Reformed Icons

More from Robert Letham, Through Western Eyes (p160-1):

“There is a surprising area of agreement between the Reformed and the Orthodox. Reformed theology believes in icons too!... The whole idea of an image (eiko_n) is an obvious Biblical category – man made in the image of God. Christ as the image of the invisible God as the second Adam. However, it stretches beyond this. For the Reformed everything is iconic. God has imprinted evidence of his own beauty and glory throughout creation…. Ps 19:1-2…. Ps 8:9…. Rom 1:20. Every blade of grass, every tree and flower displays the glory of God. Every square inch belongs to Christ, the mediator of creation (Col 1:15-17; Heb 1:1-3). If icons are windows to draw us to God, opened books to lead us to heaven, so too is the entire order of creation – the beauty of the hills, the colours of the grass, sea and sky, the trees and plants, the changing of the seasons. See Barth, CD II/1, 650f.”

Similarly, Calvin, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, argument and on 1:31, Institutes 1:14:21  

Calvin: all human action is futile

Continuing the theme of the previous post of intelligent people saying stupid things, a presenter on Radio 4 this week introduced Calvin as teaching the futility of all human action. Of course, Calvin taught no such thing. He very clearly upheld the significance and responsibility of human action. He was a very active man himself and his actions achieved much, under God.

Outward sign

Calvin defines the sacraments as "outward signs". One of the most striking things about the Supper, however, is that the bread and the wine very obviously go "inward"!

The Fabulous Four

"John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Abraham Kuyper, B. B. Warfield, Reformed theology's Fabulous Four"

J. I. Packer, Foreword to John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God (p. xxv)

The purpose (of word) and sacrament

It seems to me that Calvin's description of the purpose of the sacraments could pretty much be applied to the purpose of the Bible too.

Calvin strikingly asserts that of the ordinary sacraments of the Old Testament that these “ancient sacraments looked to the same purpose to which ours now tend: to direct and almost lead men by the hand to Christ, or rather, as images, to represent him and show him forth to be known. We have already taught that they are seals by which God’s promises are sealed, and, moreover, it is very clear that no promise has ever been offered to men except in Christ [2 Cor 1:20]. Consequently, to teach us any promise of God, they must show forth Christ.” He adds that the only difference between the sacraments of the Old and New Testament is that “the former foreshadowed Christ promised while he was as yet awaited; the latter attest him as already given and revealed.” (Institutes 4.14.20)

Now, I fully admit that there is a danger of theological confusion here. We often tend to describe the sacraments in contrast to the Word, and some of that may be going on here. You could say that the Scriptures are the promises of God and that the sacraments seal them. But I think you could equally say the scriptures present (and seal?) the promises of God, could you not?

That the sacraments are images need not trouble us too much since words are symbols or signs too.

Sacramental Objectivism

In the Institutes, Calvin classifies the sacraments as among “the external means or aids by which God invites us into the society of Christ and holds is therein” - the title of book 4. This could fit with an objective account of what the sacraments do and achieve. Like the preaching of the gospel, God really uses the, to invite us into the church and hold us therein.

Sursum Corda

On the exhortation to Lift Up Your Hearts at the Supper, see:

John Calvin, 'Form for Administering the Sacraments' in Treatises on the Sacraments (Christian Focus, reprint 2002), p121f; Institutes 4.17.36

Matthew Henry on John 11:41.

And, John Flavel on John 20 in The Fountain if Life, Discourse 40.

(cited in Maclean, Lord's Supper, p189f & n12, p256)

Stott & Calvin contra Evangelicalism!

Calvin famously argued for at least weekly Communion but couldn't get the city of Geneva to agree.

I'm told John Stott also repeatedly argued in print for weekly communion, though they didn't do that in their main service at All Souls' Langham Place. I wonder why not?

Stott says in Your Confirmation(Hodder & S, 1958), p97:

The chief expression of fellowship between Christians is the Holy Communion service. It is the central service of the church.... The Acts of the Apostles suggest that every Sunday they met to "break bread". The Lord's Day was inconceivable without the Lord's Supper. Personally, I think we, too, should attend it every Sunday.

I imagine many Evangelicals, like me, would be surprised to know that the great John Stott thought that. Why have so few Evangelicals followed his lead in this?

(HT: LB)

I'm told that Alec Motyer also advocated weekly communion. (HT: JAC)

Parker on Calvin on Sacraments

From T H L Parker, John Calvin (1975):

The sole office of the sacraments is to turn our eyes to beholding God’s promises; that is, they make the Word perceptible to other senses than the ears. (p50)

Calvin’s theology is, from this first statement of it throughout his life, a theology of the sacrament. God will not encounter man directly but by means of that which is already a human term of reference, the human means of communication and visible symbols. (p50)

Infants ought to be baptized. We should not be so sure that they have no faith. It is clear from Mark 10:13ff. that the Lord calls some from among them to be heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Why then can he not give some foretaste of his blessing? Why can they not see him in a glass darkly? It is arrogant to say that they have no faith. They have a right to baptism, for they have a common faith with adults. (p50-51)

Pastoral Duties - The Calvin Model!

