One of the things I’ve always appreciated with him was how he would at certain times follow the implications of Scriptural texts to their clear implications,  even if it made himself or others uncomfortable!  He was pretty gutsy like that at times.  It is very evident that He was not first of all trying to make a consistent, coherent system. Sometimes it lead to surprising conclusions that would shock those who came after him and esteem him. And despite certain errors in his theology, I think we can all admire the way he would throw caution to the wind and take what God says in his Book seriously.

His sermons on a number of books of the Bible are published, including a book of sermons on Ephesians. Here are a few excerpts from various writings, both things he has specifically written and also written excerpts from his sermons:

“We must make our election sure in Christ. We dare not become participant in evil things and fall as Israel; which is a good lesson to us. Adam fell and Israel also fell. We, however, cannot fall when we stand and are blessed and called through the Gospel, for in love toward us He has predestinated us unto sonship—we shall be His children. We shall believe and let Him reign in us. Then it is manifest that we were, in times past, called and chosen to become His sons. The Father beforehand appointed this in His Son that we should be children of God; reborn of the spirit. So let us bestow care upon our being acceptable to Him, for our calling follows our being chosen.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.206 ;  from his comments on Ephesians 1:4-6 ; published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“Paul says here that the Father, through the Son, hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings and made us citizens of heaven, which is based on the eternal decision of God, which was made through Christ before the foundation of the world was laid.

The election is deeply grounded with God. When a person is called to the true church of Christ, so that he is converted from darkness to light, it is a predestination which was made before the foundation of the world. This is certain—that if a person who is  called, was predestinated by Christ before the foundation of the world, he will accept the call. The predestination is an election, through which it becomes manifest whom God bath chosen, and the elect come forth so that they may be blessed with all spiritual blessings The election is deeply grounded with God. When a person is called to the true church of Christ, so that he is converted from darkness to light, it is a predestination which was made before the foundation of the world. This is certain—that if a person who is called, was predestinated by Christ before the foundation of the world, he will accept the call. The predestination is an election, through which it becomes manifest whom God bath chosen, and the elect come forth so that they may be blessed with all spiritual blessings earthly. Yet, therefore, we have the spirit in us—the image of the heavenly.

There is much indeed in us. Whoever is from above will also come again thereto; whoever is not from above, will come into the pool of the devil: for a kingdom is already prepared for us. Our destination has been fixed for us by God before the foundation of the world. We must needs rejoice in that our futurity has been established by God— before the foundation of the world! Let us rejoice in that our succession is an election, so that we stand firmly therein and do not serve another spirit, for it is now an inward, hidden kingdom of grace in us—that it may become manifest at His appearance, when the people will be separated from one another and it shall be said, ‘ . . . Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ Matthew 25:34.

‘Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:’

He hath chosen us to be holy and without blame in the world—and the chosen in the world are easily recognized because of their holiness and blamelessness. In God, everything that occurs was fore-known. He knows what takes place. He knew beforehand of Adam’s fall. For that reason the harm that we sustained through Adam was healed again in His Son.  Before our redemption takes place, there is this definite resolution of God. We have tasted, seen and experienced what sin in the world is. Therefore if we are chosen, we cannot turn back and take it on again. Adam took from us what we had and Christ restored it again and gave us an earnest in heaven, namely, the Spirit. We cannot then throw it away.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.203-204 ;  from his comments on Ephesians 2; published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“And our predestination is also simultaneously old for He had, in time past, appointed us unto adoption to Himself. The disclosure of adoption is already made known here when God enlightens us, so that the light in us shall shine forth out of the darkness. If we were thus called, so that we are now with Christ, when this calling has come to light, we then know that is as old as the calling of the Son was from the Father, that is, from everlasting. For nothing has happened and nothing can happen which He did not know and assign from eternity. So whoever was (or is) called may know thereby that he was predestinated before the foundation of the world was lain.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.207 ;  from his comments on Ephesians 1:4-6 ; published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“The children of God, therefore, are well known in the world by their love towards one
another, as well as by the hatred and enmity with which they are persecuted by men
because they are no longer of the world but of God, and indeed are so separated and set
apart from the world that they constitute an unmistakable contrast to it (enter into
opposition with it), yet not according to their own choice or bidding but by God’s
election and calling of grace”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.923 ;  from his comments on I John 3:11 ; published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“But because the world cannot receive the Spirit of truth, for it neither knows nor sees Him, it is evident that all who do receive Him and become children of God must be singled out and set apart from the world, on God’s part by election as well as on the world’s part by expulsion and rejection.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.923 ;  from his comments on I John 3:11 ; published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“For the zealous champions of the doctrine which teaches the restoration of all things cast me aside as an upholder of the doctrine of predestination, and the latter believe that they can detect an inconsistency in my teaching concerning the election of grace. And yet, I do not hold to two conflicting doctrines, for I believe in the election of God according to the Scriptures; but instead of maintaining my view in the character of a point of doctrine, I rather preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a simple manner wherever I chance to be, and leave the separation to God.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.432; “A Short Statement Wherein I Make Clear My Religious Convictions to the New English Continental Society In Answer to Six Questions Propounded by Them”;  published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

