True Humanity

A stimulating morning at SEMS with Philip Eveson speaking on “Made Like His Brothers: The Humanity of Christ”. The MP3 should appear on the SEMS website.

I was struck again by the fact that we so easily think that to err is human. Sinless humanity is totally beyond our experience. But it’s important for us to remember that sin is not of the essence of true humanity. Rather, sin spoils our humanity; it makes us less human rather than more human.

As Warfield commented, Jesus’ was the only strictly normal human development the world has ever seen.

The Lord's Prayer (sermon notes)

Here's a Word document with are some jottings I made in preparation for preaching 4 sermons on The Lord's Prayer from August - November '08. The sermons are available as audio files at:

http://www.holytrinityeastbourne.org.uk/sermons.php

Colossians Bible Studies

Here are some Bible Study notes on Colossians I prepared to assist our homegroup leaders in their preparation. (Word document, 5 studies).

Extra Catholicum

"The label “extra Calvinisticum”, applied to the affirmation that in the Incarnation the Eternal Son of God was united to but not restricted to his humanity, is misleading, to say the least. There is nothing uniquely Calvinist about the doctrine, for as a means of interpreting the Biblical witness to Christ it had a widespread and ancient usage.

There is a direct liaison from Calvin to Lombard and especially to St. Augustine. That he learned the doctrine from other portions of the tradition cannot be proved from his writings, but it was in fact almost universally confessed – from Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia, to Athanasius and Cyril, to St. Thomas and Gabriel Biel….

If one wished to add to the terminological explosion which threatens and delights the theological world, one might coin “extra Catholicum” or “extra Patristicum” as being more appropriate than “extra Calvinisticum.""

E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought volume 2 (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1966), p60

See also Peter Leithart's summary of Barth on this.

What can the so-called Extra Calvinisticum do for me?

It's a question everyone's asking, I know!

In case you need a little reminder, the so-called "extra Calvinisticum" is the idea that "the Eternal Son of God, even after the Incarnation, was united to the human nature to form One Person but was not restricted to the flesh.” (Willis, p1). See e.g. Institutes 2.13.4 and 4.17.30.

If you think that God is essentially omnipresent, it seems to me you have to say that if you think that the Human Christ was fully God and that his humanity was not omnipresent.

Willis writes of the intention, role and effect of the extra Calvinisticum in Calvin's thought:

In teaching what came later to be called the “extra Calvinisticum,” Calvin the Biblical theologian endevours, with the force of his humanist learning turned to the service of Christian theology, to safeguard an essential response to revelation which the Church before him also found it necessary to protect. It is him way of taking account of the fact that in Christ God is powerfully for us. It is not intended to evade the Christ witnessed to by the apostolic message, nor is it intended to buttress an allegedly natural theology. On the contrary, the “extra Calvinisticum” emphasizes that the God at work in Jesus Christ is one and the same with the God who sustains and orders the universe. He is the Triune God, as is manifest in the prominent role assigned to the Holy Spirit in the dynamics of the Incarnate life. The humanity of Christ can develop in a special way without transgressing the bounds of genuine humanity because of the gifts which the Logos conveys to it by his Spirit. In the “extra Calvinisticum,” Calvin is asserting that Christ is able to be God for us because he does not cease to be God over us in the Incarnation and because the humanity of Christ never ceases to be our humanity in the movement of God towards us. In Jesus Christ the vindication of the majesty of God and the re-establishment and fulfilment of the humanity of man take place. It is this gracious relationship – Creator-created, Redeemer-redeemed, Sanctifier-sanctified – on which the right ordering of history depends: such is Calvin’s affirmation in the “extra Calvinisticum,” not the philosophical principle finitum non capax infiniti. The “extra Calvinisticum” is not a sign of the discontinuity between creation and redemption, but of the fact that by assuming our condition the Eternal Son did not relinquish part of his empire but extended that empire over lost ground. Election to the body of Christ means being united to Head by the Holy Spirit, and conforming to the image of Christ in the world by the Holy Spirit. The “extra Calvinisticum” provides for Christ’s Lorship over all the world and yet his special presence with and Lordship over the Church, through the Holy Spirit; and, it bestows a Christological content upon the role which the order of nature plays in ethics.

