Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Pilgry.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer, and I want to address today this idea that the Protestant Reformers, I'm gonna focus particularly on Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox, for reasons that'll become clear very soon.

Whether they really are the sort of uncompromising figures we think of them as.

'Cause there's this idea that these were people who were bold enough to proclaim the gospel or their version of the gospel in season and out of season, whether it helped their cause or whether it hurt them or even put their life at risk.

And so I'm not addressing here the question of whether they're right or wrong about their beliefs.

We'll leave that for another day.

I want to particularly address sort of the hagiography around them.

This idea of them as these great saints who were uncompromising and unflinching in their proclamation of the gospel.

Because that is a very popular Protestant view, and I can understand why it's held by so many.

So for instance, Josh Buice, the head of the Evangelical Ministry G3 Ministries, uh, he can say things like, We can be certain, we can be certain that Luther, Calvin, Knox, Tyndale, and other figures of the Reformation were not making decisions about defending the faith by calculating their career advancement and protecting their platform.

Faithful men stand up.

Faithful men speak up.

Now, to be very clear, I agree with Buice's sentiment that we should, you know, as I said before, we should preach the gospel in season and out of season, to use St. Paul's expression.

But I'm fascinated by the number of people who try to prove that point by appealing to the alleged unflinching nature of the beliefs of Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Knox.

And Buice is not alone.

Our old friend Mike Gendron appeals to those exact same three figures, uh, as if they were these great heroic martyrs.

So many evangelicals today are compromising the very truths that the Reformers were tortured and brutally murdered for defending.

For these reasons, it will do us good to reflect on three of these reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also John Knox.

For some reason, it never seems to occur to the people who talk about them in this way that none of those guys were tortured or brutally murdered.

That just didn't happen.

The closest you get is in John Calvin's Geneva, where Calvin helps to make sure that Michael Servetus, who was another heretic, was arrested and executed, and then later defended himself on the grounds that the state should have the ability to execute heretics and blasphemers.

So you have Calvin defending the practice, not suffering under it.

Nevertheless, these guys get treated so often as these uncompromising saints and martyrs by many Protestants.

Even going so far as a giant Reformation wall being built with engraved images of them in Geneva.

In j- in honor of, you know, the veneration of the birth of John Calvin.

Now, if you can't see that image or if you want to know more about it, I'll let Mike Gendron explain it to you.

This, uh, Reformation wall rises 30 feet high, if you can imagine it, stretches 325 feet in length.

It was built in 1909 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Calvin's birth.

So all I want to do is look at all three of those guys, Martin Luther, John Knox and John Calvin, and just say do they hold to their principles when it doesn't benefit them?

And we're gonna start with Martin Luther because Martin Luther is undoubtedly the most famous, both just he's the most famous Protestant Reformer of all time.

Obviously, he kind of starts the whole thing.

But also he's famous in particular for his uncompromising faith.

Whether you love him or hate him, this is kind of a reputation that he has.

Um, Roland Bainton in his famous book, Here I Stand: The Life of Martin Luther, using a maybe apocryphal line Luther is said to have used at the Diet of Worms, talked about what drew him to Luther as a figure.

And he said there were two things in particular.

First, Luther's willingness to defy both church and state in the name of reason and conscience.

And second, that he had these moments of kind of self-reflection where he had to afterwards ask himself, after taking this bold stand, Are you alone right?

In a moment calling for decision, he took a firm stand and then undertook to convince himself all over again.

That's Bainton's view.

That's a very popular view of Luther.

And, and to be sure, there are plenty of moments that would kind of lend themselves to that, particularly if you read history a certain way.

So in many of the movies, uh, kind of made to show the amazingness of Martin Luther's life, you'll have these powerful scenes taken from the Diet of Worms focusing on Martin Luther saying this.

Unless I am convinced by scripture and by plain reason and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God.

All right.

So taken in isolation, I think that's a pretty great-sounding, uh, testament to an unflinching belief in his own correctness.

