Elect Complacency?

It's probably no huge secret that if it would not look utterly ridiculous, I would probably tattoo "Just Read Calvin's Institutes" somewhere visibly on my body for all to see.  But since I love my husband, and I really don't want to outright offend some people, I will not be doing that any time soon.  This past week I have been in two discussions that involved the acronym T.U.L.I.P. and wouldn't you know it, in both conversations the opposing converser brought up the idea formatted below:

1. You are elect to be saved by God.
2. If you are truly elect, you will persevere throughout said elect life until the end.
3. Why then evangelize, and why go to church?

Now, there are vast holes in that logical formula, but go with it for a moment.  I am continually baffled that non-Calvinists will think that Calvinists believe that evangelism, missions, preaching of the Gospel is not necessary because if someone is elect by God to be saved, well then clearly God will save them.  Maybe its the term "elect" that immediately puts in to mind a small, collective group - but I am telling you, that as a Calvinist, I hope and pray that God's elect is the majority, not the minority.  A Calvinist does not believe in a small god; a Calvinist does not believe that God's works are minor; a Calvinist does not sit back and wait for God to take care of that small portion known as "the elect."  We read the same Bible that you do.  I sit back, in tears, marveling over Paul's words in Ephesians 3:14-21:

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen!!"  (emphasis mine)

I feel a little like Shylock saying this, but if we read it, are we not moved?  Is the Holy Spirit not at work within us?  Is the power of the Almighty, Amazing, Wonderful God of the Universe not at work WITHIN us?  No one comes to the Father except through Christ.  How are they to believe if they have not heard? How are they to hear without someone preaching?  How are they to preach unless they are sent?  Why would a Calvinist ever deny this?

Just because we believe that the elect are chosen by God to be saved at His appointed time, does not mean that God magically reaches down from the Heavenly throne and stamps their forehead with a tattoo that says, "Elected!" and that's it, they are saved.  No!  They are saved because they heard the Gospel, repented and believed.  This happens because God ordained it from the beginning of time by His gracious and good will.

Ah, and here is where all the wonderful "what if" questions come up.  "What if that person was elect and  at that time they were supposed to hear, and they didn't.  What then?"  Please see blog post here.  Nonsense is still nonsense even when we talk it about God.  This is the great and wonderful thing of missions and evangelism that the church of God gets to be a part of.  Is there no better time in the life of a follower of Christ than to pray with someone as they believe in Jesus as their Savior?  Is there no better time that is more precious and more wonderful than that?  Think about it on a vastly huge, cosmological level for a second.  God ordained for that moment to happen not only in the life of the vessel chosen for glory, but in your own life as a harvester of the Word that was sown.  You are given the opportunity to see God's greatest action of all, salvation, happen!  PRAISE GOD!  IS THERE ANYTHING THAT IS BETTER THAN THAT?

So, I would like to correct the assumption that is out there that Calvinist's don't do missions, don't see the need for church, don't evangelize to people.  Instead, let's think of it this way:

1. You are elect to be saved by God.

2. If you are truly elect, you will persevere throughout said elect life until the end.

3. If you are elect, someone will have come into your life to tell you about your Savior Jesus Christ, and you will grow in the grace and knowledge of your Savior both personally and corporately as you worship God here on this earth and in eternity.  

Sprinkle, sprinkle, dunk - is it all just a lot of bunk?

Well, I finished out my semester of reading Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. For those of you who do not know, 2009 marked the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin. One day my kids will ask me what I did to celebrate the 500th year of our friend, John Calvin, and I will happily tell them, "Why Son and/or Daughter, I read his Institutes of the Christian Religion." It will be a special moment, let me tell you. This is my last essay on the subject, but most likely not my last blog entry on the man and his ever present theological tendencies in my life. Enjoy.

Baptism, that dip in or sprinkle of water, has divided many Protestants through the centuries, often leaving confusion and hurt feelings behind rather than clarification and unity. In my own life, the view of baptism has produced a chasm of sorts between my extended paternal family and myself. There is not a lot of room for a coalition between the different denominations and views of baptism, which is why I firmly believe the sacrament will always remain a mystery in this age. The goal of this paper is to look at Calvin’s view of baptism, seek to understand it more and respond to the theological implications that Calvin is producing because of his view of baptism.

Calvin begins his discourse on baptism by saying that it is “the sign of the initiation by which we are received into the society of the church.” By his initial statement, one might supposed that Calvin is going to affirm some sort of Anabaptist symbolic action on the part of the sacrament. However, Calvin will move away from this view as he unfolds and adds many-tiered meaning onto baptism. Baptism serves our faith as well as our confession before man. Everything in this action that man performs seems to be focused on the reception of man, and is not in any way an action of faith towards God. It is not done on our part as a sign of our affirmation, but is done as a sign of God’s affirmation. Calvin writes, “it is like a sealed document,” this invoking the language of the sealing of the forgiveness of sins that the Holy Spirit does in the faith of the elect.