E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought volume 2 (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1966), pp6-7

Collectanea

It's good to welcome Revd Stuart Dean to the blogosphere at http://stuartpdean.blogspot.com/

Romantic Day Out

Apparently Pastor Douglas Wilson will be speaking in North London on 14th February 2009 on "The Future of Children and Children of the Future" at a conference on hope and the family. See www.wilson2009.blogspot.com. Hope to see you there!

Camp Plans 2009

If you know anyone who'll be 11-14 years old in the summer or any Christians who might be potential leaders, we'd love to hear from you.

Danehill 1

previously Romsey 1

Ref No: EV001503

The best week of the year with something for everyone!

Great food, drama and music. Trips to the beach and Chessington World of Adventure. Choice of on- and off-site activities, sports, crafts, swimming. Indoor and outdoor pools, tennis courts & rope swing on site. Pool table, table football, table tennis. Lots of fun and laughter. Make new friends. Clear Bible teaching. See you there!

Cumnor House School, Danehill, Haywards Heath, Sussex, RH17 7HT

Saturday 1^st Aug – 8^th Aug 2009 (7 nights)

Approx 45 places for ages 11 – 14

£206 (Financial assistance may be available in cases of need)

If you came on a CPAS camp last year, the office should automatically send you a brochure. You can request brochures from the website.

For more information see the CPAS website – click “find a venture”:

http://www.cpas.org.uk/ventures/search/venture_detail.php?id=1503

Bookings open on 3^rd Januray 2009. Camp sometimes books up very fast, so apply early to avoid disappointment

Contact Revd Marc Lloyd – 01323 642406 / 07812 054820

Distress in 1 Corinthians 7

Further to these thoughts, I’m interested in the idea that the “present crisis” of 1 Corinthians 7:26 might be the fall of Jerusalem (and associated events) which Jesus predicted.

Its worth noting that apparently by the time 1 Corinthians was written it already seemed that relations between the Romans and the Jews were deteriorating and the situation was unstable. Paul may well have seen conflict as immanent.

The parallel with God’s command to Jeremiah in 16:1 not to marry and have children in the land because of the terrible times that were coming might also strengthen the case that the fall of Jerusalem is in view in 1 Corinthians 7 since Jeremiah is also concerned with the fate of Jerusalem at the hands of a pagan army.

Sermon Illustrations

I'm not very good at sermon illustrations and I'm not really sure how enthusiastic I am about them, but I'm told that Holwick's Sermon Illustration database is well worth a look. A friend tells me that 50% of the time he finds something usable there.

CICCU talks

The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) have made lots of audio sermons available here. I may plagarise some of them in the future.

LORD seeks tart to worship him

An audio recording of my sermon on John 4:1-26 is available on our church website sermons page. Here are the jottings from my handout.

A typical boy meets girl story – Gen 24, Isaac & Rebekah; Gen 29, Jacob & Rachel; Ex 2, Moses & Zipporah; John 4, Jesus & the Samaritan woman

Jesus at a wedding, 2:1-12; Jesus the Bridegroom, 3:29; Eph 5:32

The LORD the husband of an adulterous people, Hosea 1:2

The Samaritan woman’s 3-fold exclusion: (1) woman, v27; (2) Samaritan, v9 (3) notoriously immoral, v6, 6^th hour = noon, v18

The good news about Jesus is for everyone – good and bad alike

Nicodemus also needs to be born again of water and Spirit, 3:5

Living water: refreshment, satisfaction, (eternal) life, v13, 10:10, cleansing = Spirit, 7:37-39

We are all thirsty, v7, v10, Jer 2:13 – what is your broken well?

Jesus is the only fountain of living waters, nothing else can satisfy, vv13-14, Ps 42:1-2

A free gift, v10 – just ask Him

We can’t pretend to Jesus, vv16-19, v29, 1:47-50; 2:24-25; Ps 139:1-4. We might as well be honest with him.

