shaken by the events. We can identify in part because of the shock we felt on September 11, 2001. The theologian Jerome said, “Who could have believed that Rome, built by conquest of the world, would fall? Who would have believed that the mother of many nations has turned to her grave?”3 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

As devastating as was the news of the sack of Rome, there was something even worse. As people asked why and how this happened, a certain interpretation arose concerning the attack on Rome. It was what we now call the analysis or spin on the event. And as is common today, the spin on the story was worse than the story itself.

In our own time, my country, the United States, has conquered and occupied two enemy regimes across the world from us in record time and with a record low casualty count.4 Whether or not we should have done that is another matter, but the fact is that the conquest and occupation has been quite astounding — unless you follow the spin and the interpretation given so often in the major media.

“The liberal media have often proved to be better theological thinkers than Christians, for they have recognized...that there are no brute facts. All facts are interpreted facts.”

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Likewise, in 1968 during the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the ground fighting changed from being a guerrilla-type war based on raiding parties and it became a full-fledged war with full armies engaged against full armies, and the result was an overwhelming American victory in the fields, but that was followed by an interpretation or spin that destroyed the American cause.5 The liberal media have often proved to be better theological thinkers than Christians, for they have recognized the truthfulness of Cornelius Van Til’s oft-repeated saying that there are no brute facts. All facts are interpreted facts.6

What was this interpretation of the sack of Rome that was so devastating? After the events of 410, pagans attributed the sack of Rome to its failure to adhere to its historic gods and myths. Although the empire had been tolerant of Christianity for almost a century and Christianity had been the official religion for a little over thirty years, paganism remained a strong force. “Why did this happen?” everyone asked. “Simple,” answered the pagans, “Rome abandoned her former gods and goddesses who had protected her. It is the fault of the Christian God and the Christian people.”

From our perspective, the Roman idolaters look pretty silly. But all defunct idolatries look silly. To imagine that Jupiter and Juno were miffed at being snubbed may not give us an apologetic challenge, but we have to repent of our own fear of idols before we can truly understand. The empire was in the midst of its own culture war. There were not red states and blue states; there were no referendums on gay marriage; but there were cultural battles being waged all around the Mediterranean Sea. Christians were stunned by the charges. Family gatherings were tense where pagan mothers-inlaw berated Christian sons-in-law for abandoning the old ways. Nominal and weak believers questioned whether to go to the house church down the street or the temple to Diana across town. “See, I told you so” became the rebuke of pagans to Christian converts. The gates of hell may not have been on the offensive, but they seemed strong and secure.

THE CITY OF GOD

By 413, a North African Christian political leader, Marcellinus, recognized that something had to be done. Christian refugees were arriving on the shores of North Africa daily. This was a genuine Christian retreat. The church militant was becoming the church defeatist.

Marcellinus appealed to the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa to refute the charges of heresy. That bishop, Aurelius Augustinus, or as we know him, St. Augustine, got up from his sickbed, went to his study, and began dashing off a tract to answer Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

The City of God

the pagans. Thirteen years later, the completed massive tome hit the shelves of the local Scrollsa-Millions. Titled De Civitate Dei or The City of God, this book laid the vital foundations for subsequent centuries of Christian scholarship, philosophy, apologetics, and theology. It established clearly a Christian view of history, and like all historical paradigms, it provided a vision for future Christian civilization.

More than any other book of its time or since, The City of God signaled the end of the ancient world and the beginning of that new frontier era now known as the medieval period. More than any other book, it made clear that the central meaning of history was to be found in the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of man, whether that man was in Rome or Paris or London or Washington. More than any other book, this book defined the difference in the only two ways that life exists here in this world: life is either in covenant with the true and the living Triune God or it is in rebellion against that same God. More than any other book, this book showed the utter bankruptcy of the pagan worldview, which offered no happiness or blessings to people either in this world or the world to come. More than any other book, this book showed the blessings of being the covenant people of God. Augustine devoted the first ten books or portions of The City of God to a devastating and informed critique of pagan mythology and philosophy.

Combing through the histories, the beliefs, and the fruits of paganism, Augustine traced the corruptions to their very sources. He studied and quoted extensively from the best historian on paganism, a man named Varro. He also went to the philosopher he considered the best of the lot, Plato. Like a young seminarian right out of a Van Tilian apologetic class, he turned his intellectual flamethrowers to the contradictions and incoherencies of the world of pagan thought.

Christians before and after Augustine have grappled with the question, “What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens?” However one answers that question, some, like Paul in his day and Augustine in his, have to march right into the middle of Athens, right past the idols, and declare the idolEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

toppling truth. In his powerful critique of the enemy’s worldview, Augustine not only taught readers in his day to rest assured in the bankruptcy of Christianity’s opponents, he also taught future generations how to battle their own demons.