“I well know that the elect of God are preserved unto blessedness by the power of God; but who the elect are, in their persons, that we do not know. God alone knows and He knows them that are His, and I think that they who thus boast and insist are least of all the elect, because the former are humble and work out their salvation with fear and trembling.”

(Samuel H. Froehlich in Writings of Samuel Froehlich;  pp.493; “Hauptwyl April — 1836 From a letter to a brother in Ebenat”;  published by The Heritage Center Foundation)

No doubt, many of the things Froehlich said in these passages are horribly inconsistent with other things he’s said and he certainly does not follow the implications of these insights consistently. To be honest, his theology is severely muddled at certain points. But all these quotes are reflective of the fact that there are certain things in Ephesians and other Bible texts that you just can’t avoid (if you are committed to following the Bible wherever it goes, that is).   And Froehlich is honest enough to not avoid them.

Certainly Froehlich, for all his theological problems, to some extent saw the glorious divine grace which is electing grace towards those who, to quote the Westminster Confession of Faith,  “God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed time, effectually to call, by His Word and Spirit, out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature to grace and salvation, by Jesus Christ; enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them an heart of flesh….renewing their wills, and, by His almighty power, determining them to that which is good, and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ: yet so, as they come most freely, being made willing by His grace”.

It is evident that while Froehlich taught  some elements of the Reformed teaching on predestination, he was very inconsistent in how he worked that out, and I believe, was not so Biblical in the way he handled various implications/related issues pertaining to divine grace. He very much obscured what he said on election by many other things he taught. Froehlich is no longer around. But it would be a wonderful day when all those who came after Froehlich would concede the predestination evident in the glorious divine, electing grace of God, as reflected so clearly in Ephesians and elsewhere in the Bible.  And then perhaps at that time they could also be willing to go past Froehlich in not only following the Biblical texts into predestination but to continue and also follow the Biblical implications of this predestination (many of which Froehlich clearly did not grasp–or at least did not like).

“To be sure, a special circumstance influenced the Church in incoporating the Psalter into her official prayer. Certain heterodox influences, especially Gnostic ones, were inflitrating the faithful; and these innovators gladly used songs to inject their poison. Marcion spread a Psalter of his own composition. And Barsdesanes, a heretic of the second century, published a tendentious edition of the 150 Psalms which was spread far and wide through the Syriac church. The Manicheans and Arius successfully used the same tactics. Thus, in the first centuries, heterodoxy was spread in song.

The Church set up a dike, the Psalter of Israel, against invasion. At such a juncture, the deliberate choice of Hebrew prayer was pointedly a reaction. It is, therefore, an error to interpret the permanance of the Psalter in our liturgy as a sign of conservatism and of routine, the simple survival of an ancestral practice.

This faraway history enlightens us to the constant tradition of the Church, and in particular, to its tenacious resistance to counsel, however urgent, that the well-intention faithful have never ceased to lavish on her. From time to time, her children have indeed pressed their mother to retire the Psalter as a collection of outmoded and non-Christian, and to fashion a younger collection of spiritual songs, better adapted to the spirit of the Gospel and more in harmony with the aspirations of today. But Mater Ecclesia, without excluding eventual accommodations, persists in drawing from the ‘waters of Siloe that flow gently’: she refuses to slake her thirst at the ‘river’ which unloosens ruin (Is. 8:6 ff). She mistrusts oversimplified and hazardous solutions.”

