Just a few weeks ago, President Trump announced a cessation of hostilities with Iran, however tenuous it appears, a conflict having an existential impact upon the modern nation state of Israel and threats upon other Middle Eastern nations as well. But the story goes back a long, long, way….
In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey (not to be confused with the city in Italy, Pompei, and its famous volcano) laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. Following the collapse of competing and aging Greek empires, the Ptolemaic in Egypt and the Seleucid in Syria, Rome took advantage of the power vacuum and took an interest in the ancient land of the Bible.
Pompey, a religious outsider to the Jews, after defeating some Jewish resistance, entered the Jewish Temple and even walked into the Holy of Holies, thus desecrating it. Interestingly, Pompey did not take anything. Instead, he ordered that the Temple rituals be continued, as he claimed victory over the city. A little over a century earlier, the Maccabean revolt had shaken off the shackles of their Greek overlords. but now that period of Jewish self-rule came to an end, with Pompey’s conquest of the holy city. Nevertheless, the Romans did not destroy the Jews as a people or their Temple. What then was Pompey’s objective in taking Jerusalem?
Neither the Old nor the New Testament tell us about this remarkable turn of events. Rarely do Christians hear about this in evangelical churches. But this story of Pompey sets up the narrative which stands at the center of controversy over Jesus of Nazareth, who would be born just a few decades later.
The Romans and Jews were at odds with one another. To the Jews, the Romans were idolaters, worshipping many gods. To the Romans, the Jews were peculiar in their religious practices. Yet the Romans wanted to maintain some control over Judea, as Rome detected a growing threat rising in the East. The Parthian empire, whose power was centered in modern-day Iran, challenged that of Rome.
As the Romans grew to prominence, they kept bumping into their Parthian neighbors in the East, and the two did not get along well. The relatively small Jewish nation had become sandwiched between these two great empires. Though Rome now had control of Judea, it was not without some difficulty. For there were still Jews living in the East in Parthian territory, remnants of those who stayed mostly east of the Euphrates, and did not return back to the area of Jerusalem following the decline of Babylon.
Rome needed Judea as a buffer against the Parthians. But they did not want to alienate the native Jewish population of Judea such that it would raise sympathies with those Jews still living in Parthian lands. For those eastern Jews might enlist with the Parthians to push back against Rome.
Barry Strauss’ Jews Vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellions Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, tells the story of the ancient conflict between the Jews and the Roman Empire. Not only does Strauss’ book give us essential background material for understanding the Bible, it helps us understand the complexity of current events in the Middle East.
Historian Barry Strauss outlines this background material in his Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, which tells the tale of tensions between these two peoples, between Pompey’s arrival in Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and the ultimate destruction of Jewish nation in the land of Judea, through Emperor Hadrian’s crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in the 130’s CE. The first century of the Christian movement is smack dab in the middle of it all, and yet you hardly hear much about this in many evangelical churches.
In our New Testament, Christians read about a bunch of people all named “Herod.” When first reading the New Testament, it is easy to think there was this one person named Herod who kept popping up all of the time throughout the stories of the Gospels. It can be difficult to track with the “Who’s Who” of the Herods. The New Testament itself barely tells us much about who these people really were, and how they got to be the Herods of the New Testament.
The Romans were in a quandary about what to do with Judea following Pompey’s victory. The Romans were hesitant to bring in a pagan Roman to rule a people with such strange religious habits and beliefs, such as male circumcision, eating a restricted food diet, and worshipping only one God. But within a few years, the first Herod, Herod the Great, emerged as the client ruler of choice for the Romans. Through Herod, an Idumean and not really a full Jew (though he tried to position himself as one), the Romans found someone who could look after Rome’s interests in Judea without provoking intervention from the Parthians off to the east.
In some ways, Barry Strauss likens Herod the Great to having a particular “Donald Trump” transactional quality, that of celebrating the art of the “deal.” Herod believed that he could make a deal between Rome and the Jews, where both sides could get something that they wanted, though not everything, and still both Romans and Jews can somehow live in peace together, even if it was a fragile peace.
Herod was a builder, who constructed a deep-water port in Caesarea, along the Mediterranean, as well as greatly enhancing the architecture and grandeur of the Jerusalem Temple. These marvels were attempts to show Rome and the Jews that he was on both of “their” sides. Herod was also extremely paranoid and ruthless. The Gospel of Matthew lets New Testament readers know of this reputation through the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem.
After Herod’s death, around the time of Christ’s birth, Herod’s realm was divided into three pieces, one piece given to three of his sons. The New Testament tells us about Herod Antipas ruling up in Galilee, who stayed in power for a number of years. But then there was Herod’s other son, Herod Archelaus, who ruled over Judea, after he traveled to petition Rome for the right to rule in Jerusalem, following his father’s death. Mathew 2:22 gives the reader a sense that this Herod was just as ruthless as his father.
Unfortunately for Herod Archelaus, while he had his father’s ruthlessness, he did not have enough tactfulness to know when too much was too much. By 6 A.D. (CE), he was recalled by Rome, as complaints by the Jews were made against Archelaus. This led the Romans to finally bring in leadership from the outside, bringing the land of Judea under direct Roman control. The most famous of these leaders was Pontius Pilate.
Pilate had his run-ins with the Jews, but it was nothing compared to the crisis precipitated by Gessius Florus, the Roman governor appointed by the infamous Emperor Nero to rule in Judea during the years 64-66 CE. When Gessius raided the Jerusalem Temple for cash, this instigated an uprising among the Jews. Josephus, the Jewish military leader who turned traitor during the Great Jewish Revolt, blamed Gessius for the start of the conflict, which eventually led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans.
Josephus remains our best source for this period, though Strauss is careful enough to acknowledge that Josephus would at times fudge the facts to make himself look better. But the record that Josephus leaves provides a detailed tale of how the Jews, in seeking to defend against the Romans, were in many ways more at war with one another. Much of the conflict among the Jews were between those who believed that Rome should be resisted at all costs, whereas other more moderate Jews believed that Jewish resistance to Rome was futile.
Ultimately, the latter group proved to be right, as the Romans led by the future emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem and left the Temple in ruins. This was followed up by the dramatic siege by the Romans of the mountain fortress by the Dead Sea, Masada, of the last of the Jewish rebels. However, though Josephus leaves us the most detail regarding the tragedy of the Great Jewish Revolt, the outcomes of two later revolts caused more death and destruction across a much wider area.
Temple plunder depicted on the Arch of Titus, Rome, a must-see artifact at the entrance to the Roman Forum, which my wife and I visited in 2018. Titus brought back thousands of defeated Jews as slaves to Rome, after he defeated Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple in 70 A.D.
The Jewish Diaspora revolt, sometimes known as Second Jewish-Roman War, or the Kitos War, from about 116-118 CE, mainly involved the Jews in and around Alexandria, Egypt, the area which supplied a vast majority of food for Rome. Tensions between these Alexandrian Jews and the Romans in Egypt erupted, soon after Rome went to war against the Parthians. Thousands of both Jews and Romans died in the conflict, with Rome eventually gaining the upper hand.
Then finally, there was the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 CE, sometimes called the Third Jewish-Roman war, led by the messianic leader Simon Bar Kokhba against the pagan Emperor Hadrian, who decisively defeated the Jews. Hadrian had renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, placing a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, and even renamed Judea as Palestine, which even today is taken by some Jews as a slur. The cost was certainly heavy for the Romans, but the greatest loss was for the Jews, who were effectively exiled again from much of their homeland, by the end of 135 CE.