It is not where you worship but whom you worship and how you worship that counts; Jesus the New Temple, 2:19-22

Jesus the Truth, v24, 14:6

We can worship God only through Jesus and the Spirit he gives

Jesus thirsts, v7, 19:28, Ps 22:14-15, so that we can drink - water flows from Jesus, 19:34

Jesus says “I AM”, v26, Ex 3:14

A betrothal of belief – engage yourself to Jesus, be faithful to him

Calvin on the unborn children of believers

“The offspring of believers is born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb, before they breathe the vital air, are included in the covenant of eternal life. Nor, indeed, are they admitted into the Church by baptism on any other ground than that they belonged to the body of Christ before they were born…. Baptism must, therefore, be preceded by the gift of adoption, which is not the cause merely of a partial salvation, but bestows salvation entire, and is afterwards ratified by baptism.” ('The True Method of Reforming the Church and Healing Her Divisions' (1547) in Beveridge, Tracts vol 3 p275)

On the making of many books

Alisdair Heron says that:

“Contrary to what might be imagined, there is nothing easier, with access to a decent library and mastery of the elementary techniques of note-taking, than the production of impressive-looking studies running into many hundreds of pages, most of them footnotes, and concluding with a select bibliography of, say, five hundred titles. The difficulty with such artefacts is not writing them, but reading them. (Paying for them is also becoming an increasing problem.)” (pviii)

Heron, Alasdair, Table and Tradition: Towards an Eccumenical Understanding of the Eucharist (Edinburgh, The Hansdel Press, 1983)

I'm not sure its quite so easy, but there you go!

Cf. Christ, Nature, Scripture, Sacraments etc.

For anyone who can't wait for the Magnum Opus, here's a passage that might somehow get included:

“Within the sacrament, the sign’s relationship to “the Word” mirrors Christ’s relationship to God the Redeemer… (p156) [quotes Institutes IV.XIV.3]. Like Christ, the signs are perceptible, but also like Christ, their appearance does not express their meaning transparently, simply, directly, or self-evidently. Like Christ, the signs are “earthly,” simple, seemingly common; like Christ they serve to bridge human blindness and divine revelation, bot not automatically or simply. Like Christ, they belong to the cognitive and somatic complexity of God’s communication with humanity…. Calvin distinguishes a range of divine representations: nature, Scripture, Christ, the elements of the sacraments. All share in representing God to humanity. Nature is a manifestation which originates in God and displays his magnificence and love. Scripture also originates in God, abd articulates in words his will. Christ represents God more complexly, bridging in his person the divine and human, embodying and giving voice to God’s commands and instructions. God designated the elements, made of them “signs”; they do not manifest God in the same way as nature, Scripture or Christ. All share the fact of their physicality, but the ways in which they represent differ. How they function to communicate differs. And the content of their communication differs. Christ and the elements belong most fully to God’s communication of his covenant with humanity.

Those earthly elements “have been marked with this significance by God.” Their meaning is not autonomous of God speaking. The faithful learn to read the true meaning of the elements within the culture of preaching the Word of God. At the same time, the elements themselves provide a cognitive bridge, between the corporeality of human intelligence and God’s speaking. The two exist in interdependence, the one providing the verbal articulation of meaning, the other providing the tactile, visible, audible means by which that meaning is made accessible to humankind. The two sacraments exist in different relationship to preaching. Baptsim initiates the infant into the culture of preaching (Chapter XVI), signalling with the earthly element, water, the covenant between God and man. As children age, they grow in understanding of baptism (section 21). The Lord’s Supper, like preaching, recurs.” (p157)

Wandel, Lee Palmer, The Eucharist In The Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Stuck on sermon prep?

A couple of people have recommended Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, a secular book which has some insights that are transferable to how to preach more memorably. I might get hold of it and see if I can make my sermons a bit more sticky.

See also: http://www.madetostick.com/

Would Calvin have worn a chasuble?

Would Calvin have worn a chasuble if he'd been required to do so? A burning question everyone is asking, I'm sure you'll agree. I mention it because I was surprised to read that:

… in writing to the church at Wesel, he [Calvin] insisted that such trivialities as chasubles and candles must not be made an occasion for disunity.” ( ‘The Lord’s Supper in the Theology and Practice of Calvin’, G. S. M. Walker (pp131-148) p143, in Duffield, G. E. (ed.) John Calvin: Courtenay Studies in Reformation Theology (Appleford, Sutton Courtenay Press, 1966) citing Calvini Opera from Corpus Reformatorum XV.79-80)

I've wasted some time trying to track down the letter in question (in English!) but I haven't been able to do so.

