Taking Zwingli to Task

As a certain controversial friend has noted, I haven't posted anything on this blog since the Reagan administration. Well, JK, since the market demands it, I will oblige by putting forth this tidbit I posted on the discussion board for my Christian Worship class this week. Since anti-Gnostic crusading is one my favorite hobbies, I couldn't resist taking a pot shot at the Reformer who didn't even allow singing in his services. Sorry, Brother Ulrich.

For most of my life, my experiences of corporate public worship have been haunted by the specter of the Platonic Protestant from Zürich. I don`t mean to speak badly of one of our great Reformers, but Zwingli`s errors are with us still today causing all sorts of problems. When we think of worship exclusively as internal, as purely spiritual, or as a primarily individual affair, when we think the whole point of worship has been to simply learn something about God, when we see religious matters moved from the public sphere and placed outside of life in the real world and relevance to daily life, we have met with his influence. It`s no wonder I was so carnal when I was a Zwinglian.

Unfortunately, I`m still far more the Zwinglian than I want to be, but I`ve come to see far more and more that the goal of public worship is to see God in his glory, exult in him, love the brotherhood, and go forth transformed to do his work in the world each time I come from the assembly of his people. Zwingli was right to point us to the Word of God as the content and source of our worship, but thank God for the liturgical reforms of John Calvin, through which God`s Spirit has been freed to utilize that Word more effectively for its full effect on worshipers in all of their capacities--and this for the renewal of the Church and the world.

I`m not saying this can`t and doesn`t happen in a Zwinglian context. It can and does because of the enlivening influences of pietism and revivalism, but I have found in my own life greater transformation in the context of classical Calvinian worship through Word and Sacrament. It feeds heart, mind, body, and strength, and I crave it week after week.

We Already Share in Body and Blood

Here's just one gem of many from today's Calvin reading:

But the flesh of Christ does not of itself have a power so great as to quicken us, for in its first condition it was subject to mortality; and now, endowed with immortality, it does not live through itself. Nevertheless, since it is pervaded with fullness of life to be transmitted to us, it is rightly called "life-giving." In this sense I interpret with Cyril that saying of Christ's: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself" [John 5:26, cf. Vg.]. For there he is properly speaking not of those gifts which he had in the Father's presence from the beginning, but of those with which he was adorned in that very flesh wherein he appeared. Accordingly, he shows that in his humanity there also dwells fullness of life, so that whoever has partaken of his flesh and blood may at the same time enjoy participation in life.

We can explain the nature of this by a familiar example. Water is sometimes drunk from a spring, sometimes drawn, sometimes led by channels to water the fields, yet it does not flow forth from itself for so many uses, but from the very source, which by unceasing flow supplies and serves it. In like manner, the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain that pours into us the life springing forth from the Godhead into itself. Now who does not see that communion of Christ's flesh and blood is necessary for all who aspire to heavenly life?

This is the purport of the apostle's statements: "The church . . . is the body of Christ, and the fullness of him" [Eph. 1:23]; but he is "the head" [Eph. 4:15] "from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by . . . joints . . . makes bodily growth" [Eph. 4:16]; "our bodies are members of Christ" [I Cor. 6:15]. We understand that all these things could not be brought about otherwise than by his cleaving to us wholly in spirit and body. But Paul graced with a still more glorious title that intimate fellowship in which we are joined with his flesh when he said, "We are members of his body, of his bones and of his flesh" [Eph. 5:30]. Finally, to witness to this thing greater than all words, he ends his discourse with an exclamation: "This," he says, "is a great mystery" [Eph. 5:32]. It would be extreme madness to recognize no communion of believers with the flesh and blood of the Lord, which the apostle declares to be so great that he prefers to marvel at it rather than to explain it. Institutes 4.17.9

If we as the Church already share in the Body and Blood of Christ through our union with Him, is it such a stretch to consider that in some mystical way we share truly and really in flesh and blood in the Supper of the Lord and not just in the Spirit? This is precisely the line of reasoning Calvin is following here.

