survey of
 Institutes of The Christian Religion
by John Calvin
 Lesson Thirteen
the fourth on Book III, a topical study of
  Assurance of Faith
Adult Education Class for RMPCA,
class begins May 9, 2004
stored on the net at: http://www.dakotacom.net/~rmwillia/lesson13_essay.html
date shared: August 1, 2004

Reasons for a topical study:

I had decided at the beginning of the class to work through Institutes as it is written, not the alternative and more popular way of handling it by topics. But this decision is inadequate for the topic of assurance of faith, for despite the essentialness of the topic to his theology, Calvin doesn't have a single comprehensive chapter dedicated to the issue but rather it is spread throughout the whole of Institutes, making the task here one of gathering up the pieces and presenting them in a coherent and logical order. Therefore we will begin with Calvin's definition of faith, something we studied in lesson 10:

For faith includes not merely the knowledge that God is, but also, nay chiefly, a perception of his will toward us. It concerns us to know not only what he is in himself, but also in what character he is pleased to manifest himself to us. We now see, therefore, that faith is the knowledge of the divine will in regard to us, as ascertained from his word. And the foundation of it is a previous persuasion of the truth of God. So long as your mind entertains any misgivings as to the certainty of the word, its authority will be weak and dubious, or rather it will have no authority at all. Nor is it sufficient to believe that God is true, and cannot lie or deceive, unless you feel firmly persuaded that every word which proceeds from him is sacred, inviolable truth. II.2.6

We shall now have a full definition of faith, if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, and sealed on our hearts, by the Holy Spirit. II.2.7

Calvin has as his primary opponent in this discussion of assurance of faith, on the right- the Roman Catholic doctrine[i] that such assurance is presumption, and on the left- the radical insistence that such assurance is not possible this side of the grave.

What becomes the target for our discussion, is the WCF chapter on the topic:

http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/indexf.html
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Chapter XVIII

Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation

I. Although hypocrites and other unregenerate men may vainly deceive themselves with false hopes and carnal presumptions of being in the favor of God, and estate of salvation[1] (which hope of theirs shall perish):[2] yet such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love Him in sincerity, endeavouring to walk in all good conscience before Him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace,[3] and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.[4]

II. This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope;[5] but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation,[6] the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made,[7] the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God,[8] which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption.[9]

III. This infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties, before he be partaker of it:[10] yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto.[11] And therefore it is the duty of every one to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure,[12] that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience,[13] the proper fruits of this assurance; so far is it from inclining men to looseness.[14]

IV. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation divers ways shaken, diminished, and intermitted; as, by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the Spirit; by some sudden or vehement temptation, by God's withdrawing the light of His countenance, and suffering even such as fear Him to walk in darkness and to have no light:[15] yet are they never so utterly destitute of that seed of God, and life of faith, that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart, and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may, in due time, be revived;[16] and by the which, in the mean time, they are supported from utter despair.[17]

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Return to Historic Documents page

There has been a controversy that Calvin and the confession teach distinctly different things, "This infallible assurance does not so belong to the essence of faith" and assurance as an integral part of the definition of faith itself, this is a second reason for this topical study, to take a moment and enter into this discussion. The solution is that the two: Calvin and the WCF are looking at faith and its elements from different perspectives, the 5 blind men and the elephant problem.[ii]  Another good reason for looking at this topic is that it forms an extraordinarily important transition to Book 4, for the question: "am I saved?" is analogous to the question "are you'all saved?" which is one of the dominant themes of book 4, this along with the fact that the means of grace form a critical component to the assurance of faith thus laying the groundwork for next weeks lesson, today.

I’m going to introduce two metaphors that I hope will help with visualizing the issues.
The first is a racetrack that spirals inward to the center, the second is baking a loaf of bread.

What is the question posed by the phrase "assurance of faith"?