Nevertheless, as Strauss paints it, it was the Jews who survived in the long run, while Rome ultimately failed. The Jews lost their Temple, the core element of their faith, but in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, and finally with the defeat of Bar Kokhba, the surviving Jews basically found a way to reinvent Judaism, retaining an embrace of the Law of Moses, without a Temple at its center. Furthermore, the Jews were able to do so, living as a minority in a culture dominated by those who were not like them in their beliefs and practices.
Strauss’ Jews vs. Rome weaves a fascinating story of those three great Jewish revolts, and the consequences which followed. Having this story in mind sheds a lot of light on the background for the New Testament, and the world in which figures like Jesus, Paul, and the other early disciples of Jesus lived.
One particular story stands out to me regarding the time of Jesus in Galilee. Roughly about the time that Jesus was born, there was a city, Sepphoris, just a few miles from Jesus’ boyhood home of Nazareth, which had undergone a revolt against Herodian rule. But the Romans came in and destroyed the city, taking the inhabitants off to become enslaved. A new population, more friendly to the Romans, occupied the remains of the city, which was rebuilt during the early years of Jesus. Unfortunately, the New Testament never mentions Sepphoris, despite its proximity and walking distance from Nazareth. Some historians speculate that Jesus may have accompanied his carpenter father to help rebuild that city.
Strauss’ work also helps us understand what is going on in Israel today, particularly in view of the crisis of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s aggressive response in Gaza for over two years, including military conflicts in southern Lebanon and with Iran. In a 2025 YouTube short video of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister comments about his reading of Barry Strauss’ book, and why he desired to read the book. Netanyahu responded with, “Well we lost that one, and we have to win the next one.” The video pops every now and then on YouTube, but at times the video has been taken down. The last version I know about is linked here.
Veracity blogger, on-site, at the Roman Forum, in 2018, where the “pagan” culture of Rome reigned supreme, until the story of the Crucified and Resurrected One superseded it. On the opposite side of the Roman Forum, at the entrance, stands the Arch of Titus, which depicts the defeat of Jerusalem, in 70 A.D., which among the Jewish people was pretty much the equivalent to the “9-11” attack in the United States, for Americans.
What is so eerie about reading Jews vs. Rome is how relevant Strauss’ book is to current events. Not too long after reading Strauss’ book, the United States and Israel made pre-emptive strikes against the Iranian Shiite regime, in late February, 2026. While the war has been greatly debated in the United States, as to its legitimacy, it would appear that for the Israelis, there is less controversy (though clearly not everyone in Israel agrees with Netanyahu). One can read from Netanyahu’s comments about Jews vs. Rome, that Netanyahu believes that Israel today can not afford to make the same mistakes made some 2,000 years ago. Israel’s foreign policy understands that the Shiite regime in Iran is the rough equivalent to first century Rome. I will leave it to the news commentators and political analysts, who know better than I do, as to what Netanyahu has been thinking, and if he has been right or not.
My primary takeaway from Jews vs. Rome is historical, in how the story of this ancient conflict can help us to better comprehend the historical context of the Bible. Understanding the conflict between Rome and Jews helps Christians to better understand why so many of Jesus’ followers were hoping him to be a military and political Messiah, who would rise up against Rome, and remove the Romans from the land. The period of the Jews versus Rome conflict represents the zenith of apocalyptic writings and thinking among the Jews. The Jews were expecting a messianic figure to come, bring an end to the current world order, and start something new, with the liberation of Israel as the focal point. However, in the case of the early Christian movement, that did not turn out exactly the way many Jews were anticipating. The announcement of the coming Kingdom of God by Jesus of Nazareth took on a completely different dimension, one that would forever change the trajectory of human history.
Many thanks go to Barry Strauss for giving the reader an enthralling account of the conflict, which became the fertile ground from which the Christian faith took hold in the world, some twenty centuries ago. The fact that the situation regarding the fate of ancient Israel stills holds immense narrative power should tell us why the conflict in the Middle East seems like it is never ending.
Want more details about the book? Listen to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s interview with Barry Strauss.
Greg Harris is a friend of mine. My wife and I were in a small group Bible study with Greg and his wife Kim for a couple of years in our church. Greg is pretty soft spoken, so you would never know that he is the executive director of Counteract International, a ministry to incarcerated youth in Central America, unless you pressed him to talk about his story.
In his recent book, Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose, author Greg Harris tells stories of how Counteract staff in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras go to Central American detention centers to offer vocational training, counseling, and above all, Christian hope, to a population of young people who have been largely abandoned due to poverty and neglect.
Hopelessness Among Central American Youth
The explosive growth of gangs in Central America is a notorious social problem, which seems distant to most North Americans. But we do see the fallout in our society, as many young people and families fleeing violence over the past few decades have made their way as immigrants into the United States, either legally or illegally. Extreme poverty has forced countless young people to experience alienation in their homes, neglect and even abuse by their parents, part of a spiraling breakdown of families which repeats generation after generation.
Gangs function as alternatives to biological family and Christian community. Where biological and even church families fail to provide a structured, supportive, and safe environment for kids to flourish, they will turn to gangs who offer a promise of protection and sense of importance and value. Unfortunately, the promises that gangs offer are only a counterfeit, however appealing they might appear in times of crisis.
The effects of gang violence in Central America are staggering. Several countries in Central America have had some of the largest murder rates in the world. Honduras, for example, had 37.6 homicides per 100,000 people as of 2021. The number of homicides per person in Latin America is roughly five times higher than in North America.
However, there is some good news recently as some trends appear to be reversing, but problems still persist, just in different ways. El Salvador was known for having the worst murder rate in the world, roughly 106 per 100,000 in 2015, roughly one murder per hour. Nearly ten years later, after the government started to aggressively crack down on gangs, that rate has dropped dramatically to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025, making El Salvador one of the safest countries in the world. But the shift has come at a cost, with El Salvador having one of highest incarceration rates, about 1.6% of the population. What does one do with all of those young people in prison?
Counteract, originally named as “Orphan Helpers,” was started by a Virginia realtor, Greg Garrett, back in 2000. As a Christian businessman, Garrett wanted to know how he could help “the least of these,” quoting the words of Jesus in the New Testament. Over time, some Central American governments began to close orphanages, and so Counteract began to shift their mission purpose to meet the greatest, growing need. Since then, Counteract has focused its mission on training and sending staff into the prisons and detention centers in order to walk alongside troubled youth who experience very little hope, who tend to distrust the larger society around them.
Greg Harris, and his co-author Francisco “Pancho” Molina, tell the story ably well in Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose. One of the most moving stories Greg and Pancho tell in the book comes from the COVID lockdown, when the detention centers decided to lockdown their facilities in certain areas for 21 days, where no one, including guards and other administrative personnel, could leave their respective centers for that entire time period.
Counteract staff had been told that this policy would apply to them as well: No more visits during the day, and then returning home for the night. Once you entered the detention facility, you were pretty much in there with everyone else. It was a difficult decision, as Counteract staff typically have families of their own outside of the detention center walls to take care of. Yet sacrificially, all of the Counteract staff decided to commit to the 21 day isolation policy, and stay with their incarcerated kids. These Counteract staff knew that over 90% of their job was simply to show up and be there for these kids, who had no hope otherwise.