Baptism means nothing without faith, faith is not possible without the revealed Word of God, and both of these things are meaningless unless the Holy Spirit has enacted in the life to bring about true, saving faith. What Calvin has described as baptism up to the point of 4.15.2 is pretty straightforward language, and agreeable among practically all the views of baptism among the Reformers. From this point on though, his language and description of the action becomes a rather confusing mixture of a saving action and a response to a saving work of faith.

He begins his next section by dealing with the timing of baptism. Baptism was not to be done at the end of one’s life as a catchall for the sins that had been committed throughout life. Calvin writes, “But we must realize that at whatever time we are baptized, we are once for all washed and purged for our whole life.” Now, I do realize that Calvin is responding to the notion of saving your baptism until the end of your life, but he begins to use the language of time in this argument; that is, that at some point and time, namely when one is baptized, at that point in time, there was an expiation of sins. At the time of baptism and through baptism, “Christ’s purity has been offered us in it; his purity ever flourishes; it is defiled by no spots, but buries and cleanses away all our defilements.” This is a big step away from baptism being merely done to serve our faith and our confession; it is also a vast change of language between being proof of a sealed document to now having purity offered in it.

A few sections later, Calvin shifts back to the language of sign. He writes, “Through baptism, believers are assured that this condemnation has been removed and withdrawn from them, since (as we said) the Lord promises us by this sign that full and complete remission has been made, both of the guilt that should have been imputed to us, and of the punishment that we ought to have undergone because of the guilt.” Baptism is now a sign again of the saving action of God that was worked in faith, not actually in and through this sacrament. It is through this sign that we can look for the promise that God has given us in His Word. The action, the sacrament, remains the action of God, not of man, and points us to Christ’s saving work on the cross and the promise of eternal life.

The sign is where “we publicly profess” and “openly affirm our faith.” However, Calvin also believes that it is far more than a mere profession. He writes:

“For inasmuch as it is given for the arousing, nourishing, and confirming of our faith, it is to be received as from the hand of the Author himself. We ought to deem it certain and proved that it is he who speaks to us through the sign; that it is he who purifies and washes away sins, and wipes out the remembrance of them; that it is he who makes us sharers in his death, who deprives Satan of his rule, who weakens the power of our lust; indeed, that it is he who comes into a unity with us so that, having put on Christ, we may be acknowledged God’s children. These things, I say, he performs for our soul within as truly and surely as we see our body outwardly cleansed, submerged, and surrounded with water.”

While the language and description are beautiful, this is where I begin to have a hard time understanding where Calvin is getting his definition of baptism. While the Bible does indeed tell us of baptism, and even provides a few sentences on the subject and what it could possibly mean (and more importantly what it probably does not mean), I have always thought that it was the explanations provided by great theologians and thinkers that have confused the mystery all the more for the common man.

First, the language; if we are “outwardly cleansed, submerged, and surrounded with water” than why would we ever think that sprinkling a few drops of water is any sort of acceptable way of performing the outward sign? If we are confessing a death, shouldn’t there be a submersion as an active symbol? We have come to an age where it is far more important to agree to disagree on the little things rather than divide into another sect of Protestantism (which I do whole heartedly agree with), but if we are going to recapture some of this language and symbolism, which points back to the time of the early church, then maybe there needs to be a re-visitation on how the sacrament is administered.

Secondly, Calvin’s description of the saving act of Christ though faith is stunning, beautiful and thought-provoking. It is far too little that we use language like weakening of “the power of our lust.” Instead, it is common to merely say that we have sinned, God has forgiven us, and there is a moment that we were saved. The language of sin and forgiveness is left up to the theologians and writers of books; the community is left with clichéd phrases that leave us questioning if the person is truly saved. I am not sure what it will take to rid the Christian community of mere phrases and confessions, possibly a study of the Psalms much like the work that Calvin did in studying the poetical book.

I do believe though that if we, as the body of Christ, can recapture this language, then the action of baptism that is practiced largely throughout the Protestant world as a believer’s or confessional baptism would have more meaning to the Christian. They would again be able to see it as the symbol of death; of surrounding oneself with a cleansing water and emerging the new man or woman, wholly washed of the sins, the lusts, the flesh that so easily entangled the former life. This would be something to remember; this action would again be something to cling to in the times of temptation. The cool water could remind the Christian of the refreshing life that is now theirs.

Despite my love for Calvin’s polished pen, I am left with confusion about the specific timing of the nature of enacting faith and the action of baptism. Calvin, like Luther, reminds us to look back to our baptism in times of temptation or when the urge to sin is upon us. Our baptism seems to be the time when our faith is affirmed, not only then on the part of our action in proceeding with the sacrament, but somehow the faith is sealed because of this action. The sealing all belongs to God, Calvin argues, so there is no room for any sort of Pelagian work on the part of the human participant. However, the difference between the saving work of faith and the symbolic sacrament of the faith seems to be convoluted in the language Calvin uses. As quoted earlier, that it is the “time we are baptized” that “we are once for all washed and purged for our whole life.” That somehow through this sign, God is proving what he is inwardly doing or has done.

This leaves me questioning, does one have to be baptized? And if so, is the baptism when faith is complete and not before sealed by the Holy Spirit? If so, I have seen far too many discrepancies of this sacrament in my life. Recently in our home church, there was a baptism service. One man that was being baptized shared his testimony in which he had been saved, received faith, or given his life to Christ (depending on the language of faith) about 25 years earlier; 25 years earlier! He was now getting baptized. When he is tempted in sin, should he look to the moment of baptism as when his faith was symbolically sealed, or should he look to that moment 25 years earlier when he was on his knees repenting to the Lord for his sins and saying that he believed that Jesus was his Savior? If I was a betting woman, I think I would say that he should probably remember the moment on his knees; this seems to have been the point when everything changed in his life, when faith was evident because of the process of sanctification seen over the past 25 years, not some plunge in a tub of water. While Calvin might have something to offer the present church in way of our language of faith, sin and salvation, I am not sure that his theology of baptism will help the greater church that is not wholly clear on what they are participating in, since the issue of time between the action of faith and the action of baptism is far greater than it was in his day.



Bibliography
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), vols. I & II.

Mediate, Mediate, Mediate - If you say it fast, it sounds funny, right?

This is my paper on Calvin's view of Christ as Mediator for all time. What I am basically disagreeing with is that he says that the Old Testament fathers and godly KNEW Christ as Mediator. It is long, but hopefully not boring. And it goes to show that I don't agree with EVERYTHING that Calvin says. So there. And here we go...

If man is unable in any capacity of his own to come to the Heavenly Father by his own work and own righteousness, then there must be a Mediator between man and the Heavenly Father who has perfected, imputed and imparted righteousness. The view of God the Father that Calvin has presented in the Institutes of Christian Religion is a view that holds to a completely holy, completely other Deity. Man is incapable of even coming to a true knowledge of God unless He somehow acts in their lives to reveal Himself to them. God cannot and will not have anything to do with sin – He abhors and rejects it. In order then for a fallen world that is tainted and covered with sin to have a relationship with this holy, other God, He has to provide a way for a different covering; a holy, righteous covering that will not be tainted by sin. This covering has come through the life, death and resurrection of the God-man, Jesus. His perfect, stainless righteousness now covers all who believe and trust in Him through faith. Jesus’ act came at a specific time in human history. God, who is outside of time, came into our time and as the Word of God tells us, at the “fullness of time… God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” This news is beyond anything we, who are in time after Christ, can imagine or believe to be possible; however, it does leave a question for what has happened to God’s chosen people, the faithful of the Old Testament, who were before the time of this redemptive act. If one is only able to be reckoned righteous under the righteousness of Jesus, then how are these who lived before Christ able to come to their Heavenly Father? Calvin answers this in several ways throughout 2.6-2.10 – that they had faith not in the acts of the Law, but in the future hope of a Redeemer, that God chose them and communicated completely with them, and that they knew Christ as Mediator. It is the third of Calvin’s assertions that I will hope to show has overstepped boundaries of interpretation and translation.

In the summary of his points on the law, Calvin writes, “There are two remaining points: that the Old Testament fathers (1) had Christ as pledge of their covenant, and (2) put in him all trust of future blessedness.” By the end of this four-chapter discussion, Calvin puts these last two points in to tie together all that he is holding to in concern with the salvation of the Old Testament fathers. It is interesting that Calvin has used the description of a pledge for Christ here, since up to this point, his words have been mingled with the idea of future hope and present knowledge and use of the word Mediator, not pledge. Calvin’s view of the law and interaction with God for the Old Testament fathers has quite a pendulum swing throughout these four chapters. By the end, he is more amiable towards the law as it points to Christ and sees the patriarchs as having “a real participation in God.” However, as Calvin begins to look at the law, he sees it through the lens of Paul, someone who is known for seeing the law as a curse, bringing with it the knowledge of sin. He states that, “In the precepts of the law, God is but the rewarder of perfect righteousness, which all of us lack, and conversely, the severe judge of evil deeds.” To even imagine that the offerings and sacrifices that the law required was a way for redemption to happen was laughable to Calvin. He writes, “In short, the whole cultus of the law, taken literally and not as shadows and figures corresponding to the truth, will be utterly ridiculous.”

The shortcomings of the law are seen because of the New Testament and the better work of Christ. However, I do not agree that this view of the law can be forced upon the Old Testament fathers and their own view of the law. While it may seem ridiculous to take the law as literal, the whole of Israel took the law very literally, and in that literalness it brought about a love for the law. This is why the writer of Psalm 119 can say that those “whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD” are considered blessed. The sacrifices and offerings that the LORD provided to the people of Israel, as a way for redemption, was a delight to them. When the people of Israel returned from captivity, Ezra opened up the law of Moses to them and read from it for days. Their response was one of weeping, worship, and of thankfulness that despite their turning away from the law, the Lord is “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

Yet, at the same time the law was not only about an action of sacrifice and offering. At the end of the second giving of the law, Moses says, “For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, when you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statues that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” There is something in the law that will point the men and women of Israel to love God the Father with more than just mere actions, but with their entire being – heart, soul and mind. The psalmist expresses this when he says, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” The law did not give the Old Testament fathers free reign to continue sinning, much as the Gospel of Christ does not give us this freedom either. Offerings made without a repentant heart are worthless; likewise our worship and offerings today are worthless if we are not repentant of the sin that is constantly in our lives.

Thus, when Calvin writes, “For what is more vain or absurd than for men to offer a loathsome stench from the fat of cattle in order to reconcile themselves to God? Or to have recourse to the sprinkling of water and blood to cleanse away their filth?” , I think that Calvin has grossly exaggerated the point. Do not we as Christians rely upon the spilling of the perfect blood of Christ now? I cannot imagine that the bruised, bloodied, stricken, smitten body of Christ smelled particularly aromatic while it hung on the cross for hours. In fact, our Savior had even partaken of a last meal hours before this torture that had to be moving through his intestinal system at some part during this time. Sweaty, bloody, beaten – and we believe that this will reconcile us to God? Yes, a resounding yes – because it would not be absurd to believe this, because this is how God has chosen to redeem His people. The law is the same. While it may sound ridiculous to slay animals, sprinkle blood and to find one perfect lamb among thousands every day and year, this is how God chose to reveal His redemption to His people.

In agreement with Calvin, it was not the acts of following the law that brought redemption, but the faith for the future, better Redeemer that was promised to them. Calvin, however, takes this future hope one step further and states that the Old Testament fathers “had and knew Christ as Mediator.” It is because they trusted “in their Mediator, they may freely dare to come forth into God’s presence.” I agree fully with this statement that the Old Testament fathers understood that drawing into the presence of God required a mediator, but I do not think that they held this view to be Christ, at least not the Christ that is revealed to us in the New Testament. When the people of Israel were at Mount Sinai, they feared the LORD and relied on Moses to intercede and mediate for them. The law provided that priests should mediate and make the offerings for the people after they consecrated and purified themselves. All of this was done so that the LORD could dwell in the midst of His people; “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.” The mediation by the priests was not something that was taken lightly. Somehow by offering an unauthorized fire to God, the priests, Nadab and Abihu, died before God because they were not permitted to offer this fire either because of lack of purity or incorrect timing. The priests took great care to enter into the presence of God. Flippancy, complacency and disrespect were not allowed in this setting. To offer anything before God took not just blood of an animal, but one’s whole heart bent towards God, one’s whole mind concentrated solely on God, one’s whole soul repenting from the sin it contains and turning to God.

Calvin would argue though that this system still required knowledge of Christ as Mediator. He supports this by saying that the godly of the Old Testament knew of Christ as can be seen through their prayers and writings. He states that,
“Hannah, the mother of Samuel, describing the happiness of the godly, already says in her song: ‘God will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his Messiah’ [1 Samuel 2:10]. By these words she means that God will bless his church. To this corresponds the prophecy that is added a little later: ‘The priest whom I shall raise up… will walk in the presence of my Christ’ [1 Samuel 2:35].”
This is an interesting translation that Calvin is giving to these verses. The ESV reads verse 10 as “he will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed.” In verse 35 the ESV reads, “he shall go in and out before my anointed forever.” , The Hebrew word, Messiah, has been translated as “anointed one” here instead. It holds the force of anointed as the “king of Israel, Saul, David and his descendents.” What is interesting is that Calvin, with his translation of Christ, is pointing ahead to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, not to any sort of earthly king for Israel, like David. Calvin has interpreted this passage through the lens of the New Testament in order to show that Hannah’s prophecy is not about a coming king for the present day Israel, but rather she was looking ahead, as all godly people of the Old Testament did, for a Mediator Redeemer that was promised.

Calvin’s translation is poor, but it is his interpretation and hermeneutic that forces this translation. He does not seek to know the original intent of the author of the book of 1 Samuel. He forgets about the context of the books of Samuel as a whole and their focus on the Kingdom of David. He sees only that the promise has come in our Savior Christ, and that this must be the same for all time. It is very hard to say that from these verses, Hannah had any knowledge of what Jesus would actually be and that in her present time as offerings and sacrifices were made, she knew that Jesus was mediating these for her.

It is not that we cannot say that Jesus was also mediating for the Old Testament fathers and godly by enacting his righteousness instead. It is that we cannot know that the people of Israel in the Old Testament knew Christ as Mediator. They had hope in the LORD and His steadfast love. They knew that the LORD God was their Redeemer and had hope for the LORD to redeem his people here on earth. However, from the reactions of the people of Israel when the Redeemer did come to this earth, one can see that they were not ones of expected anticipation. Peter said at Pentecost, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.” The Old Testament fathers and godly people had faith in the future Redeemer, but when the fullness of time came, they did not know their Redeemer, their Mediator, their Christ.



Bibliography
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), vol. I.

Koehler, Ludwig and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Boston: Brill, 2001), vol. I.

To the Holy Spirit

Something that I have always found delightfully challenging in my Christian journey is my theology of the Holy Spirit - some use the big term pneumatology here. I remember being challenged at Moody that I do not think through pneumatology enough in my life. I usually focus on other areas of theology - like Theology Proper (Study of God), Soteriology (Study of Salvation) and even Ecclesiology (Study of the Church). What is funny though is that the Spirit is working in all of these things, and I rarely pay enough attention to notice.

This week as I was reading Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, he spoke on faith, for quite some time - I believe something in the range of 150 pages would be accurate. Calvin gets into the nitty-gritty on what faith actually is and what the object of faith is (Belief in the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, not just in God). He manages somehow near the end of this contemplation on faith to swing the focus to the work of the Holy Spirit. It is only through the work of the Holy Spirit in one's life and heart that one can have faith in the first place. So, if you are reading this today as a Christian, true follower of Christ, you have faith because the Holy Spirit worked in you to bring this about.

When I first became a Christian, there was a lot of doubt in my mind on several subjects. Questions like - is this really all true? What will really happen when I die? How can I truly know that I am saved? These plagued me for quite some time. Despite these questions though, my faith grew over the years. As I read more of the Word, my faith grew more assured. The questions that haunted me slowly faded away and I became more and more sure of the Truth in my life and in my faith.

Calvin writes in 3.2.36 and 37:

"The Spirit accordingly serves as a seal, to seal up in our hearts those very promises the certainty of which it has previously impressed upon our minds; and takes the place of a guarantee to confirm and establish them."

"Faith is tossed about by various doubts, so that the minds of the godly are rarely at peace - at least they do not always enjoy a peaceful state. But whatever siege engines may shake them, they either rise up out of the very gulf of temptations, or stand fast upon their watch. Indeed, this assurance alone nourishes and protects faith."

I am continually learning that the Holy Spirit's work in my life has always remained constant. From the time that faith was given to me, He has sealed it upon my heart. Throughout this time, I may have had my doubts and experienced temptations, but His seal has always remained the same! My faith grows because the Holy Spirit's assurance and seal is nourishing it and protecting it. Once again, Faith is ALL about God the Spirit! There is nothing that I can do in it - He imparts it, He protects it, He seals it, He nourishes it. If any part of myself were left to preserving it, I would have utterly failed years ago. Temptation would have overtaken me; doubt would have ceased me; death and destruction would be awaiting me. But Praise Be to the Holy Spirit, for He has protected me and sealed me, and death, doubt and temptation have no reign over me!

See the Art in Me

Well, a couple of days late on the promise, but here is the paper on Calvin, icons, and art that I recently wrote (slightly shortened and modified, but still pretty long - take it in chunks, if you must).

In Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin has proclaimed a very high view of God from the outset of the book. God is the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Author of Salvation. This very knowledge of God leads to a knowledge of self that finds humanity as utterly hopeless and constantly fallible in its search for God. Humanity does not find God; God finds humanity and declares Himself to them. Having set the stage for the relationship between man and God, Calvin begins 1.11 by titling it, “It is unlawful to attribute a visible form to God, and generally whoever sets up idols revolts against the true God.” It is through man’s “folly, nay, madness” that the icons of religion have been produced. Calvin writes that, “this brute stupidity gripped the whole world – to pant after visible figures of God, and thus to form gods of wood, stone, gold, silver, or other dead and corruptible matter – we must cling to this principle: God’s glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him.”

Something to understand about the time that Calvin, Luther, Zwingli and the other Reformers is that the Church was dripping with fashioned icons to Saints and God. Images of God were everywhere, little pictures (or icons as they were known) were in all of the Churches and people's homes, and worship was being given to these icons. So, Calvin addresses this problem head on and says that it is against God's second commandment - Do not make a graven image. For my Lutheran and Catholic friends out there, you may be saying to yourself, this is not the second commandment, so let's take a brief look into God's command in Exodus 20:4.

Calvin has separated out verses 3 and 4 of Exodus 20 into the first and second commandment of God. First, God has commanded that He alone is deity. To follow this up, the second commandment relates to the first and for Calvin, explains what worship is approved or rejected by God. Worshipping God alone is accepted and approved; creating any sort of image, likeness, carving that could represent God or any other gods is rejected. Calvin writes, “But God does not compare these images with one another, as if one were more subtle, another less so; but without exception he repudiates all likenesses, pictures, and other signs by which the superstitious have thought he will be near them.”

Luther, however, has combined Exodus 20:3, 4 to represent the whole of the first commandment of God. The force of the commandment under Luther’s view is that one is to “regard me alone as your God.” Luther is concerned with the intention of the heart, not the display of icons or art. He says, “That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.” Luther distastes the practice of works in faith and views this as the god that is against God, rather than a veneration of icons. He writes, “Idolatry does not consist merely of erecting an image and praying to it. It is primarily in the heart, which pursues other things and seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils.”

Both Calvin and Luther have a strong opinion formed before coming to the text. They have both seen an abuse of the first and/or second commandment in their time. For myself, the thrust of this commandment(s) comes in verse 5, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” It is because of this verse that I tend to agree with Luther’s view of the commandment that the action that God detests or loves is the intention of the heart in worship. If our heart is inclining towards worshipping an idol, then the purpose of sculpting that form will be for worship. However, if our heart is inclined for worshipping the one, true God, then the purpose for forming or painting an icon will be for aid in worship of the one, true God. The heart’s intention is pure, and the commandment is not broken.

During the time of the Iconoclast Controversy and the Seventh Ecumenical Council, iconophiles (people who were pro-icon) were asked to draw a clear line between worship and veneration. Veneration for man was done as an act of honor; worshipful veneration was “given only to the uncreated God.” Through the centuries, this distinction did not remain clear. The views of mankind as “brute stupidity” (said by Calvin) and “lazy-bellies and presumptuous saints” (said by Luther) shed light on why the distinction was no longer clear enough for the average layperson to grasp. A theology of worship and the place of icons in this worship needed to be addressed. Calvin argues in 1.11.9 that even a bow of veneration to the icons is a superstition. He says, “And there is no difference whether they simply worship an idol, or God in the idol. It is always idolatry when divine honors are bestowed upon an idol…because it does not please God to be worshiped superstitiously, whatever is conferred upon the idol is snatched away from Him.” Here is the heart of the matter for Calvin – worship is for God alone, man cannot distinguish between veneration and worship because the very act of bowing implies worship to the idol. Worship for Calvin must be “soli Deo gloria (to God alone be the glory) and finitum non est capax infiniti (the finite cannot contain the infinite).” In 1.11.10, Calvin describes the lengths these Christians are going to for icons – by taking up the sword in order to defend those who would burn them, by taking long, taxing pilgrimages in order to see images even if they have a likeness of it in their home. The outward actions show Calvin what is at the heart of the people. There has been a veneration not of just honor, but a bestowing of deity to the icons.

The use of icons in worship crosses a dangerous line. They had ceased being used as an aid in worship. They became the objects of worship, and therefore, took away what God alone deserved and should be given. For Calvin, there is no distinction between latria (worship) and dulia (service) – both are for God alone, not man and not an image. Since man cannot separate the image from worship, the image or icon should be destroyed. Calvin held firm to his convictions on theology and worship. Churches were stripped bare in Geneva. While he briefly accepts that art and sculpture can be a gift from God in 1.11.12, Calvin is vague about what can be painted or sculpted and in what function it can serve a purpose. William Dyrness writes, “Whatever Calvin’s good wishes might have been for those gifted in these arts, Calvin gives them no positive encouragement or guidance. As a result, artists and sculptors were mostly out of work in the Geneva of Calvin’s time.”

The theology of God that Calvin presents is one that I firmly believe and hold accordingly in my life. Worship as a response to this belief is an all-encompassing act. It transcends time and generations, and is an invitation by God to join in on something that is far bigger than ourselves that He has initiated through both nature creation and human creation. All of our actions in worship should point to God, and I agree with Calvin that the veneration of icons had crossed the line into worship of the icons and saints rather than of God. However, I believe that a reform in the area of iconography would have been more beneficial to the community rather than a destruction of church buildings and church art.

Luther had to deal with these matters more specifically because of the destruction of church buildings, icons, images and art in Wittenburg by the leadership of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. Luther addresses the destruction of images by seeking a reform of the heart first, rather than a destruction of property. He writes, “For when they are no longer in the heart, they can do no harm when seen with the eyes.” Mere destruction of images, for Luther, will only swell up pride and preserve the idolatry in the heart of “false confidence and pride in works.” In his sermon on the destruction of images, Luther uses the first commandment as his basis for what should be obeyed. It is the command not to have any other gods that Luther upholds as the principle. If images are made in order to be a god, then sin and disobedience to the command has occurred. He states, “where, however, images or statues are made without idolatry, then such making of them is not forbidden, for the central saying, ‘You shall have no other gods,’ remains intact.”

Luther’s concern for the heart and proper worship are evident throughout this sermon. His strong stance against strictly enforced destruction is because he sees the church replacing the works of pilgrimage and indulgences with the work of destruction. In faith and belief there is nothing that one can do to achieve any sort of good standing with God, and Luther sees Karlstadt requiring people to destroy images as a call for works to be performed. Luther desires that through right preaching and the Holy Spirit’s work on man’s heart, the veneration and worship of images will be destroyed in man’s heart and the icons that are improperly used and abused will be destroyed accordingly.

What then should become of works of art in the church? Cathedrals were built higher, more ornately to draw men’s eyes heavenward towards thoughts of God the Creator. Art, structure and images have been found to serve the church in didactical purpose. Today, power point screens run during times of praise with pictures of God’s creation – working to focus the thoughts and minds solely on God. One would be hard-pressed to find a church that did not have an operating flannel graph in use every Sunday during Children’s Church twenty years ago. Windows are filled with stain-glass that depict the lives of saints – reminding us of the great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us and the communion of saints that we as believers now have come into.

Every aspect of artistic life in the church should serve as a means to bring glory and worship to God. In the construction of the tabernacle in the Old Testament it is said:

“Then Moses said to the people of Israel, ‘See the LORD has called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold and silver and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, for work in every skilled craft. And he has inspired him to teach, both him and Oholiab the son of Ahsamach of the tribe of Dan. He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver – by any sort of workman or skilled designer.” Exodus 35:30-35

Not that this can be a proof-text for art in Christianity, but it shows that God valued giving talent and skill to His people in order that a place of worship, a place where they could encounter God and receive forgiveness, could be constructed in a way that brought beauty and glory to God.

Calvin’s strong stance against any sort of images in the Church and subsequently a lack of direction for artistic expression does not sit well with me, a daughter of the Creator who has been given a creative drive and talent with which I have tried very hard to find avenues to express my faith and give glory back to God through my art. The abuse in the Church during the period of the Reformation and before is clearly a sin in the heart of man. Worship belongs to God alone. There is room for art and images in the Church though, as they serve to point to God, to direct the congregations thoughts and vivid images of their mind to God, and as they serve as an outlet for the artistically talented to express notions of Joy, Grace, Peace, Faith and Love in ways that only they are capable of doing – whether by a paint stroke, a click of a camera or the molding of clay.




Bibliography
The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959).

Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), vol. I.

Dyrness, William, Reformed Theology and Visual Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Eire, Carlos M. N., War Against the Idols (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

Giakalis, Ambrosios, Image of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (New York: E.J. Brill, 1994).

Luther’s Works, ed. Conrad Bergendoff (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958), vol. 40.

I hope that Someday I'll see without these Frames.

A couple of weeks ago, I started reading John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, as seen by angst-y post previous about a week back. Now, to ensure you that I am not just a "wrathful God" person, there have been marvelous thoughts in my head on eternity as of late.

Calvin begins Book 1 by explaining that we know ourselves by our knowledge of God. The two are "mutually connected." He then goes into great detail explaining natural revelation of God and special revelation of God that would put our dear friend Tony Evans to shame for his atrocity written a few years back. The artist/creative side in me has always been amazed at God's natural revelation to us. Calvin expressed it most eloquently in 1.5.1 by saying, "Yet, in the first place, wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory. You cannot in one glance survey this most vast and beautiful system of the universe, in its wide expanse, without being completely overwhelmed by the boundless force of its brightness." Boundless force of its brightness - what a fantastic thought!

Now, we recently moved to New England, and I have not been disappointed in the least with the bold claim that one must see New England in the Fall in order to really understand and grasp the purpose of this season. The colors, the air, the simple breeze that blows through and makes you begin to wonder... there is a boundless force of brightness occurring. I love it, every single second. The most wonderful aspect of all of this is that I can truly enjoy this beautiful brightness because it points me to the Creator. He is in charge of the workings of the trees, so that they change their color and become a vast array of chromatic display that painters can only hope to capture one day with their brush. He has created the idea of "crispness," so that when the air blows through my hair, a sense of happiness and longing for something more overwhelms me.

I began to wonder as I read through Calvin, if I enjoy Fall and New England's version of the season this much with my poor eyesight and confined word expression of it now, how much more amazing will eternity be? I sit and marvel at what the Creator has done here, in this fallen world, and He is up there laughing because He knows that my mind will be blown when I meet Him in eternity. This is the wonderful thing about God - He has created each one of us with amazing gifts and talents and desires, and we get a taste of it here in this earth, but the real Joy will be when we see without these frames, and He shows us All of Himself. God is holding back here. This thought makes me weep, because I am completely blown away here by the beauty of nature. Oh, how SMALL my mind is and how AMAZING our God was, is and will be!

Let's Call a Spade, a Spade

I am in the process of digesting the Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. Last night, during the class on this subject, we were discussing natural and special revelation. Calvin begins by arguing through Romans 1. Basically affirming that God has revealed Himself to us through 1. the very idea of God/the Creator implanted in our minds and 2. through creation declaring His glory. Calvin gets up in people's faces, basically saying that we cannot do anything but sin with this knowledge. We take this innate discovery in ourselves that there is a God and use that to create idols transforming Him unto our own whim. He asserts that, and for all of our p.c. friends out there - I do not apologize, "no religion is genuine unless it be joined with truth" (Institutes, 1.4.3. page 50).

Our professor, playing the devil's advocate, asked us if this was something that we could agree to. How is it possible that Christianity is the only way to know God? This is radical thinking, right? It is my understanding that we should put Calvin into his context. I would say that this is not a radical statement in Calvin's time. The refreshing thing about pre-modernity is that they called heretics, heretics. They called pagans, pagans. The ungodly were the ungodly. They were not concerned about the hurt feelings, the incorrectness of the cultural or political statements, or if there was possibly a way that God would reach into the other's religion and work grace through its constructs. NO! There was no genuine religion unless it was joined with truth! There was an idea out there that what God the Father, the Creator and Redeemer said to be true through His revealed Word was actually truth, the only truth, and there was no other way but that. Not on some holier than thou sentiment, but on the pure basis that God was/is in control over everything as Creator and Sustainer of life.

What has become of this? Humanism has gone so far that our world is reaching in oneself to the point that we can now declare what is ultimately good or bad for ourselves because that is the chief end - discovering what my needs, wants are and how I am able to fulfill them. So, it does not matter if the revealed Word says that my desires are sinful, because I can pick out what is good for me from the text and the rest will be only useful for the past. We have evolved and moved on from the past. You know, there was a guy named Marcion in the early 2nd Century that tried to take out specific portions from Scripture too and have the Word of God be Jew-free. What happened to him? Oh yeah, they had the balls to call him what he was, a heretic.

Now, what becomes of all of this? We, as the Church, have entered into a world that deems judgment, whether authored by the Creator of the world or not, as a taboo. We are coming dangerously close to having our view of loving thy neighbor, despite their sin, be tolerance of their sin and acceptance of who they are. I am starting to believe that there should be a Reform to become more Reformed again. Maybe my offensiveness to the world would cause such a stir that they would finally declare a judgment against me, declare me a heretic against society and crisp me up on a stake. Could this be the start of an exit out of post-modernity? If so, bring on the marshmallows and weenies!

An Ecumenical Approach...

This year I was going to start taking Latin at GCTS (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), where I attempting to achieve an MA in Church History. However, do to some budget cut-backs and such, this course had to be dropped this year. This would not be a problem, typically, but I found this out on Tuesday morning, classes picking up this Friday.

So, I was pretty frantic in my search of something to do next. I needed to take a course on ethics at some point in this 2 year journey, so I looked into this wonderful thing called the BTI (Boston Theological Institute), which GCTS is a part of. The gist of the BTI is that 9 schools are participants in this institute, any student of these 9 schools can take courses at any of these institutions during their time and have it count as credit for their program. So, I found an interesting ethics course at Boston College's School of Theology and Ministry entitled "Ethics in an Ecumenical Perspective."

Now, I have somewhat of a mutt formation when it comes to my Christian heritage. I am formerly Lutheran, Emergent, and Non-Denominational, and now I am a part of an Assemblies of God church. This whole conglomeration of Denominational backgrounds for the Jesuit priest who is teaching my class is labeled "Protestant." For him, and the majority of the class, striving to look at ethics through an ecumenical perspective is reading through and attempting to understand how Protestants approach moral ethics. This can be done by reading Karl Barth, Diedrich Bonhoeffer, James Gustafson and other random Protestant moral theologians. At the same time, I am coming to the class to discover how it is that Catholics and Jesuits understand or approach moral ethics, so this can be done by reading Josef Fuchs, Germain Grisez, etc, etc.

I am very excited about this class, firstly because I have never really thought like a Catholic and this will take a lot of brain power on my part to be able to do well in this class. But, the thing that I loved most so far, is that this Jesuit priest/professor/doctor of moral theology and extremely sharp, intelligent man has quite a sense of humor. To lighten the class about halfway through he pulled up his desktop wallpaper and showed us two pictures of statues from a Jesuit Church in Rome. In one of the pictures you can see an angel towering over a Jesuit man, holding out his hand to him. The Jesuit man is being pulled downward by a Protestant woman whose breast seems to have fallen out of her robe. However, the Jesuits who view this can find courage in this statue because the man has his gaze firmly fixed on the angel - this serves as a reminder that they must keep firm and never waiver to the Protestant prostitutes (or just women) that would tempt to lead them astray.

The second picture was a statue where an angel was standing tall wielding a sword down upon two men. You can clearly see the faces of the two men, so the professor asked the class who these two men were. Well, immediately someone answered, "Calvin and Luther." And what was the reply of my esteemed professor? "Yes!" Of course it is those two brigands of the Reformation! And in the corner of the statue is a small angel, an angelite or cherub if you will, tearing up the pages of Luther and Calvin's books. My professor jokingly said that this was the Jesuit Church of Ecumenicalism. Funny.

So, to end this blog entry, I have found some of Luther and Calvin's more appropriate quotes about the Pope and the Bishops that assure me that this particular approach to ecumenicalism is on both sides. Enjoy!

“I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist” - Luther

"Formerly laymen used to administer the sacraments as often as priests do now. Yet the superstitious of our day regard it as a great offence if a layman touch the bare chalice, or even the cover of it. Nor is a nun, though a consecrated virgin, allowed to wash the altar cloth or the sacred linen. O my God! this shows how far the sacrosanct sanctity of this sacrament has gone! I expect the time will come when the laity will not be allowed to even touch the altar -- except with money in their hand." - Luther

"We know well that under the Pope there is a bastard sort of Christianity." - Calvin

"As for the name of the Bishop of Rome, that is a foolish question to dwell upon. We bestow too much honour upon those horned cattle in calling them bishops, for the name is too honorable for them. Neither does the title of Pope any better suit the brigand who has usurped God’s seat." - Calvin