Book review: THEODORE BEZA – The Man and the Myth
By John Hooper
THEODORE BEZA – The Man and the Myth by Shawn D. Wright. Christian Focus Publication, 2015; 256 pages, paperback. ISBN 978-1-78191-684-1 Price: £4.99 from ICM Books, 115 Dunkirk Road, Lurgan, Craigavon BT66 7AR or https://www.icmbooksdirect.co.uk
In Issue 466 of the Quarterly there was a review of Paul Helm’s book Calvin and the Calvinists. At the end, the reviewer added a footnote referring readers to this book by Shawn Wright, “for a further refutation of Kendall.” That is a reference to Dr. R T Kendall and the re-interpretation of the relationship between the theology of Calvin and that of his successors, which he propounded in his book Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649. While Helm makes an occasional reference to Beza, Wright gives us a much more detailed assessment of Beza’s Calvinism. A copy of his book has kindly been sent to me for review in these pages.
Having read this book, it is clear to me that Beza was a consummate theologian but he had a pastor’s heart. His purpose always was to apply theology to the needs of the souls of men, and that is the missing element from so much that has been written about him in the past. Thanks to Shawn Wright and a few others in America, notably Dr. Richard Muller, the tide is turning and the real Beza is now emerging. He is not so much the scholastic rationalist, as usually portrayed, but a shepherd of souls. Even when he writes about predestination, the subject he is most noted and criticised for, it is pastoral considerations that dominate. Says Wright,
Whether it was calling Christians to humility as they considered predestination, reminding unbelievers that the truth of reprobation should make them flee the wrath to come, or encouraging believers to share the truth of the gospel with all people since they were not privy to God’s eternal determination of those who had not yet submitted to Christ, Beza applied the truth of predestination to his readers. He was a consummate pastor. (page 126)
Read Beza and you will read good theology affirmed and applied. Reading this book by Shawn Wright, which has many quotes from Beza’s works, will give you a flavour, and hopefully a hunger for more, but satisfying that hunger may prove a problem. Unfortunately, few of Beza’s writings are in print, though some are accessible on-line. The next step might be to read a larger work by Wright, Our Sovereign Refuge – the Pastoral Theology of Theodore Beza, published in 2005 by Paternoster Press.
But now to the book under review. It has nine chapters, the first being an introduction giving an outline of the book. The second is a brief account of Beza’s life and context, while the third brings to light his theological vision. Here Wright sets before us the main thesis of his work, that Beza is far from the rationalist that scholars normally portray. He writes, “A host of scholars have argued that Calvin’s theology is different from later ‘Calvinism’. The progenitor of this newly-minted ‘Calvinism’ is usually identified as Theodore Beza. The problem, it is usually claimed, is that Calvin was more circumspect and explicitly evangelical in his theology than were his later followers. Calvin was biblical; they were philosophical.” (page 39).
Wright ably demonstrates that, regarding Beza at least, this is simply not the case. For Beza both “the heartbeat of Christian piety” and “the purpose of theology” is to know God (page 48), not just to know about Him. The life and ministry of Theodore Beza provide ample evidence of the compatibility of a robust Calvinism with an evangelical and pastoral concern for souls. “For Beza, God’s sovereignty was vital for believers. The realities of Satan, of a raging spiritual battle, of hell, and of heaven, necessitated an omnipotent hand to preserve and guide Christians through their earthly pilgrimage.” (page 50). “The complete sovereignty of God was the foundation of Beza’s pastoral vision.” (page 68).
Over the next five chapters Wright takes us through five of Beza’s written works. Each chapter begins with the work’s historical setting and continues with a summary of the treatise concerned. Chapter 4 introduces us to Beza’s Confession of the Christian Faith, written in 1559 to aid believers in their reading and study of the Bible. It is a concise summary of Christian doctrine covering the Godhead (four chapters), the church, the last judgment and the errors of Rome (one chapter each). At the heart of this Confession, says Wright, is “Beza’s overwhelming pastoral concern for people’s eternal well-being” (page 73), and uppermost in his mind was the need of his own father for the truth of the gospel. The chapter ends, as they all do, with an excellent application to the modern reader and, under the heading of “Uses,” some questions to challenge us further.
It is in Chapter 5 that we enter deep waters as Wright guides us through Beza’s Tabula Praedestinationis. The title Wright gives this chapter is telling: Letting God be God, and he dives straight in with his opening sentence, “Theodore Beza is no more famous – or perhaps infamous – than for teaching a doctrine of double predestination.” (page 111). Wright ably demonstrates, contrary to the opinion of many, that Calvin also believed predestination to have both positive and negative components – election and reprobation. Wright points out that Calvin even recommended his congregation to read Beza on the subject, and if you have Calvin’s Sermons on Election and Reprobation, republished in 1996 by Old Paths Publications, you will find that recommendation at the foot of page 310.