Again, whether you think that's good or bad, the reality is that Martin Luther is a little cagier about what it would actually take to convince him.

So Diet of Worms is kind of the end point of a fascinating sort of back and forth Luther has over the course of two years.

I want to focus on this in kind of three chunks, just to give a little bit of historical background people don't often give when they hold up Luther at the Diet of Worms as this great, you know, unflinching principled individual.

Let's start with 1517.

You've got October 31st, Martin Luther releases the 95 Theses.

The popular image is that he nails them to the door of the church in Wittenberg.

That probably didn't happen.

But either way, he begins to question doctrines related to indulgences, not indulgences themselves, in 1517.

By 1518, um, this has really become, like, a major kind of scandal in the church.

And so he takes the opportunity to write to the pope on May 30th, 1518, promising him that he's got a bad rap.

He says, I know, Most Holy Father, that evil reports are being spread about me .

some friends having vilified me to your Holiness, as if I were trying to belittle the power of the keys and of the Supreme Pontiff.

So notice what he's saying at the outset.

He's not attacking the papacy, and he denies the charge of being a heretic and a renegade, and he promises him, he says, Therefore, Most Holy Father, I prostrate myself at your feet, placing myself and all I am and have at your disposal to be dealt with as you see fit.

My cause hangs on the will of Your Holiness by whose verdict I shall either save or lose my life.

Come what may, I shall recognize the voice of Your Holiness to be that of Christ speaking through you.

So, it's a pretty bold proclamation that he believes the papacy is true and that he's going to trust Pope Leo X to adjudicate this dispute that he's in, in the middle of on indulgences.

That isn't followed by some private correspondence.

By January of the next year, we find him writing to the Elector Frederick about how Magister Spalatin, that's the German theologian and fellow Lutheran, Spalatin, had proposed that the matter be referred to the verdict of the Archbishop of Salzburg.

So he, you know, there's this idea maybe we could have the Archbishop of Salzburg sort of resolve this.

But he says he doesn't think the pope would put up with, you know, a judge.

Like you can't have learned people and laypeople and, you know, this, this trial on German soil adjudicating this sort of thing.

That's what Luther and his allies are wanting, and he's like, The pope's not gonna accept that.

And then he says, And I too will not submit to the pope's verdict.

Now, that's quite a change from him saying, you know, the exact opposite in May of the prior year.

So this is, by the way, before the pope has issued an actual verdict in the case.

While this is still pending, you see principled unchanging Luther going from saying he's gonna trust whatever the pope does 'cause, you know, the pope's the Holy Father, to him saying he's not gonna listen to what the pope says.

And sure enough, uh, in June of 1520, it takes, yeah, uh, more than two years for this to finally get sorted out, the pope releases a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, in which he condemns several, not all, but several of the things Martin Luther had been arguing for.

He goes through, you know, some of the various claims he was making and, and rejects some of them.

That, uh, then leads to Luther, you know, not doing what he said he was going to do.

Now, we haven't gotten there yet because even though this is released in June, correspondence between Germany and Italy is really slow at this period of history.

So before this even gets back to Martin Luther, before he's had a chance to see this or read what the pope has said or anything like this, we find him writing to George Spalatin, the theologian I mentioned earlier, saying to him in July of 1520, For me the die is cast and I despise Rome's displeasure as much as her favor.

I shall never be reconciled to her, let her condemn or burn me as she will.

So notice this.

He's not trying to be reconciled to the church at this point.

He is saying instead, If I can get a fire, I shall publicly burn the whole papal code, this serpentine piece of treachery, and make an end of the humility I have hitherto displayed in vain so that the enemies of the gospel may no longer vaunt themselves on account of it.

So, one thing I would take from this, again, as a non-Lutheran, is, yeah, some of this humility appears to have just been an act.

L- he promises to trust whatever the pope says if he thinks it's gonna help him, and once he realizes it's not gonna help him, he just throws off the whole humility façade.

Now, maybe that's too harsh of a read, but look at just the sequence of events.

