The law of God is the royal law of liberty and liberty consists in being captive to the Word and law of God. All other liberty is not liberty but the thraldom of servitude to sin (John Murray, Collected Writings, Vol. 1, 215).

If we once allow expediency to dictate law then we are on the road to tyranny and conscience is no longer captive to the law of God but to the variable fancies of men (John Murray, Collected Writings, Vol. 1, 205).

As early as 1541 the Ecclesiastical Ordinances had declared that it was desirable that schools should be established to provide an education in Christian piety and eloquence and to produce a supply of godly men for the ministry and for leading positions in public life. It was not until 1559 that Calvin’s detailed plans became a reality. In the preparatory school pupils were to read morally acceptable classical texts, gaining thereby a general literary education and an introduction to rhetoric. This in turn was to lead to logic and dialectic. In the more advanced schola publica, students were to be given long hours of daily tuition in Latin, Green [sic, i.e., Greek], and Hebrew for the purpose of the close textual study of the Old and New Testaments. The preaching of dogmatics was not a separate item. It was incorporated into the teaching of exegesis (Gillian Lewis’ “Geneva 1541-1608” in International Calvinism 1541-1715, edited by Menna Prestwich, 63).

Can you say that there is no relation between a man’s position in the realm of doctrine and his principles of life and conduct? No; they are one because they concern truth and the sanctity of truth. Truth is one, and it is a moral and psychological impossibility for a man’s belief with respect to what constitutes Christianity to be heterodox and his beliefs with respect to what constitutes the norm of Christian life to be orthodox (John Murray, Collected Writings, 195).

We cannot enter here into a detailed examination of everything that Calvin, a man of the second generation, derived from the Reformers and from the humanists who preceded him. It will be enough to mention that he owed much to Martin Luther, that he derived much of his ecclesiology from Martin Bucer, that he was on the best of terms with Philip Melanchthon, and that, even after his conversion, he did not break with the methods and objectives of a Bude or an Erasmus. He had been won over to the Reformation, but he remained a humanist. Indebted as he was to the theologians and scholars who had blazed the trail for the Reformation, Calvin was equally familiar with certain medieval authors, such as St Anselm of Canterbury, St Bernard of Clairvaux (whom he was fond of citing), Peter Lombard, St Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus, who, whatever has been said to the contrary, certainly influenced his conception of God. Beyond the doctors of the Middle Ages, moreover, he assiduously studied the Fathers of the Church. The two he preferred were St John Chrysostom, whom he appreciated as an interpreter of the Bible, and above all, St Augustine, with whom he felt a a deep affinity. To sum up, while Calvin was nurtured on the Bible, his reading of it was enriched by his astonishing knowledge of the great authors of the Christian tradition (“Calvin” by Richard Stauffer in International Calvinism 1541-1715, edited by Menna Prestwich, 29).

Finally got around to reading Carl Trueman’s article calling Christian Institutions to prepare for winter.

Thus, for Christian educational institutions, the way ahead may be very hard. It will not simply be a matter of budgeting without federal loans. It could easily become a matter of budgeting without not-for-profit status. That double whammy is likely to annihilate many of those institutions which refuse to accommodate themselves to the dominant sexual culture. And that means that educators may need to look to new models of pursuing their callings.

The current struggle probably cannot be won in the law courts—certainly not until there are deeper changes in the ethos of society. Laws that may be used to dismantle Christian educational institutions are already on the books. How they are to be applied will be determined by the dominant taste or cultural sentiment. That aesthetic point is what Christians need to address. And that brings us to the need for cultivating good taste, sentiments, and aesthetics.

The response of Christian higher education to the coming winter must therefore be twofold: financial planning for the worst-case scenario, where not only federal money but also tax-exempt status is revoked; and careful reflection on how the curriculum can cultivate accurate and wholesome aesthetic judgment. And, given the very brief time colleges have to shape young people’s minds, they need to see their task as adjunct to the greater task of family and, above all, church—the vessels that carry us from the cradle to the grave.

And the more human doctrine has the appearance and pretext of sanctity, the more dangerous it is (From Chapter XIV, William Farel’s Summary (1529), in 16th and 17th Century Reformed Confessions, Vol. 1, 64).

Not the church but Scripture is self-authenticating, the judge of controversies, and its own interpreter. Nothing may be put on a level with Scripture (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, 86).

The most valuable object which the student of historical and polemic theology can aim at is to endeavor to trace, by a survey of controversial discussions, how far God’s completed revelation of His will was rightly used by the church for guiding to a correct knowledge and application of divine truths, and how far it was misapplied and perverted (William Cunningham, Historical Theology, Vol. 1, 7).