There are a number of somewhat different ways to ask this question. "Am I saved?" is perhaps the most common, "do I have a genuine saving faith?” or "is the final judgment that I am in Christ a certainty?" are versions that accent different pieces of the ordus salutis[iii]. What is driving all these questions is not just the human desire for confidence and internal assurance that what you believe is true, but the acknowledgement of two serious problems in the faith. The first we talked about last week: the problem of apostasy. That is the illustration of a very successful and popular pastor that unexpectedly gets up one fateful Sunday morning and announces to the congregation that he is tired of living a lie, therefore he immediately is resigning his ministry, will have his lawyers file divorce papers Monday and declares his undying love for his secretary. The two of them get into his new red convertible and head off for the Dominican Republic for a quick divorce, for the both of them, and a small wedding. On the way to the airport they die in an automobile accident. "He who perseveres to the end- will I save"[iv], the perseverance of the saints, to us time bound creatures means that real or genuine Christians will die in such a way that the testimony of their faith is secure. They will die with their confession that Jesus is Lord on their lips, not it's opposite, a denial, an apostacy. (http://www.apuritansmind.com/TULIP/PerseveranceOfTheSaints.htm

A related problem is that of counterfeit faith[v], from the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3-23) we understand that there are those who appear to be Christians that are not. Calvin used the sequence of the universal calling being in some cases so powerful that the unregenerate respond, not with true faith, but with a counterfeit that has no ability to put down real strong roots, for the ground is rocky and shallow, and the faith proceeds from the natural man’s heart of stone.  They heard the gospel call, but were not elect so that the special, particular call that is accompanied by grace and the new heart was not theirs. Now this can explain counterfeit faith but it does not identify it, but rather looks to the solution of 'by their fruits you shall know them". Effectively waiting for those plants to grow up and to see what kind of soil they are anchored in and what kind of seeds they sprung from. That real saving faith will produce unique fruit that the counterfeit faith is unable to is the universal demand of Calvin and of Scripture. But this is external to the believer and appears similar to the idea that good works earn merit, if only the merit of being declared from 'true faith'. The problem of the counterfeit faith is the problem of apostacy in time, invisible before the apostacy is obvious to anyone, when it is still hiding inside the person, visible only to him as hypocritical and self-contradictory thoughts. We are all aware that we can and do deceive ourselves and the worry that the faith is this kind of self-deception is a common thought throughout the ages.

I think that there are two more issues that come into play. The first is the natural human judgment that sincerity is somehow a mark of the truth. This is most obvious to me with the nice clean-cut young vigorous LDS missionaries at your door. The inclination is to believe them since they believe so sincerely. But there is simply no way to relate truthfulness to sincerity. People hold to false beliefs with great sincerity, likewise some can hold to true knowledge very insincerely. You could expect that the truth would so motivate people that they would show the truthfulness as an outward sincerity, but the expectation is not the same thing as a cause-effect relationship. Likewise the depth of our commitment, the loudness that we espouse ideas is no indicator of the truthfulness of our principles. Because someone dies for his or her faith, this does not make the faith true. Lots of people unfortunately have died believing they were fighting for good and noble purposes, when in fact they were wrong. The judgment of the truthfulness of ideas must be done on grounds other than the strength of their adherent’s convictions or on the sincerity with which they hold those beliefs. There is a flipside to this idea, that is it seems natural to disbelieve someone who holds beliefs either insincerely or lightly, but this is a judgment that is concerned with whether or not they truly believe what they say they do, it is not a judgment on the truthfulness of what they believe. So the depth of belief and the sincerity with which you hold those beliefs can not be used as criteria for truthfulness. Rather at best it is a  judgment on whether they really believe what they saw they do or rather are playing a game or deceiving themselves.

But what about the opposite of sincerity, confidence, and assurance—doubt? That is the pastoral problem that drove Calvin, that motivated the writers of the confession and drives the issues for us here today. For the presence of sin in our lives, a continuing problem for anyone not teaching some form of perfectionism, will often show as doubt in our minds and in our souls. Justification as we saw two weeks ago is an instaneous process, sanctification is an uncompleted in this lifetime, ongoing battle against the remnant man of sin that used to rule over our lives. Doubt is the big element of this old man that can and often does reassert itself as a basic challenge to the assurance and presence of faith and therefore challenges the instrumental cause of our salvation---the faith that grasps and holds onto the promises of God as applied to me. The big question is the relationship of doubt to the element of faith. If faith is a package of yeast, about to be added to the flour of our lives, can any of the doubt in our lives contaminate the yeast, get inside of the faith? Or are the doubts external to the faith itself and when we look inside we are confusing the issue by relating faith too closely with doubts. This is the question that Calvin answers with a resounding “no!”, faith by its essence contains assurance and never any doubt. The doubt, the uncertainty are not part of faith, but rather a remnant of sin in our hearts. Calvin speaks about little faith(as a quantity not a quality), and understands faith as a continuum where some people exercise or display lots of assurance and others apparently very little, perhaps even an unconscious assurance, but he always defines the two: assurance and faith very closely.