G.K. Chesterton’s confidence in shrugging off Darwinism and other heresies echoes Augustine.

C.S. Lewis’ certainty of the vindication of God in the dock reminds us of Augustine. J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism is a twentieth-century application of Au“The City of God gustine’s methods. The critiques of mod...established clearly ern philosophies and theologies found in a Christian view the works of Rushdoony, Schaeffer, Van of history, and Til, and Schlossberg are updated versions like all historical of Augustine. Christopher Dawson simply applied Augustine’s historiography to paradigms, it European history. Gregg Singer applied provided a vision Augustine’s precepts to American hisfor future Christian tory. The works of Phillip Johnson and civilization.”

Nancy Pearcey, as well as the older works of Henry Morris, in answer to the Darwinian scientific worldview, follow the model of Augustine.

After shredding the pagans for ten books, Augustine turned his attention to constructing a Christian view of God, the world, man, history, and reality. Well trained in rhetoric and philosophy, Augustine did not found his worldview on the fruits of his well-trained reason. Instead, Augustine takes the reader step by step through the Bible. In the Bible are found the precepts, the examples, and the mandates for a Christian culture. In those pivotal doctrines of creation, the fall, and redemptive history, the patterns for building an earthly city with eternal foundations are found. Like the great theologians who would follow in his footsteps, Augustine did theology by mining the text of Scripture.

Of course, Augustine stumbled over the currents and influences of his time. He could not transcend Greek philosophy or Latin culture. His theology is tainted at points by the retreatist and ascetic aspects of much of the early church. Hence, Augustine is not the man to go to for directions for intimacy in marriage. Sometimes, he made poor applications or came to weird interpretations of Scripture. But mistakes and missteps in theology SPRING 2017

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are readily correctable if Scripture is the foundation for theology. It is a self-renewing, self-correcting epistemology. So even when Augustine was wrong, he was right, for he kept pointing to the Bible as the source of truth.

The fall of the Roman Empire is now the stuff of history and movies. The Roman religions and myths are long since reduced to Trivial Pursuit questions. The Visigoth threat to Europe is long gone. North Africa has long since ceased to be a center of Christian thinking. The crisis of 410 is forgotten, but Augustine’s City of God lives on. It is more relevant to our own culture “Like the great wars than are the latest best-sellers. It is both a model for us and instruction to us. theologians who A child saying, “Tolle lege” or Take it and would follow in his read it, prompted Augustine’s conversion. footsteps, Augustine We can do no better than follow that addid theology by vice with The City of God.

mining the text of Scripture.”

1 W.B. Yeats, ”The Second Coming,” 1919.

2 For further reading on Alaric and the sack of Rome see Marcel Brion, Alaric, the Goth, trans.

Frederick Herman Martens (New York: R.M McBride & Co, 1930).

3 See Henry Wace and Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 499500.

4 See Yaakov Katz, “Analysis: Lies, Leaks, Death Tolls and Statistics,” The Jerusalem Post, last modified October 29 2010, http://www.jpost. com/International/Analysis-Lies-leaks-deathtolls-and-statistics. For an ongoing comparison of wars by death toll see “List of Wars by Death Toll,” Wikipedia, last modified January 9 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_ death_toll.

5 See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Penguin, 1991).

6 Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1955), 116.

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Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Pierre Viret: THE FORGOTTEN

GIANT

21 PAGE NO.

of the REFORMATION Editor’s note: This article was originally published

by Chalcedon, April 2011. Reprinted by permission http://chalcedon.edu/faith-for-all-of-life/pierreviret-the-forgotten-giant-of-the-reformation/pierreviret-the-unknown-reformer/

GOD WORKS MYSTERIOUSLY, often concealing his purposes and plans from the wondering eyes of men. Even as we seek to understand and search out his ways, we find our sight limited and our knowledge incomplete. Much is veiled from our view. In like manner the visible history of Christ’s church is often hidden in clouds of obscurity. For reasons known only to God, he often chooses to conceal some of his greatest treasures, awaiting their rediscovery by the church in his perfect time. Thus it has been with Pierre Viret, a forgotten giant of the sixteenth-century Reformation.

Pierre Viret was born in 1511 in Orbe, a small town in the Pays de Vaud (present-day French Switzerland), to a devout Roman Catholic family.