He promises to trust the pope.

He then says he's not gonna accept the verdict.

He doesn't get the, the verdict that he likes, and then he announces very clearly, I shall never be reconciled to Rome.

Right?

Like, there's this popular image that, oh, he tried really hard to stay in the church and the church just excommunicated him.

But no, he's doing these childish things like taking the whole code of canon law and, as well as, you know, the whole papal code, th- this is what he refers to it as.

And Exsurge Domine when he gets that and a bunch of other things, and in December of that year, has a big bonfire with the college students in which they burn all of these different church documents.

That's not someone trying to smooth things over with the church.

So, I listed the timeline right there.

You've got Luther publicly declaring that he's going to follow the pope's verdict, I mean, declaring it to the pope and then privately saying he's not gonna accept the pope's verdict, uh, and then privately suggesting he doesn't want to reconcile with the church.

That doesn't look like a come what may, in season and out of season principled position.

It looks like saying different things publicly than privately.

But, understandably, people's views do change over time so it's not completely infeasible that between, you know, 1518 and 1520 Luther's views on the papacy soured.

That's a completely reasonable proposition.

I'll, I'll accept that.

There certainly is a change and I just wanted to highlight that.

But now I want to focus on a much narrower span of time.

Not two years, but really the span of about a week.

Because now you've got the arrival of Exsurge Domine, so we're now in October of 1520.

Luther receives the document on October the 10th.

It, again, this gives you some idea of how long it takes things to, to arrive, uh, because it was released on June 15th.

It doesn't get to him until October 10th.

So one reason this whole process is as slow as it is, is just because mail is not fast.

So October 10th, he gets the papal bull saying that the pope disagrees with him on certain things.

On October 11th, again, to George Spalatin, he tells him, This bull condemns Christ Himself.

Like may- he doesn't just say, He condemns my view of scripture.

He says, It condemns Christ Himself.

And then he says, I'm going to act on the assumption that it is spurious, though I think it is genuine.In other words, he's going to publicly pretend he thinks that this is a forgery, even though he has good reason to believe it is actually from Leo X. And he does that.

He, he pretends he doesn't know whether the Pope really wrote it and everything else.

This was, you know, another one of these sort of saying one thing privately and another thing publicly kind of moves.

But then, he laments that the Holy Roman emperor doesn't take up arms against the Pope for disagreeing with him.

He said, Would that Charles were a man and would fight for Christ against these satans.

And then he says in the same letter, I feel much freer now that I am certain the Pope is Antichrist.

This is really important.

It's October 11th, 1520, and Martin Luther has decided the Pope is actually Antichrist.

Why does that matter?

Uh, well, because eventually in, later in 8, 1520, he's going to launch what he calls against the execrable bull of Antichrist, where he attacks Pope Leo as being Antichrist and publicly denounces him.

He says, I call upon you to renounce your diabolical blasphemy and audacious impiety, and if you will not, we shall all hold your seat as possessed and oppressed by Satan, the damned seat of Antichrist in the name of Jesus Christ, whom you persecute.

That's what he's gonna say by the end of 1520.

I don't know the exact date of that response.

And he's already clearly thinking this privately 'cause we see this from his private correspondence.

Contrast that with what he is publicly telling the Pope at the same time.

So this is October 13th.

This is, again, two days after a private letter where he denounces the Pope as Antichrist.

He writes to the same pope, Pope Leo X, in this false flattering tone.

He says, um, I declare that I'm not aware of ever having spoken of you except with great respect.

Now, whether you love Pope Leo X or hate him, whether you believe the Pope is the Antichrist or not, can we at least acknowledge that this is not someone holding to a view in season and out of season and speaking truth to power or doing any of This is someone saying to different groups of people what he thinks they're going to want to hear as it suits him.

So, again, that's the span of not even a week, October 10th to October 13th, 1520.

Let's then transition from that, because in his correspondence to Pope Leo X, he does say to him that he wants to appeal his judgment, uh, to that of a general Christian council.