Where to look for the answers

It's not a trick question, the right answer is to look to the Scriptures, for that reason the links to the prooftexts of the WCF above are live online. But both sides have a high view of Scripture and in fact, use the same Scriptures, only varying the weight given to various ones in their discussions. It is not a discussion about basics as much as a family discussion about priorities or experiential differences.

I've made reference to the two major elements of the issue: intrinsic and extrinsic elements of faith. Calvin divides Books 1-2 from 3 on the basis of the objective work of God as Creator and Sustainer followed by the presentation of God as Father and Jesus as Mediator from the subjective application of this knowledge to the individual soul through the instrumentality of faith. Where the nature of the Mediator forms the transition from the objective to the subjective work of God in faith, the issue of the assurance of faith sums up the intertwining and inseperability of the two- objective and external and subjective and internal. A distinction without a separation as Calvin remarks several times. Look again at the first line of Institutes, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are inseparable. As we contemplate ourselves, we see the sin and darkness within and our eyes are drawn outward and upward to the majesty and holiness of God. We no sooner confess our sins in this morning's service then it is followed by the declaration of the forgiveness of sins. Because of our innate subjection to time we see these things as sequences of activities in time. Some would accuse us of a circularity of thinking, when in fact the thoughts are like a spiral not a circle. Each time we exercise the means of grace, each time we contemplate and acknowledge the character of God and our relationship to him, we in fact, change. We over time spiral inwards towards the center, towards the person we will be, not running fruitlessly around a racetrack. This metaphor helps even more if we think of the two goalposts a  the objective and subjective sides of salvation. Most of the time, while running we can have our eyes on one or the other of the goalposts, this is a problem of our finite nature. But as we run, one or the other of the goalposts are in our consciousness, teaching and instructing us, both are important and inseparable.

The same thing happens as we contemplate the grounds of our assurance of faith. Calvin is eager to help those with new or weak faith to understand that God is their refuge and strength not the sincerity or strength of their faith. The grounds of this sure and certain knowledge is the same grounds as our salvation, the external historical work of God in presented Jesus as the Mediator.[vi] So as we contemplate inwardly we are directed outwardly. As we look at the nature of Jesus as the Mediator that shows us God as Father, we are convinced that the promises are not just out there in the world but are in fact, to be applied internally. This is the nature of faith as assent and trust, it does not end with intellectual assent but rather immediately trusts in the application of the promises of God to me, it trusts that God is true to His word and will save those who call upon Him. This is the spiral set into motion by the inseparability of the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. We spin around the track, each time learning more and deeper, each time the Holy Spirit builds us up in the faith and seals the promises ever tighter to our hearts and supplies good evidence that God is in control and everything is going according to His plan. The internal naturally leads to the external which leads back to the internal, they are perspectives of a single issue-the nature of faith.

