INTRODUCTION
This is a book about two conflicting worldviews. In
particular it is about how differently Calvinists and Darwinists view the
world. If you are under-whelmed with excitement at the mere thought of
attempting to read a whole book dealing with this topic, then let me reassure
you with an old North American Indian adage: ‘Walk a mile in another man’s
moccasins before you criticize him’! This is very much the path we have taken
throughout this book.
As we travel together we will examine the nature of
things – as seen through the eyes of both John Calvin (1509-64) and Charles
Darwin (1809-82). As you already can see, the year 2009 was the five-hundredth
and two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of each of these men respectively.
Why write a book about the thoughts of two men from
so long ago? Well, Calvin with his ‘Institutes of Christian Religion’ and
Darwin with his ‘The Origin of Species’ have very much influenced Western
thinking. For example, arguably many of the democratic freedoms we in the West
today enjoy owe a great debt to the busy pen of John Calvin – including the
freedom of speech that allowed Charles Darwin to pen his ‘The Origin of
Species.’
Mind you, was it not for Evolutionary Thought
we would not be entertained by the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars movies.
For, the premise for all the alien life-forms in these and other movies of
their ilk is due to the Theory of Evolution. Think about it: If it is
believed that life has somehow evolved on earth then it is likely to have
somehow evolved elsewhere in the universe. Such-like views are extrapolated
from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution so called. The millions of dollars
spent funding SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) projects are also
based on the Theory of Evolution.
However, as much as watching movies with aliens in
them, and as much as serious alien searches in outer space also can be fun and
exciting, there is a downside to the Theory of Evolution that also needs
to be noted. For, it is from the views espoused in Darwin’s The Origin of
Species that much of the Militant Atheism in our own day has arisen! Make
no mistake, Calvinism and Neo-Darwinism are two very much opposed worldviews.
They are locked in mortal combat. So serious is this matter that, if it hasn’t
already, Western democracy will become detached from its Christian moorings to
be set adrift in the uncharted seas of relativism – i.e., if Neo-Darwinism is
permitted to cut the West’s Biblical moorings.
Says one representative atheist,
We must
fight for a post-Christian secularism, that is to say atheistic, militant, and
radically opposed to choosing between Western Judeo-Christianity and its
Islamic adversary – neither Bible nor Koran. I persist in preferring
philosophers to rabbis, priests, imams, ayatollahs, and mullahs. Rather than
trust their theological hocus-pocus, I prefer to draw on alternatives to the
dominant philosophical historiography: the laughers, materialists, radicals,
cynics, hedonists, atheists, sensualists, voluptuaries. They know that there is
only one world, and that promotion of an afterlife deprives us of the enjoyment
and benefit of the only one there is. A genuinely deadly sin.[1]
Au contraire! As a matter of fact, as a Christian I enjoy this world
very much thank you! I’m also looking forward to this world’s future renewal!
Therefore I would much rather listen to the Frenchman and Christian John Calvin
than the Frenchman and anti-Christian Michel Onfray any day! Says Calvin,
The
Apostle Paul distinguishes believers by this mark, that their ‘conversation is
in heaven,’ whence also they ‘await their Saviour’ (Philippians 3:20). And,
that their courage may not fail in this race, Paul joins all creatures to them
as companions. For because formless ruins are seen everywhere, he says that
everything in heaven and on earth strives after renewal (Romans 8:19). For
since Adam by his fall brought into confusion the perfect order of nature, the
bondage to which the creatures have been subjected because of man’s sin is
heavy and grievous to them. Not that they are endowed with any perception, but
they naturally long for the undamaged condition whence they have fallen.
Accordingly, Paul has attributed ‘groaning’ and ‘birth pangs’ (Romans 8:22) to
them, that we, ‘who have received the first fruits of the Spirit’ (Romans
8:23), should be ashamed to languish in our corruption, and not at least to
imitate the dead elements, which bear the punishment for the sin of another.
To prick
us more sharply, Paul calls the final coming of Christ ‘our redemption’ (cf.