In other words, he's of the view that this'll be settled not by the Pope, as he originally claimed, but instead he'll listen to an ecumenical council.

And he doesn't get an ecumenical council in his lifetime.

Eventually the Council of Trent will, uh, resolve that he was wrong as well at an ecumenical council.

But before that, he does h- go to the imperial diets or like court in verbs.

And there you have that quote that you heard before.

But now think about it in a new light, because here's Martin Luther who first declared he wanted to be judged by the Pope and then declared, no, nevermind, I wanna be judged by an ecumenical council.

Now standing up and saying once he realizes neither's gonna go in his favor, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils.

My man, you are the one who suggested we adjudicate this with popes and councils, and now you're saying you don't believe in those things?

So you can see this reversal on papal authority, a total just dishonesty about his view on Leo X and what he says about Leo compared to what he says to Leo.

And then you have this total reversal on w- the, the role of, uh, ecumenical councils just between 1520 and 1521, not even in the span of a year.

Like the span of about half a year he does this 180 on the authority of ecumenical councils.

Now, people will say, oh, Luther's views were evolving, but it's hard to see in this someone of, you know, unbreakable, unflinching, uh, sort of bravery and consistency or any of those things.

So, again, I mean obviously I'm coming at that as a non-Lutheran, but those are just things that make me question the kind of popular narrative about him.

So, so much for Martin Luther.

I wanna turn to a much lesser-known figure now, John Knox.

I, I'm gonna let Mike Gendron kind of introduce you to John Knox, except to say that he's a Scottish Calvinist who's really influential in, uh, the creation of Presbyterianism in Scotland.

One of my, my favorite pictures of John Knox preaching his first sermon on Daniel 7:24-25 at St. Andrews Cathedral.

His preaching denounced Rome's false gospel and pronounced the Pope to be Antichrist, and the mass to be idolatrous.

Very bold.

So that is very much the popular image of John Knox.

Love him or hate him, this guy is very bold.

He'll say whatever because he believes it's the word of God.

And there's, uh, not just like what he says, but also kinda what he does.

So there's this moment where he's captured by the French and he's offered this statue of Mary to venerate, and instead he acts against it with this, you know, extreme reaction.

The French tried desperately to convert John Knox back to Roman Catholicism, even attempting him to kiss a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Instead, John Knox resolutely refused and said, Such an idol is accursed, and he threw it overboard.

So apparently John Knox hated the idea of religious images and statues, regarding them as idols.

And so of course, Protestants have honored him by creating a giant statue of him, uh, in Geneva, Switzerland.

But as Mike Gendron will point out, that's not quite right.

They actually made two statutes to him.

By the way, John Knox is the only man that's mounted twice on the monument, not only here, but outside of this wall you see a huge, um, 'nother wall that's extending out 325 feet and he also appears there.

Apparently religious statues are okay for me, but not for thee.

But it's actually not John Knox's antipathy towards the Virgin Mary I wanna talk about.

It's his antipathy towards Queen Mary.

So if you're not familiar, Henry VIII- and dies.

His son, Edward VI, dies as a teenager, and so that leaves the Tudor dynasty and the English crown in precarious hands.

And so, in- at first, the crown goes not to another male but to Henry VIII's son, di-, excuse me, daughter, uh, with Queen Catherine of Aragon.

So if you remember, the whole controversy over why the Anglican Reformation happens in the first place is because Henry VIII thought he needed to have a son to pass on the Tudor lineage.

And then his son dies before, uh, reaching even the age of 20, and the Tudor lineage passes on to a woman anyway.

The daughter he could've had if he'd just never divorced his wife in the first place.

Neither here nor there, but there you go, Henry.

And so that daughter was Queen Mary I, who was loathed by Protestants because she was Catholic and because she fought against Protestantism often violently.

She was given the kind of unfair nickname Bloody Mary at a time when, uh, both Protestant and Catholic leaders often used civil force.

Remember John Calvin talking about why it's okay for the state to do that in punishing heretics?