More on types of conversions

I've talked several times about the two extremes of the experience of conversion. The one extreme is labelled "Luther", that sudden, overwhelming, emotional, this “dark night of the soul” where the believer is overwhelmed by his sense of sin and likewise overwhelmed at the significance of the grace and power of the solution presented in the Gospel. The other extreme is the covenant child who grows up in the church and can never remember the time she did not believe, no great earthshaking conversion experience, only the gentle and continuous acknowledgement that God is my Father and Jesus is my Lord, from her earliest memories. It is a spectrum with people falling into all kinds of mixtures and permutations of the two extremes. We need to remember that neither experience is normative but each is a legitimate response to the conditions a soul finds itself in, for some are born into the faith younger than others.  But we need admit that theology depends on the experiences of those living and writing about it and as the majority experience changes so does the theology to explain and understand the underlying experiences with God. Calvin was saved, suddenly, out of the midst of a Romish faith that taught particular doctrines. It is his purpose in Institutes to argue against the error of these doctrines, which most of his congregation too had once believed. As time goes on, more of a congregation become the 'covenant child' type of conversion, and their major concerns evolve. For the problem of covenant children is the line between assent and trust. Assent to knowledge and trust in the application of that knowledge to you is a problem if you have heard this knowledge from childhood and are convinced of the truthfulness of it without necessarily fighting the same intense battles that Luther and Calvin fought. For in these battles comes a confidence, a certainty that is hard to match element by element with a faith that doesn't experience such a radical about-face and change later in life. From the radicalness of this new life much is obvious that is hidden in the covenant child’s experience. This is what happened historical in the generations subsequent to Calvin which wrote the confession. In the American experience that ended up with the half-way covenant, as an unbiblical and unsuitable compromise, was again trying to work out these complex issues. The WCF is the culmination of some of these early forces and expresses thoughts in terms of those experiences, for this radical internal assurance is more often the result of working through the problems brought up by the 'dark night of the soul' than it is with those experiencing redeeming grace from a young age. But it is a matter of where your eyes are focused, on which goalposts more than a real difference in definition, a difference in emphasis.

_{The discussion}

First I owe much of this discussion to the books listed in the research links[vii]. One problem with time constraints is that there is much more I would like to have read, including the first hand accounts of the Marrow Men controversies, something I did not get to do. Second, there are several must read essays on the net on the topic.[viii]

_{I think it demonstratable that Calvin taught that assurance, that is the certainty of salvation, is essential to, and a critical part of faith itself. Part of the puzzle is that there}[ix] seems to be some people teaching a _{difference between saving faith as an act of the will and a counterfeit faith as a convincing knowledge to the intellect, thus driving a wedge between the 3 pieces of faith: knowledge, assent and trust.} Trying to build on the parable of the sower they wish to be able to distinguish the types of soil, whether good fertile or shallow and unsuitable, before the plants flower and fruit. By locating the heart of counterfeit faith in the intellect they would say that this person is convinced by the knowledge of God as taught in the Church is sufficient to persuade just the intellect of it’s truth and this yields a faith of assent only, which can not save. The problem is that these unregenerate apparently saved by aren’t people are convinced that they see the faith as applied to themselves. This is the distinguishing mark of trust, the trust that the promises of God are applicable to me, personally. The apostate pastor in my example knew all the right knowledge and preached it convincingly, but even to himself the fact of his not-saved condition occurred when he entered into the affair with his secretary and did not experience the crisis of faith and repentance that sin requires of us. From the moment he dwelled in sin his mind and heart should have been full of contradictions and doubt. These ought to have lead to repentance and the ceasing of the sinful behavior, not to the spoken apostacy from the faith. The big point is that he himself did not know until sin bore the fruit rather than faith. You know a weed is a weed when it grows weed seeds, you know when a shallow rooted plant is in the wrong soil when it dies.

From the perspective of the confession, assurance is a fruit of faith, essentially as we over our lifetime spin around the spiral of our lives, we see how we handle the problems that are posed. If we handle them properly, in a Biblical manner we have an increasing confidence that the faith within us is in fact genuine. This adds to the assurance of faith as a fruit of faith, this is explicit and external confirmation of our state before God.

What is driving this spinning around the track metaphor is that justification is a forensic event, it changes the way God interacts with us, but it does not change the insides of us, that changing occurs through time and is incomplete in this life. So we have this event, in God, which will only be revealed in time at the final judgement to us, which is described as perfect, complete, without turning, without doubt; because it is anchored in God. But sanctification is occurring to sinful people, in time, not perfect, not complete, with doubt and much uncertainty, yet sanctification is the logical outworking of justification, it follows as a matter of course. Calvin’s perspective is that he is looking at the character of the One Who Promises, in justification and in the election that logically preceeds it, Calvin finds certainty and assurance far beyond human comprehension[x] or attainment, because it is anchored in the character and attributes of God. The confession however is more practical and is looking at the same process but from the perspective of sanctification where the process is much messier because it is anchored in the sinful nature of mankind.  The metaphor is that God supplies this ball of faith inside of us, inside the ball of faith there is no doubt-that is Calvin. Through time this ball of faith begins to ferment and leaven the raw materials of our hearts, souls and minds. But now the yeast of faith is mixed with works, and the final product-the loaf of bread is not yet complete enough to see, but the process- the bubbles, the rising is evident which shows that the yeast was alive-the WCF viewpoint. It is looking at the loaf of bread- our lives and looking for evidence that the yeast is functional. Calvin was looking at the yeast package and read the label—Made by God and finds that sufficient evidence that the yeast will work in the future. But they are both talking about the same thing—making a loaf of bread.

