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Resources on the Life, Writings and Legacy of John Calvin

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:52:12 -0400

The 500th Anniversary of John Calvin's birth (2009) has given rise to a flood of new books on the life, thought and legacy of the reformer. Below is a list of some suggested reading some new works, and some of enduring value. More introductory-level suggestions are at the top, followed by some more advanced suggestions for those already familiar with Calvin and the Reformed Tradition.

Calvin quotes

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:15:40 -0400

Here are a few quotes from Calvin's Institutes that I selected for inclusion in a church magazine to reflect the basic posture of Calvin's piety, oriented as it is toward magnifying the glory of God and subordinating self-concern. Unfortunately these don't convey the Christological centered-ness of his piety, but they convey where Christ leads us by the Spirit:

"We are consecrated and dedicated to God in order that we may thereafter think, speak, meditate, and do, nothing except to his glory."

"We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours. Conversely, we are God's: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God's: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God's: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal."

"We ought to we seek not the things that are ours but those which are of the Lord's will and will serve to advance his glory. This is also evidence of great progress: that, almost forgetful of ourselves, surely subordinating our self-concern, we try faithfully to devote our zeal to God and his commandments. For when Scripture bids us leave off self-concern, it not only erases from our minds the yearning to possess, the desire for power, and the favor of men, but it also uproots ambition and all craving for human glory and other more secret plagues. Accordingly, the Christian must surely be so disposed and minded that he feels within himself it is with God he has to deal throughout his life. In this way, as he will refer all he has to God's decision and judgment, so will he refer his whole intention of mind scrupulously to Him. For he who has learned to look to God in all things that he must do, at the same time avoids all vain thoughts. This, then, is that denial of self which Christ enjoins with such great earnestness upon his disciples at the outset of their service."

Christian Doctrine is necessary for human flourishing

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:21:29 -0400

"Christian doctrine is necessary for human flourishing: only doctrine shows us who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do. The stereotype of doctrine as dry and dusty cuts a flimsy caricature next to the real thing, which is brave and bracing. Doctrine deals with energies and events that are as real and powerful as anything known in chemistry or physics, energies and events that can turn the world we know upside down, energies and events into which we are grafted as participants with speaking and acting parts."

- Kevin Vanhoozer, "Introduction" to The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (WJK, 2005).

An Appropriate Pride: Obama's Inauguration, National Self-Focus and Global Crises

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:18:04 -0500

Comparing news coverage among U.S. and foreign media outlets is often cause for embarrassment (if you're from the U.S.), but the typically celebrity-obsessed and self-focused content generated by the American media has seemed appropriate on the occasion of Obama's inauguration to the office of President of the United States.

I'll begin with a few images.

Building Neighborhood Relationships: Lent in the Living Room

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 14:41:02 -0500

One of the greatest needs of the church in North America is to develop deeper relationships with our neighbors -- in the usual sense of "neighbors," as in those who live near to us. We often live private lives and don't even know that the other Christians in our neighborhood are Christians, since denominationalism has resulted in two Christian families next door to each other worshiping and fellowshiping with different congregations. So, it's tough to build Christian fellowship that will impact one another -- and impact those who are not yet believers -- right where we live.

In an age when the "unchurched" are less and less likely to "go to church" looking for spiritual nourishment, it's important that we be pro-active and bring it to them where they live. To that end, one idea some churches are exploring is called "Lent in the Living Room." It's a special initiative, for a special time of the "church year," to encourage the members of our congregation to host small groups in their homes. Hopefully, this will catalyze the development of new and deeper relationships that will continue well beyond the season of Lent.

If you're interested, check out how my own congregation, Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX, is exploring this way of building "neighborhood relationships" this year. It may give you some ideas for what could work in your own congregation, too.

Bonhoeffer: The Church Confesses, Christ Builds

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:19:10 -0500

From a 1933 sermon based on Peter's confession at Caesarea Philipi (Mt. 16:13-18):

"But it is not we who should build, but he who will build. No human hands builds the church, but Christ alone. Whoever thinks he can build the church is already destroying it. For what he is building is a temple for idols, without knowing or wishing it.