Apparently, again, it's okay for me and not for thee.

So against this, John Knox rails, but not just because he doesn't like that she is a Catholic.

Specifically, he does not like that she's a woman.

And so he writes in 1557 an essay or a treatise called The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment, meaning government, of Women.

And so it's just him announcing that it is, uh, abominable before God for a woman to lead in any kind of context.

I'll give you a little bits of excerpts from this.

And this part does sound very brave, except well, we'll see.

So Knox says, I am assured that God has revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and have empire above man.

And yet with all, there is such silence, as if God therewith were nothing offended.

But notice this point, because Knox is totally aware that his fellow reformers are being cowardly.

And we're gonna see more evidence of that later, that they secretly think it's not okay for a woman to be queen, but they don't want to actually say that publicly.

But Knox is willing to.

He argues that, To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is repugnant to nature, consummately an insult to God, a thing most contrary to His revealed will and approved ordinance.

And finally, It is a subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

So it's not even okay to have a woman to be mayor.

Now, a whole lot of his argument turns on a single Bible verse, which actually appears on the cover of his treatise.

When you can fit your biblical references on the front page, not a great sign usually.

But his argument is from 1 Timothy 2:12, where St. Paul says, I suffer not that women usurp authority above men.

Now, stripping this of any context of what Paul is actually talking about, which is about, uh, like pastoral leadership in the church, Knox instead argues that Paul is ta-, uh well, really the Holy Spirit working through St. Paul, is taking from women all power and authority to speak, to reason, to interpret or to teach, but principally to rule and to judge in the assembly of men.

So don't even think out loud if you're with guys.

Don't, just don't.

That's his argument.

That what St. Paul means to do is just like stop women from speaking in public, in men.

Um, don't speak, don't reason, don't interpret, don't teach, and certainly don't rule or judge.

He argues this not just on the basis of that one verse, but also because he thinks it's obvious that women are too emotional to be leaders.

He says, Would to God the examples were not so manifest to the further declaration of the imperfections of women, of their natural weakness and inordinate appetites.

And there follows a kind of funny but very sexist treatment of how, uh, like women are so emotional that they'll kill themselves, and they're so driven by lust that they'll do all of these crazy thing.

And so it's a pretty wild kind of passage, not based on an- any Scripture, even- there's not even a citation in this part.

It's just Knox's view on women being irrational creatures.

And then he says, For those that will not permit a woman to have power over her own son So notice, he doesn't even think she should, like as mother, have this kind of authority, 'cause she's so irrational.

Will not permit her, I am assured, to have rule over a realm.

And those that will not suffer her to speak in defense of those that be accused, neither will admit her accusation intended against man, will not approve her that she shall sit in judgment crowned with the royal crown, usurping authority in the midst of men.

In plain language, since you can't trust a woman to give testimony in court or to like testify against a man, how can you possibly trust her to rule a country?

That's the argument.

You can judge for whether or not you think it's good.

The one thing it has going for it, if anything, is that it is at least bold, seemingly.

But then, a very funny thing happens the very next year.

To the South, I present to you, Elizabeth, your undoubted queen.

Yeah.

The Catholic Queen Mary dies and her half-sister Elizabeth comes to the crown.

Now, this creates a very awkward situation for John Knox, because allegedly, he wasn't objecting to Mary because she was a Catholic.

He was objecting to her because she was a woman.

He was saying everyone, Catholic or Protestant, has to reject Mary, because you can't have a woman as queen ruling a country, and then a devout Protestant, indeed her very sister, comes to the throne.

What is he gonna do now?

Is he gonna stick with the courage of his convictions in season and out of season?

Of course not.

He's going to quickly write a letter to Queen Elizabeth announcing he doesn't mean all that.

And so he writes, To the virtuous and godly Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, etc.John Knox desireth the perpetual increase of the Holy Spirit, et cetera.

So notice this thing that he declared contrary to nature, contrary to scripture, he now declares to be the will of God.