His father Guillaume was a tailor. Of his childhood, Pierre later noted, “I was naturally given to religion, of which however I was then ignorant.”1 His schoolteacher, Marc Romain, was a follower of Luther; thus Viret, while still a lad, was exposed to the teachings of the Reformation.

Viret’s parents soon noticed their child possessed an aptitude for learning and sent him to Paris to study for the priesthood. While at college, Viret was converted to the Protestant faith, and fleeing the persecutions rampant in the Roman Catholic stronghold of Paris, he returned to his hometown, Orbe.

EARLY MINISTRY

Upon his return to his native village, Viret, at the age of twenty, was implored by William Farel to begin preaching in the town church. Viret, of a Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

R.A. SHEATS

naturally “timid and modest disposition,”2 was quite unwilling to accept such a post. At Farel’s continued prodding, however, Viret at last conceded, preaching his first sermon May 6, 1531.

Crowds flocked to hear the young preacher, marveling at the eloquence and wisdom of the man they had known from childhood.

Many souls were converted under Viret’s preaching, but of greatest importance to the young pastor was the conversion of his two Roman Catholic parents. As he noted later, “I have much occasion to give thanks to God in that it hath pleased him to make use of me to bring my father and mother to the knowledge of the Son of God ... Ah! If he had made my ministry of no other use, I should have had good cause to bless him.”3

R.A. SHEATS is the author of Pierre Viret, the Angel of the Reformation (Zurich Publishing, 2012). An independent researcher and author, she has contributed articles to the Pierre Viret Association, and the International Journal of Reformed Theology and Life. Sheats is currently engaged in the translation of Pierre Viret’s original works from sixteenth-century French into English. She lives in Florida.

Throughout the next three years, Viret regularly traveled between several of the surrounding villages to further the work of the Reformation. Accompanied by Farel, he journeyed first to Grandson, a small town just north of Orbe, which was quickly won to the gospel under the Reformers’ preaching. Later that year Viret preached in Payerne, a small village bordering the Catholic canton of Fribourg. It was perhaps here that “The visible history the young preacher met with his deadliest opposition. of Christ’s church

is often hidden in

The city was strongly Roman Catholic clouds of obscurity... and violently protested the preaching of Thus it has been the “new faith.” Viret, knowing that his with Pierre Viret, a teaching was no more than the truth of the Word of God, begged for a public forgotten giant of the disputation in which he would be permitsixteenth-century ted to prove his case from Scripture. The Reformation.”

Council of Payerne at last acceded to this request and a date was fixed. The night before the disputation, however, Viret, returning home, was ambushed in a solitary field by a priest from the Payerne Abbey. The would-be murderer gravely SPRING 2017

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Pierre Viret

“Viret...was ambushed in a solitary field by a priest...seeking to douse the Light against which he could not dispute.”

wounded the young preacher with his sword and left him for dead, thus seeking to douse the Light against which he could not dispute. Discovered by his friends, Viret, half-dead, was slowly nursed back to health and soon continued his work in another city: Geneva.

REFORMATION IN GENEVA

In 1534 Viret journeyed to Geneva to again assist Farel in his Reformation work. Geneva was at first quite hostile to the teaching of the new preachers, and another murderous attempt awaited the young men.

At the instigation of the Catholic authorities, a woman, Antonia Vax, was persuaded to eliminate both Farel and Viret by serving them a poisoned spinach soup. Farel, declaring the soup to be too thick, asked for something else to eat. Viret, however, still pale and weak from his sword wounds, was assured by Antonia that the soup would aid in the restoration of his health, and trustingly ate an entire bowl of the poisoned dish. He grew dangerously ill and lay for some time at the point of death.

Upon hearing the news, the townspeople of Geneva mourned the impending loss of their beloved Reformer, exclaiming, “Must the Church be robbed of such a pearl?... Poor Viret! Poor reformers!... Sword-cuts in the back, poison in front…such are the rewards of those who preach the Gospel!”4 This episode, though so detrimental to the Reformers, also brought much damage to their adversaries as many now looked with suspicion and contempt upon the perpetrators of such a base crime. The priests and monks were henceforth regarded with grave doubt and misgiving, and little more than a year later, through the indefatigable labors of Farel and Viret, the General Council of Geneva officially accepted the Reformation.5 Two months after this event, John Calvin entered Geneva, simply planning to remain for the night. Farel, accompanied by Viret, visited Calvin’s lodgings at the Bear Inn and persuaded him to remain to preach in the city. It was Farel, ViSPRING 2017

ret, and Calvin - this Triumvirate, as these three Reformers were often termed, that God mightily employed to further His work of Reformation in French Switzerland.

