The Necessity of Reforming the Church by John Calvin

The necessity of reforming the church by John Calvin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a good little read, which has the advantage of being very concise and direct. It was written to Emperor Charles V on the eve of the Diet of Speyer (1544). This tract was written as an apologia for the Reformation. What was going on in the sixteenth century that made reformation necessary? I think Calvin lays out a case that it was quite necessary, and that the only course of action open to the Christian who loved the church of Jesus Christ was to support the Reformation.

What will be most surprising about this work is how heavily some issues factor into Calvin’s reasoning. You might expect him to focus on sola scriptura or sola fide. These issues simply do not get much attention. Instead, Calvin focuses on the abuses in worship, prayer, and the Sacraments. This, I think, should be quite instructive for us. Too often, we place a great stress on theological purity, but scarcely think about purity in the corporate action of the church. We should have done the one without leaving the other undone. Let us serve our Lord by pressing forward toward excellence in all areas of life.

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God Wants Everyone to be Saved (2)…

I ran across a gorgeous little ditty from John Calvin today. It fits into the discussion about God’s will and the salvation of people. Calvin’s little tract is called “Articles concerning Predestination”; it’s found in a volume translated and edited by J.K.S. Reid entitled Calvin: Theological Treatises. In that the article is short, I will reproduce the whole thing below and then add some comments afterward.

Articles concerning Predestination

Before the first man was created, God in his eternal counsel had determined what he willed to be done with the whole human race.

In the hidden counsel of God it was determined that Adam should fall from the unimpaired condition of his nature, and by his defection should involve all his posterity in sentence of eternal death.

Upon the same decree depends the distinction between elect and reprobate: as he adopted some for himself for salvation, he destined others for eternal ruin.

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Down in the ‘Ppoose

I know, I know… I’ve been out of commission for the past number of weeks. Well, I’m now back up and runnin’. There are plenty of things about which I can write. I have a lot of material about covenant, family, worship and much more. I would like, however, to start with a highly significant development in the life of the Prussic family.

It's well-known that Calvin basically wanted to kill everybody.

Now, my oldest son is named Calvin (after John Calvin, that monstrous heretic that burned hundreds of thousands of well-meaning happy people in that theocratic hell called Geneva). Just kidding, but my first-born is named Calvin after John Calvin. In any event, when he was born in April of 2005, I was on my way back from Edmonton, Alberta; I actually missed his birth! I was up in Edmonton meeting with the (then) Northwest Presbytery of the Bible Presbyterian Church. So, for the past six years (marked by the day before Calvin’s birthday) I’ve been licensed to preach the Gospel. I was not, however, ordained to the Gospel ministry.

Recently, by the grace of God, the Columbia Bible Presbyterian Church called me to be their pastor. We moved down to Scappoose, Oregon, in Columbia County, and I’ve begun preaching and teaching. I am not yet a pastor, as I’ve not been ordained by the Presbytery. I have yet to undergo further examinations by the Presbytery, and, if I pass, I hope to be ordained within six months.

The upshot is: rejoice with us! This call to ministry is an answer to a lot of prayer (both on the part of the congregation and on the part of our family). We’ve rejoicing to be at the CBPC. We love the people here and are very excited to minister God’s Word, build up the people here, and grow the church. If you are around the NW Portland area, or if you know people who are in that area, please recommend them to come visit us. Also, check out the church’s website – it’s quite informative and helpful.

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Word and Spirit – Like Milk and Cookies…

…they just go together.

How is it that we can recognize the Spirit of God? Do we do so by feeling or intuition? Do we simply *know* God’s Spirit? If so, why does John admonish believers to test the spirits? If believers *knew* the Spirit from false spirits, there would be no reason to test the spirits. What, then, is the believer to use to test the spirits? Maybe another way of asking is, by what means do believers recognize the Spirit of God? I think God’s answer to this question is actually quite elegant and simple, and it’s exceedingly workable. Let’s see if I can’t lay it out so as to be understood.

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St. Anselm on Free Will

Augustine & Calvin

I’m always amused when people say that the majority of church history is not “Calvinistic.” I’m amused because it’s both true and false. It’s true in that the Reformation put a fine point on issues of divine sovereignty and human inability. Take note that I said the Reformation, not Calvin. If by “Calvinism” we mean a commitment to the utter helplessness of humanity and a profound commitment to the sovereignty of God in the salvation or damnation of sinners, then we might just as well call it by a name reminiscent of any of the Reformers. Arminius himself was absolutely committed to the utter and absolute helplessness of humanity. If, however, by “Calvinism” we (anachronistically) mean the five points of Calvinism, then a great deal of the church is not Calvinistic… that is, completely Calvinistic.