At the beginning of the original Tabula, Beza placed a chart or table – as the name suggests – providing a visual summary of what follows. Wright does not reproduce the table in his book, presumably for practical reasons, but he tells us it “presents a view of human destiny that is completely under the sovereign control of God.” Consequently, many, after taking “a quick glance” at it, “have discounted Beza’s theology as rigid, God-dishonouring, and unnecessarily humanity-shrinking.” (page 114). But in drawing their hasty conclusions they have overlooked the rest of the treatise and Beza’s biblicism that it brings to the fore. Wright says, “It is in this exposition – complete with 578 “proofs from the word of God” footnoted and included as an appendix to each section – that Beza intended to convince his readers of the truthfulness of his position.” Wright adds, “What might have been a rigid, polemical, and scholastic tome if only in chart form thus becomes pastoral, personal, and profitable because of Beza’s careful exposition.” (page 115). One might wish that the full text of the Tabula had been included as an appendix, but it can be found, along with all those Scripture references, in Wright’s earlier book, Our Sovereign Refuge.
Wright calls the doctrine of predestination “complicated” (page 119), but Beza handles it carefully so as not to attribute to God anything that is unworthy. Perhaps we exacerbate the complications still further in our own minds by overlaying them with a reluctance to accept what Scripture says and give God all the glory. For Beza it is God’s glory that is ultimate, “and both His reprobating and His electing display and magnify His glory” (page 144).
Wright closes this vital chapter with a timely challenge:
… like Beza, we need to come to grips with the fact that God is God. We’re not. And we have to allow Him the right (in our hearts and minds) to be God and to be in complete charge of our destiny and the destinies of those whom we love … Rather than attempting to re-cast God in our own image, we need to allow Him – through the Bible – to change the way we think about Him. (page 156)
It is said of Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall that he lived at a time when “the definite out-and-out Calvinism of another day was going out of fashion.” The “out-and-out” Calvinism of Calvin, Beza and Kennedy, the Calvinism that your reviewer was brought into by grace many years ago, is already out of fashion once more. May God revive His church with a reformation that will once again acknowledge and adore His absolute sovereignty over the world, His church and the souls of men!
In chapter 6 we continue to appreciate Beza’s application of Divine sovereignty to the affairs of life as Wright takes us through his Treatize of the Plague. The Black Death claimed Beza’s brother, his wife of nearly forty years, and almost himself so it is not surprising that Wright finds this work “filled with pastoral wisdom” (page 159). Beza’s treatise deals with two questions. Firstly, was the plague an infectious disease transmitted by natural means, or was it a punishment sent directly from the hand of God? Secondly, is it appropriate for believers to flee? If you want to know Beza’s answers, buy the book! I am giving nothing away when I say that Beza responds both biblically and pastorally, using the situation to write with great wisdom on the relationship between God’s eternal decree, human responsibility, and God’s use of secondary means. Surely Beza has something to teach us regarding our responses to the pandemic we too have recently come through.
Chapter 7 brings us to a subject that troubles many Christians: assurance. Wright opens up Beza’s Treatize of Comforting such as are Troubled about their Predestination. Should we look inwards for evidences of sanctification, or should we look to Christ? Some writers, such as R T Kendall, tell us that Calvin and Beza answered these questions very differently, but Wright shows that they were not far apart. He finds, “Beza’s reasoning is warm, comforting, and hopeful as it points doubters to Christ. Abounding in Biblical principles, it is Puritan-like in being both rigorous and warm.” (page 208).
The last chapter brings us to Maister Bezaes Houshold Prayers, a set of twenty-eight prayers for private use. Shawn Wright looks at four of these, sharing many quotes that give us a glimpse into the heart of this man who has been so misunderstood and misrepresented. Earlier we quoted Wright as saying, “Beza was primarily concerned with knowledge of God,” and it is here in these heart-warming prayers that we enter into something of Beza’s own experience of walking with his Lord. We see too his love for others, both fellow Christians and those who have yet to know the blessings of salvation. Here again God’s sovereignty is never far from Beza’s mind as he notes, “According to His wisdom, He knows the time and convenient means to let us fully enjoy the efficacy of our prayers” (page 225). God knows best how to answer our prayers. One niggle is that in translating these prayers into English from French, the second person singular that would surely have been used in the original when addressing God, tu, has become you instead of thou.
To conclude, the “influencers” of the past thirty to forty years have succeeded in keeping Theodore Beza in the shadows. Dr. Wright is to be thanked for bringing him, and the truth that he loved so deeply and applied so pastorally, out into the light for us to see. His book has been in print for nine years already – I regret not having read it before – and I hope that Christian Focus Publications will keep it in print for many years to come, because its message is vital for our times.