LAUSANNE DISPUTATION

Soon after Calvin accepted his post in Geneva, Viret was providentially brought to the city of Lausanne, capital of the Pays de Vaud, which had just come under the authority of Bern, a Protestant canton of Switzerland.6 Bern, desirous of winning their newly-acquired city to the gospel, organized a public disputation in which the principal elements of the faith would be discussed.

All Catholic clergy were required to be in attendance. The defense for the Reformed was offered primarily by Farel and Viret, who ably championed the cause of Christ. Calvin also attended the debate, speaking twice throughout its course.

At the close of the week-long disputation, Lausanne declared for the Reformation, and Viret was appointed pastor of the city.

FOUNDING OF THE LAUSANNE ACADEMY

Though Lausanne was now officially Reformed, it was still heavily steeped in Catholicism. To rectify the ignorance rampant among the priesthood, Viret determined to begin an academy for the training and education of young men for the ministry. Under the oversight of the Bernese authorities, the Academy was founded in January of 1537 and was the first Protestant and Reformed academy of the French-speaking world.7 The Lausanne Academy boasted learned instructors from Italy, Germany, France, and Switzerland. Theodore de Beze, future successor to Calvin in Geneva, was principal of the Academy for nine years.

Many renowned men of the faith received their training at Viret’s Academy, including Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, authors of the Heidelberg Catechism of 1562, and Guido de Bres, author of the Belgic Confession of 1561.8 VIRET AND CALVIN Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Pierre Viret

A year after the commencement of the Lausanne Academy, Viret met with a singular joy when the Lord provided him a godly bride. On Sunday, October 6, 1538, Viret and Elisabeth Turtaz, a lady of Orbe, were married. Farel presided over the ceremony.9 Two months following these celebrations, Viret was recalled to Geneva after Calvin had been banished from that city. Viret’s loving spirit and gentle character had made him a favorite among the Genevans, and they longed to again have him as their pastor. Known as the Smile of the Reformation, Viret worked in Geneva “to rebuild the ruins, to dress the wounds, to reconcile the divers and opposing elements.”10 Viret remained a year in Geneva, during which time he urged the Council upon several occasions to recall the exiled Calvin. At Viret’s continued appeals, the Council sent to call their former pastor home.11 Calvin, however, was in no way eager to return to the trials and troubles that awaited him in that city, and at first rejected the proposal to return, writing Viret, I read that passage of your letter, certainly not without a smile, where you shew so much concern about my health, and recommend Geneva on that ground. Why could you not have said at the cross? For it would have been far preferable to perish once for all than to be tormented again in that place of torture. Therefore, my dear Viret, if you wish well to me, make no mention of such a proposal.12

While refusing to return to the troubled city of Geneva, Calvin simultaneously harbored hopes of the city’s reformation after learning of Viret’s arrival there. Writing to Farel in February of 1541, he expressed his assurance of the salubrious effects of Viret’s influence on the tumultuous population, “It was a singular joy for me to learn that the Church of Geneva is endowed with the arrival of Viret.... I now foresee that the matter is out of danger.”13 Viret, however, could not be dissuaded from calling his friend back to his duty and exerted his utmost influence to convince the reluctant CalEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

vin to return. Writing again, Viret described the transformation of the city and the people’s willingness to receive the gospel, You cannot imagine the attentiveness with which they listen to my discourses, and what a crowd of men they attract...such tranquility reigns in the republic, it is completely transformed, and has taken on a wholly new appearance.... The Lord has offered us a most favorable moment. If you neglect it, Calvin, the Lord will certainly punish you for neglecting the Church, and not you only, but also those who restrain you.14

After many such appeals, Calvin was at last persuaded to return; Viret joyfully assisted him in his re-entrance. Having finally restored his friend to his post, Viret at once desired to return to his pastorate in Lausanne, but he was persuaded to remain for several months to aid Calvin. Farel, writing to the pastors of Zurich, noted the importance of Viret’s presence in the city of Geneva at this crucial time, “If Viret is recalled [to Lausanne], then surely Calvin and the Church of Geneva shall fall again into ruins!”15 Calvin also shared this opinion, as is noted by historian Michael Bruening, Three days after his return, Calvin told Farel, “I have also kept Viret with me, whom I absolutely would not allow to be taken away from me.” Now it was Calvin who sought to persuade Viret that he was needed in Geneva. He explained to Farel, “If Viret leaves me, I am completely finished; I will not be able to keep this church alive. Therefore, I hope you and others will forgive me if I move every stone to ensure that I am not deprived of him.”16 A FRIEND INDEED

Viret’s selfless assistance of Calvin was not overlooked by the elder Reformer. The friendship of these two men expanded significantly during this time and showed itself in a beautiful brotherly relationship growing and deepening throughout the course of their lives.

