The Debt We Owe John Calvin

John Calvin is associated with the biblical doctrine of predestination, often in a very negative way.  His teaching of predestination has been badly misrepresented, sometimes to the point of sarcastic caricature.  Calvin believed in predestination because he was convinced the Bible taught it, and that it was an indispensable part of God’s revelation of Himself, with important consequences for the gospel.  B. B. Warfield explains with clarity and insight the context of Calvin’s zeal for predestination: “It was that we might know ourselves to be wholly in the hands of this God of perfect righteousness and goodness—not in those of men, whether ourselves or some other men—that he was so earnest for the doctrine of predestination: which is nothing more than the declaration of the supreme dominion of God.  It was that our eternal felicity might hang wholly on God’s love—and not on our sinful weakness—that he was so zealous for the doctrine of election.”  Warfield has given us a fine assessment of the great reformer and his achievements when he writes, “Here we have the secret of Calvin’s greatness and the source of his strength unveiled to us.  No man ever had a more profound sense of God; no man ever more unreservedly surrendered himself to the Divine direction.  No one has spoken of the majesty of God and the insignificance of man with such feeling and truth as Calvin.  If there is anything that will make a man great, surely it is placing himself unreservedly at the disposal of God.  This is what Calvin did, and it is because he did this that he was so great.”