John Calvin was America’s ’Founding Father’ [Presbyterian Rebellion Day]

Christian Telegraph ^

[Gamecock]

More than a thousand attendees are expected to gather for a four-day conference to celebrate John Calvin's 500th birthday, reports Michael Ireland, chief correspondent, ASSIST News Service.

As America prepares to celebrate Independence Day this July 4, Vision Forum Ministries will be hosting the national celebration to honor the 500th birthday of John Calvin, a man who many scholars recognize as America's "Founding Father."

The event -- The Reformation 500 Celebration -- will take place July 1-4 at the Park Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston, according to a media release about the event.

"Long before America declared its independence, John Calvin declared and defended principles that birthed liberty in the modern world," noted Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum Ministries.

"Scholars both critical and sympathetic of the life and theology of Calvin agree on one thing: that this reformer from Geneva was the father of modern liberty as well as the intellectual founding father of America," he said.

Phillips pointed out: "Jean Jacques Rousseau, a fellow Genevan who was no friend to Christianity, observed: 'Those who consider Calvin only as a theologian fail to recognize the breadth of his genius. The editing of our wise laws, in which he had a large share, does him as much credit as his Institutes. . . . [S]o long as the love of country and liberty is not extinct amongst us, the memory of this great man will be held in reverence.'"

He continued: "German historian Leopold von Ranke observed that 'Calvin was virtually the founder of America.' Harvard historian George Bancroft was no less direct with this remark: 'He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty.'

"John Adams, America's second president, agreed with this sentiment and issued this pointed charge: 'Let not Geneva be forgotten or despised. Religious liberty owes it much respect.'

"As we celebrate America's Independence this July 4, we would do well to heed John Adams' admonition and show due respect to the memory of John Calvin whose 500th birthday fall six days later," Phillips stated.

Calvin, a convert to Reformation Christianity born in Noyon, France, on July 10, 1509, is best known for his influence on the city of Geneva, the media release explains.

"It was there that he modeled many of the principles of liberty later embraced by America's Founders, including anti-statism, the belief in transcendent principles of law as the foundation of an ethical legal system, free market economics, decentralized authority, an educated citizenry as a safeguard against tyranny, and republican representative government which was accountable to the people and a higher law," the release states.

The Reformation 500 Celebration will honor Calvin's legacy, along with other key Protestant reformers, and will feature more than thirty history messages on the impact of the Reformation, Faith & Freedom mini-tours of historic Boston, and a Children's Parade.

The festivities will climax on America's Independence Day as attendees join thousands of others for the world-renowned music and fireworks celebration on the Esplanade with the Boston Pops Orchestra.

[.45 Long Colt]

I’m not going to debate you in this thread or any other. You don’t understand Scripture and either you don’t know history or you are determined to misstate it to paint the Roman Catholic religion in a better light. Perhaps you are a priest, maybe even a Jesuit.

Yes, Calvin was a sinful man, just like the popes who for centuries presided over hideous tortures and even genocide for so-called “heretics.” They strangled and then burned heretic William Tyndale for daring to translate the Bible into the vulgar English tongue giving common people access to God’s Holy Word. What kind of “church” withholds God’s truth from men? Had I been alive during in certain times and places I would have been one of the inquisition targets because they tortured and murdered people who believe as I believe, namely that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. Pursuant to the Council of Trent, I’m still under worthless anathemas.

Oh, and what was liberating about Calvin was his theology! Without men such as Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, and Knox, the American Revolution would not have happened as it did and our founding documents, if they even existed, would have looked radically different. Our nation has fought tyranny for countless millions around this planet. They have those protestant reformers like Calvin to thank. In contrast, Catholicism goes hand in hand with both theological and political oppression.

[Religion Moderator]

You don’t understand

Reading the mind of another Freeper is a form of "making it personal."

Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.

[Cronos]

I’m not going to debate you in this thread or any other.

You mean you are not going to debate the scripture I posted?

don’t understand Scripture

You mean your inadequate mistranslations of Scripture don't stand up?

[Cronos]

your statement Calvin is among the greatest liberators in human history. shows a need to read

I can recommend Stephen Hick's "John Calvin's Geneva

The city-state of Geneva was in effect, a police state, ruled by a Consistory of five pastors and twelve lay elders, with the bloodless figure of the dictator looming over all, John Calvin....