Calvin on Mother Church

Calvin is a bit too decretal and Augustinian for my taste in his opening remarks on the Church in his Institutes. He incorrectly applies the discussion of the Body of Christ in Ephesians to the invisible Church, evidencing an over-spiritualization of the communion of saints and a high degree of individualism. Much better are these remarks on the necessity of membership in the visible Church:

But because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn even from the simple title "mother" how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels [Matt. 22:30]. Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives. Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah [Isa. 37:32] and Joel [Joel 2:32] testify. Ezekiel agrees with them when he declares that those whom God rejects from heavenly life will not be enrolled among God's people [Ezek. 13:9]. On the other hand, those who turn to the cultivation of true godliness are said to inscribe their names among the citizens of Jerusalem [cf. Isa. 56:5; Ps. 87:6]. For this reason, it is said in another psalm: "Remember me, O Jehovah, with favor toward thy people; visit me with salvation: that I may see the well-doing of thy chosen ones, that I may rejoice in the joy of thy nation, that I may be glad with thine inheritance" [Ps. 106:4-5 p.; cf. Ps. 105:4, Vg., etc.]. By these words God's fatherly favor and the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the church. (4.1.4)

Predestination Thoughts

I'm currently in Book 3, Chapter 21 of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. This is where he puts forth his comprehensive teaching on the doctrines of predestination and election. I'm still fairly early in his discussion, but so far I'm finding his teaching to be sober, balanced, careful, and non-speculative—all the things that are commendable about him. Instead of forcefully plowing ahead and asserting his point of view, he is careful to let the Bible speak its own words without forcing them into his conclusion. Whether you accept his teaching of double predestination and of unconditional election to salvation versus unconditional reprobation, you can't knock his method.

There are three thoughts that come to mind about my own prejudices concerning this topic. I need to get them out in the open.

First, I am completely comfortable with the idea that salvation is purely by God's free, unmerited mercy without reference to anything I can do, have done, or will do. That sinners accept salvation is totally dependent on God's decision; it is God's means of securing for the elect the end to which He has destined them.

I am not comfortable, however, with the inverse—that our damnation is purely by God's eternal decree and is without reference to the sins that the damned can commit, have committed, or will commit. That people are recalcitrant sinners is God's will; it is His means of securing for the reprobate the end to which He has destined them.

To sum up, I accept that salvation is totally unmerited, but I cannot wrap my head around a damnation that is not conditioned at rock bottom on our sins. I know I can't deserve my salvation, but, if I'm going to be damned, at rock bottom I damn well want to deserve it.

Second, I am not a disinterested party. Granted, I am confident in my own election (looking at the testimonies the Scriptures, the sacraments, and covenant give and my subjective experience of God's grace to me, I have assurance of God's favor-this is a whole other issue, can Christians know for sure if they are "saved"?), but, as a human being, I find disconcerting the notion that at bottom God does not have loving intentions for all of his human creatures. Though I trust that God has saved me, is saving me, and shall save me, I still have an interest in the existential plight of fellow human beings. There's that whole, "Love your neighbor as yourself" thing, you know.

Intellectually, the above is a strike against my ability to make an objective decision regarding the actual teaching of Scripture on this matter. Hopefully, the fact that I am aware of my a priori prejudices can help even this out.

Finally, even if I do not come to accept double predestination as objectively, propositionally true, if one believes, for whatever reason, that he or she is elect, I agree with Calvin that this doctrine should produce humility and gratitude toward God rather than presumption. If it results in presumption, on the other hand, I guess the good circular Calvinist answer would be that it proves the reprobation of the ungrateful sinner who uses it to presume upon God's grace.

At any rate, certain biblical passages do seem to teach at face value unconditional reprobation. Even if the explicit words of such passages are not literally word-for-word true, these passages can still be useful not as timeless, propositional truths but as inducements to bow in humility and gratitude before God that He has chosen to show such mercy to pitiful creatures he could just as easily have chosen to damn. Still, if this scenario were the case, I would worry that it would still paint God to be unjust and amoral and induce us to worship Him just for His benefits to us and not for His intrinsic nature. We shall see.

Thoughts on the Bible 1

I've been meaning to put together some thoughts on this for a little while, but I've been mired in a bit of a summertime slump of laziness, apathy, and boredom. I've been needing just a bit of a kick in the seat of my pants to get me to write on this subject, and that came in Sunday School yesterday. In celebration of Calvin’s 500th birthday, we've been taking some time to get acquainted with the life and contributions of this father of the Reformed tradition.