It's by the grace of God that this has happened.

And obviously, he has some backpedaling to do because he would like to go to England and she is also, uh, the regent over Scotland as well.

So he's in a very precarious sort of situation.

So he has to kind of own up, like, Yeah, I did kind of write that book.

He says, I cannot deny the writing of a book against the usurped authority and unjust regiment of women.

Yeah.

It's got your name on it.

It was only a year old.

Neither yet am I minded to retract or call any principal point or proposition of the same till truth and verity do further appear.

But why either your grace, either yet as such as unfeignedly favor the liberty of England should be offended at the author of such a work, I can perceive no just occasion.

In plain, Why would you be offended that I wrote a work about how women can't rule a country, Queen Elizabeth I? And so he insists, like, Well, why would you take any of this as applying to you?

He said, As, as concerning your regiment, how could or can I envy that which I have trusted and for which, as oblivion will suffer, I render thanks unfeignedly unto God?

That is, that it has pleased him of his eternal goodness to exalt your head, which times was in danger to the manifestation of his glory and the extirpation of idolatry.

In other words, he's like, Why would I even be upset with you, Queen Elizabeth, ruling England when you were obviously put there by God to smash idols?

So I'll let you judge for yourself whether you think that he's, uh, backpedaling, got his tail between his legs and is totally renouncing his prior public stated opinions from a year earlier as the political climate shifted.

But this is, again, a, a weird guy to highlight as, like, here's someone who won't back down when the political shifts, you know, the political winds shift.

It's like, yeah, he did.

We like very publicly can see in the span of a year, uh, him having to back down very quickly.

And it's not just John Knox that gets wrapped up in it.

It's also his kind of master, John Calvin.

'Cause here's the thing.

Back in 1554, before he actually wrote, uh, the book publicly, John Knox had talked about how he'd gone down to Switzerland and talked some ideas of, on a sensitive subject over, uh, with the major figures there in Switzerland.

This is obviously John Calvin and, and some others.

It doesn't take rocket scientists to figure out, like, oh, okay.

Like, John Knox didn't just come up with all this stuff on his own.

He's part of a group of people in Switzerland who believe this, the most famous of which is kind of the head of this theological movement, John Calvin.

And so you find John Calvin, uh, suddenly kind of in the doghouse.

So he writes, uh, to William Cecil, who is the chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. And you can just read from the letter in 1559 how uncomfortable, uh, John Calvin finds this whole thing.

He had tried to send a copy of his commentary on Isaiah to Queen Elizabeth I and, uh, got word back that his homage had been found rather distasteful to Her Majesty because she had been offended with him on account of certain writings that had been published in Geneva.

Now, we have a pretty good idea what those writings are.

Uh, the most famous of them being, of course, John Knox's.

And it's, it's clear why, you know, she's not getting into the weeds on, uh, you know , I don't agree with your soteriology or your views on predestination.

I dis- No.

It's obviously the part she's upset with are these things coming out of Geneva about how women aren't allowed to rule even cities.

That's not great for her political situation.

But Calvin insists this has nothing to do with him.

He says he didn't merit to have his book rejected and that it felt like a pretext had been sought to throw the follies of others upon him.

Nevertheless, in this letter to Cecil, he admits, like, he actually did know a little more about the situation than maybe he would like to admit.

He says, Two years ago, John Knox, in a private conversation, asked my opinion respecting female government.

Notice the way he frames this.

Like, this is a private conversation.

And in that private conversation, he argues that it's contrary to nature and contrary to God, but that it could sometimes happen, like slavery.

You know?

Like, God could force this otherwise immoral thing to happen as a way of punishing you.

That's his argument.

And then he says, Well, nevertheless, certain women had sometimes been so gifted that the singular blessing of God was conspicuous in them.

Now, r- remember, this is what he is now telling William Cecil, the chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth.

And as he says, God made it manifest that they had been raised up by the providence of God, either because He willed by such examples to condemn the supineness of men, like the laziness of men, or thus show more distinctly His own glory.