Book 4 is primarily about the church, one of the first questions is how to draw the line so that you get Christians inside and false brethren on the outside. It’s the answer to the question earlier, “are you’all saved?” But Calvin draws the line differently do subsequent reformed churches because Calvin still believed in the parish ideal, all those within earshot of the church bells except Jews attended that church. But only those with some fruit of sanctification and without serious fruit of not-saved were admitted to the Lord’s supper, this being the line drawn between saved and unsaved.

_{Now what do we think of the relationship of  Calvin's thinking to those of the Westminster Assembly? We have a few options: the confession expands and includes things learned by the church in the intervening years, or that Calvin was going in the wrong direction and the confession fixed this, or as i think, they are looking at the issue from different directions, different perspectives. This is the metaphor of running around the track. Sometimes we can see one or the other of the goalposts, sometimes both. Calvin's big worry, and major motivator was not to allow the Roman Catholic position of mixing faith and works together as the ground of our salvation or the assurance of the certainity of our salvation. He like Luther always has one eye on where he came from, and where his flock came from, the errors of doctrine are so firmly in his mind that he stops any thought of processes with regards to the grounds of the faith. But we are children of time, and time is what changed the experience of the Reformed churches to the days of the confession, time that packed the churches not with ex-catholics but with covenant children who oftentimes seemed to know the words but hadn't had them impressed powerfully on their hearts. It is the same issue, what is faith? how do we obtain it? how do we know it is genuine? but the questions are being asked from a different vantage point, by people shaped by surprisingly different experiences. Because of this they accent different pieces of the puzzle, they dwell on different motifs and make reference to different verses of the Scripture. However they are talking about the same thing. What the big difference is in the subjective experience of assurance not the intellectual jigsaw puzzle completion that has to make assurance part of or not part of the essence of faith. To the confession writers, the experience of faith did not automatically contain an experience of assurance, nor for Calvin was this the necessary experience. For he talks of little faith, or weak faith, or even doubting faith, understanding it to be, at times, true saving faith that is deficetive in it's experience but not in its origin or its Author. It is this that Calvin wants to hold above all else. Monergism not synergism, faith is of God, not a cooperative effort of us, or our works with God.}

research notes not integrated into the endnotes:

6. Assurance Distinguished.

By Assurance of faith, we mean the certain and undoubting conviction that Christ is all He professes to be, and will do all He promises. It is of the essence of saving faith, as all agree (see Heb. 10:22; 11:6; James 1:6, 7; 1 Tim. 2:8; Jer. 29:13). And it is evident that nothing less than full conviction of the trustworthiness of the gospel would give ground to that entire trust, or envoke the hearty pursuit of Christ, which are requisite for salvation. The assurance of grace and salvation is the assured conviction (with the peace and joy proceeding therefrom) that the individual believer has had his sins pardoned, and his soul saved. Rome stoutly denies that this is a part of faith, or a legitimate reflex act, or consequence thereof, (except in the case of revealed assurance.) Her motive is, to retain anxious souls under the clutch of her priest-craft and tyranny. The Reformers generally seem to have been driven by their hatred of this odious doctrine, to the other extreme, and make assurance of hope of the essence of faith. Hence, Calvin says, in substance: "My faith is a divine and spiritual belief that God has pardoned and accepted me." The sober view of the moderns (see Conf., ch. 18) is, that this assurance is the natural and proper reflex act, or consequence of true faith, and should usually follow, through self-examination and experience; but that itch notch the essence of faith. 1st. Because, then, another proposition would be the object of faith. Not whosoever believeth shall be saved; but "I am saved." The latter is a deduction, in which the former is major premise. 2nd. The humble and modest soul would be inextricably embarrassed in coming to Christ. It would say "I must believe that I am saved, in order to be saved. But I feel myself a lost sinner, in need of salvation." 3rd. God could not justly punish the nonelect for not believing what would not have been true if they had believed it. 4th. The experience of God’s people in all ages contradicts it. (Ps. 73:13, 31:22, 77:2, 9, 10). 5th. The command to go on to the attainment of assurance, as a higher grace, addressed to believers, shows that a true believer may lack it.
from: http://www.pbministries.org/R.%20L.%20Dabney/Systematic%20Theology/chapter11.htm