Counteract’s Mission to “Love Thy Stranger”
Greg’s book had been out for a few months, so I finally got around to reading it this spring. I am glad I did.
Whereas most cultures have believed that one should take care of friends and family in need, caring for strangers was not part of that social ethic. Yet the New Testament stood that kind of cloistered social ethic on its head by expanding the concept of “love thy neighbor,” a phrase many know from the Hebrew Bible. In Christianity, particularly through the Gospels and the writings of the Apostle Paul, the idea of “neighbor” includes not just family and friends, but also strangers in need. For example, Ehrman observes that the entire history of “hospitals” grew out of the Christian tradition. Therefore, it should not be a surprise to find Christians in El Salvador making their way as counselors into prisons to befriend mistrusted, isolated youth.
Today, when many distrust Christianity as being something not so good for the world, it is encouraging to hear a non-believing historian acknowledge that the Christian faith introduced to human history the idea of caring for people who are strangers to you. Christianity changed the moral conscience of the West.
Ehrman’s conclusion is ironic as an atheist: “thank God for Christianity.” For atheists who have no divine transcendent metanarrative to appeal to, the best they can do is to borrow from the ethical dimension of Christianity to guide them.
What Greg Harris writes about in Counteract is the perfect expression of “love thy stranger.” While young people who get mixed up in gangs are often treated as strangers who are to be forgotten, ignored, or else marginalized from society, Counteract International offers a positive witness to the gospel message that gives hope to those who otherwise have no hope.
Greg’s book is a short read, less than 200 pages. It will stimulate you to engage in a ministry where Christians can truly become the hands and feet of Christ, offering hope to the hopeless. Through Counteract International, followers of Jesus are finding ways to connect with young people in the prison system in Central America, making friends out of strangers. I generally do not tear up when reading a book, but I teared up when reading this one.
If you want to invest in a Christian ministry doing high-quality work to care for those “strangers” hidden away in prisons, investing in the ministry of Counteract International, which Greg Harris writes about in his book, will extend that message of hope to those who feel hopeless. That message of hope actually works to change lives, which should encourage us in a day when so many negative aspects about our world can bring us down. I highly recommend Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose for everyone.
From the Christianity along the Rhine blog series… probably the last installment…
Back in October, 2025, my wife and I took a Viking longboat cruise ship down the Rhine River, starting in Basel, Switzerland, an experience that easily scratched my church history itch. But before we arrived in Basel, we stayed for two nights in Zurich, Switzerland, which is the setting for this story, where the legacy of Carl Jung began to permeate the modern world. I thought I would end this travelogue series with one more look back at Zurich….
While in Zurich, we took a boat trip around Lake Zurich. There we saw the home of Carl Jung on the shore of the lake, the main subject of this story, and a central character in a book I read prior to arriving in Zurich….
The combined influence of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung has shaped the modern world in many ways.
The relationship between Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis, and the younger Carl Jung, who adapted Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, is the focus of John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method, which was later adapted into a 2011 film of the same name, by director David Cronenberg. Both Freud and Jung were born in the 19th century, as multiple disciplines of science were being established in the Western world. Freud, an Austrian Jew, and Jung, a Swiss son of a Protestant pastor, independently entered into the developing field of psychiatry, in an effort to find a scientific way to understand the human mind, in hopes of analyzing and curing mental illness.
Freud spent most of his career in Vienna, Austria, whereas Jung practiced his profession in Zurich, Switzerland. The two eventually met and became friends, whereby Freud began to view Jung as his intellectual son, who could carry the psychoanalytic movement forward….
A Most Dangerous Method: A Short Review of the Book
What makes Kerr’s history in A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein so intriguing is the introduction of a third character, a young Jewish Russian woman, Sabina Spielrien, who was a psychiatric patient of Jung’s in Zurich. Spielrein would eventually become one of the first female psychoanalysts herself, until she and her two daughters were murdered by the Nazis during World War II in Russia.
Yet as a young patient of Jung’s in his Zurich clinic, she began to have an infatuation with her Swiss psychiatrist, and the two had some kind of affair. Kerr is cautious in not definitively concluding that the affair was sexual, offering instead to say that Spielrein and Jung shared “poetry” together. The film version of the book is not so cautious, and openly portrays the affair as sexual. I could have done without that gratuitious aspect of modern filmmaking.
Either way, for Kerr the character of Spielrein brings into the relationship between Freud and Jung a special dynamic which also explains how these two intellectual giants of the early 20th century eventually parted ways and dissolved their friendship. Though culturally a Jew, Freud took his psychoanalytic theory in a more materialistic and atheistic direction, whereas Jung sought to combine psychoanalytic theory with his own understanding of Christianity.
According to Kerr, what eventually drove Freud and Jung apart was their efforts to psychoanalyze the other, as each man knew of a hidden flaw in the other, which made for a barrier which could not be breached. Freud was having an affair with his wife’s sister, which Jung knew about, whereas Spielrein as an up-and-coming psychiatrist began to consult Freud after Jung severed the affair with Spielrein.
However, it was not the sexual insecurities and histories of both Freud and Jung which alone drove the two apart. It was also the religious backgrounds of each, Freud’s Jewish heritage and Jung’s Christian heritage. Thirdly, it included the very real intellectual differences between the two men, particularly in how each viewed the essential features of psychoanalytic theory and method. The combination of all three tensions: the sexual, the religious, and the intellectual, doomed their friendship and collaboration. In the discipline of psychology, both Freud and Jung were schismatic, both thinking of the other as a heretic. So much for the idea that psychoanalysis was a science that could rise above such differences.
The contribution of Spielrein to the development of psychoanalysis was rarely noticed by anyone until some of her papers were discovered in the 1970s. But the influence of both Freud and Jung in the modern world can not be ignored. Freud pioneered the practice of using free association as a means of diagnosing mental health issues. Freud pursued efforts at dream interpretation in order to reveal repressed memories. He also developed a theory of the human pysche made up of the id, ego, and the super-ego, whereby the life drive, the libido, was in continual conflict with the death instinct.
Carl G. Jung’s last residence, on Lake Zurich in Switzerland. Jung’s home is now a museum. I did not get a chance to visit the museum, but on a boat trip around Lake Zurich, I I took this snapshot of Jung’s home, when my wife and I visited Zurich in October, 2025.
The Enduring Influence of Sigmund Freud, and Even More So, Carl Jung in Psychotherapy
Jung for his part popularized the concept of the archetype, the anima and the animus, and synchronicity. We also get the popular idea of personality types, the extrovert and the introvert, from Carl Jung. Hardly a day or two goes by where someone I converse with does not use terms like “ego,” “introvert,” or “extrovert” to either describe themselves or someone else they know. We live in the shadow of a world created by Freud and Jung.
For Kerr, Spielrein played an essential role, prompting both Freud and Jung to consider new ideas in the development of each thinker’s particular approach to psychoanalysis. Spielrein is also noted for having psychoanalyzed the great child psychologist, Jean Piaget.