(The Songs of the People of God by Charles Hauret, p. 23-24)

–

The Humanness of John Calvin: The Reformer as a Husband, Father, Pastor & Friend by Richard Stauffer, Solid Ground Christian Books

If you are at all interested in the Swiss Reformer John Calvin, I must heartily commend to you this book. In a mere 100 or so pages, Stauffer does an excellent job of a painting a portrait of Calvin. It’s probably a different portrait than what you may have in your mind, but its very accurate and corrects a lot of misconceptions of Calvin.

Calvin is slandered by his enemies, but even people who like him tend to pigeon-hole him into something he is not. Calvin was not a one-track theologian with nothing on his mind but predestination. He was not a cold, heartless exegete. He had a soft pastoral heart and a friendly, temperate disposition in many ways. One by one, Stauffer shows Calvin as a Husband, Father, Pastor, and Friend. To me, the most enlightening of these was “Friend”. The book really shows through primary sources how Calvin came along side people, cared for them, and was fiercely loyal to them. And it was not just one or two friendships that he nurtured, instead Calvin sought a handful of friendships and really himself poured into them.

The section on Calvin as “Pastor” is also very good, showing the way he cared for his people and also his humble approach, even upholding the church leadership which overthrew his own, because he felt it was still a valid church. Calvin’s pastoral heart really shines forth and refutes the idea which relegates Calvin to some sort of cold-hearted dictator. The portrayals of his sympathy and care for human suffering really dispels a lot of common misconceptions.

We also get a good glimpse into Calvin’s married life, and how he cared for his children. Their time was not an easy one, and Calvin’s faith and humanness really comes out as they go through various difficulties, including the plague.

There are two other areas that come out in this book, which aren’t part of the subtitle but seemed prominent to me. First of all, there is a great portrayal of Calvin as a Bachelor and second Calvin as a Matchmaker. Calvin’s desire to encourage good matches for his friends really comes out here.

• I was converted under the preaching of John Preston
• I pastored a newly established congregational church in New England
• I helped establish Harvard College
• Cotton Mather called me “Pastor Evangelicus”

Puritan Two

• I was appointed to the Westminster Assembly, and was the only one who was a member of all three of its major committees
• I was the only member of the Westminster Assembly to become a bishop after the restoration
• I died of kidney stones

Puritan Three

• I immigrated to New England, and enrolled at Harvard
• I had a pastorate in Massachusetts for over 57 years
• I was a doctor, wrote poetry, and interested in botany
• I wrote metrical paraphrases of many Psalms
• My grandson was one of Yale’s earliest presidents

You are not unacquainted with the day of our Communion.

I entreat, therefore, the aid of your prayers for that great work, which is one of our feast days, wherein our well-beloved Jesus rejoiceth and is merry with his friends.

Good cause have we to wonder at his love, since the day of his death was such a sorrowful day to him, even the day when his mother, the kirk [church], crowned him with thorns, and he has many against him, and appeared his lone in the fields against them all; yet he delights with us to remember that day. Let us love him, and be glad and rejoice at his salvation. I am confident that you shall see the Son of God that day, and I dare in his name invite you to his banquet.

- Samuel Rutherford in “A Letter to Marion M’Naught”, May 7, 1631 (from Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Puritan Paperbacks, p.20-21)

• I was expelled from Oxford
• I was born in the same decade as the original publication of the KJV
• I was one of the youngest members of the Westminster Assembly, but not very active in it
• I was beheaded for treason at the age of 33
• 15 volumes of his sermons were published

Puritan Two:

• I was a preacher at Gray’s Inn
• I never married
• John Cotton was converted under my preaching
• I helped Thomas Goodwin in his theology
• My last sermon was on John 14:2

Puritan Three

• I was born in Hetford, England
• I’m said to have memorized the entire New Testament and the book of Psalms
• I catechised John Owen
• I preached during the Great Plague

Puritan Four

• I got my BA at 19, but my Doctorate at 40
• I was one of three clerks at Westminster Assembly
• I counseled Christopher Love before his execution for treason
• I was ejected from the Church of England pulpits in 1662

Take a guess.. If you get one, you will be congratulated and get an honorable mention on this blog

Calvin is slandered by his enemies (see a previous blog post), but even people who like him tend to pigeon-hole him into something he is not. Calvin was not a one-track theologian with nothing on his mind but predestination. He was not a cold, heartless exegete. He had a soft pastoral heart and a friendly, temperate disposition in many ways. One by one, Stauffer shows Calvin as a Husband, Father, Pastor, and Friend.  To me, the most enlightening of these was “Friend”. The book really shows through primary sources how Calvin came along side people, cared for them, and was fiercely loyal to them.  And it was not just one or two friendships that he nurtured, instead Calvin sought a handful of friendships and really himself poured into them.