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Pierre Viret

Viret finally returned to Lausanne in 1542. His absence had been very detrimental to the health of the church, which he found in a terrible state.

Writing to Calvin upon his return, he mourned, “I came, I saw, I was dumbfounded (veni, vidi, obstupui). If only what we had heard about the state of this church were not so true.”17 Despite Lausanne’s manifest need for Viret, Calvin still desired to have his fellow Reformer at his side, and in July of 1544 he urged the Council of Geneva to write to the Bernese lords, requesting permission to permanently retain Viret at Geneva. Upon hearing of the letter, however, the Lausanne counselors and pastors immediately sent their own ambassadors to Bern, begging the lords to reject Geneva’s request. Meeting with such a desperate appeal from Lausanne, Bern declined to grant the transfer and ordered Viret to remain in Lausanne. Upon hearing that “Though now Geneva’s request was refused, Viret wrote serving in to Geneva to express his devotion to the separate locations, city, assuring them of his love,

Calvin and Viret continued their friendship through a plethora of letters. A regular correspondence passed between them upon every subject.”

“As for me, if you so desire, you will always have me as your humble servant, no less than if I were present with you, as truly I am in spirit, though I am distant in person; I will also be joined with you in body as soon as it is the good pleasure of Him who has called us in His service.”18

Though now serving in separate locations, Calvin and Viret continued their friendship through a plethora of letters. A regular correspondence passed between them upon every subject. As one historian noted, At Calvin’s return [to Geneva] Viret joined him as a colleague, and the sweetest epistolary relationship was enjoyed between the two. During nearly twenty years continual messages passed from Geneva to Lausanne. Everyday news, events involving the Church or State, household troubles, memories, plans, confidences, all are found in this friendly correspondence, which never closes without feeling and emotion, filled with testimonies of the truest affection. The two friends never laid

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the pen aside except to visit each other, and what a time was their every meeting!

“Someone told me,” wrote Calvin, “that you are inclined to come to Geneva. I have seized the hope with as much fervor as if you were already here. If such is truly your intention, come Saturday. Your arrival could not be more timely. You will preach for me Sunday morning in the city so that I can preach at Jussy, and join me after dinner. We’ll take a visit to Monsieur de Falais; then, crossing the lake, we’ll enjoy the pleasures of the country together at the home of our friends Pommier and Delisle, and we shan’t return until Thursday....

Above all, you can count on the warmest reception.”19 THE SHADOW OF DEATH

In 1545 Viret’s life was disturbed by another great tragedy. His wife Elisabeth fell ill, and despite Viret’s desperate efforts to revive her failing health, she died in March of the following year. Writing of her death to a dear friend, Viret wrote, “The Lord has dealt me such a painful blow...in the death of my well-beloved wife. He has taken half of myself.... I am so afflicted by this blow that I appear to myself a stranger in my own house.”20 Viret’s sorrow was so great that Calvin was terrified lest his friend perish under the weight of the blow. Writing his comrade, Calvin begged Viret to come to Geneva for a time: “Come to distract yourself, not only from your sorrow, but also from all your troubles. You need not fear that I will impose any work on you. I will take care that you enjoy your own pleasure in tranquility. And if anyone bothers you, I will deal with them.”21 Knowing Viret’s reluctance to leave his work in Lausanne, Calvin continued to press his dear friend, so much so that Viret could at last refuse no longer, and leaving his pastorate for a short time, Viret journeyed to Geneva to enjoy the company and consolation of his fellow Reformer.

The wonderful harmony and brotherly love existing between these two Reformers is truly an example for all ages. Though each man was called Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Pierre Viret

individually and fashioned in a particular way quite distinct from the other, God saw fit to bring these tools together, separately crafted, but each endued with the same vision: to engage in the work of the Kingdom of Christ. Writing of this holy friendship in a book dedicated to Viret and Farel, Calvin wrote, It will at least be a testimony to this present age and perhaps to posterity of the holy bond of friendship that unites us.

I think there has never been in ordinary life a circle of friends so heartily bound to each other as we have been in our ministry.22 BATTLES WITH THE MAGISTRATES

Viret, seeking to further the Reform in Lausanne, did his utmost to turn the formerly ignorant populace into a Christian people. The political structure of the times, however, added great difficulty to this task. The Council of Bern – the political head of Lausanne – reserved to itself much of the church’s jurisdiction. One matter of constant concern to Viret was church discipline. This, he rightly believed, was a tool pertaining solely to the church authorities, not the civil government.