Yesterday we talked about his legacy and, inevitably, our pastor, Rev Nancy, directed us to ponder the remarks made in the video about Calvin's view of Scripture. The scholars in the video gave Calvin's doctrine of Scripture a bit of a neo-orthodox coloring. They first described the sense in which Calvin bids us to look beyond the words of the Scriptures themselves to what the Spirit is saying through those words.

They also described the sense in which Calvin bids us to understand that the Bible has an ultimate target that it’s trying to hit—that it’s the Word of God in that it points always only in the direction of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

Well, right enough. The Bible is no dead letter; it’s a living document. The Scriptures are not something that is simply acted upon by our reason or our ability to comprehend what is written or spoken; no, rather, the Word of God acts upon us. In other words, the Scriptures have a property of vivifying and transforming power about them because of the Spirit's activity moving over the face of the words printed on the page or those uttered by the mouth. Furthermore, we recognize that the Bible is the Word of God because it testifies to the ultimate revelation of God, His eternal Word, God the Son, Jesus Christ.

These are indeed affirmations that I am willing to wager that we all would accept about the Scriptures, but, does it seem to you that the scholars’ words about the Bible and Calvin's view of it and my own affirmation of those comments are less powerful and forceful than coming right out and saying that "the Bible is the only and authoritative Word of God, without error in the original manuscripts" or some other similarly worded inerrantist formulation? Maybe . . .

At any rate, though the scholars on the video are undoubtedly correct that Calvin lodges the efficacy of the Word exclusively in the work of the Holy Spirit and views Christ as its only target, it's quite plain to me that Calvin would also insist that the Bible not only contains the Word of God but is itself the Word of God and is free from all error. I'll let the Calvin scholars figure out exactly what Calvin believed in regard to the Scriptures, but this puts us in a place where I can venture forth a few thoughts.

"Bibliolatry?"

I learned a new word from Rev Nancy earlier this summer that I had not heard before. She also brought it up in the Calvin class yesterday. That word is "bibliolatry," or, "Bible idolatry." What?! Bible worship?! What kind of nonsense am I talking?!

Yes, indeed, Bible worship does exist, and I don't think that this is just a way theologically left-leaning Protestants dismiss people who actually believe what the Bible says. Bible worship is what happens when we attempt to read the Bible as if we don't need the Spirit's guidance. This is what’s going on when we domesticate the Bible, tear it apart, and put it back together in a neat, compact, easy-to-understand system of essential doctrines and call that system the Word of God and depend on it as if it were God Himself. God and His Word, of course, are bigger than our individual interpretations or those of our particular Christian traditions, so we need to be on guard against this tendency to paint our own culturally-conditioned readings of the Bible on the sky. Otherwise, we will find that we have made an idol too of that which truly and uniquely reveals God to us.

Sometimes we forget that what is more important about the Bible is not the information it provides but the One whom it reveals. The Bible is not an end in itself. Though its message is certainly important, the message is intended more than anything to draw us to the One who breathed it forth through the writers He inspired. We must also remember that for us today it is only as the Holy Spirit hovers over the face of the words written on the page or spoken by the mouth that God and His will are truly and effectively revealed in the Scriptures.

This is enough to chew on for a bit. Stay tuned, I've got more thoughts on this coming tomorrow.

Calvin's Legacy

Kevin DeYoung nailing it on Calvin's legacy. Let us stand as firmly on the Word of God as Calvin. "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever."

http//www.revkevindeyoung.com/2009/07/withering-and-word-john-calvin-at-500.html

Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

In commemoration of John Calvin's 500th birthday (which coincidently falls on July 10, yours truly's birthday), I've been reading his great systematic theology Institutes of the Christian Religion. Fortunately, Princeton has been given permission to offer daily readings from the Battles-McNeill translation, which is much better than the 19th-century Beveridge translation. Love Calvin or hate him, he's easily the greatest theologian in the history of Protestantism, so one would do well to become acquainted with his thought.

One of the aspects of Calvin's thought that has irked me is his thoroughgoing focus on God's sovereignty and Providence in governing the universe. Calvin seems to think that God's instrumentality (direct or indirect) is present in all that happens, whether for good or ill. This is so pronounced in the Institutes that it approaches a strict determinism. Argue with this if you want. I most certainly have, and something indeed still seems wrong with this kind of approach, but in this season in my life in which things have not quite worked out for me as I had planned in regard to seminary and my move to St. Louis, Calvin's confidence that God is radically in control begins to sound pretty good to me. I take comfort and hope in this from today's reading:

If things do not go according to our wish and hope, we will still be restrained from impatience and loathing of our condition, whatever it may be. For we shall know that this is to murmur against God, by whose will riches and poverty, contempt and honor, are dispensed. To sum up, he who rests solely upon the blessing of God, as it has been here expressed, will neither strive with evil arts after those things which men customarily madly seek after, which he realizes will not profit him, nor will he, if things go well, give credit to himself or even to his diligence, or industry, or fortune. Rather, he will give God the credit as its Author. But if, while other men's affairs flourish, he makes but slight advancement, or even slips back, he will still bear his low estate with greater equanimity and moderation of mind than some profane person would bear a moderate success which merely does not correspond with his wish. For he indeed possesses a solace in which he may repose more peacefully than in the highest degree of wealth or power. Since this leads to his salvation, he considers that his affairs are ordained by the Lord. 'We see that David was so minded; while he follows God and gives himself over to his leading, he attests that he is like a child weaned from his mother's breast, and that he does not occupy himself with things too deep and wonderful for him.

Fast and Feast, Flesh and Spirit

For someone who just joined a congregation in a mainline denomination three weeks ago, I was awfully hard on that segment of American Protestant Christianity in my last post. All criticisms aside, the orthodox majority of mainline Protestants have done some things better over the last century than most evangelicals have. They have done particularly well with two areas I am keenly interested in—the Sacraments and the social aspect of the Gospel, both emphases that have prevented them from falling into the Gnostic scheme of spiritualizing all the trappings of religion away, at least not to the extent that most evangelicals have.

When it comes to its official statements in its Book of Common Worship, the Presbyterian Church USA is one of the most solid of the mainline churches when it comes to its sacramental theology and its sacramental liturgies. Its baptismal liturgies incorporate the beauty of the best Reformed language about the Sacrament and handle with nuance and subtlety the dialectic theological concerns in play in Reformed thought on the Sacrament. Its Eucharistic liturgies incorporate elements of patristic liturgies, giving them an awesome sense of history and mystery and a catholicity that resonates with believers from the Christian traditions of Wittenberg, Geneva, Rome, and of Constantinople and points north and east. The PCUSA has also done a fantastic job in its work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in bridging the centuries-old rift that developed between the Reformed and the Lutherans due to their differences on the Sacraments. Needless to say, I am thrilled to officially be a member of this denomination.

In her sermon last Lord's Day, our pastor, Reverend Nancy Carle, did not address the Sacraments but did deal nicely with the issue of fasting as a discipline we are called to practice especially during the season of Lent but also as an ordinary practice of our spirituality. She took the anti-Gnostic track of defending the practice by discussing the importance God places on the actions we perform in and with our bodies. We are not to think of ourselves as having competing and dichotomous fragments of ourselves labeled spirit and matter, with spirit being good and mighty and flesh being somehow lesser or weaker. She pointed to the fact that God called materiality and flesh good and very good when he created it in the beginning and that God assumed flesh and blood in the person of Jesus Christ, who physically died and bodily rose from the grave. Likewise, she noted the Christian belief in the general resurrection of the dead as stated in the Apostles' Creed. It is in the context of such an embodied spirituality that fasting is an appropriate and necessary activity for Christians. In the season of Christ's suffering and death, we are to show our thanksgiving and joy by bringing our bodies into subjection and offering them as a sacrifice to he who was and is our all-sufficient sacrifice.

With the embodied nature of our spirituality under discussion last Lord's Day, it was appropriate that the contrasting theme of feast also appeared in the service. The idea of fasting as a means of feasting on Jesus Christ came up during the sermon, and, during the children's feature, Nancy discussed with the youngsters the ample material for feasting our worship together provides. She pulled out a hymnal and intimated to the children that a great feast for our ears was set in the music of the church. She pulled out a Bible and pointed to the great feast for our hearts that God's Word is. She also pointed to the congregation and the choir assembled behind her and noted what a feast of wisdom is set before inquiring minds in all the lessons God's people can teach us.

Most naturally, then, my mind made the progression to something else that is as central to our life and worship together as the spoken and written Word of God. Also, with the matters of the mental, emotional, and spiritual feasts set before God's people in worship being dealt with, it was only natural that I should think of the physical feast of the Church. My eyes went from the pastor and the children gathered on the other side of the sanctuary back to the centrally-located altar, hoping against hope that I was mistaken that no feast of Christ's body and blood lay there ready and waiting for us to consume, but, alas, I was not mistaken. No bread. No wine. No literal feast was to be had this day. In good Presbyterian fashion, our fare today was destined only to be words.

Well, my time for complaining is over. Presbyterians have not historically celebrated the Lord's Supper often. Many are now doing so weekly, but many more still are not. The fact is that Presbyterianism is centered on the Word. Well, the entire Church is centered on the Word of God—both the testimony about him and his Father we call Scripture and the God-Man himself, Jesus Christ. The Word of God is speech by and about God as well as the flesh and blood human being that was and is God. Just as Jesus did not come in words alone but also in the flesh when he walked the earth, so too does he not, or, at least should not have to, come by words alone today. In this sense, it is perfectly Presbyterian to make the Sacraments as central to our worship as the Bible is. Since Christ has gone to be present in heaven at the right hand of the Father, through the power the Holy Spirit the Sacraments are the means, in addition to the speech of Holy Writ, by which we continue to commune with him in a fleshly way.

Do I overstate the need for God to engage us at every level of our being, or, conversely that we need to engage God at every level of our being? Doesn't Scripture say, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all" (John 6:63). This is the verse that the Swiss Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, used to support his position on the Lord's Supper at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529.

At this fateful meeting, the Protestant princes and theologians of Germany and their counterparts from Switzerland were assembled to bolster the Protestant movement and unify it in the face of the threat from the armies of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Zwingli and the Swiss Reformed camp agreed on virtually all major points of doctrine with Luther and his followers. However, Luther and Zwingli quarreled bitterly on the question of the Lord's Supper.

Luther took quite literally Christ's words at the Last Supper, "This is my body. This is my blood." He was quite unwilling to budge on this point. He felt that the statement was just too strongly put in Scripture to spiritualize it away. He did not quite accept the Roman Catholic view either, but this was primarily because it was expressed in terms more associated with Aristotelian philosophy than the Bible.

Zwingli found Luther's view to be outright idolatry. He found repugnant the idea that God is present "in, with, and under" the physical elements of bread and wine. On this point, John Calvin would later agree with Zwingli, but his reason for rejecting the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist was thoroughly biblical. As for Zwingli, the basis of his reasoning was philosophical.

Calvin could not reconcile the idea of Jesus Christ the human being sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven while simultaneously being present on a thousand altars. He was worried about inadvertently endorsing the "Monophysite" heresy (which is the elimination of the distinction between Christ's humanity and divinity, namely that "the humanity of Christ is absorbed into his divinity just as a drop of rain is into the sea"), but he nevertheless still affirmed that Christ is spiritually present in the Sacrament and that it contains a divine blessing for believers and a curse for unbelievers.

Zwingli, on the other hand, could not reconcile Christ's physical presence in Communion with his Platonic understanding of the relationship between spirit and matter. For Zwingli, matter was inherently inferior to spirit and could not carry the weight of spiritual reality. As a result, Zwingli's interpretation of that great Eucharistic chapter, John 6, hinged upon verse 63: "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all." (I find it remarkable that a theologian who was as otherwise skilled as Zwingli was could fail to recognize that following his exegetical reasoning on the Lord's Supper to its most obvious conclusion would be to empty the Incarnation of any significance as well!)

At any rate, Luther thought Zwingli had performed a rational emptying of the Lord's Supper and thus uttered, "We are not of the same spirit." (Yay Luther! Even though these words were disastrous for Protestant prospects for church unity and I have some points of departure from Lutheran views of the Lord's Supper, I still have to admire Luther's stand for historic Christianity here.) It was at this point in history that we can mark the definitive split between the Reformed and the Lutherans. Though Calvin took a view of the Sacrament somewhat closer to Luther's view, he helped deepen the split between his followers and Luther's by signing a statement of agreement with Zwingli's followers in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549. The Reformed have been trying to figure out whether they follow Calvin or Zwingli on the Lord's Supper ever since. (Can you guess which I follow on this doctrine?)

But what do we make of the essential biblical distinction between Spirit and flesh? Paul, for example, uses the dichotomy between Spirit and flesh repeatedly in his letters to mark a sharp distinction between the life of regenerate and unregenerate humanity. Those of the Spirit are rescued from sin and death, given everlasting life, and set on a trajectory toward glory, but those of the flesh are altogether ruined, wrecked, and doomed.

The Gnostics read their anti-materialist prejudices onto Paul's letters, inferring that spirit is inherently good and that matter is inherently evil. I do not mean to question Paul or the Holy Spirit for their mutual decision to use these terms, but it seems as if the distinction inherently smacks of Gnosticism or some species of Platonism.

Well, I think we can defend Paul's and also John's use of this dichotomy while affirming that there is nothing intrinsic to mere spirit or to mere flesh that makes one superior to the other. I want to note a couple of things.

1. "Spirit" in the Pauline Epistles and in John 6:63 is, of course, the Holy Spirit.
2. "Flesh," as used in the New Testament, often means sinful human nature. That is what is in play in most Pauline usage of the word. Neither does it refer exclusively to our bodies and their sinful nature but it includes our sinful minds, sinful hearts, and sinful spirits as well. This is all "flesh" for Paul.
3. "Flesh" in John 6:63 is not synonymous with "sinful human nature" or bare materiality but with pure natural reason. The flesh here that is of no help is that of the human mind unenlightened by faith, not the flesh and blood that Christ bids us to eat and drink as our regular "spiritual" food earlier in the chapter. Christ's literal flesh and blood offered up for us at Calvary, and consequently signified for and delivered tangibly to us in the Eucharist (not by transformation but by the presence of the Holy Spirit in and with the bread and wine, according to my Reformed perspective), is everything in John 6. The flesh and blood Christ offered up for us at Calvary is the root of our Life as regenerated persons.
   
   (The best Protestant commentary I could find on John 6:63 is solid but contains a heresy. The Geneva Study Bible notes of this verse: "The flesh of Christ therefore quickens us, because he that is man is God: and this mystery is only comprehended by faith, which is the gift of God, found only in the elect."
   
   Good so far and still good on its lexical note on Spirit, except for the heresy it contains: "Spirit, that is, that power which flows from the Godhead causes the flesh of Christ (which is otherwise nothing but flesh) both to live in itself and to give life to us."
   
   That which is in parentheses is technically heretical because there is no humanity of Christ without the divine nature joined to it in hypostatic union. The ancient ecumenical Council of Chalcedon describes Christ as being "in two natures, inconfusedly,unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.")
   
   I digress; the point is that Christ's discourse on his flesh and blood in John 6 must be apprehended by faith, not according to human reason. Human reason finds it preposterous that Jesus can be both fully God and fully human and consequently a human sacrifice for us, but faith recognizes that these are the central realities of the Christian faith.
4. The Spirit is eternal, but the flesh is temporary. This doesn't necessarily imply hierarchy of mere spirit over mere matter. The Spirit/flesh dichotomy is most appropriate for its inference about duration and influence. Flesh (matter) as we currently know it is perishable. Sinful flesh in particular is dying a slow death in the Church and in the individual Christian, but it will inevitably and completely die, though bare matter will not disappear because we will have perfect and incorruptible physical bodies in the Kingdom.
   
   The Spirit, on the other hand, which is God's agent (not to mention very God of very God) of cosmic and individual regeneration, is already powerful in the Church, the world, and in individual believers. The Spirit's influence is eternal and is only getting stronger in the Church, the world, and in individual believers. It will triumph over all when the Kingdom arrives in all its fullness.

Okay, here's how I'm going to bring this sprawling train wreck to an end. We fast during Lent, not because matter is bad, but because matter is good, inasmuch as it is a means of communion with God. We fast so we can bring our bodies and souls into subjection to the will of God and thus offer our whole selves as sacrifices to the one who sacrificed his whole self for us.

When we feast as the Church on the Lord's Supper, we are anticipating that time when matter is returned to the purpose for which it was created—to be a means of union between God and his creatures. The purpose of the Eucharist is thus, according to my friend Dustin Lyon, "the fundamental proclamation of the gospel where all creation is redeemed and the world becomes what it was meant to be: a means of communion with God and transparent to Him." That's why the Word of God, as embodied in Jesus himself, Scripture, and Sacrament, are central to Christian worship. Let us not feast on words alone but on the Word, flesh and Spirit, in all of his fullness.

Thoughts on Calvin

Here is my weekly post for my Reformation and Modern Church History class. I am discussing my impressions regarding John Calvin's personality and theology.

John Calvin looms perhaps as large in my theological imagination as St. Paul. In moments when I forget that the seat of authority rests exclusively in the Scriptures, in those moments when I am over-awed by the power of the human mind to comprehend the mysteries of God and by the eloquence of speech and the written word to express them, I get carried away and ascribe too much significance to extra-biblical witnesses to God's grace and glory. I have often done this with Calvin, and, worse, I have aspired to emulate him and attain to his level of glory. When I recognize this for the sin that it is, I turn to the God who is above and beyond anything we can comprehend and put into words, realizing my own inadequacy of expression in the face of such majesty and wonder, and I worship. Calvin was a great teacher, but, if any honors belong to human teachers, they belong to those through whom God chose to give us the authoritative witness to His revelation in history that is the Scriptures. Paul is to be honored above Calvin and God infinitely above them both.

Nevertheless, we can glory in and praise God for his gifts to others and for the gifts he gives us through them. I thank God for Calvin. I also thank God that through this week's readings and lectures I have had some incorrect impressions corrected.

Much to my surprise, and initially to my chagrin, Calvin describes himself as being of "a timid, soft, and pusillanimous nature." This is much to the contrary of what I had been informed about him. Without ever reading much of his writing, excluding quotations from his writings on the sacraments I have seen in a couple of books, I have long been aware of his importance and influence in the Protestant faith tradition and have been captivated by the grand sound of the term "Calvinism" and by the larger-than-life character of his teachings on grace, God's sovereignty in bringing us to faith and in preserving us to the end, and, of course, his thoroughly orthodox and well-balanced view of the sacraments. In contrast to what I have long thought about much of his teaching, however, I have also long thought of Calvin the man as a somewhat nasty fellow—a combative, dogmatic man who was spiritually prideful and arrogant about his knowledge, had an explosive temper, was generally ill tempered, and was the theocratic dictator who condemned Servetus to death. I also thought that the man who is the champion of the idea that God created the vast majority of humankind for the express purpose of damning them, must himself be as indifferent and un-empathetic toward people as he believed God to be.

What has been revealed to me, however, since I started reading the Institutes this year in commemoration of his 500th birthday (which coincidently falls the same day as my birthday, July 10) and since I have gotten to know him a little more personally this week is that he utterly confounds me. I love him, but he drives me nuts. On the one hand, I do see a man who is a surprisingly (to me anyway) earnest, caring, humble shepherd of his flock. He is also, or at least strives to be, intellectually humble. He does not rise to the heights of speculation that it would be easy for such an intelligent man to rise to. He has a proper and sober regard for the utter mystery of God; he's almost apophatic at some points. Also, I see that he was not a politician but a devoted churchman. Instead of one who thoughtlessly put heretics to death, I see a man who was conflicted and struggled mightily with what to do with Servetus. Instead of someone who imposed his hard, pitiless, indifferent feelings about others on God, I see someone who is simply teaching what his honest reading of the Bible shows, even if it is a teaching that seems indigestible. And yes, Calvin was human. He had a wife and grieved over the loss of his only child.

On the other hand, Calvin is a man of the 16th century with all the flaws of his time. The language he uses to speak of Catholics and even other Protestants in the Institutes is shameful and uncharitable to an extreme. It reveals him to be an extremist who cannot tolerate in the least those who disagree with him. (To be fair, Luther is guilty on this count as well.) Calvin was an old grouch with a bad temper.
(I forgive him for this; I've got a really bad temper myself.) Calvin shares the responsibility for putting Servetus to death. Religious freedom was apparently anathema to him. Also, Calvin, even if he has a right view of human limits and the incomprehensibility of God, still tries to put God and his actions into a rational box. (I concede we need systematic theology, but it inherently trends toward putting God in a rational box.) And predestination to reprobation, even though I have come to accept predestination to salvation, is still an intolerable doctrine for me.

To conclude, I regard Calvin as one of my earthly fathers in the faith. I absolutely love him and praise God for him, but don't grown-up children reserve the right to argue with their parents?