Yet despite the positive contributions that Freud, Jung, and now, apparently Spielrein, have made to psychiatric theory and practice, the sticking point for Christians today is how such ideas have been extended beyond psychology into the realm of how we think about God in an increasingly secularized world. Confidence in the Bible as God’s revelation has been superseded in the development of the psychoanalytic movement: God is less a real person to have a relationship with and more a concept in which to interpret the inner workings of the mind. Freud had an apparently antagonistic view of Christianity, whereas Jung sought to reconceptualize Christianity, or at best in trying to reinvigorate interest in Christianity, by laying aside questions of history and focusing on the concept of myth, looking at the stories of the Bible as a lens by which we can better understand the human psyche.
The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon: Jungian Psychology for a 21st Century Audience
Here in the early 21st century, the influence of Freud has been eclipsed by the influence of Jung. We often hear people talk about things like “Freudian slips,” but Freud’s outlook on mental health today has been largely superseded by the insights of his Zurich younger counterpart. That influence has been felt even within the Christian church.
The most popular proponent of a Jungian interest in Christianity is none other than Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychiatrist, who is widely influential on YouTube and the DailyWire. Jordan Peterson considers himself not to be a “typical Christian;” that is, he is not committed to anything which might be defined as historically orthodox, but neither would he embrace atheism.
Jordan Peterson is clearly a disciple of Carl Jung. He has used his insights gained from Jungian psychology to examine the problem of what makes a normal person commit horrific acts of evil, among a variety of other things. Peterson combines his interest in the work of Carl Jung with Russian authors, like Fyodor Dostoevsky, to reinvigorate an interest in Christian spirituality. The “Rise of Jordan Peterson,” a phenomenon which prompted the title to documentary about Peterson, stands in contrast with the pessimism towards Christianity promoted by the New Atheism movement of the early 21st century. In a world that seems to be growing in its skepticism of Christianity in general, it is a relief to know that Jordan Peterson’s friendly interest in Christianity is sparking fruitful conversations about the faith.
Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of skepticism among historically orthodox Christians that such psychoanalytic efforts to rethink Christian theology will ultimately amount to much, despite the best of intentions by the proponents who offer it. After myself having read books by those like John Sanford and Morton Kelsey, who have sought to integrate Jungian thought and Christianity, the project seems to lead to nowhere, despite the lure of tantalizing insights into the human psyche.
I know of Christians who have benefited from various psychological insights from Jung’s work. But while I would not want to disparage such interests, some caution is in order. The famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, which divides the human psyche along four axes: Introvert versus Extrovert, Thinking versus Feeling, Intuitive versus Sensing, and Perceptive versus Judging, is built squarely on the psychoanalytic foundations set forth by Carl Jung (Frankly, in my view, the Myers-Briggs test is not that much different from the Enneagram, but that’s a topic for another blog post).
Nevertheless, as Christian apologist Douglas Groothuis has argued, there is just too much openness to the occult in Jungian thought to lead to real, genuine spiritual healing for those tormented by questions of the soul. I have read enough of Jung’s thoughts on the interpretation of the Bible to know that he is not much of a careful exegete of the Bible. Rather, he interprets many passages of the Bible through his psychoanalytic framework. If you spent much time reading books by Jordan Peterson, or view his YouTube videos, you will get a lot of the same thing.
Like with Jung, Jordan Peterson’s influence on stirring interest in Christianity has been like a two-edged sword. On the one hand, Peterson is great at generating interest in Christianity, and he does have many helpful insights to offer his readers/viewers, particularly for young men. Peterson’s famous book regarding his “12 Rules for Life” does have its spiritual rewards. Even Peterson’s wife, Tammy, returned to the Roman Catholic Church a few years ago. But if you really want to understand the Bible, there are more tried and true ways of interpreting Scripture the Bible without Peterson’s Jungian hermeneutical grid often getting in the way.
Carl Jung via Jordan Peterson as a Gateway to Historic Orthodox Christian Faith?
As the world’s most recognized disciple of Jung today, Jordan Peterson, acts as kind of like a “gateway drug” into Christianity. If that is what it takes to bring someone into the orbit of Christian faith, then that is great. But I find that Peterson’s brand of Jungian psychology only carries you but so far. For those Christians who are overly skeptical about Jordan Peterson’s influence, then you might want to consider the impact Peterson has had on her daughter Mikhaila, who from what I can see from this interview with Canadian Christian apologist, Wes Huff, has also become a Christian, showing a keen interest in knowing more about historic orthodox Christianity. Wes Huff might be the most well-known Christian apologist active on YouTube these days, and his interview with Mikhaila is spot-on in my view.
In preparation for our trip to Europe in 2025, where we visited Zurich, Switzerland, the city where Carl Jung spent most of his professional life, I wanted to learn more about the famed Swiss psychoanalyst, whose influence is still being felt now in the 21st century. John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method sounded like a good title in which to learn more. Unfortunately, I found reading A Dangerous Method to be a mixed bag at best.
While the historical background offered by John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method is of interest, the book itself was for me difficult to get through. It amazed me how well the letters of correspondence involving Freud, Jung, and Spielrein have been preserved to tell the story that Kerr meticulously narrates. However, Kerr assumes that the reader has familiarity with numerous psychoanalytic concepts. I listened to pages and pages of references to “dementia praecox” before I finally had to stop listening to the audiobook to look it up and discover that “dementia praecox” was an early diagnostic term to refer to schizophrenia. It would have been better if Kerr had explained his terminology, instead of assuming too much from his audience.
Stumbling blocks like these made progress through the book into a slog. A book like this will surely interest those who are already invested in the field, but as a psychological “layperson,” I could not wait to finish the book and move onto something else.
Just the other day, a colleague of mine came to my office and asked if I had ever heard of “Jordan Peterson,” as he had recently listened to a podcast where Peterson was speaking. This colleague of mine does not go to church, and he knows that I am a Christian, but there was just something about Peterson’s talk about the Bible that intrigued him. I doubt if my colleague has ever heard the name of Carl Jung before. But apparently he got a dose of Jung’s thought by listening to Jordan Peterson. I pray that having that kind of exposure to Jordan Peterson might yield some fruit and encourage him to consider a full-on look at Christianity itself, not simply as some ideological framework which has arranged the mental furniture of the Western world, but as a joyful, deep, and real encounter with Jesus Christ.
I have been blogging now for a little over 13 years at Veracity. My interests for Veracity have been (and basically remain) in Christian apologetics and church history. That will probably continue for some time to come. In fact, I have one more blog post coming up chronicling the trip my wife and I took to Europe last year, where I got to visit a lot of sites along (or not that far way from) the Rhine River.
But as we are heading into the summer of 2026, I wanted to write a fairly short blog post on a topic that is really important when it comes to the world of long-form blogging… and much, much more. Much of what I write here on Veracity deals with book reviews, with some occasional diversions, like the “Christianity Along the Rhine” blog series.
What I have learned along the way is that social media has really disrupted the way people interact with one another. Thankfully, it has taken awhile, but it seems like within the past few years, people are finally starting to wisen up about the dangers of social media. Schools are starting to implement common sense controls of access to technological devices, particularly for young people, as we are learning the hard way about the fallout of introducing hi-tech devices to kids at too early an age, which has given us an unbelievably severe epidemic of anxiety and depression among children, and even young adults.