http://www.hornes.org/theologia/con..._absolution.htm
 
-- links list
http://www.monergism.com/thethresho.../assurance.html
http://www.e-grace.net/assure.html

good but read online:
http://www.mbrem.com/confessions/wcf18.htm
http://www.the-highway.com/articleDec98.html
http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosent...nink/srbeza.htm
http://www.girs.com/library/theolog...subsoter10.html

Part Two lesson 13

Introduction to Institutes Book IV

The title of Book IV is:

BOOK IV. THE EXTERNAL MEANS OR AIDS BY WHICH GOD INVITES US INTO THE SOCIETY OF CHRIST AND HOLDS US THEREIN.

The chapter divisions with links online to the text are:

1. Of the true Church. Duty of cultivating unity with her, as the mother of all the godly.
2. Comparison between the false church and the true.
3. Of the teachers and ministers of the Church. Their election and office.
4. Of the state of the primitive Church, and the mode of government in use before the papacy.
5. The ancient form of government utterly corrupted by the tyranny of the papacy.
6. Of the primacy of the Romish see.
7. Of the beginning and rise of the Romish papacy till it attained a height by which the liberty of the church was destroyed, and all true rule overthrown.
8. Of the power of the church in articles of faith. The unbridled license of the papal church in destroying purity of doctrine.
9. Of councils and their authority.
10. Of the power of making laws. The cruelty of the pope and his adherents, in this respect, in tyrannically oppressing and destroying souls.
11. Of the jurisdiction of the church and the abuses of it, as exemplified in the papacy.
12. Of the discipline of the Church, and its principal use in censures and excommunication.
13. Of vows. The miserable entanglements caused by vowing rashly.
14. Of the sacraments.
15. Of Baptism.
16. Paedobaptism. Its accordance with the institution of Christ, and the nature of the sign.
17. Of the Lord's Supper, and the benefits conferred by it.
18. Of the Popish mass. How it not only profanes, but annihilates the Lord's Supper.
19. Of the five sacraments, falsely so called. Their spuriousness proved, and their true character explained.
20. Of civil government.

The book divides rather logically into 1-7 the outward organization of the Church, 8-13 the discipline of the church, 14-19 the means of grace, the preaching and teaching of the Word and the sacraments, 20 on civil government.

It is my belief that Calvin’s heart lay with this book, my copper thread is Calvin always having one eye towards France and the problem of evangelizing and disciplining his countrymen. I read one book, I didn’t capture the quote I am afraid, that compared Calvin to Lenin, that both had the genius of organization, that desire to form an organization that would win the coming battles. This captures something very essential about Calvin, for it is in church organization and church discipline that Calvin created a church that can live independently from the state. The Lutheran churches are oftentimes mere departments of the ruling state, an Erastianism that is explicit in Luther’s theology. The Roman church since the time of Constantine had become closer and more intimately intertwined with the political state.  But Calvin and even more subsequent reformed theology developed a notion of the church that could survive in a society where the state was even outwardly hostile to the church.

I would like to use this as an organizing principle to get into Book IV, what did Calvin teach that gave particular strength to the Reformed churches so that they could organize in the face of governmental opposition? So next week will be lesson 14, how to define the church? what are the marks of a true church? and what are the means of grace and how does this relate back to the contents of Book 3-faith? Following week will be on Servetus, the big question is the relationship of the church and the state, tied back into the definition of the church, and asking the fundamental question of whether this action was consistent with the theology or rather a confusion. The last lesson, 15, will be to tie the ends of the study together. Going back to the preface to Francis I and looking at the last chapter-on civil government i want to ask a very pointed question. Was Calvin being disingenuious when he claimed to be a good subject of the king when the Reformed beheaded Charles King of England in Jan 30th, 1649. The associated issue is if Reformed theology lead naturally to republican forms of government that challenged and finally won over the long held divine right of Kings to rule.