When I think of the “Calvinism” of the church in broad historical terms, I’m thinking of it in a general sense: a commitment Augustinian anthropology and soteriology.

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Old on the Reformed Baptismal Rite

The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century by Hughes Oliphant Old

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this book to be fascinating, greatly informative and easily accessible. Old offers a look at the development of the practice of baptism among the Reformers, but in so doing he gives us much more than that. For anytime one studies the Reformers, one necessarily studies all of church history before the Reformers. This book offers a sweeping (but detailed) view of the baptismal rite from NT times into the early Christian centuries, through the long Middle Ages into the Reformation. Old analyzes changes in the rite of baptism in light of historical, political, and theological developments in the church and the culture generally. He demonstrates how the baptismal rite developed through the centuries and what the Reformers had to work with as they set to reforming the baptismal rite in their own churches. I’ve read a good deal about the Reformed doctrine of baptism, but I was blown away by how much I didn’t know about the Reformed practice of baptism. Further, I am impressed at how conversant the Reformers were (generally, but specifically with regard to baptism) with the early and medieval church. The Reformers (and Old’s presentation of their work and thought) should encourage us to read more broadly and be less provincial. This is an excellent book and is highly recommended for anyone interested in the doctrine and practice of baptism in the Reformed churches.

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Individual Election is Biblical

Having had some fun conversations with Arminians and Semi-Pelagians of late, I wanted to highlight what I see as a very obvious weakness in their theological thought. This weakness actually grows out of a weakness in “Calvinistic” thought (or articulation). Let’s see if we can’t unwrap this and have some fun.

Synod of Dordt

The Calvinist weakness: the Reformed faith (yes, broader than the followers of Calvin) and some Lutherans (including Martin Luther, himself) have taught individuals are the objects of divine election unto eternal salvation. More simply stated, God eternally chose certain people to be saved in Christ. The flip side is also true, that God has eternally passed over and/or rejected other individuals. The sum of these two groups equals the total individuals in history; everybody fits into one or the other category: elect or reprobate. (See the Canons of Dordt for a classic articulation and defense of these ideas.)

Now, sometimes, Calvinists (having this paradigm in mind) insist that, in the Bible, election is always individual, unconditional election. This is unfortunate, as it’s certainly not true.

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15 Most Influential Books

 

Books! Read Good Ones.

 

I posted this list as a note on Facebook earlier today. That list was supposed to be short, but I wanted to elaborate a bit about why each of these books is so important to me. Here goes.

1. The Bible by God – the whole world hangs on this book. It is God’s self-revelation unto our salvation. I loathe when people (recalling my liberal professors at University) pay lip service to the Bible, but deny its teachings. This book must rule us.

2. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin – The only people more influential on my thinking than John Calvin are my parents (God bless them). This book rocked my little world. It was my introduction into the vast cosmos of Christian thought. Calvin is one of the great masters of Christian thought. This work is his justly famous summary of Christian doctrine.

3. Luther the Leader by John L. Nuelsen (I think) – I was a sophomore at University. I wanted to know about the Reformation. I sat in my ignorance on one side of the apartment looking across at this book on the book shelf. I knew the end of my ignorance was in its pages. This was the first book I picked up as an adult, and I picked it up with the express purpose of learning. That was awesome. It sparked a deep desire in me to know the things of God and his people – a desire that continues to burn.

4. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame – This is one of the books that my mom read to me before bed. Thanks, mom. I have not read it as an adult, but as a child it helped me develop an imagination and a sense of wonder at the way things are.

5. He Shall Have Dominion by Kenneth Gentry – This book brought just about everything together for me. It’s a book about Postmillennialism (the best book available to define and defend postmil theory), but it draws together so much: covenant, ethics, history, God’s plan of redemption, and much more. Gentry’s book helped me bring together a fulsome Christian view of all these things.

6. Theonomy in Christian Ethics by Greg Bahnsen – Bahnsen work on ethics helped me sharpen my thoughts about ethics. It’s very popular in Christian circles to be dismissive of large tracts of God’s law. Bahnsen helped me fine tune my commitment to divine law, even in the details.