Social media cuts into attention spans, part of the reason why long-form blogging, for most part, has been in decline since blogging’s hey-day 10-15 years ago. The meme “TL;DR”, standing for “Too Long, Didn’t Read” has pretty much shown people that we have a culture which has made attention deficit disorder a pretty much normal thing now. Plus, the exposure to ideas, impersonal contact with supposed “friends” we “meet” on the Internet, make interaction with people on the Internet a fairly treacherous endeavor. Take the social media site NextDoor for example, where I am astounded by the number of posts saying “I am looking for a friend,” etc. The Internet is ripe with opportunities for scams and deceptions.
The late Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world in 2007. The world has never been the same since. However, there is something emerging now which will probably eclipse the influence of the SmartPhone….. that is AI (Artificial Intelligence)
In some sense, things have not changed that much since 2019, when I wrote “Reflections on Seven Years on Internet Blogging.” We still get amazingly overwhelmed by Internet content. The hardest part (still) comes in discernment, trying to sort the good from the bad. The most extreme voices seem to garner the most attention, whereas measured, thoughtful content gets buried underneath the digital overload.
I read mostly via listening to audiobooks, mainly on my commute too and from work, as an act of rebellion to the noise people mostly suffer with Facebook and Instagram. I still do not have a Facebook or Instagram account, so I wear that with a badge of honor.
Nevertheless, I do consume a good amount of YouTube. There is a lot of garbage on YouTube, but there is also a lot of good content. There is a wealth of knowledge to be learned about church history and apologetics, which is both good and bad. Again, the problem is in trying to figure out how to parse through everything you could ever listen to, or view, and sort out the beneficial from the stuff that leads you down the wrong path. For every few good YouTube channels which interview accomplished scholars, etc., there are many more popular Christian channels which are simply a waste of time.
The vast amount of content on YouTube, as well as the world of audio-only podcasts, has given our current generation access to really good Bible teaching…. better than most Christians have had since the beginning of the Christian movement…..if we know where to find it. This puts local church pastors/bible-teachers in a tough spot. As Christians can easily reach for an iPhone to listen to a good online sermon, that sermon/podcast presenter stands a good chance of being a better public speaker than your local pastor/elder. The main difference is that you can develop some kind of friendship, or even accountability relationship with your pastor/elders, which is essential to a healthy Christian community, which you simply can not get from someone miles away with a computer, a microphone, and an Internet connection.
However, I think things are shaking up in the Internet world, a world I helped to create as an Information Technology specialist, working at a college…. and that game changer is AI (Artificial Intelligence).
AI is really the talk of the digital ecosystem. And there is a good reason for it.
Over the past few months, I have started to take AI more seriously. It really is a game changer.
AI gives us the ability to sort through the immense amount of information available on the Internet, making it reasonably digestible… and it does so…. fast. I mean…. AI is really fast….We still need good content out there, as any user of AI should know that indeed AI absolutely still makes mistakes. “Garbage in, garbage out,” as they say.
Did you catch that? Most kids…. that means, if you are a parent…. probably your kid, if you give them an iPhone, is already doing this: 72% of American teenagers have already turned to AI for companionship.
If you thought social media was dangerous for kids, you have not seen anything yet.
But here is the thing: AI has come a long way in just the last few years. There is no way to fully predict how AI will ultimately evolve and change our world…. but one thing is for sure, it will change things. It is already changing things: Just ask the people who are threatened by these huge, monster data centers being built in their backyard. If something is digital, it is only a matter of time before AI takes it all over. But the amount of energy resources required to run AI are just overwhelming. We already have a crisis regarding the production of energy, and now AI want orders of magnitude more to power itself. Where are we going to get all of those resources to run AI????
If I was to encourage a young person in high school today, I would try to steer them to either pursue a classically-oriented liberal arts education; where the goal is character formation, whether that be through a college or some other similar method, but that also has practical skills in mind (there are many PhDs out there who know their stuff, but who are flipping burgers at McDonalds)….. OR to skip college altogether and get into some kind of apprentice program; as an electrician, plumber or a carpenter, and learn a valuable hands-on skill. It will take a while before robotics will eliminate a lot of those skills.
In the meantime, do not be surprised if the up-and-coming generation today is getting most of their knowledge about Christianity…. not through the Bible… and not even from Christians around them…. they are getting it through AI.
Try it yourself: Go on over to ChatGPT, or the Google AI search on your phone, and type or speak into your app: “How do know if Christianity is true?”
I will still be doing long-form blogging for the foreseeable future. Why? Because that is how AI learns things. As I said earlier, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” when it comes to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude AI, or just doing a Google search in AI mode. Do not get mad with AI when it tells you certain things about your Christian faith that you do not like, if you are not supporting efforts to get good evangelical scholarship out there that Christians can use everyday.
There is still a lot of ground-breaking scholarship happening that most Christians know little about, but which will help us to better appreciate both the history of Christianity as well as learning better apologetic tools to help us to better defend our faith, and share the Gospel with our neighbor. I still want to try to get that good content out there. Hopefully, AI will pick up some of it.
However, I do not know how AI will impact our day-to-day lives. But mark my word, it will.
Christians need to be prepared for AI, as it will present new spiritual challenges, along with providing helpful tools to enable Christians to be better and more informed witnesses for Jesus.
Aside from Martin Luther of Wittenberg, Germany, the name most associated with the Protestant Reformation is John Calvin, a Frenchman who lived most of his adult life in exile from his home country. Born in 1509, Calvin was a good bit younger than his other famous contemporary. When Luther appeared before Emperor Charles V to make his famous “Here I Stand” defense of his theology, John Calvin was only about 12 years old.
Calvin’s father had high hopes for his intellectually gifted son. He was able to send his son off to study at the Sorbonne, in Paris, when John Calvin was only about 13 years old. While Calvin was studying in the university, the humanist movement, with its cry of “ad fontes,” Latin for “back to the sources,” was in full swing. Part of that movement was to go back to the original Greek text of the New Testament, which whetted Calvin’s appetite to learn more about what that crazy Augustinian monk in Wittenberg, Germany was making such a fuss about.
Many of his professors were opposed to Luther’s Reformation efforts. But as a student, John Calvin went the other way, being converted to Protestantism in 1534. The tension created a vocational crisis in this young man’s life. He was forced to flee Paris, in search of a new home and a livelihood.
In October, 2025, my wife and I took a trip on a river cruise down the Rhine River. We got to visit several of the cities to which Calvin fled, including Basel, Switzerland and Strasbourg, France. We even made it to Paris, where the young Calvin first became exposed to the ideas of the Reformation.
Basel Cathedral, in Basel Switzerland, home to the Reformation movement in this Swiss city. Over the years, many leading Protestant figures attended this church, including Karl Barth and John Calvin. Calvin first came to Basel to flee the authorities in Paris, who were determined to wipe out the Protestant movement in France. My photo from October, 2025.
What we did not have time to do was visit where John Calvin spent most of his life, as a pastor in the Swiss city of Geneva. While Calvin was on the run from French authorities bent on silencing the Reformation in France, he made it to Geneva where he was only planning to spend one night, before making his way elsewhere. But when a fellow Protestant serving as pastor in Geneva, Guillaume Farel, discovered that the brilliant young Calvin was in town, he made his way straight over to see the Frenchman. That evening proved to be a turning point in Calvin’s life.
Prior to traveling to Geneva, John Calvin originally intended to live in Strasbourg, wanting to live a quiet life there, pursuing his intellectual studies. Calvin had spent some time in Italy, gathering together some material related to his intellectual interests. So when Calvin was merely passing through Geneva for the night, in order to avoid a path through a nearby military conflict, the thought of staying in Geneva was far from his mind.