So he acknowledges, 'cause Calvin actually does have a biblical argument to raise against John Knox's point, which is, well, there are women leaders in the Bible.

You have figures like Deborah, who was raised up as a judge.

And it doesn't appear to be something that's contrary to nature.

Nothing in the text suggests God was punishing them by having them delivered by a woman.

There's none of that.

You don't find any of that in there.

And so as he, you know, now tells the story, uh, he's able to point to these kind of examples and, and give maybe a little more of a moderate view, but nevertheless, still one that's pretty hostile to the idea of women in government.

But then, according to his claim, I added in conclusion that since by custom, common consent, and long-established usage, it had been admitted that kingdoms and principalities might be by hereditary right transmitted to women, it did not seem proper to me this question should be mooted.

Notice two things here.One, even though he thinks it's contrary to the will of God, contrary to nature that women should lead, he doesn't want to talk about it publicly.

And this is already contrary to the popular image of the brave John Calvin.

Uh, it's also not a very strong objection because w- in the context of England, which is what we're looking at, Elizabeth and Mary were the only two women to ever rule England at this point.

So there was no custom, common consent and long-established usage that sometimes the crown would pass to a woman instead of a man.

It had always been, uh, passed down to the son.

It's only because Henry VIII couldn't have a legitimate son who would live to adulthood that this question has even arisen.

So Calvin's kind of excuse here is, is just factually not true.

Like, there is no such case, uh, in England.

But nevertheless, he says that this question shouldn't be, like, moot.

It shouldn't be debated, not only because it is odious in itself but because, in my judgment, it is not permitted to unsettle governments that have been set up by the peculiar providence of God.

This is a strange argument.

Like, well, it could upset the English crown if we ask whether Elizabeth really should be the queen or not.

That is a strange argument, and I think it's worth calling it out as such.

Because he seems to be saying, You can privately think that she's not the lawful queen of England, but don't publicly say that because that's not good for the government.

And then he claims, and I'll leave it to you to decide how plausible you think this is, he says, Of the book, meaning John Knox's book, I had not the slightest suspicion, and it had been published a whole year before I was aware of its existence.

So he's claiming Remember, the book came out in 1557.

He's claiming he didn't even know about it for another year, even though, in his own telling, he had talked to John Knox two years earlier, in 1557.

Now, there are some problems with John Calvin's after-the-fact story.

We don't have a lot of written record, but you do have things like 1554, not 1557, but 1554, five years earlier, Knox seemingly saying that he had talked with the people he needed to talk to in Geneva about this sensitive subject.

And it became pretty quickly clear which sensitive subject he was talking about when he finally set pen to paper.

But it also is clear from some of Calvin's other correspondence that the version that he tells William Cecil isn't all true.

So he writes to Bullinger, uh, another Swiss reformer, and this is back in 1554.

So, maybe he's forgotten.

Who can say?

But he says, in 1554, that he's gonna look over the answer that Bolling- that he, excuse me, that he had looked over the answer that Bullinger had given to what he calls the Scotsman.

And there was some dispute over, uh, which Scotsman this was, but it Again, 1554, John Knox claimed he talked to some folks in Switzerland.

Here are these Swiss guys talking about talking to a Scottish guy, and it's not hard to put the pieces together.

Also, we have Bullinger's notes that he sent to John Knox, so we know which I mean, it, it seems pretty clear the, the Scotsman in question is John Knox.

But you will occasionally find Protestants who deny this because it undermines Calvin's later account that he didn't talk to him until 1557.

So anyway, Calvin says, He talked over these matters with me before he came among you.

And then he had talked to him about how it is utterly at variance with the legitimate order of nature for a woman to be head of a government.

Um, nevertheless, uh, you might have a case because of extraordinary grace where he's reproaching men for their sluggishness and raises up a woman with a heroic spirit, like Deborah.

Now, there doesn't seem to be that in the case of either Mary or Elizabeth in this sense.