"We shall confess -- he shall build. We shall preach -- he shall build. We shall pray to him -- he shall build. We do not know his plan. We do not see whether he builds or tears down. It may be that the times, which by human standards are times of collapse, are for him the times of great building. It may be that the times, which by human standards are times of great success, are for him times to tear down. It is a great comfort that Christ gives to his church: confess, preach, and bear witness to me. I alone will build as it pleases me. Don't give me orders. Do your job -- then you have done enough. You are all right. Don't seek out reasons and opinions. Don't keep judging. Don't keep checking again and again to see if you are secure. Church, remain a church! But, you, church -- confess, confess, confess! You have only one Lord -- Christ alone. By his grace alone you live. Christ builds."

Taken from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons, ed. and trans. Edwin Robinson (Zondervan, 2005).

A Faith's Dwindling Following

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:52:05 -0400

George Will had a nice piece in the Washington Post today about mainline denominations, the Episcopal Church's experience in particular: "A Faith's Dwindling Following." I take that back. It wasn't 'nice.' But it was honest. The last paragraph captures the bottom line quite well:

"The Episcopal Church once was America's upper crust at prayer. Today it is 'progressive' politics cloaked -- very thinly -- in piety. Episcopalians' discontents tell a cautionary tale for political as well as religious associations. As the church's doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted. It celebrates an 'inclusiveness' that includes fewer and fewer members."

Is the Financial Crisis of the U.S. Divine Retribution?: Providence in a Global Economy

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:49:45 -0400

In the U.S., investors are panicking, polls say the average working person believes we may be headed for another Great Depression, and those close to or in retirement are scrambling to stabilize the future of their fixed income in order to continue making ends meet. Yet the woes of the U.S. economy appear to be good news to some of the "enemies" of the U.S. In the Middle East, many appear to view the troubles of the U.S. economy as the latest in a series of events they describe as divine retribution. According to the Financial Times, "Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, an influential hardline figure in Iran, has described the crisis as a punishment. 'As Americans are happy to see problems in Iran we are happy to see the US economy disturbed and problems extended to Europe,' he said recently. 'They see the results of their vicious acts and God is punishing them.'"

Ecclesiology and the Cartesian Turn

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:39:28 -0400

Janos Pasztor offers a packed summary of some of the ecclesiological consequences of the so-called "Cartesian turn" - the rise of the anthropological starting point -- and often endpoint -- in the pursuit of knowledge that became dominant among philosophers in the 18th century and has characterize "Modern" thought):

"Theology itself was very considerably influenced by this development. It was a 180-degree turn: it began losing its theocentric character and became more and more anthropocentric. For these kinds of theologies it was not God who would come to man addressing him in his life-giving Word, but man would make attempts to approach God by means of an intellectual enterprise. A late twentieth-century representative of this trend of thought says: 'God is the object of my consciousness which I perceive in so far as I perceive something, that is I allot him a place within the framework of a sign-system, in order to be able to talk to others about this matter.' Consequently, the church is the people, who, by virtue of having accepted the common sign-system, are seeking common answers to the meaning of existence.

"These trends of thought, however respectable they might have been otherwise, have rejected most of the things the Reformers stood for. The divine Logos, the eternal Son, 'true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father,' became the Logos of the philosophers, a principle and idea, or a set of thoughts. As Blaise Pascal put it, here one has to deal with the God of the philosophers instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus Christ. Instead of listening obedience to the Word of God, one meets the rule of reason in rationalism; instead of the freedom of God's liberated children, one gets the freedom of the individual thinker in liberailsm. These ideas had a devastating effect on the field of Christology. They brought about what has been termed by Hungarian theologians, a Unitarian theology in everything but name."

"...the church is nothing but one of the many human organizations dealing with issues like religion and morals."

"....For people with that kind of idea, catholicity meant 'as opposed to confessional catholicity...the universal kingdom of spirit, but something other than the Holy Spirit,' if it meant anything at all."

Janos Pasztor, "The Catholicity of Reformed Theology," Toward the Future of Reformed Theology (Eerdmans, 1999), p. 29.

What Way Ahead? Part Two: Initiating the Case for Realignment

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:39:17 -0400

In the first article of this series I outlined three options that traditional Christians have taken and might take now as we face the challenges of life today in the Presbyterian Church (USA). The three options were the long-term approach of renewalists, to defect in place, or to leave the denomination. I suggested none of the three options presented a hopeful future for the unity and witness of the PC(USA), nor would they help unify evangelicals, nor do they anticipate the impending challenge of relations with the Ecumenical Church. In this piece, I will outline the basics of a fourth option, which has been dubbed a reshaping of the PC(USA) or a realignment within the denomination. It is this fourth option that holds the most promise for responsibly facing the theological and institutional challenges before us.