Frail, thin, short, and lightly bearded, with ruthless, penetrating eyes, he was humorless and short-tempered. The slightest criticism enraged him. Those who questioned his theology he called “pigs,” “asses,” “riffraff,” “dogs,” “idiots,” and “stinking beasts.” One morning he found a poster on his pulpit accusing him of “Gross Hypocrisy.” A suspect was arrested. No evidence was produced, but he was tortured day and night for a month till he confessed. Screaming with pain, he was lashed to a wooden stake. Penultimately, his feet were nailed to the wood; ultimately he was decapitated.

1. Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).
2. Jacques Gruent was racked and then executed for calling Calvin a hypocrite
3. A man who publicly protested against the reformer's doctrine of predestination was flogged at all the crossways of the city and then expelled.
4. Calvin's Letter to the Marquis Paet, chamberlain to the King of Navarre, 1561. "Honour, glory, and riches shall be the reward of your pains; but above all, do not fail to rid the country of those scoundrels [Anabaptists and others], who stir up the people to revolt against us. Such monsters should be exterminated, as I have exterminated Michael Servetus the Spaniard."

Sources quoted in Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, vol. 8:

• "The death penalty against heresy, idolatry and blasphemy and barbarous customs of torture were retained. Attendance at public worship was commanded on penalty of three sols. Watchmen were appointed to see that people went to church. The members of the Consistory visited every house once a year to examine the faith and morals of the family. Every unseemly word and act on the street was reported, and the offenders were cited before the Consistory to be either censured and warned, or to be handed over to the Council for severer punishment."

• Several women, among them the wife of Ami Perrin, the captain-general, were imprisoned for dancing.

• A man was banished from the city for three months because on hearing an ass bray, he said jestingly 'He prays a beautiful psalm.'

• A young man was punished because he gave his bride a book on housekeeping with the remark: 'This is the best Psalter.'

• Three men who laughed during a sermon were imprisoned for three days.

• Three children were punished because they remained outside of the church during the sermon to eat cakes.

• A man who swore by the 'body and blood of Christ' was fined and condemned to stand for an hour in the pillory on the public square.

• A child was whipped for calling his mother a thief and a she-devil.

• A girl was beheaded for striking her parents.

• A banker was executed for repeated adultery.

• A person named Chapuis was imprisoned for four days because he persisted in calling his child Claude (a Roman Catholic saint) instead of Abraham.

• Men and women were burnt to death for witchcraft. (See Pike, pp. 55,56).

From Other Sources:

• Belot, an Anabaptist was arrested for passing out tracts in Geneva and also accusing Calvin of excessive use of wine. With his books and tracts burned, he was banished from the city and told not to return on pain of hanging (J.L. Adams, The Radical Reformation, pp. 597-598).

• Martin Luther said of Calvin's actions in Geneva, "With a death sentence they solve all argumentation" (Juergan L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, vol. I, p. 285).

• "About the month of January 1546, a member of the Little Council, Pierre Ameaux, asserted that Calvin was nothing but a wicked man - who was preaching false doctrine. Calvin felt that his authority as an interpreter of the Word of God was being attacked: he so completely identified his own ministry with the will of God that he considered Ameaux's words as an insult to the honour of Christ. The Magistrates offered to make the culprit beg Calvin's pardon on bended knees before the Council of the Two Hundred, but Calvin found this insufficient. On April 8, Ameaux was sentenced to walk all round the town, dressed only in a shirt, bareheaded and carrying a lighted torch in his hand, and after that to present himself before the tribunal and cry to God for mercy" (F. Wendel, Calvin, pp. 85, 86).

"Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" James 3:11.

NOTE: he was as bad as anyone else in his day. He was no "liberator".

[.45 Long Colt]

I’ll pray for you.

[Cronos]

Nah, Tyndale had no influence on the American revolution -- you do know that tyndale was there just about the time Columbus set sail and quite a while before American independence (btw, you were taught the old one "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, right?

Oh, and you do know that we've been independent for about 200 odd years, right?

[Cronos]

I’ll pray to Jesus Christ for you. If you want to pray to something else, go ahead, that’s your choice. We Christians will pray for you.