7. Christian Apologetics by Cornelius Van Til – I have never worked harder to read a book than I worked to read this one. It paid off. In the words of Kenneth Gentry, Van Til helped me begin to *think* as a Christian.

8. The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul – This book helped me keep my mind in the great morass of happy-clappy Christianity that I was introduced to as an undergraduate. God’s holiness is rightly horrifying. Sproul taught me about the trauma of holiness. Thanks, R.C.

9. The Sovereignty of God by Arthur W. Pink – don’t read the abridged version of this. This work will rock you to your core. When I read it I was already convinced of the absolute sovereignty of God (call it “Calvinism” if you must). This book details how the Bible shows God’s absolute sovereignty in various areas of life, including salvation and reprobation. Pink is a great antidote to the poisons of Arminianism.

10. Westminster Standards (but especially the Shorter Catechism) – The Standards are always in my hands. They’re a consistent source of spiritual sustenance and guidance. I recall learning a great deal from the Shorter Catechism in one particular reading at an airport (LAX) in 1998.

 

Leo Tolstoy

 

11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy – I read this amazing book for the first time in 2000. Took a while, cuz it’s big and thick. That’s okay. Big books just take longer to read. Don’t be scared of them. W&P, itself, was vast and amazing, telling the story of many lives in the context of the Napoleonic Wars in Russia. Simply amazing. This book also kicked off a love affair between me and Russian authors, especially Tolstoy.

12. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway – This book taught me that people could use words to paint pictures in my mind, that they would write words that could break my heart, that being an author is art. This book (along with others) convinced me of the necessity of reading fiction for pastors. Words are powerful tools. We gotta learn how to use ‘em.

13. First in his Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton by David Maraniss – This may seem like a curious book to make the top 15. I suppose that it is. Let me put it this way: Before I read this book, I abhorred Bill Clinton. After I read this book, I abhorred Bill Clinton, but thought that there were many ways that I should be more like him.  Briefly, it opened my eyes to my narrow view or assessment of people. It didn’t make me think differently about right and wrong, but it did help me access people in a broader, healthier way.

14. Confessions by Augustine – This book, to some degree, taught me devotions. It demonstrated that a thinking Christianity can be a devotional Christianity. It is proof that not only can you have both head and heart, but that the heart is diminished without the head, and the head is diminished without the heart. Also, I like reading Augustine thoughtfully kicking around an idea, an idea with which all the greatest minds in history subsequently wrestle. Augustine is a wellspring of centuries and centuries of thought.

15. Jewish Backgrounds of the New Testament by J. Julius Scott, Jr. – I read this book at the end of seminary: wish I read it long before that. Scott shows how dependent the NT is on both the OT and intertestamental Judaism. This book helped me get a better view of the “historico” part of my historico-grammatico-theological hermeneutics.

Looking at my list now, I see that I should have added How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – this book’s title is cliché, but that’s only because of how successful it was. This book codifies how to treat people so that they like you. The simple version is *actually* be interested in them, focus on them, their desires and interests. Love them first, and, in turn, they’ll love you back. I think this book could be read annually with great benefit.

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Calvin the Lutheran

I might just as well have called this “Luther the Calvinist,” as (relative to my point) both are quite true. Further, what’s said here of the Magisterial Reformers could also be said of the lesser-known Reformers (also, check out The Other Reformers).

So, what am I after, here? What’s got me all worked up into a little tizzy, again? I’ll tell you what: I’ve had to endure (with much long-suffering) some brothers on Facebook that have maintained that Luther didn’t teach predestination like Calvin did. Some want to make Luther something of an out-and-out Arminian. Others want to speak of him holding to “single” but not “double” predestination. Now, I’m no Luther scholar (though I do fancy myself as something of a Calvin scholar). In any event, I have read enough Luther (The Bondage of the Will ought really to be enough all by itself) to know that he was a rip-snortin’ Augustinian, fully supporting and teaching the absolute sovereignty of God in the salvation of men.

