Thursday, May 1, 2025

It is the 1st of May 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Holy cow, it is the 1st episode of season 7 of the podcast! We started this little experiment in daily church history on May 1st 2019- the average price of eggs in America in 2019 was $1.40. So, it’s been awhile.

The 7th time I’ve been around the calendar looking for stories, and like the widows oil I keep fearing I’ll run out but haven’t yet- so, on May 1st I’ve told the story of the Back to the Bible radio show, the Elector Frederick the Wise, the history of May Day, the story of David Livingstone and the Jesuit Adam Schall- astronomer for the Chinese emperor.

All good stories- but there is another and one that takes us to the Reformation era and zips us all around an empire and various states undergoing the changes in church and theology.

It was on this, the 1st of May in 1545 in Bourges, France, that Francois Du Jon would be born to minor nobility- he would come to fame as Franciscus Junius the elder and become one of the key Reformed theologians in the so-called “Age of Orthodoxy”. He was initially educated to join the political set, learning law and Greek. He was appointed to serve the French ambassador to the court of Suleiman, but arriving in Lyon, he found the ambassador had already left, and that was that. He would stay in Lyon, and though he had been tutored by Huguenots and had a taste for Reformation theology, he himself tells the story of reading Cicero and imbibing a rationalism in Lyon. Upon returning home, he read the Gospel of John and was reinvigorated in his desire to study Reformed theology. And so he was off to Geneva to learn under Calvin and Beza.

Those were difficult years- his father was murdered by a catholic extremist, and he had virtually no funding. He would have stayed at Geneva to teach, but his life became a pilgrimage across Europe- first he is called to be a pastor at the Walloon church in Antwerp (essentially these are French-speaking Calvinists in the Netherlands and modern-day Belgium). Being a foreigner in the Netherlands, he was not protected as a Dutch pastor would be, and Junius would head to Limburg and ultimately to Heidelberg, where a new elector had embraced the Reformed faith. He would be called to assist more Walloons in the Netherlands, but made it back to Heidelberg, where he worked with Immanuel Tremmelius, the formerly Jewish convert to Christianity and well-known Hebraist. Junius and Tremmelius would produce a very popular Latin translation of the Old Testament. He would also marry Tremmelius’ daughter. Their son, Franciscus Junius the younger was a philologist.  

The 1580s saw him on the move again- this time as a diplomat across Europe until he was called to his final position- a chair of theology at the University of Leiden. He was appointed in 1592 and it was from this chair he wrote his most famous work “De Vera Theologia” or “A treatise on true theology” which is a standard for the era of Reformed Orthodoxy- the book is not theology per se, but how to “do theology” from the limits of our human knowledge to distinctions and definitions as well as the purpose, end, and pastoral application of theology.  It would be used by the later Lutheran scholastics as well. He would also write a standard work on Federal Theology- a key element of “covenant theology” popular with the Reformed scholastics.

He would have corresponded with the likes of Justus Lipsius, the Catholic humanist, as well as with a colleague at Leiden: Jacob Arminius (of the famed Arminian group opposed to Calvinists). Junius had held to edit the Belgic confession and its language regarding election- the correspondence was kept secret but later published as “the Friendly Conference of James Arminius with Mr Francis Junius about Predestination”.

Junius would succumb to an outbreak of the plague in 1602, and Arminius would receive his chair of theology- the rest is history regarding Arminius, the Calvinists, and the like. Born on this day in 1545, Franciscus Junius the Elder was 57 years old.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and, oh, so much Revelation in the daily lectionary- let’s do it- chapter 3 and the letter to the church at Laodicea:

To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:

These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

19 Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 20 Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

21 To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 1st of April 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who follows the Laodicean principle with his coffee, he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who will drink the morning’s black coffee in the afternoon- no reheating necessary- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.