The lords of Bern, on the other hand, reserved this right to themselves alone, requiring Viret and other pastors to submit all requests for discipline to the Bernese for either approval or rejection.

Throughout his pastorate at Lausanne, Viret made numerous journeys to Bern to request the magistrates to cede him the authority necessary to establish and build the church. Viret pled with the Bernese lords, assuring them that a true church must be permitted to govern its members.

Bern, desirous of retaining its power, refused to relinquish such authority to the church, declaring that it was the state’s prerogative to govern all.

Viret knew well that a lack of discipline would result in no church at all. Pastors, he stated, must be allowed to enforce “this discipline, by which we can distinguish between swine, dogs, and sheep, according to Christ’s teaching.”23 “Discipline,” he noted, “can be abandoned, if the administration and use of the Word of God and the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

sacraments are also abandoned, for the Word and the sacraments cannot be properly administered without it.”24 Despite the continued appeals, Bern refused to allow Viret to exercise church discipline or restrict the Lord’s Table. They stated that all must be permitted to participate and any pastor “I think there has who refused to administer communion was to be immediately discharged. The never been in Lausanne pastors, following Peter’s iniordinary life a circle tiative (Acts 5:29), sent numerous letters of friends so heartily to Bern in which they stated their obligabound to each other tion to follow God rather than men:

as we have been in ministry.”

We have not been called to this our charge [the ministry] to close our eyes, to keep silent, to conceal vice, and to cover the scandals of those who have been entrusted to us, but to be on guard, to be attentive, to unceasingly lift our voice with strength, when needed.... We must do this to discharge our duty in good conscience.25

The dispute finally came to a head in 1558. Writing to Calvin on August 24, Viret confided, “I have more bitter worries than anyone. I am between the anvil and the hammer, and know not where to turn.... I pray that God does not withhold His directions from me.”26 As Christmas communion approached, Viret announced that he could not in good conscience administer the sacrament without first being permitted to examine and instruct those who wished to partake. Going before the Council of Lausanne, he begged a seven-day postponement of the communion service to provide the time necessary to examine the communicants. After much debate, the Council agreed to grant the pastors the stipulated time.

When news of the ruling reached Bern, however, the magistrates were outraged at this usurpation of their authority. They sent immediately to Lausanne to countermand the decision of the Council and to dismiss and expel Viret and his colleagues.

Thus ousted, Viret and his associates were ordered to pack their belongings and leave the city. A refSPRING 2017

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Pierre Viret

uge was soon found in the neighboring town of Geneva, where Calvin welcomed his friend with the warmest affection.

After Viret’s dismissal, Bern appointed other ministers in his stead, but those nominated to fill his place refused, preferring rather to join Viret in exile than submit to Bern’s demands. Numerous professors and students of the Academy also followed the expelled ministers, vastly swelling the numbers of the exiles. Johannes Haller, a contemporary, noted that “over a thousand people migrated from Lausanne to Geneva.”27 The significance of this exodus from the city of Lausanne can scarcely be overstated, for the city’s population at the time was little more than five thousand.28

“Within five months of their displacement, Calvin founded his Genevan Academy, employing as its core faculty the outcasts who fled Lausanne.”

Of the host of distinguished refugees exiting Lausanne, many of the professors, including Valier, Berault, Merlin, Tagault, and Chevalier, found a work prepared for them upon arrival in Geneva.29 Within five months of their displacement, Calvin founded his Genevan Academy, employing as its core faculty the outcasts who fled Lausanne. Thus the Lausanne Academy of twenty-two years was relocated, becoming the world-acclaimed Genevan Academy.30 MINISTRY IN FRANCE

Geneva’s joy at receiving their former pastor again after a “loan” to Lausanne of twenty-two years was unimaginable. The city welcomed the exiled Viret with acclamation and open arms, while the Council declared that Viret would be “received as a minister here and given 400 florins a year and two casks of wine.”31 Calvin even good-humoredly noted that the house provided to Viret was larger and better furnished than his own.32 Viret was immediately assigned the Church of St. Germain in which to preach, but the multitudes that pressed in to hear his sermons were so numerous that a new location had to be found to accommodate the crowds. The Council therefore determined to move Viret’s preaching to the larger church of St. Pierre, which would provide ample room for the masses desirous of attending SPRING 2017

the sermons.33 Viret’s time in Geneva was cut short, however, due to a serious illness. In April of 1561 he fell dangerously ill and, fearing that this sickness would soon bring him to the grave, drew up his will on April 12. Concerning this time, he later wrote, “I fell into an illness whereby my body was so debilitated and brought so low that in my judgment I could expect nothing else but to be lowered into the grave. I had never before had a sickness that had brought me so close to death, not even when I was poisoned by the art and cunning of the enemies of the Gospel.”34 During the summer months Viret’s health was partially restored, but as winter again approached, his doctors urged him to seek a warmer climate in southern France. He therefore left Geneva in early September.