Anyhoo… I was very pleased to run across something pertaining to this issue whilst reading Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield tonight:

 

B.B. Warfield

The doctrine of predestination is not the formative principle of Calvinism, … [though] it has been firmly embraced and consistently proclaimed by Calvinists because it is an implicate of theism…. And so little is it a peculiarity of the Reformed theology, that it underlay and gave its form and power to the whole Reformation movement; which was, as from the spiritual point of view, a great revival of religion, so, from the doctrinal point of view, a great revival of Augustinianism. There was accordingly no difference  among the Reformers on this point: Luther and Melanchthon [Luther's protégé] and the compromising Butzer [Martin Bucer] were no less jealous for absolute predestination that Zwingli and Calvin. Even Zwingli could not surpass Luther in sharp and unqualified assertion of it: and it was not Calvin but Melanchthon who gave it a formal place in his primary scientific statement of the elements of the Protestant faith. 

Now, I’ll grant that Melanchthon softened on this in his later career, taking a good deal of the Lutheran church with him (the Philippists), but not all of it (the Gnesio-Lutherans). From the beginning, however, the Reformation was thoroughly Augustinian – boldly and clearly proclaiming the absolute sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners. Arminianism was an early seventeen-century development in (read: perversion of) the Reformed tradition. This perversion was specifically repudiated by all branches of the Reformed church around the world (not just at Dort). Arminianism’s very popular today (even for the last century and a half), but it was unheard-of among the Reformers. Sorry to the revisionists.

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Who are Your People?

Here’s another angle on why to study church history… dig this:

¹ Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
² I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
³things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
⁴We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done. Psalm 78:1-4

The Psalmist, here, commands a covenantal pedagogy. Parents were to tell their children of the mighty works of Yahweh. The works he did generations and generations before were to be recounted to the children of the present generation. By way of application, the works that our great, great, great grandparents saw (should) have been reported down the generations to us, and we’re to tell them to our children. Are you parents doing this? More on this below.

⁵He established a testimony in Jacob
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
⁶that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
⁷so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
⁸and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God. Psalm 78:5-8

Part of the parental responsibility, as articulated here, is to train our children to train their children. God calls us to multi-generational pedagogy. Positively, we’re to train up our kids to set their hope in God, remember his mighty works, and to keep his commandments. This instruction comes, do take note, in the context of the covenant body – the people of God.  Teach your kids not to repeat the unfaithful and rebellious aspects of their fathers (vs. 8). These fathers, however, are their fathers. This can be called covenant identity. Our children are part of the family of faith, which faith is passed on generation to generation. This is our children’s identity; it’s WHO THEY ARE. We baptize our children of the covenant because they deserve it by identity. We train them up to know and own their own, God-given identity, with all its attendant blessings and responsibilities.

Our fathers are our fathers. See that the rest of the Psalm rehearses a great many negative and rebellious acts of God’s people. Our fathers, whether they were unfaithful or not, are still our fathers. There’s a great deal we can learn from the sins of our fathers, often times more than we can learn from their faithfulness.

Final point: Does this command to tell our children of the mighty works of God end where the Bible ends? That is, are there no mighty works of God outside the pages of Scripture? What about the great acts of God in judging our apostate fathers (Israel) by the hand of Rome in AD 70? What about the great martyrs of the first centuries of Christianity? Is their faith not a mighty and wonderful work of God? What about the Cappadocian Fathers? Does this include Athanasius? How about Nicaea? What about Augustine? Shouldn’t Augustine’s mind qualify as a one of Yahweh’s mighty deeds? What about Boethius? The growth of the Eastern Church? And on, and on, and on… Do your children know the story of Athanasius? Do you kids know why Augustine was weeping in the garden under the tree, and what the little kid was singing outside the garden walls? They most certainly should. It’s their history. It’s their identity. These stories are some of the stories of their people, stories to which they’re entitled by covenant identity. Don’t rob them. Neither should we rob them of the “negative” stories. Our people are not only the people who suffered persecution at the hands of Jews and Romans, but we are also the people who persecuted Jews and heretics. Our stories include both Ignatius of Antioch and Tomas de Torquemada. Our identity encompasses both the selfless missionary work of Patrick, Augustine of Canterbury, Aidan, Xavier, and Geneva under Calvin and also the loathsome violence of the Crusades. In a word, our identity is quite catholic, but not in the unfortunate, narrow sense that Rome uses it (they’ve hijacked that term, but it’s not theirs – it’s ours). Rather, our identity is catholic in the fulsome, glorious, biblical sense. We belong to the people of God, a people spanning from Adam down to the present moment, and with a view to 1000 more generations (maybe 100,000 more generations). Church history isn’t just informative and instructive, it is part of our identity.

Who are your people?

A toast to Christian catholicity!

 

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