Romans 8:23). It is true indeed that all the parts of our resurrection have
already been completed; but because Christ was once for all offered for sins
(Hebrews 10:12), ‘He shall appear a second time, apart from sin... unto
salvation’ (Hebrews 9:28). Whatever hardships distress us, let this
‘redemption’ sustain us until its completion.[2]
John Calvin (1509-64) systematized the Christian Religion at the time when the
Church that had become very deformed under the papacy and Roman Catholicism,
was being reformed. Reformed Christianity, to which I adhere, began at the time
of the great Reformation – a time of getting back to what the Bible really
teaches.
Perhaps you have been inoculated against Reformed
Christianity and the Christian worldview. Perhaps some portion of
misinformation propagated by anti-Christians such as Michel Onfray or Richard
Dawkins has so gotten stuck in your craw that it causes you to spit whenever
you hear Calvin’s name mentioned! A small sample of the teeth gnashing and
vitriol spewing that the name of Calvin causes in some can be found in the
following caricature of Calvin and some of his Biblical understandings, as
painted by the Darwinist and ‘journalist’ Christopher Hitchens,
According
to the really extreme religious totalitarians, such as John Calvin, who
borrowed his awful doctrine from Augustine, an infinity of punishment can be
awaiting you even before you are born. Long ago it was written which souls
would be chosen or ‘elected’ when the time came to divide the sheep from the
goats. No appeal against this primordial sentence is possible, and no good
works or profession of faith can save one who has not been fortunate enough to
be picked. Calvin’s Geneva was a prototypical totalitarian state, and Calvin
himself a sadist and torturer and killer, who burned Servetus (one of the great
thinkers and questioners of the day) while the man was still alive. The lesser
wretchedness induced in Calvin’s followers, compelled [them] to waste their
lives worrying if they had been ‘elected’ or not…[3]
Hitchens goes on to state that he has had some crazy people phone him ‘with
hoarse voices condemning me to death or hell or both’ … And of ‘the eternal
blackening of my name by religious frauds and liars.’[4] Crazy people are crazy whatever their
worldview, but, in the interest of truth, sanity, and the un-blackening of the
name of John Calvin, Francis Nigel Lee sets the record straight,
Servetus
had blasphemously described the most blessed Trinity as a three-headed dog and
a monster from hell! Yet even at a time when the Catholic Inquisition was
seeking to slay Servetus and every Protestant city in Europe had expelled him
or condemned him, Calvin corresponded with him and sent him a copy of his
Institutes. For Calvin sought to win Servetus to Christ!
Knowing
full well that Calvin favoured the punishment of exile for heretics and the
death penalty for blasphemers, the wretched Servetus arrogantly made his way to
Geneva planning to overthrow Calvin and de-christianize the city. Put on trial
by the civil magistrates of Geneva (and not by Calvin who was neither a judge
nor a citizen of that city) Servetus was found guilty of blasphemy and sedition
and sentenced to death by burning. Calvin unsuccessfully tried to get Servetus
to recant his errors. When Servetus would not recant, Calvin pleaded for a
milder form of punishment. And later still, Calvin also pleaded with Servetus
in his death cell to get right with God and accept the Divine Christ as his
Lord and Master!
Rarely in
the annals of history has so much evangelical concern ever been shown to such a
monstrous miscreant, as Calvin showed to Michael Servetus, enemy of Christ and
Christianity and of public law and order! Even during that highly intolerant
age, the gentle Calvin tenderly yet firmly presented Christ and His salvation
to the very man who had sought to destroy him![5]
By first looking at ‘The Question that Divides’ and
then considering ‘The Tie that Binds’ The Nexus book is a call for the
return to the way of thinking that made the Western nations great in the first
place; i.e., to thinking Biblically. Calvin shows us how to do this: We use the
Scriptures as our ‘spectacles.’
Yes, there will be much sabre-rattling heard from
the Atheist Fundamentalists’ camp at the mere thought of a book of this sort,
but all I ask is that the reader ‘Walk a mile in another man’s moccasins before
you criticize him.’ However, if you would walk a mile with me please also keep
in mind what Jesus says in Scripture, ‘Whoever compels you to go one mile, go
with him two.’ In other words, really hear me out before you agree/disagree
with me!
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