But Farel had rushed over and confronted Calvin, threatening him with the very judgment of God, pleading with Calvin to stay in Geneva and help to establish the Reformation there in that city. Shocked by Farel’s threats, Calvin canceled his plans to go to Strasbourg, and he stayed in Geneva, where he learned to become a pastor, a shepherd caring for the souls of church goers under his care.
It was a fateful decision. Aside from a brief move a few years later to Strasbourg, Calvin spent the rest of his life in Geneva, tending his spiritual flock, and building what would become a great training ground for Reformation thinkers, who spread many of Calvin’s ideas and teachings all throughout Europe.
But despite his vocation as a pastor in Geneva, Calvin managed to find the time and energy to pursue his most well-known intellectual interest of all, a literary effort to try to convince his fellow Frenchmen of the truth of the Protestant Reformation understanding of the Gospel. According to church historian Bruce Gordon, the Institutes of the Christian Religion first saw the light of day in 1536 as a Latin text. In the Institutes, Calvin addressed his work to the King of France, pleading the cause of the Reformation.
Over the decades, Calvin would revise the Institutes several times, with the final version being published (still) in Latin in 1559. Various revisions by Calvin were then translated by him into French, to try to reach his fellow countrymen. By then, after having several decades as an active pastor, preaching, counseling people, performing baptisms and funerals, he was able to combine his pastoral sensitivities with his crisp theological acumen to produce perhaps the single most influential written work to come out of the 16th century Protestant Reformation movement.
Bruce Gordon has written a wonderful book, just a bit over 200 pages, John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography, which looks at the history and influence of Calvin’s most well-known work. Gordon’s book is part of the “Lives of Great Religious Books” series, which focuses on the history and influence of numerous books like these, with brief summaries of the author’s life, along with greater attention to how such books have been received down the ages.
Calvin in Basel Switzerland: The First Draft of the Institutes
Before Calvin made his fateful stop in Geneva, Switzerland, he spent some time in Basel, Switzerland, where he worked on that first draft of the Institutes. He most probably attended the city church there, the Basel Cathedral, which had become aligned with the Protestant movement over the previous decade.
As I stepped inside that cathedral, I tried to imagine what it might have been like for Calvin to seek spiritual refuge there in Basel, knowing that he may never be able to return to his native France. Nestled near the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland, along the Rhine River, Basel has a special place in the history of the Christian movement.
Basel has had numerous connections to the Reformation movement over the years. This was the city where Huldrych Zwingli, the fiery Swiss preacher of Zurich, Switzerland had become first exposed to the ideas of Desiderius Erasmus and the humanist movement, as a college student. Erasmus was the Catholic scholar who produced the first major revision of the New Testament Greek text, based largely on newly discovered ancient manuscripts received from Eastern Orthodox scholars who had fled Constantinople, after it had been captured by the Turks in 1453. Erasmus’ work on the Greek New Testament was the intellectual fire which lit Martin Luther’s imagination, in his conflict with the Pope.
Fast forwarding to the 20th century, the great Swiss Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, spent most of his adult years in Basel, writing his Church Dogmatics, which in many ways mirrors the contribution Calvin gave to Christian readers, through the Institutes.
Calvin in Strasbourg, France, Where He Found His Wife
Going down the Rhine River from Basel, you eventually pass by the city of Strasbourg, on the border between France and Germany. Calvin’s first few years in Geneva had been pretty rocky. At one point, the city council became so infuriated with Calvin’s Reformation ideas that they kicked him out of the city. Calvin decided to join up with his friend Martin Bucer, who was serving as a pastor in Strasbourg. Calvin found a job as a pastor at Saint Nicholas Church, on the outskirts of the old city of Strasbourg.
In the early 20th century, Albert Schweitzer preached in Saint Nicholas Church, in Strasbourg, the same church the 16th century Protestant Reformer, John Calvin, preached in a few hundred years before. Calvin’s flock was made up of Protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution in France.
However, despite the hardships in Strasbourg, and being unable to return to both Paris and Geneva, Calvin’s life was set on a new course…. at least temporarily. One of those Anabaptists he encountered eventually cast aside those radical beliefs, and became his wife, Idelette de Bure.
Idelette had been recently widowed, leaving her with two children. Martin Bucer proved to be the matchmaker to put her and John Calvin together as a couple, and Bucer presided over the marriage in his home. Though Idelette bore Calvin several children in their marriage, none of those children survived beyond infancy. When the city council in Geneva decided to call John Calvin back to Geneva to become the city pastor again, Calvin came back with a ready made family.
Idelette eventually died before John Calvin did, and not long after she died, he wrote to his friend Pierre Viret:
I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my indigence, but even of my death. During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry.
It was in those waning years in Geneva when Calvin put the final touches on the Institutes of the Christian Religion, with a last revision. Calvin died about 5 years later in 1564.
Our last stop in Europe at the very end of our trip along the Rhine River was after taking a bus ride to the city of Paris, where Calvin studied there as a young man at the Sorbonne.
The Sorbonne in Paris, part of the University system where John Calvin studied law and eventually became exposed to the ideas of the Protestant Reformation.
The Legacy of Calvin’s Institutes
Debates over Calvin’s legacy continue to generate ongoing discussion among today’s evangelical Christians. However, there is still a vigorous scholarly debate as whether or not John Calvin was even a “Calvinist.” Gordon admits this as much in observing that “Calvin never saw a tulip in his life” (Gordon, p. 9).
What is typically known as “Calvinism” today is a product of theological debates from the 17th century in the Netherlands, which eventually gave us the well-known T.U.L.I.P. acronym for the “five points” of Calvinism. Calvin was already dead decades before Jacob Arminius, a theologian in the Netherlands, became the center of the controversy regarding “Calvinism.” Gordon reports that the actual “T.U.L.I.P” acronym itself, standing for “total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints,” entered the theological discussion much later, with the writings of the Presbyterian theologian, Lorraine Boettner, in the early 20th century (Gordon, p. 154). John Calvin is probably most well known for his support for the doctrine of predestination, even though back in the 16th century this was only a minor theme in the Institutes.
Calvin’s Institutes were less about predestination and more about offering a defense of the Reformation, with an original preface pleading with the King of France to hear his case for Protestantism, and stop the persecution of Protestants. Calvin’s work evolved over the years to become more of a training manual for preachers, urging them to have a right view of “the word of God and rightful administration of the sacraments.”
By the time Calvin published the last version of the Institutes in 1559, his work took on the framework of the Apostles Creed, discussing theological matters ranging from the doctrine of creation to the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. Towards the end of the Institutes, Calvin addressed the topic of the relations between church and state, filled with ideas that eventually became incorporated into the Constitution of the United States, centuries later, which advocated for the freedom of religion.
Nevertheless, Bruce Gordon takes the position that Calvin’s Institutes not only upholds the doctrine of predestination, in the sense of God having “the card deck stacked in the believer’s favor,” an image I picked up in seminary, the Institutes also adheres to the concept of double predestination. Other reformers in Calvin’s day, like the Lutheran Philip Melanchthon and Huldrych Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, accepted the former sense of predestination, but not the latter (Gordon, p. 26).
