Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 01:2 (Jul 2009)
Article: John Calvin And Missions
Author: Derek Thomas

---

PRJ 1:2 (July 2009) p. 212

John Calvin And Missions

Derek Thomas

Calvin’s espousal of the doctrine of predestination is considered by some to be irretrievably at odds with evangelism and missions. Typical are the comments of A. M. Hunter in a book called The Teaching of Calvin, a Modern Interpretation (“Modern”—it was written in 1920) where he suggested that Calvin “displayed no trace of missionary enthusiasm.” Ralph Winter writes equally strongly about the Reformers generally: “[they] did not even talk of mission outreach.”1

But this is palpably wrong. In fact, a case could easily be made that the modern missionary movement began not with William Carey but with John Calvin in Geneva! To begin with, Calvin was clear enough that the responsibility to spread the gospel lies with Christians: “it is our duty to proclaim the goodness of God to every nation…the work is such as ought not to be concealed in a corner, but to be everywhere proclaimed.”2

Theology

If by “missions” we mean regularly held recruitment cycles with special meetings aimed at securing an immediate, conscious, decisive act of faith in Jesus Christ where those who wish to respond are invited to come forward, raise a hand, and fill out a card in some act of public testimony, then Calvin knew neither the term nor the practice. Based on a faulty anthropology, this view of missions assumes moral ability on the part of the sinner to respond at whatever time he or she so chooses. Calvin, on the other hand, believed the natural man to be in a state of moral and spiritual bondage, totally depraved in every

PRJ 1:2 (July 2009) p. 213

aspect of his faculties (mind, heart, will, and affections) and unable to choose that which he is bound to do.

That this did not prevent Calvin from asserting an obligation on the part of the individual believer to evangelize (or on the part of the unbeliever to respond) can be seen in what Calvin wrote in (of all places) his Treatise on Predestination:

Since we do not know who belongs to the number of the predestined and who does not, it befits us so to feel as to wish that all be saved. So it will come about that, whoever we come across, we shall study to make him a sharer of peace.... Even severe rebuke will be administered like medicine, lest they should perish or cause others to perish. But it will be for God to make it effective in those whom He foreknew and predestined.3

Commenting on Micah 2:1-4, with its world-wide vision of the kingdom,...

visitor : : uid: ()