As a reminder, the approach I am taking in this series may strike some as backwards: outlining practical approaches first, followed by more in depth engagement of theological and historical rationales. This approach is by design and request. To begin outlining the nature of and need for a realignment within the PC(USA), I will begin looking at some of the deeper issues involved below.

Christians and Cremation

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:52:12 -0400

Richard Mouw offered some brief and helpful thoughts on cremation on his blog, and it's resurrected some of my own recent wrestlings with this issue.

I think there are good arguments for and against the practice of cremation from a Christian perspective. I worry less about whether cremation poses any obstacles for Gods power to resurrect the dead, and more about how the practice can impact our attitude toward the physicality of life in the present. We do tend to treat our bodies as objects apart from ourselves, rather than part of our-selves. Pressing issues in bioethics offer plenty of good examples, and in the evangelical community it tends to be part and parcel of the larger world-denying rather than world-engaging spirituality. If ultimately, God's plan is to redeem our bodies and indeed all creation, how should that impact the way we treat our own bodies and the creation now? (Gilbert Meilaender has an interesting article on this issue, and he touches on cremation, in the February 2007 issue of Touchstone, called Broken Bodies Redeemed.)

Benedict XVI: Christian faith is personal encounter, not moralism

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:16:42 -0400

In an address to a group at the Vatican yesterday, Benedict XVI, while reflecting on Paul's conversion, noted that Christianity "is not a new philosophy or a new form of morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ, even if He does not reveal Himself to us as clearly and irresistibly as he did to Paul in making him the Apostle of the Gentiles. We can also encounter Christ in reading Holy Scripture, in prayer, and in the liturgical life of the Church - touch Christ's heart and feel that Christ touches ours. And it is only in this personal relationship with Christ, in this meeting with the Risen One, that we are truly Christian."

Though in some ways this is an unremarkable statement of mere Christianity, I think this succinct statement is a nice contradiction of the impression one can get of the Pope from American media. The composite picture of the Pope gleaned from mainstream media can make it seem as though he thinks of Christianity first and foremost as a set of moral restrictions.

There are a few reasons why the media focuses on the Pope's comments on the conflict between mainstream Christian ethics and western libertarian morals. Obviously such comments seem newsworthy because they speak into the "culture war." And the continuity of basic Christian ethics across the Protestant-Catholic divide has, of course, been one basis for recent rapproachment between evangelical Protestants and Catholics. On that score, see the nice editorial from Richard Mouw in the New York Times, written during the Pope's visit to the U.S. last Spring.

The audio of the Pope's brief comments yesterday can be heard here.

What Way Ahead? Part One: Three Options

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:00:00 -0400

For conservative Christians in the PC(USA), facing major challenges is nothing new. But the challenges we are accustomed to facing took on new proportions at the 218th General Assembly.

Though the technical implications of the Assemblys decisions on sexuality remain unclear, the number and consistent character of those decisions speak with a clear voice. When the misguided statement on interfaith relations is added to the mix, not to mention the embarrassing lack of attention to Christian faith exhibited in the discussions leading up to these decisions, this GA has successfully pulled back the veil, so to speak, enabling us to see more clearly the situation weve been facing for quite some time.

Life for Christians in Pakistan After Musharraf

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:07:54 -0400

Just beneath the surface of recent events in Pakistan (namely the resignation of Musharraf in the face of imminent impeachment) lies the uncertainty about what the coming changes in governance will mean for the minority of Pakistani Christians. The following are a couple of news stories related to the developments in Pakistan:

http://www.mnnonline.org/article/11572

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/pakistans.christians.face.uncertain.future.after.musharraf.resignation/21252.htm

Recovering the Wounded: Healing a Church in Exile

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:09:05 -0400

Psalm 147:2: "The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel."

Commenting on this verse, Calvin expreses confidence that God would ultimately restore the Church from the ruinous state that formed so much of Calvin's own life:

"In calling God the former and architect of the Church, his object is to make us aware that by his power it remains in a firm condition, or is restored when in ruins. Hence he infers that it is in his power and arbitrament to gather those who have been dispersed. Here the Psalmist would comfort those miserable exiles who had been scattered in various quarters, with the hope of being recovered from their dispersion, as God had not adopted them without a definite purpose into one body. As he had ordered his temple and altar to be erected at Jerusalem, and had fixed his seat there, the Psalmist would encourage the Jews who were exiles from their native country, to entertain good hope of a return, intimating that it was no less properly Gods work to raise up his Church when ruined and fallen down, than to found it at first. It was not, therefore, the Psalmists object directly to celebrate the free mercy of God in the first institution of the Church, but to argue from its original, that God would not suffer his Church altogether to fall, having once founded it with the design of preserving it for ever; for he forsakes not the work of his own hands.