The section on Calvin as “Pastor” is also very good, showing the way he cared for his people and also his humble approach, even upholding the church leadership which overthrew his own, because he felt it was still a valid church. Calvin’s pastoral heart really shines forth and refutes the idea which relegates Calvin to some sort of cold-hearted dictator. The portrayals of his sympathy and care for human suffering really dispels a lot of common misconceptions.

We also get a good glimpse into Calvin’s married life, and how he cared for his children. Their time was not an easy one, and Calvin’s faith and humanness really comes out as they go through various difficulties, including the plague.

There are two other areas that come out in this book, which aren’t part of the subtitle but seemed prominent to me. First of all, there is a great portrayal of Calvin as a Bachelor (as my previous blog post covered) and second Calvin as a Matchmaker. Calvin’s desire to encourage good matches for his friends really comes out here.

Teasing:

“We know that in the course of the Frankfort Conference of 1539, at which representatives of the two confessions had gathered for discussion, during a meal Melanchthon made fun of Calvin, who had been rather pensive, by saying ‘he was dreaming of getting married’. This pleasantry was perhaps not without basis.” (p.34)

On Celibacy and A Different Take On Being Dedicated More Completely To The Lord:

“‘I am inclined to be hostile to the celibate even though I am not married and don’t know if I ever will be. If I should take a wife, it would be in order to dedicate myself more completely to the Lord, being greatly freed from many worries.” (p.33)

On What He Was Looking For

“on May 19, 1539, Calvin revealed in a letter to his friend Farel that he was looking for a wife. ‘Remember well what I am looking for in her. I am not of the crazy breed of lovers, who, striken by the beauty of a woman, love even her faults. The only beauty which captivates me is that of a chaste, kind, modest, thrifty, patient woman, who I might finally hope would be attentive to my health’. “

Discouragement

” ‘I fear that if you want to attend my wedding, you may not come until much later. I have not yet found a wife, and I am asking myself whether I should search any more’ “

Who He Eventually Found

“Farel wrote Fabri telling him about the marriage of Calvin with an ‘upright and honest’ and ‘even pretty’ woman…He married Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist citizen of Liege who had returned to the Reformed faith shortly before his death.”

Take these examples. Secretly, I wonder whether I should aspire to getting insulted in this way. I still don’t know whether they are compliments or insults.

[John Calvin] is ” the author of a religion of the table, the stomach, the fat, the flesh, the kitchen” (Jacques Desmay, vicar-general of the diocese of Rouen)

In [John Calvin], the whole reformation only tendeth to “establish the reign of wine, women and song” (Jacques Desmay, vicar-general of the diocese of Rouen)

Wine, women, and song. Hmm.. I’ve seen worse errors. Would to God that he raises another Docteur de la Kitchen.

“Contrary to popular impression, the Puritan was no ascetic…he never praised hair shirts or dry crust. He liked good food, good drink and homely comforts; and while he laughed at mosquitoes, he found it a real hardship to drink water when the beer ran out.” — Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family

“worldly things are good in themselves and given to sweeten our passage to heaven” — Richard Sibbes

“[In] the writings of the Puritans, marriage and the sex act within it are affirmed as gifts from God. This was a progressive view, for it contradicted the prevalent medieval teaching that religious celibacy was more virtuous” — Betsy Hart

“We must picture these Puritans as the very opposite of those who bear that name today: as young, fierce, progressive intellectuals, very fashionable and up-to-date. They were not teetotallers; bishops, not beer, were their special aversion.” — C.S. Lewis

“the typical Puritans were not wild men, fierce and freaky, religious fanatics and social extremists, but sober, conscientious, and cultured citizens, persons of principle, determined and disciplined excelling in the domestic virtues” –  J.I. Packer

“These are things to be gloried in. If we find our sins pardoned, our persons accepted, and our nature renewed; we may comfort ourselves in health, in wealth, in wife, in children, in anything, because all come from the favor of God.” — Richard Sibbes

“It is an honest and a lawful, though it may not be a very desirable employment, that you have undertaken: you may glorify God in your employment, if you will, and benefit the town considerably.”

– Cotton Mather to an Ale House owner