Like, with the judges, you have these figures where God raises up, uh, these ordinary people and calls them to an extraordinary kind of mission.

In this case, it's just the Tudor bloodline.

It's just who did Henry VIII happen to have a child with that week?

I mean, that's kind of the argument that maybe you could say, That's how God is conspicuously raising people up.

That's not what people normally mean by that term.

So his arguments here don't seem to apply to the English context again.

But then he said, But though a government of this kind seems to be nothing else than a mere abuse, yet I gave it as my solemn opinion that private persons have no right to do anything but to deplore it.

So it's an interesting argument there.

He's cautious.

Like, i- in total fairness to John Calvin, he has a much more nuanced view than John Knox.

Like, John Knox just goes off the rails and then finds himself in this very embarrassing position.

Calvin has considered that even though he's strongly against women leading, even in a civil context, he can't say, Therefore, we should overthrow the government.

And so he's not in quite as much hot water, um, as John Knox is.

But as I mentioned, there was another person from the British Isles, uh, that was kinda having these same conversations, and that was a guy by the name of Christopher Goodman who was writing a treatise on whether or not it was okay to rebel against the crown.

And one of the things he considered is women don't have a right to rule.

And Goodman, in his own letters in 1558, talked about how, uh, he had gotten the judgment of Calvin on this question.

And it's fascinating kinda telling.

H- y- you know, he's talking it through before publishing the book, and he shows him kind of the propositions that You know, he's obviously arranging to write a book.

He's not just musing over a cup of coffee.

And-Calvin said to him that certain parts seemed harsh, especially to those who were in the place of power and that they should be handled with caution, but nevertheless admitted that the gist was true.

So all that's to say Calvin takes a sort of moderate view.

You can privately think women aren't lawful heads of state, but don't say it out loud because it could lead to rebellion.

And also, he talks about in his letter to William Cecil, he doesn't want to see, you know, the Presbyterians kind of expelled from the British Isles.

And you, you, you know, there's very much a political consideration.

Now you can think Calvin's position is sane and reasonable, maybe this is one of those times where prudence is the better part of valor, but I mention all this to say, not only are there some questions of kind of the authenticity and veracity of Calvin's own report here, it, it seems like some of the things he's saying, it doesn't quite square with the facts in terms of how much he knew and when he knew it.

The bigger issue, I think, is simply this.

The thing that started this was Josh Bice's claim that folks like Luther, Calvin, and Knox, we can know with certainty were not making decisions about defending the faith by calculating their career advancement and protecting their platform.

We see all three of them literally doing that.

When Luther thinks it helps his platform to defend the Pope or appeal to the Pope's good nature, he does that.

When he thinks it'll defend his cause, uh, to appeal to an ecumenical council, he does that.

When he realizes neither's going to help him, he then suggests neither has authority.

John Knox when he thinks it'll help the case against Catholic Mary, argues women don't have the lawful right to lead.

When it's Protestant Elizabeth, he suddenly changes his principle.

John Knox Or excuse me, John Calvin seems to do much the same thing, but you have added to it, uh, this idea that we can privately think these things, but let's not publicly say them, uh, because that won't help our case in places like England.

So whatever you may think of the reformers, I would just suggest this characterization, the popular image of them as these unflinching, devout saints willing to die for their fa- These guys don't die for the faith, and they show themselves extremely shrewd in appealing to the powers that be.

And I'm just scratching the surface here.

The politics of the Reformation are fascinating.

One of the first things Martin Luther does is, as you saw, he appeals to the secular state to try to defend his case, even if it means starting a religious war in Europe, which eventually does happen.

Yes, he's willing to compromise with political authorities to advance his own, if you want to call it, career and platform, that.

So all I would suggest here is some of the hagiography and whitewashing of the reformers should be scrubbed away to give a more realistic presentation of how shrewd and adept they were as politicians.

Again, whether you think that's right or wrong, let's at least talk honestly about the character and nature of the Protestant Reformers.

For Shameless Popery, I'm Joe Heschmair.

God bless you.