In double predestination, not only is the true Christian believer predestined to be saved, the first sense of predestination, those who are not true believers are predestined to be eternally separated from God. From a Scriptural perspective, what makes this so controversial is that the terminology of predestination is used in the Bible only in the former sense, and not the latter. However, theologically and philosophically, it makes sense to some that if predestination works one way, it should also work the other way as well. The problem with the Institutes (see chapter 21) is that it is not altogether clear how Calvin connects the idea of predestination of the elect with the fate of the permanently lost. Does Calvin’s view of predestination assume a kind of symmetry, or asymmetry with regard to the eternal state, and what does that all mean?
While scholars debate over what Calvin himself really believed, it is quite clear that many of Calvin’s followers indeed have subscribed to the concept of double predestination. For even if Calvin was not a full-on advocate for double-predestination, many of Calvin’s contemporaries thought he was, and Calvin surely opened the door for many of his followers to embrace such a doctrine.
Gordon argues that Calvin picked up this idea for double predestination from his reading of Romans 9, particularly from the line in Romans 9:13: “Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated,” though scholars debate whether or not Calvin interpreted the meaning of this correctly (Gordon, p.27). If indeed Calvin did embrace a full-on double predestination doctrine, it would help to explain why a number of scholars today, including the vocal, controversial, and strident David Bentley Hart views Calvin with such moral disgust (as in this New York Times interview from April 2026).
Bruce Gordon acknowledges that Calvin’s holding to the first sense of predestination had a positive pastoral motive behind it. In medieval Catholic scholastic theology, there was always some insecurity about the eternal fate of someone who claimed to be a Christian. For while God would certainly find a way to purge venial sins from the soul of the Christian through purgatory, a failure to confess a mortal sin in this life was altogether a different matter. An unconfessed mortal sin might indeed lead someone who was otherwise a faithful churchgoer to effectively lose their promise of salvation. How does one really know if their sins have been properly and fully confessed before taking their dying breath, such that they would avoid eternal separation from God?
Calvin believed that this anxiety-prone medieval theology undermined the concept of being saved by faith, and faith alone, and salvation by grace, and grace alone. Calvin instead held that to put the decision for one’s salvation in the hidden will of God provided a sense of comfort for the believer, granting an aspect of assurance regarding one’s saving faith. In Calvin’s view, the status of the Christian believer before God belongs in God’s hands, and not our own. Calvin fully believed that for genuine Christians “in turning to Christ, the people behold God’s love as in a mirror“ (Gordon, p. 27).
For Calvin’s detractors however, even among his fellow Protestant Reformers, Calvin’s association with double predestination brought shock and disdain. Gordon writes:
“For Calvin, that teaching was the message of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, but for his numerous opponents it was an appalling idea that made God the author of sin. Calvin’s God— they wrote, preached, and taught— was a capricious tyrant who created women and men in order to destroy them” (Gordon, p. 33).
Whether or not Gordon’s assessment is correct, Calvin’s reputation has often been thought of in this way.
Regardless as to how double predestination fits into Calvin’s own thinking, Calvin sought to hold the tension between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility together, though awkward that may sound to his readers, if not entirely despicable to his critics. Elsewhere Gordon says:
One cannot blame God for sin, a point on which Calvin was adamant, though he was frequently attacked by detractors who believed that his arguments inevitably led to God as the author of evil. Calvin repeatedly repudiated that charge, pounding his fist on desk and pulpit, declaring that humans alone are responsible for their fallen state. (Gordon, p. 39).
For Calvin, the key to making sense of this tension is by emphasizing the role of conscience in making a person aware of their own rebellion against God. The Institutes make it a point that not only does the Bible help us know who God is, the Bible also helps us to know ourselves. Humans are discontent with themselves because they do not know themselves. The Christian faith enables the believer to truly know who they truly are, and that truth is the most liberating and exhilarating benefit of seeking after Christ.
The process of truly knowing ourselves is bound up in Calvin’s understanding of our mysterious union with Christ, as Christians. While the human proclivity towards sin is more treacherous than most people can ever imagine, the joys of knowing ourselves more and more as we learn to know more about God are priceless, beautiful, and beyond all measure.
Calvin believed with every fiber of his being that God’s goodness is so pervasive it is spoken in our ears and stands before our eyes even when we are neither listening nor looking (Gordon, p. 47).
This was the heart of Calvin’s message about our mystical union with Christ. If there was one primary takeaway that Calvin intended with the Institutes, it was this grand and beautiful vision of being one with Christ…. not predestination.
Haidplatz. In this building, off of this city square, the Diet of Regensburg was held in 1541. John Calvin attended a Colloquy (or “Diet”) here in 1541, where fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon sat down with Roman Catholic scholar Johann Eck, to see if some kind of resolution could be found to reconcile the differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics. While some progress was made, the participants found the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper to be the primary issue that could not be resolved. This meeting at Regensburg was probably the best opportunity for reconciliation, which was ultimately lost. .. I took this photo back in October, 2022, on a different trip to Europe.
The Influence of the Institutes Over the Centuries
After Calvin’s death, the Institutes established his reputation as perhaps the greatest of the Reformed authors of the 16th century. Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor in Geneva, became the primary interpreter for Calvin.
In the 17th century, Calvin and his Institutes became synonymous with the Reformed faith. Detractors of Calvin generally depicted him as a monster, the one most responsible for the cruel death of the anti-Trinitarian heretic, Michael Servetus, at the hands of civil authorities in Geneva. Calvin’s defenders, particularly in England, viewed as the father of the Puritan movement, hoping to purify the Church of England of papist bad habits and bad theology. Others like the Dutch theologian, Jacob Arminius, had a more cautious appreciation of Calvin’s legacy. I am confident that the earliest Puritans to settle in the American colonies carried copies of the Institutes with them.
By the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, Calvin’s emphasis on “true religion” in the Institutes became sidelined by a new generations of thinkers who began to view Christianity as merely one religion among many others. Faith founded upon reason superseded faith founded upon revelation. When Jean- Jacques Rousseau came to Geneva and published his Emile in 1762, Rousseau publicly denied original sin and the doctrine of the Trinity. Church leaders in Geneva were no longer required to adhere to doctrinal formulations once championed by Geneva’s most well-known preacher, John Calvin.
However, as Bruce Gordon reports, more moderate voices emerged making a positive appeal to Calvin’s Institutes as a source for challenging traditional norms. In the 18th century, Jacobus Capitein, the first African to study the Calvinist theology, found in the writings of Calvin a Christian basis for undermining the morality of slavery. Later in the 20th century, South African Calvinist Allan Boesak found a theological basis in Calvin for the cause of liberation against apartheid (Gordon, pp. 75ff). Boesak had been initially horrified by Calvin, thinking him to be an apologist for racial-based slavery. Yet after making a careful re-reading of the Institutes, Boesak changed his mind about Calvin, seeing in the Frenchman’s work the theological resources necessary to completely dismantle the South African regime of apartheid (Gordon, pp. 166). Again, we see how a fresh look at Calvin has helped theologians more recently make a distinction between the original Calvin and the “Calvinism” of later generations which took the legacy of Calvin in wrong directions.
