Calvin’s Defining Passion in the Protestant Reformation
It’s been said that the overarching passion of Martin Luther that provoked the Reformation was sola fide, the doctrine of justification; that’s what provoked the firestorm initially. As the Reformation developed and moved beyond Germany into England, Scotland, and the Netherlands, the great Swiss Reformer John Calvin began to exert tremendous influence. Calvin is credited with formulating the doctrines that define historic Reformed theology, yet he was indebted for many of his contributions to Luther.
Calvin was Luther’s junior, and he had enormous admiration for Luther. Usually Calvin is linked with the doctrine of predestination, but there was nothing about that doctrine in Calvin that wasn’t first in Luther and nothing in Luther that wasn’t first in Augustine.
Yet predestination was not Calvin’s defining passion. His role in the Reformation was centrally concerned with worship, and he was concerned with applying the principle of soli Deo gloria to worship. Calvin sought to reform the church’s worship and to purify corruptions that had crept in by the time of the sixteenth century, particularly patterns that developed during the Middle Ages.
In the medieval Roman Catholic Church, the use of icons and statuary became very important. Church authorities said that it is not proper to give worship to an icon or to a statue but that it is proper to give service to these items. They distinguished between latreia, or “worship,” and* doulia*, or “devotion.” On the topic of Mary, Roman Catholic authorities said that she was to receive not latreia but hyperdoulia, extreme service to honor her as Theotokos, the mother of God. Calvin stated that this distinction between latreia and doulia of idols was a distinction with-out a difference. He wanted to get rid of idols in any form and said that we ought not to serve them because to serve them is in fact to worship them.
Calvin noted that the fundamental sin of fallen humanity is idolatry, pointing out that the human heart is an idol factory. Paul teaches in Romans 1 that this is the case. In this chapter, Paul is introducing his explanation of the gospel, and he talks about God’s revelation of His wrath against the whole world. God’s wrath is revealed because the whole world is guilty of unrighteousness and ungodliness. The Apostle identifies the particular type of unrighteousness and ungodliness in view as mankind’s stifling the knowledge that God reveals to all of us. God has made Himself known in nature and conscience, and yet sinful humanity suppresses or represses that knowledge and refuses to acknowledge God or to honor Him as God.
People sometimes object that it’s not fair for God to condemn people who have never heard of Christ. Yet the truth is that God will not punish people for not believing in someone they’ve never heard of; He will punish them for rejecting the God who has revealed Himself clearly. All people know God; they simply suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness. That is the sin that they will be punished for.
Paul declares in Romans 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world.” That sounds like a contradiction. How can you see that which is invisible? If it’s able to be seen, then it’s visible, not invisible. But Paul is telling us that the attributes of the invisible God are made manifest through and in the creation, which is visible. By observing the creation, we see and confront the revelation of the invisible attributes of God. Paul goes on to say that “they are without excuse.” People sometimes think that if they were born in a non-Christian culture or if they’ve never heard of Christ, somehow they have an excuse. That won’t work. There is no excuse for rejecting the Father—you can’t plead ignorance, since the Father has manifested Himself clearly. Paul says next, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21).
The last sola to be embraced by fallen creatures is soli Deo gloria because our corruption means that we refuse to honor or glorify God in an appropriate and proper way. We often describe God in such a way that it’s not the true God that we’re talking about. If your god is not sovereign, your god is not God. If you don’t acknowledge the sovereignty of God, if you don’t acknowledge the justice of God, if you don’t acknowledge the omniscience of God, the immutability of God, then whatever god it is that you are acknowledging is not God. You’re not glorifying God as God; you’re glorifying something less than God as if it were God. And to glorify something other than God or less than God as if it were God is the very essence of idolatry. The Apostle explains:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator. (Rom. 1:21–25)
This is our most basic sin: an exchange is made. God reveals Himself, but we trade in the truth and walk out with the lie. We exchange the glory of God for the glory of the creature. That can be done in a crass way of worshiping a tree, a totem pole, or some kind of statue or icon that we craft with our hands. Yet there’s another more sophisticated form of idolatry in which we set up idols intellectually. When we reconstruct our doctrine of God in such a way that we strip Him of those attributes with which we are uncomfortable, we reconstruct a god who is not holy, a god who is not wrathful, a god who is not just, a god who is not sovereign. Then we say, “Well, our god is a god of love, and he has no place for justice or judgment or any of those things; he is pure love and mercy and grace.” We take the attributes of God that we like and reject the attributes of God that we don’t like, and when we do that, we are just as guilty of idolatry as a person who is worshiping a totem pole.
One of the great pernicious lies about the character of God is that we all worship the same god. It doesn’t matter what we call him—Allah or Yahweh or Tao or Buddha—we all worship the same thing. This is false. Notions of this kind are forms of man-made religion, and man-made religion is an idolatrous substitute for true worship. We can be religious and be idolaters at the same time if we are withholding the glory that belongs to God and to God alone. Calvin understood this; he understood how deeply rooted in our souls the penchant for idolatry is and how easily we turn aside from true worship to idolatrous worship. As a result, we must strive to be certain that our worship is appropriate and God-glorifying. Does it honor God the way that God seeks to be honored? Jesus tells the woman at the well that “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23). We need to take that seriously.
In 1996, the Cambridge Declaration was drafted in response to certain worrying trends in the evangelical world. Here’s what it says about soli Deo gloria:
soli Deo gloria: the erosion of God-centered worship, wherein in the church, biblical authority has been lost, Christ has been displaced, the gospel has been distorted or faith has been perverted, it has always been for one reason: our interest had displaced God’s, and we are doing His work in our way. The loss of God’s centrality in the life of today’s church is common and lamentable. It is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment, gospel preaching into marketing, believing into technique or methodology, being good into feeling good about ourselves and faithfulness into being successful. As a result, God, Christ, and the Bible have come to mean too little to us and to rest too inconsequentially upon us. God does not exist to satisfy human ambitions or cravings, or the appetite for consumption or our own private spiritual interests. We must focus on God in our worship rather than in the satisfaction of our personal needs.
People sometimes claim that they don’t enjoy going to church because they don’t get anything out of it. It must be understood, however, that the purpose of the Sunday morning gathering of the saints is not personal enjoyment or entertainment. It’s not evangelism or fellowship either. It is the worship of God. In fact, the whole goal of salvation is to bring people to a place where they worship God and honor Him as God.
The Cambridge Declaration goes on to state, “We reaffirm that because salvation is of God, has been accomplished by God, is for God’s glory that we must glorify Him always, we must live our entire lives before the face of God, under the authority of God, and for the glory of God alone.” In everything we do, we are to give honor and ascribe glory to Him. The declaration goes on, “We deny that we can properly glorify God if our worship is confused with entertainment; if we neglect God’s law or the gospel in our preaching; or if self-improvement, self-esteem, or self-fulfillment are allowed to become alternatives to the gospel.”
Our worship services must be carefully constructed because we do not worship alone. When we come to worship on Sunday morning, we are entering the heavenly sanctuary; we’re involved in the communion of saints where God is present, Christ is present, and the spirits of the righteous made perfect are present. Our worship services are not just for us, and the great danger in our day is that we make ourselves the center of concern and we steal the glory of God. In salvation, in worship, in all that we do, the driving passion of the Christian must always be soli Deo gloria, to God alone be the glory.