[Cronos]

I'll pray to Jesus Christ for you. If you want to pray to something else, go ahead, that's your choice. We Christians will pray for anyone who thinks that a "great liberator" is someone who:

• beheaded a girl
• imprison a man for the name he gives his child
• imprison women for dancing

etc. Is Stalin in this list of yours of "great liberators"?

[ShadowAce]

Yes, Calvin was a sinful man,...

So why do calvinists identify themselves first and foremost with a sinful man, rather than as a disciple of Jesus?

I call myself Christian--not calvinist, not catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or any other denomination. I follow Christ, not the extra-biblical teachings of a sinful man who claims that God creates most men for the express purpose of throwing them into Hell.

[Cronos]

with both theological and political oppression.

do read some history. Read about the Calvinist Hohenzollerns who forced the Lutherans in Prussia to submit to Calvinist ways.

[Cronos]

So why do calvinists identify themselves first and foremost with a sinful man, rather than as a disciple of Jesus?

Not all. One needs to also have pity for the poor souls who don't understand but are easily led by their perception of Calvin as the tough guy.

[.45 Long Colt]

I’m a lawyer, but I also have an M.A. in history. I’ve studied Tyndale extensively. The impact of his work cannot be denied. More than 80% of the text of the King James came straight from Tyndale’s translation and his translation was the major influence on the Geneva Bible, which was the Bible used by the American Puritans and the Pilgrims.

On another note, most of the more than 1,000 Scripture references found in Shakespeare derived from Tyndale’s work. “Without Tyndale, no Shakespeare” is a popular cliché among historians.

[.45 Long Colt]

“I follow Christ, not the extra-biblical teachings of a sinful man who claims that God creates most men for the express purpose of throwing them into Hell.”

That’s what Arminians, semi-pelagians, and other freewillers claim Calvinists believe and it’s a false caricature. I do believe in reprobation, but there is much more to it than that.

I am first and foremost a Christian. I happen to believe the theology nicknamed Calvinism to be the most authentic expression of biblical Christianity, particularly the theology laid out by the Apostle Paul. That theology was believed, taught, and loved by many for centuries before John Calvin took his first breath.

[ShadowAce]

...and it’s a false caricature.

Then explain predestination, omniscience, and election while you prove it is false.

I'm willing to listen.

[balch3]

This thread didn’t turn out like the Calvin-worshipers anticipated.

[stfassisi]

I’ve studied Tyndale extensively. The impact of his work cannot be denied. More than 80% of the text of the King James came straight from Tyndale’s translation and his translation was the major influence on the Geneva Bible, which was the Bible used by the American Puritans and the Pilgrims.

Dear friend, You wasted money being educated about tyndale and the error filled KJV -which is not the word of God in many cases

I don't even need to use Catholic sources to show this. You have the gay king James approving something ought to tell you things can't be trusted

Here is errors found by protestants http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/graphic1designer/errors.html

Never trust western education to tell the truth on anything historical.

[stfassisi]

led by their perception of Calvin as the tough guy.

I don't see much difference between calvin and satanist-both lead to destruction of souls when defended

[BlueDragon]

The site which you [sort of] point to, doesn't quite say what it seems to me you are implying.

Many of the errors (most of the errors?) which arose from them not having a complete Greek received text, were from relying upon the Latin Vulgate at those junctures.

No biblical scholar or translator today relies upon the Latin Vulgate as a primary source document, due to it's many known flaws.

Wow. talk about a comment back-firing... It's no wonder that in your next comment you appear to show some confusion as to the difference between satan, and Calvin.

[stfassisi]

“No biblical scholar or translator today relies upon the Latin Vulgate”

The original Greek is what matters and KJV kooks translated hebrew and used the council of Jamnia which is an Errol

Educate yourself beyond google

[aruanan]

"Scholars both critical and sympathetic of the life and theology of Calvin agree on one thing: that this reformer from Geneva was the father of modern liberty as well as the intellectual founding father of America," he said.

That's absurd. John Calvin established the first modern totalitarian society in Geneva. He was also the godfather of modern materialism. Though, I guess he could be considered the father of "modern liberty," the ideological, dirigist variety where a small group determines what is liberty for the masses living under their edicts.