In America, the legacy of the Institutes divided Protestant Christians in a complicated way. The great philosopher/theologian Jonathan Edwards, who knew the Institutes well, cited Calvin as an authority, but also noted that he did not always agree with the famous Genevan preacher. John and Charles Wesley found much in the Institutes regarding the doctrine of election to be revolting. Yet John Wesley appealed to the Institutes for a sound doctrine of justification. John wrote:
“I think on Justification just as I have done any time these seven-and-twenty years, and just as Mr. Calvin does. In this respect I do not differ from him an hair’s breadth” (from a journal entry by John Wesley, quoted in Gordon, p. 84).
Ironically, Bruce Gordon argues that in the 19th century, the most influential reclamation of Calvin’s theology as put forth in the Institutes came from none other than Fredrich Schleiermacher, the father of Protestant liberalism. The fact that the Institutes could inspire both the conservative evangelicalism of a Jonathan Edwards and the Protestant liberalism of a Fredrich Schleiermacher illustrates just how diverse theological traditions find their home in the Institutes.
As Protestant liberalism in the late 19th century began to break the hegemony of the earlier conservative evangelical movement in the United States, the Princeton theologian of the early 20th century, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, championed a revival of Calvin’s theology in a conservative effort to thwart the cancer of pervasive theological liberalism taking over the church.
Though not as conservative as Warfield, back in Europe, theologians like Karl Barth and Emil Bruner sought to revive Calvin’s theology for the modern world, in an answer to the growing decline of evangelical faith in Europe, precipitated by the rise of historical criticism, particularly in German liberal Protestantism. Gordon quotes from a 1962 Time magazine article, where Barth said:
“Calvin is in Heaven and has had time to ponder where he went wrong in his teachings. Doubtless he is pleased that I am setting him aright” (Gordon, p. 133).
The famous dispute concerning natural theology between Barth and Brunner revolved around how to best interpret Calvin’s Institutes. Dutch theologians who stood somewhere in between Warfield and Barth, such as the elder statesman Abraham Kuyper and his successor, Herman Bavinck, pioneered a kind of Neo-Calvinism based on the Institutes.
Gordon quotes from Bavinck that in the Institutes Calvin expressed “clear, deep and harmonious insight into Christian truth [such] as to render any subsequent modification unnecessary” (Gordon, p. 129). Bavinck believed that John Calvin was the model pastor/theologian that any truly reformed evangelical pastor/theologian should seek to emulate. Bavinck himself was largely unknown in America, up until the last 25 years or so, when his Dutch works were finally translated into English, inspiring contemporary evangelical thinkers, such as the late Tim Keller.
The newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris, France. John Calvin most likely worshipped in this church, near the Sorbonne, where he studied law in Paris. This photo shows the remarkable job restorers made after the recent tragic fire nearly destroyed this iconic landmark in Paris.
Calvin’s Influence Today
The problem of evil remains perhaps one of the most troubling questions which Christian apologetics have to deal with, in a world today beset by wars and other conflicts that were basically unthinkable in certain quarters a generation ago. John Calvin had his own solution to the problem of evil, but not every Christian finds the theology associated with his name satisfying as it was in 16th century Geneva, Switzerland.
For sure, Calvin’s legacy is still a hotly debated topic these days. Even AI creators on YouTube are writing heavy-metal/rap songs about Calvin the controversialist:
On the one side, the Institutes remains perhaps the most influential theological work articulating the basic ideas of the Protestant Reformation, particularly among today’s Protestant evangelicals. There are still some who view any criticism of Calvin as an attack on the very Christian Gospel itself.
Both of these views of Calvin are extremes, which at a minimum are unhelpful, if not outright distorting. I view myself as advocate of a “reformed” theology, but I would be careful to use a little “r” when speaking of being “reformed,” as opposed to a capital “R” as in “Reformed,” which seems to be more along the lines of an 18th century Jonathan Edwards approach to being “Reformed” (Yet even Edwards offered some modest critique of Calvin). Put in contemporary terms, I am more like a little “r” “reformed” advocate, like the late Tim Keller, and less a capital “R” “Reformed” advocate, such as what I see in John Piper.
In my view, John Calvin got his view of the sacraments, particularly regarding the Lord’s Supper, about as correct as you can get. Calvin’s idea that we are saved by faith alone, but that faith is never alone; that is, genuine faith is always accompanied with good works, hits the mark as well.
In fact, aside from Calvin’s particular emphasis on our mystical union with Christ, the other broadly predominant themes in the Institutes includes his doctrine on the sacraments, particularly on the Lord’s Supper, and the work of the Holy Spirit. One does not need to be a “Calvinist” to appreciate Calvin’s very practical theology aligned with these themes. Interestingly, some of the most excited supporters of John Calvin today are evangelical baptists, who completely disagree with Calvin on the topic of infant baptism, which he firmly supported!
Calvin is also one of greatest and most influential Christian apologists for capitalism. We have Calvin to thank for his reading of the usury texts in the Bible, where the idea of lending money to others, as long as the interest charged is not excessive, is within the permissible ethical framework of the Bible. It is hard to imagine how the modern banking system which has enabled countless millions to obtain affordable housing through mortgages would have been possible apart from Calvin’s view of lending money at modest interest rates. In other words, if you own a house by possessing a mortgage, you might want to thank John Calvin for enabling that to happen.
My greatest gratitude for Calvin comes from his theory of divine accommodation, whereby in Holy Scripture, God condescends to us by speaking at our level. As Calvin writes in the Institutes (1.13.1):
“Who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.”
This idea of divine accommodation often gets misunderstood, but positively and rightly understood, it helps us parse through what the Bible actually teaches versus the particular cultural and human limitations of the author. Instead of being a hindrance, the sum of the particular cultural and human limitations of each writer of Sacred Scripture are used by God to be the vehicle by which we come to know God’s truth.
Most importantly, Calvin’s insistence on the sovereignty of God, that God knows better than what we think we know, is perhaps his most influential contribution to Christian theology. Calvin obviously was not the first to think of this, but his name in church history is often tightly linked with the doctrine of God’s “hidden decree.”
For if I was given the task of writing the Bible, there are plenty of things I would put in differently than what we find in the Bible. But the Bible is the authoritative book the sovereign God has given us, so I need to learn to trust that God knows what he is doing with the Bible, particularly when I am not so sure about some of the things I read about in the Bible.
God’s providential care over us in our world is meant to provide us comfort, when things do not always make sense to us. This can be applied any number of issues any Christian can run into in living the Christian life; whether it be struggling with some type of difficult teaching we read in the Bible, or the question of why we or someone else we care for is suffering, or anything having to do with the vexing problem of evil. I can trust that the sovereign God of the universe knows what he is doing, even when I am befuddled about my own circumstances. More than any other theologian, I have Calvin to thank for this insight.
On the other hand, I am not sure yet that Calvin got his view of penal substitutionary atonement right (at least Calvin’s critics think he is wrong here), something that I am trying to work out for myself this year. Furthermore, if Bruce Gordon is right and the Institutes does teach a form of double predestination, then I am not on board with Calvin on this. But I am not completely convinced that Calvin was really a “Calvinist” as much as Gordon suggests he was (I am not the only one who thinks this way …I have good company).
Either way, Bruce Gordon’s wonderful book on the Institutes maps out the history of how the Institutes has influenced the Christian movement, for both good and for ill. My trip last year visiting several of the cities where Calvin lived has served as a helpful reminder of the mark Calvin’s influence has made on the Christian church.
You probably know what I am standing in front of!! The seeds of Calvin’s conversion to Christ were germinated in this city when Calvin was a student.
Veracity 