Viret’s reputation was so great that the moment he set foot on French soil, he was given immediate authority in the Reformed French churches wherever he chose to go. “Offers poured in requesting Viret to come to such places as Orleans, Avignon, Montauban and Montpellier.”35 “When Viret arrived in France, churches from all over the country sought him out. The churches in Nimes and Paris even sent delegates to Geneva to ask officially for his services.”36 Viret arrived in Nimes on October 6; the city received him with the greatest warmth.37 Indeed, the churches were not large enough to contain the crowds that sought to hear him; Viret was therefore compelled to preach in open fields and pastures. The multitudes responded eagerly to the Word of God, and on January 4, 1562, in a service lasting six hours, Viret administered communion to over eight thousand believers.38 Friend and foe alike were drawn to the sweetness and gentleness of Viret’s preaching. As he preached one day in a field in the Vaunage, the very prior and monks themselves came to listen to the man’s words. As Viret explained to his listeners the wonders of the gospel and the blessedness of the Redeemer, his words did not return void: “The success was complete. The priests, the officers...became Protestant, and the abbey conEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Pierre Viret

secrated half its revenues to evangelization, and the other half to aid the poor.”39 While in Nimes, Viret preached every Sunday and Wednesday to increasingly swelling crowds.

He was also employed as a professor of theology at the local Academy, as well as doubling as a peacemaker in several church squabbles. His presence was sought everywhere; he presided over both provincial and national synods of the French Reformed churches in 156240 and 1563.41 As Viret’s leave of absence from Geneva neared its conclusion, the Council of Nimes grew terrified of losing their pastor. In an effort to retain him, they sent a delegation to the Genevan Council, writing, “The harvest surpasses belief, and the famine is intolerable.... We need reapers.... In the name of the God you honor, we beseech and beg with our greatest affection that you leave [Viret] with us.”42 Despite the desperation of the letter, the Council of Geneva did not grant the request.

Indeed, they were so flooded with letters begging for Viret’s presence that they at last decided to let Viret himself decide where to proceed. Requests again poured in from Montpellier, Montauban, Orleans, and even Paris. Viret at length decided upon Montpellier; he entered that city in February of 1562.

As with Nimes, Viret’s efforts met with exceptional success. “Spectacular results followed with large numbers being won to the side of the Reformed Faith, including nearly the entire faculty of the famous medical college of Montpellier.”43 After a short stay, Viret accepted a call to Lyon in late May, where he remained for the next three years. The City Council of Lyon, in writing to the Council of Geneva, expressed their indebtedness to Viret in November of 1562, “We derive more aid and assistance from his learned and holy teaching than from our entire army.”44 “Without his presence it would be impossible for us to hold our soldiers to their duty.”45 In March of 1563 Viret’s ministry was severely threatened by the issuance of a royal edict forbidding all foreign-born pastors from ministering in France. Because of Viret’s renowned Christian character, however, he was exempted from the edict by request of the Catholics themselves.

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

A LASTING LEGACY

Although the work of the ministry demanded much of Viret’s time, he still found opportunity to write. His scholarly production was immense; he was a prolific author, writing over fifty books.

His works were bestsellers in his day and were translated into many languages including German, Italian, English, Dutch, and Latin.

Though Viret’s works display great depth in their treatment of theological subjects, he nevertheless wrote in an informal, easy-to-understand style. It was often noted that in him was found a theologian who was not afraid to stoop to the ignorant, to use rusticity with the rustics, and to lisp with the children. Indeed, his style of treating deep theological truths made his books beneficial to both the newest convert and the most learned theologian.

While at Lyon, Viret completed his greatest literary work, his three-volume Christian Instruction in the Doctrine of the Law and the Gospel. Theologian Jean-Marc Berthoud writes of this theological masterpiece, [I]f Calvin is incomparable as a dogmatic exegete and polemicist, Viret largely surpasses him as ethicist and apologist. His strength was a domain often neglected because of its complexity: the application of the Word of God to every aspect of life.

His Christian Instruction in the Doctrine of the Law and the Gospel of 1564 is unquestionably the best commentary on the Ten Commandments that the Christian Church has ever known.46

After a difficult – though fruitful – life spent in service to his God, Pierre Viret died in early 1571 at the age of sixty. Like the site of his death and burial, which remains unknown to this day, the life and theological greatness of Pierre Viret remains unknown to the church at large. Is this also the work of God? Has He thus withheld His Reformer, perhaps awaiting the time when, in His providence, Viret’s life and thought shall be most needed for His church?