This comfort ought to be improved by ourselves at the present period, when we see the Church on every side so miserably rent asunder, leading us to hope that all the elect who have been adjoined to Christs body, will be gathered unto the unity of the faith, although now scattered like members torn from one another, and that the mutilated body of the Church, which is daily distracted, will be restored to its entireness; for God will not suffer his work to fail.

In the following verse he insists upon the same truth, the figure suggesting that though the Church labor under, and be oppressed by many diseases, God will speedily and easily recover it from all its wounds. The same truth, therefore, is evidently conveyed, under a different form of expression that the Church, though it may not always be in a flourishing condition, is ever safe and secure, and that God will miraculously heal it, as though it were a diseased body."

William Abraham on the Unity of the Church

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:02:59 -0400

Some notes from William Abraham's article in Nicene Christianity: The Future for a New Ecumenism, where his task is to reflect on the phrase of the creed about the church as "one, holy, catholic and apostolic."

A few introductory quotes on the challenge of ecclesiology in the modern era:

"Ecclesiology is one area in theology where there is enormous temptation to think in abstract and utterly unrealistic terms. We find it difficult to think historically, concretely, and realistically" (p. 178).

"We need a theological vision of the church that does three things. It allows us to acknowledge reality as we find it empirically in teh church as it is and as we can predict it will be in the future. It provides a narrative of the divisions and chaos in the history of the church. And it acts as a norm that can deepen our experience, call us to accountability, and evoke a straining toward renewal and revitailzation at a crucial juncture in our history" (p. 179).

Abraham's brief sketch of such a theological vision of the church begins by describing the church as the work of the Holy Spirit in manifesting the reign of God in the world. He then focuses on what, then, is the referent in the creed's confession of "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church." What did the Holy Spirit establish at Pentecost? He stresses that it must be read as referring to "a historical people with definite institutional continuity and history from one generation to the next." This was the experience of the church in its first centuries of existence (assuming, we should note, that we do not consider the great variety of groups it is now easy to identify as heretical on the basis of the creed). Thus, he rightly finds abstract definitions of the church that allow for the variety of Christian divisions that exist today unacceptable, whether they appeal to the "invisible church" or the Reformation "marks of the church" as applied at the congregational level.

How then can we identify the church the church today? He doesn't really answer this question, for it is basically unanswerable if the creed is indeed referring to "a historical people with definite institutional continuity," given the divided condition of the church since the division of East and West and much more so since the Reformation.

In the end, Abraham's desire is to lift up the creed's descriptive phrase about the church as a norm after which we should all strive in our present divided condition. We cannot rest in our divisions or come up with clever ways to legitimize them. At the same time we can't simply say various denominations are not works of the Spirit. His solution to this is to suggest, along the lines of Ephraim Radner's proposal (in The End of the Church) that the church is in a similar situation as the divided kingdom of Israel: God was not working in and through them as he had, not in fullness, but nor had he withdrawn himself altogether. In the church today, God is "remaining faithful to his covenant and continuing to pour out his Holy Spirit," but "has withdrawn the fullness of his blessing, waiting patiently until we repent of our manifold sins and disorders" (p. 186).

Among his practical proposals for striving toward the creed's description of the church are the necessity of recovering "the full canonical heritage of the church of the first millennium before the split between East and West," and that "we must find a way to relativize our varied epistemological commitments" (that he thinks have often come as a result of confusing the canon with epistemological criterion, a misuse of the canon and an improper exaltation of epistemology in the life of the church that has catalyzed and continued to justify many Christian divisions).

Who Really Cares About Christian Unity?

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:26:47 -0400

In a January 2001 article in First Things, entitled "Who Really Cares About Christianity Unity?", Bruce Marshall reflects on the divided nature of the (western) Church today, in dialogue with key aspects of Ephraim Radner's argument in his The End of the Church. His overall point: the Church at this point can expect its own death, which it has asked for, mostly by persisting willfully in disunity, by not having a common eucharistic life and by preferring its own division to meaningful (eucharistic) reunion. This the Church has done for a variety of reasons, though he pins much of the blame on the convenience of separation as the result of one-upsmanship and as a catalyst for more successful sheep-stealing, clearly not laudable reasons for persisting in division.

The Church is made one and receives life through the eucharist, but when we think we're celebrating the eucharist in our persistently divided churches, our "sectarian eucharists" result in eating and drinking judgment against ourselves (1 Cor. 11:26-29). Hence, if we are united to Christ at all, we are united in his death through baptism, which is still a (truncated) source of unity across denominations. Being united in Christ's death but not in his life means together (in our disunity) we can expect death.

The Lord will bring about resurrection in the Church after its death, but what we can expect on our own horizon is demise. And no particular group can escape this judgment. Just as the remnant in divided Israel was sent into Exile along with the rest, so too will those seeking genuine Christian unity today be subject to the Church's death. And just as a remnant returned to the Land of Promise to rebuild, so too will God raise up a future generation at some point to reveal the glory of Christ's resurrection.

Both Radner and Marshall undercut the theological justification for the Reformation. While admitting the Church can also suffer death by abandoning the truth, Marshall then states that one cannot "accept disunity" to preserve the truth, because one cannot pit the Gospel against the Church, for such would be to say "we have Christ's command to dismember his own body--the same body that, as the New Testament teaches, Christ does not despise, but nourishes, care for, and loves unto death (cf. Ephesians 5:29).

Radner and Marshall ilft up Jansenism as an example of how to both pursue the truth and insist on maintaining ecclesial unity in the face of church powers that deny the truth. Of course, Jansenism was unable to survive. And so the conclusion: better to die while seeking "to commit the destiny of the Church and the cause of the gospel to God alone" than to die by dividing the Church. Of course, this whole framework seems to presume that a united body that celebrates something it calls the eucharist cannot cease to be Christ's Body, hence to divide such a body is always to divide the Body of Christ.

Marshall was Lutheran in 2001. He has since entered the Roman Catholic Church.

Eugene Peterson on the Personal Character of Following Jesus

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:22:47 -0400

The intro to Peterson's latest book, The Jesus Way, functions like a good summary of a main theme in almost all of Peterson's writings, including those directed to pastors. He titles the intro "The Purification of Means" (via Maritain), the means, that is, of following Jesus. From the opening paragraphs:

"The ways Jesus goes about loving and saving the world are personal: nothing disembodied, nothing abstract, nothing impersonal. Incarnate, flesh and blood, relational, particular, local. The ways employed in our North American culture are conspicuously impersonal: programs, organizations, techniques, general guidelines, information detached from place. In matters of ways and means, the vocabulary of numbers is preferred over names, ideologies crowd out ideas, the gray fog of abstraction absorbs the sharp particularities of the recognizable face and the familiar street...We cannot use impersonal means to do or say a personal thing - and the gospel is personal or it is nothing....If any of the means we use to follow Jesus are extraneous to who we are in Jesus - detached 'things' or role 'models' - they detract from the end of following Jesus" (pp. 1-2).

Barth on evangelical soteriology and ecclesiology

michaelryanwalker@gmail.com (Michael R. Walker) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:00:24 -0400

When setting out his approach to expounding the doctrine of reconciliation in Church Dogmatics IV.I , Barth laments what he sees as a clear shift in Post-Reformation Protestant theology (both scholasticism and pietism) toward the direct application of salvation to individuals by faith without reference to the church, which then is relegated to the status of the means for individual salvation:

"It was an intolerable truncation of the Christian message when the older Protestantism steered the whole doctrine of the atonement - and with it, the whole of theology - into the cul de sac of the question of the individual experience of grace, which is always an anxious one when taken in isolation, the question of individual conversion by it and to it, and of its presuppositions and consequences. The almost inevitable result was that the great concepts of justification and sanctification came more and more to be understood and filled out psychologically and biographically, and the doctrine of the Church seemed to be of value only as a description of the means of salvation and grace indispensable to this individual and personal process of salvation....
....Certainly the question of the subjective apprehension of atonement by the individual man is absolutely indispensable. And it belongs properly to the concluding section of the doctrine of reconciliation - yet not in the first place, but in the second...." (Dogmatics IV.I, Bromiley trans., section 58.4).