Apparently Luther said:

Now the elevation of the sacrament, wearing the tonsure, putting on the chasuble and alb, etc., are matters concerning which God has given neither commandments nor prohibitions. Therefore everyone is to have freedom of choice to do these things or refrain from doing them. God wants us to have such freedom, etc. Since the pope does not allow for such freedom of action, but curbs it with his teaching and commandment, he usurps the office of God and sets himself arrogantly in God’s place, as St. Paul has forewarned concerning him [II Thess. 2:4]. He makes sin where God would have no sin, and thereby kills souls and binds consciences.

Luther's works, vol. 40 : Church and Ministry II (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Volume 40, pp 129-130

Of course it all depends on what meaning is attached to that stuff. It would be a sin to elevate the sacrament that the bread might be worshiped.

Tragedy

With a vernacular service followed at every point by the people, Calvin had restored the primitive pattern of corporate, congregational communion. It is, however, a tragedy that for his spiritual descendants, no less than for himself, the scriptural ideal of weekly communion has not yet been adequately realised; the result has been an unnatural divorce between word and sacrament to which the whole theology of Calvin is opposed. (p143

‘The Lord’s Supper in the Theology and Practice of Calvin’, G. S. M. Walker (pp131-148) in John Calvin: Courtenay Studies in Reformation Theology (Appleford, Sutton Courtenay Press, 1966) Duffield, G. E. (ed.)

Hungry?

I've just enjoyed rereading Matthew W. Mason, ‘A Spiritual Banquet: John Calvin on the Lord’s Supper’ Churchman vol 117 no 4 2003 pp 329-346, which I heartily recomend. Matthew has some interesting things to say on contemporary evangelical neglect of the Lord's Supper and some possible reasons.


Here's the introduction:

Much contemporary evangelicalism neglects the Lord’s Supper. In contrast, John Calvin, whose view was shared by our English Reformers, viewed it as a ‘spiritual banquet’ wherein we feed on Christ. Although he did view the Supper as a memorial of Christ’s death, the centre of Calvin’s Eucharistic theology is the doctrine of faith-union. As believers feed on the bread and wine physically, they feed spiritually on Christ, a view supported by 1 Corinthians 10:16. As a covenant meal, the Supper comes annexed with covenant blessings for those who eat with faith, and covenant curses for unbelievers who partake. Calvin’s view of the Supper is biblically faithful and theologically satisfying, and the contemporary church would profit from its recovery. (p329)

He argues that:

Calvin urged frequent use of the Lord’s Supper because he valued it highly, and if he is correct, our neglect of the Supper is tantamount to hungry people deciding to starve themselves three weeks out of every four when they could be at a banquet. (p330)

Matthew reminds us that Calvin maintains that:

the Lord’s Table should have been spread at least once a week for the assembly of Christians, and the promises declared in it should feed us spiritually…. All, like hungry men, should flock to such a bounteous repast. (Institutes IV.xvii.46, Ford Battles edition p1424)

I will be with you always

I often feel inches away from Christological and Trinitarian heresy. I am trying to puzzle over how we should understand the presence of Christ (especially in the Lord’s Supper) and what Calvin means by this:

What can be imagined more absurd than that the flesh of Christ was in heaven while he hung upon the cross? Yet undoubtedly the whole Christ, God and man, was then also in heaven… Christ, the Mediator, God and man, is whole everywhere, but not wholly, (totus ubique, sed non totum) because in respect of his flesh he continued some time on earth and now dwells in heaven. (‘Last Admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal’, Calvin’s Tracts volume 2, Treatises on the Sacraments, p418)

Or again,

… Christ as mediator is everywhere, and in as much as he is one person, he, as God and man, or God manifest in the flesh, fills all things, although in respect of his flesh he is in heaven. (p452)

I feel am a bit confused as to what it means that the whole Christ is with us but not wholly but I think it goes like this:

The person Christ is everywhere according to his divinity, since as God he is omnipresent. Christ’s divine essence fills heaven and earth (p385).

But Christ is also seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven whence he shall come again in the same manner in which he went, according to his human nature, which, like any real human body occupies a certain amount space in a particular location.

We could add that:

Christ may also be said to be with us by the Holy Spirit since the persons of the Trinity indwell one another. The Holy Spirit is not Jesus but he is the Spirit of Jesus.

Further, the Spirit unites us by faith to the human flesh of Jesus which is heaven. Again, precisely what that means and achieves ....

Christ’s power and virtue, his empire and the secret power of his grace are everywhere (p457).

Any help / corrections most welcome!