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1

As quoted in J. H. Merle D’Aubigne, D.D., History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, Vol. III (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 2000), 220.

2 Emile Doumergue, Lausanne au temps de la Reformation (Lausanne: Georges Bridel & Cie Éditeurs, 1902), 11. Author’s translation.

3 D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe, Vol. III, 223-224.

4 Ibid., 248.

5 May 21, 1536.

6 Henri Vuilleumier, L’Église Réformée du Pays de Vaud, Tome I (Lausanne: Éditions La Concorde, 1927), 118.

7 Henri Meylan, La Haute École de Lausanne, 1537-1937 (Université de Lausanne, 1986), 9.

8 Jean-Marc Berthoud, Pierre Viret: A Forgotten Giant of the Reformation (Zurich Publishing, 2010), 19.

9 Pierrefleur, Mémoires de Pierrefleur (Lausanne: Éditions La Concorde, 1933), 137.

10 Jean Barnaud, Pierre Viret, Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre (Saint-Amans, 1911), 205. Author’s translation.

11 Felix Bungener, Calvin: His Life, His Labours, and His Writings (T. & T. Clark, 1863), 162.

12 Calvin to Viret, May 19, 1540, quoted in Jules Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, Vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1858), 187.

13 Calvin to Farel, February 19, 1541, quoted in Jaquemot, “Viret: Réformateur de Lausanne,” 30. Author’s translation.

14 Viret to Calvin, February 6, 1541, quoted in Schnetzler, Vuilleumier, & Schroeder, eds., Pierre Viret D’Après Lui-Même (Lausanne: Georges Bridel & Cie Éditeurs, 1911), 45-46. Author’s translation.

15 Henri Vuilleumier, Notre Pierre Viret (Lausanne: Librairie Paytot & Cie, 1911), 87. Author’s translation.

16 Michael Bruening, “Pierre Viret and Geneva,” Archive for Reformation History, Vol. 99 (2008), 184.

17 As quoted in Michael W. Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground: Conflict and Reform in the Pays de Vaud, 1528-1559 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005), 179.

18 Viret to the Council of Geneva, July 10, 1544, quoted in Schnetzler, ed., Pierre Viret, 65.

Author’s translation.

SPRING 2017

19 «Les Amitiés de Calvin,» Bulletin de la Société de L’Histoire du Protestantisme Français (Paris, 1864), 93. Author’s translation.

20 Viret to Watteville, March 8, 1546, quoted in Doumergue, Lausanne au temps de la Reformation, 46. Author’s translation.

21 Calvin to Viret, quoted in Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 315. Author’s translation.

22 As quoted in Berthoud, Pierre Viret: A Forgotten Giant, 48.

23 J. Cart, Pierre Viret, le Reformateur Vaudois (Lausanne, 1864), 118. Author’s translation.

24 Pierre Viret, Instruction Chrétienne (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 2008), 348. Author’s translation.

25 Letter of July 15, 1555, as quoted in Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 445. Author’s translation.

26 Cart, Pierre Viret, 123-124. Author’s translation.

27 As quoted in Bruening, Calvinism’s First Battleground, 254.

28 Ibid., 10.

29 Cart, Pierre Viret, 126.

30 Meylan, La Haute École, 26.

31 Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 538. Author’s translation.

32 Robert D. Linder, “Forgotten Reformer,” Christian History Magazine, Issue 71 (2001), 37.

33 Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 539.

34 Viret, Instruction Chrétienne, 83. Author’s translation.

35 Robert D. Linder, The Political Ideas of Pierre Viret (Geneva, 1964), 43.

36 Bruening, “Pierre Viret and Geneva,” 194.

37 Cart, Pierre Viret, 133.

38 Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 565.

39 Frédéric Lichtenberger, Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses, Tome XII (Paris, 1882), 407.

Author’s translation.

40 Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 569.

41 Vuilleumier, Notre Pierre Viret, 244.

42 Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 567-568. Author’s translation.

43 Linder, Political Ideas, 43.

44 Lyon Council to the Council of Geneva, November 18, 1562, quoted in Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 588. Author’s translation.

45 Lyon Council to the Council of Geneva, November 22, 1562, quoted in Barnaud, Pierre Viret, 588. Author’s translation.

46 Jean-Marc Berthoud, Des Actes de L’Eglise (Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1993), 54.

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Pierre Viret

Author’s translation.

Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

SPRING 2017

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Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity