A ban on dancing had already been introduced before Calvin’s time, but it is true the regulations had been tightened. Calvin thought that since the way people touch each other in dance is nothing less than a first step to adultery, the purity of the body would be better safeguarded by the complete avoidance of dancing. Even if nothing untoward was to happen it was . . . in Calvin’s words, ‘an invitation to Satan.’

Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life, 151.

Calvin took his task as a preacher seriously. He saw the preacher as God’s ambassador to the church. Calvin thought that when he spoke as a preacher, it was God himself who spoke. This also meant that Calvin would have to account for every word he uttered. It was for this reason that Calvin could not ascend the pulpit without careful consideration, because he thought of it as ‘the throne of God, and from that throne he wants to govern our souls.’ The presence of the pulpit meant that at church the congregation would come face to face with God’s judgment seat, where guilt must be confessed and where forgiveness would be obtained. For the preacher it meant speaking only after first listening respectfully to his Taskmaster. This was true not only for Calvin but also for every other preacher. If a pastor did not first become a student of the Word, ‘it would be better if he were to break his neck while climbing into the pulpit.’ ‘For God there is nothing higher than the preaching of the gospel . . . because it is the means to lead people to salvation.’ Calvin had enough self-knowledge to realize that he himself had to be subject to the Word as well. ‘When I climb into the pulpit, it is not simply to instruct others. I do not exclude myself, since I myself must remain a student as well, and the words that come from my mouth are to serve me as much as others. If not, woe to me!’

Herman J. Selderhuis, John Calvin: A Pilgrim’s Life, 110f.

Godfrey, W. Robert. John Calvin: Pilgrim and Pastor. Wheaton: Crossway, 2009.

Sample Pages

This book is an ideal introduction to Calvin’s life and theology. Godfrey begins not with Calvin’s birth but with Calvin at Strassburg producing his first commentary (on Romans), the first major revision of his Institutes, and his “Reply to Sadoleto.” The remainder of the first chapter places Calvin and his theology in his Reformation context by examining the reply to this Roman Catholic Cardinal.

Chapters two through five provide a brief survey of Calvin’s life. Chapters six though eleven provide a survey of various topics.

I found the biographical chapters enjoyable but without information that I hadn’t heard elsewhere. The chapter on worship was my favorite of the topical chapters. The chapter on the sacraments was, as expected, the chapter where I most disagreed with Calvin.

Is it not evidence of stubbornness rather than of diligence to raise strife over the time and order in which [angels] were created . . . . Not to take too long, let us remember here, as in all religious doctrine, that we ought to hold to one rule of modesty and sobriety: not to speak, or guess, or even to seek to know, concerning obscure matters anything except what has been imparted to us by God’s Word. Furthermore, in the reading of Scripture we ought ceaselessly to endeavor to seek out and meditate upon those things which make for edification. let us not indulge in curiosity or in the investigation of unprofitable things. And because the Lord willed to instruct us, not in fruitless questions, but in sound godliness, in the fear of his name, in true trust, and in the duties of holiness, let us be satisfied with this knowledge. For this reason, if we would be duly wise, we must leave those empty speculations which idle men have taught apart from God’s word concerning the nature, orders, and number of angels. I know that many persons more greedily seize upon and take more delight in them than in such things as have been put to daily use. But, if we are not ashamed of being Christ’s disciples, let us not be ashamed to follow that method which he has prescribed. Thus it will come to pass that, content with his teaching, wee shall not only abandon, but also abhor those utterly empty speculations from which he calls us back.

Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.4

Alan Jacobs wrote an excellent critique of Philip Jenkins’ work, The Lost History of Christianity. (Jacobs actually critiques a Boston Globe essay by Jenkins, but the Globe essay was “a kind of preview” to Jenkins’ new book.)

Here’s an excerpt:

And if I do give up on the uniqueness of Jesus, what do I retain? I think we get a clue in this passage from Jenkins:

By the twelfth century, flourishing churches in China and southern India were using the lotus-cross. The lotus is a superbly beautiful flower that grows out of muck and slime. No symbol could better represent the rise of the soul from the material, the victory of enlightenment over ignorance, desire, and attachment. For two thousand years, Buddhist artists have used the lotus to convey these messages in countless paintings and sculptures. The Christian Cross, meanwhile, teaches a comparable lesson, of divine victory over sin and injustice, of the defeat of the world.

But these lessons are not comparable at all; they are quite dramatically at odds with each other, which may help to explain why attempts to reconcile them—if indeed that was really what was going on—have not succeeded. Christianity, being anything but Gnostic, does not believe that the material world is evil, but rather good: the glorious creation of a personal God. Christianity does not teach the innocence or purity of the soul, but rather the corruption of the will and the resulting involvement of the body in sin: As the Body says in a poem by Andrew Marvell, What but a Soul could have the wit / To build me up for Sin so fit? Christianity does not believe in nonattachment, but rather teaches precisely the opposite, that we should weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. The Buddha says, “He who has no love has no woe”; St. John says, “He who does not love abides in death.”

 

The whole article is well worth reading.

Moreover, they unjustly set the ancient fathers against us (I mean the ancient writers of a better age of the church) as if in them they had supporters of their own impiety. If the contest were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory—to put it very modestly—would turn to our side. Now, these fathers have written many wise and excellent things. Still, what commonly happens to men has befallen them too, in some instances. For these so-called pious children of theirs, with all their sharpness of wit and judgment and spirit, worship only the faults and errors of the fathers. The good things that these fathers have written they either do not notice, or misrepresent or pervert. You might say that they only care is to gather dung amid gold.

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 18.

In the pages that follow, Calvin provides examples to substantiate his claim.

Calvin also warned against false miracles:

When we hear that [miracles] were appointed only to seal the truth, shall we employ them to confirm falsehoods? In the first place, it is right to investigate and examine that doctrine which, as the Evangelist says, is superior to miracles. Then, if it is approved, it may rightly be confirmed from miracles. Yet, if one does not tend to seek men’s glory but God’s [John 7:18; 8:50], this is a mark of true doctrine, as Christ says. Since Christ affirms this test of doctrine, miracles are wrongly valued that are applied to any other purpose than to glorify the name of the one God [Deut. 13:2 ff.].

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 17.

In demanding miracles of us, they act dishonestly. For we are not forging some new gospel, but are retaining that very gospel whose truth all the miracles that Jesus Christ and his disciples ever wrought serve to confirm. But, compared with us, they have a strange power: even to this day they can confirm their faith by continual miracles!

. . . . . . . . . .

Perhaps this false hue could have been more dazzling if Scripture had not warned us concerning the legitimate purpose and use of miracles. For Mark teaches that those signs which attended the apostles’ preaching were set forth to confirm it [Mark 16:20]. In like manner, Luke relates that our ‘Lord  . . . bore witness to the word of his grace,’ when these signs and wonders were done by the apostles’ hands [Acts 14:3 p.]. Very much like this is that word of the apostle: that the salvation proclaimed by the gospel has been confirmed in the fact that ‘the Lord has attested it by signs and wonders and various mighty works [Heb. 2:4 p.; cf. Rom 15:18-19]

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 16.

It seems from what Calvin says here that he believed that miracles were given during the giving of revelation as a sign of its authenticity. It also seems that he believed there to be no more need for signs after the revelation had been first given.

Michael Ruse writes in the November/December Books and Culture:

Thanks to scholars like Mark Noll (in America’s God), we now know how deeply the racism of 19th-century America was connected with and supported by biblical literalism—especially the ways in which the Bible was used to justify slavery.

Michael Ruse, “In the Land of Nod,” Books and Culture (Nov/Dec 2008): 39.

Does the evidence presented by Noll actually indicate that Biblical literalism lies at the root of Christian justifications for antebellum slavery?

“Literal” is a tricky word. Does it mean non-allegorical interpretation? Does it mean non-metaphorical? Noll seems to mean neither in America’s God. His use of “literal” denotes a superficial, surface reading of Scripture that fails to probe the Scriptures in a theological or synthetic manner. Noll makes a causal link between common sense realism and this approach to Scripture (America’s God, 379-385). It seems the claim that biblical literalism was used to justify slavery must be qualified by a careful definition of “literalism.” Without this definitional limitation, the claim that “biblical literalism” supported racism and slavery is in danger of slandering those who currently hold to what may be called “biblical literalism.”

What does Ruse mean by “biblical literalism”? He says, “The Sermon on the Mount hardly justifies slavery, so it is not the case that one has to reject the Bible to fight against the vile practice, but many passages of the Bible taken literally seem to support it” (p. 39f.) Does he mean “taken superficially and without theological intertextual considerations”? This would cohere with Noll’s usage, but it is not consistent with typical usage. Ruse could mean “that sense of interpretation (of a text) which is obtained by taking its words in their natural customary meaning, and applying the ordinary rules of grammar” (OED, 3.a).

Though Ruse appeals to Noll, it seems more likely that he means by “literal” not the non-standard meaning used by Noll but the more common meaning found in the OED. The fact that the article deals with the Creation/Evolution debate strengthens this supposition.

If this is the case, Ruse’s claim that biblical literalism is the culprit for 19th century racism and slavery fails. In The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, the book-length treatment of the material Ruse refers to in America’s God, Noll indicates that racism was something read into (not out of) the biblical texts (cf. p. 52, 54).

The more successful biblical arguments against antebellum slavery did not depart from a biblical literalism (as defined by the OED above). Noll notes this was especially true among African Americans who had a view of Scripture that was much higher than many white abolitionists (p. 64).

It is true that these biblical literalists did not argue against slavery per se. They noted instead the many ways in which biblical slavery differed from that practiced in the antebellum South. In other words they recognized a difference between a non-race-based slavery of no more than six years after which the former slaves were provided for liberally upon release (Ex. 21:2; Deut 15:12-18) and a race-based slavery founded on man-theft in which the slaves and their families could be held in perpetuity.

The difficulty was not that “many passages of the Bible taken literally seem to support [slavery]” (p. 40). The problem was a lack of careful attention to the specifics of the text.

Recently a segment of evangelicals has been pushing for the abandonment of sola Scriptura in favor of a theological approach that relies on both Scripture and Church Tradition.

D.H. Williams is a key figure moving some evangelicals this direction. Here’s a quote that captures some of his concerns and hints toward his proposed solution:

Despite the recent attempts of a few evangelical writers to inculcate a theory of sola scriptura as the real intent of the early church, there was no question in believers’ minds that Scripture could or should function in the life of the believer apart from the church’s Tradition. Were it to do so, there was scarce assurance that an orthodox Christian faith would be the result. While many parts of Scripture were inherently perspicuous and able to be understood with little outside assistance, post-apostolic Christians would have anathematized the principle set forth in Buswell’s systematic theology, ‘The rule is then give the Bible an opportunity, in you own mind, to interpret itself,’ as setting the stage for heretical aberrations.

D. H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 98

The October 2008 issue of First Things contains an article which reveals the difficulty of using tradition rather than Scripture as the touchstone of orthodoxy. Richard John Neuhaus’ article, “What Really Happened at Vatican II” evaluates two books about Vatican II that present different visions of the council.

Included in the article is this section which focused on a quote from Benedict XVI about the council:

The question is one of hermeneutics, says the pope. There are, he suggests, two quite different ways of understanding the council: ‘On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. She is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”

p. 25

This of course raises the question: If the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church struggles over the interpretation of a church council, how can it solve the problem of rightly interpreting Scripture. Or to put it another way, how does an authoritative interpretation of Scripture help when people can’t agree on the interpretation of the interpretation.