Calvin was much in demand for suggesting brides for young men. Only a couple of months before he had been writing to Farel himself on behalf of such a young man and saying that he could think off-hand of only three girls who are beautiful, virtuous, and well-dowried, although there are certainly two very pretty girls living near him, but their dowries are not large.

T. H. L. Parker, John Calvin (1975) p178

Calvin, Doctor of the Catholic Church

T. H. L. Parker said this of Calvin:

As I have been writing the book he has more and more taken on the character and stature of a doctor of the Catholic church. A 'Reformer'? Yes, certainly, for it is the office of the doctors of the church to reform the church - and ecclesia semper reformanda. But not just 'Reformer' in its historical sense; not just the first of the Calvinists or the Calvinians or the 'Reformed' or the Presbyterians. Rather, at a time when the western church had become provincial, he was a doctor of the Catholic church.

John Calvin (1975) p.viii

Calvin & Barth

T. H. L. Parker said:

... to treat of Calvin now without taking into account both Barth's criticisms of Calvin and also the new light he has shed on many of Calvin's doctrines would be to label oneself as hopelessly archaic.

John Calvin (1975), p.viif

Oh well. "Hopelessly archaic", it is, then.

Where to start

Warfield once said:

All subsequent attempts to state and defend that [truly evangelical] theology necessarily go back to it [The Institutes] as their starting-point, and its impress upon the history of evangelical thinking is ineffaceable.

"On the Literary History of Calvin's 'Institutes'", Works V, 373-4 quoted in Reymond, Calvin, p15f

Praise for Calvin & The Institutes

The Sorbonne had the Institutes burnt in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in 1542 and 1544.

The RC Florimond de Raemond called it "the Koran or rather the Talmud of heresy, being, as it is, a mass of all errors that have ever existed in the past, or ever will exist, I verily believe, in the future." (1605).

Will Durant, a 20th C American historian called it "the most eloquent, fervent, lucid, logical, influential, and terribe... in all the literature of the religious revolution... developing the thought of [its author's] predecessors to ruinously logical conclusions," whose author, because of his doctrine of predestination, "darkened the human soul with the most absurd and blasphemous conception of God in all the long and honored history of nonsense".

Jacques Desmay called Calvin "the author of a religion of the table, the stomach, the fat, the flesh, the kitchen" in whom the whole Reformation tended to "establish the reign of wine, women, and song." (1621).

Robert Raymond, John Calvin, p14, 136

Calvin's literary output

59 large volumes in the Corpus Reformatorum and 12 more under the title Supplementa Calviniana.

Robert Raymond, John Calvin p13

Suprasubstantiation

Keith Mathison, Given For You, pp279-280:

Calvin’s doctrine of the presence of Christ [in the Eucharist] was never given a similar sounding name [to the Roman Catholic transubstantiation and the Lutheran consubstantiation], but I would suggest the term suprasubstantiation might be an appropriate and accurate designation. The prefix supra means “above,” “beyond,” or “transcending.” According to Calvin, Christ’s body is present in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, but the mode of his presence is not specifically connected with the substance of the elements. The elements of bread and wine are a necessary part of the sacrament, but they are not the primary focus. Christ is present by virtue of the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit, not by the transformation or combination of material substances.

Because Calvin taught that Christ’s body is made present in the sacrament by the working of the Holy Spirit, his view of Christ’s sacramental presence has sometimes been referred to as a doctrine of “spiritual presence.” Unfortunately, this term is often misunderstood to mean that only Christ’s Spirit or divine nature is present in the sacrament. Calvin explicitly denied any such idea. The term suprasubstantiation might avoid some of these misunderstandings because it communicates the idea that there is a real participation in the substance of Christ’s body and blood, as Calvin taught, but that this participation occurs on a plane that transcends and parallels the plane on which the physical sign exists. It communicates Calvin’s focus on the presence of Christ in the sacrament, not the presence of Christ in the substance of the elements.

Strange New Teaching

Keith A. Mathison writes:

"Of all the various concepts of the Lord's Supper that exist today, symbolic memorialism is the only view that is in complete and total discontinuity with the teaching of the historic Christian church. When we look at the doctrine of the Lord's Supper from the first centuries of the church onward, it becomes abundantly clear that although Christ's presence in the Supper was explained in different ways, there was no disagreement over the fact of that presence. The doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the sacrament was not denied by Luther or Calvin during the sixteenth-century Reformation. In fact, Luther argued that the universal testimony of the historic church proved the validity of this doctrine:

This article moreover, has been clearly believed and held from the beginning of the Christian Church to this hour - a testimony of the entire holy Christian Church, which, if we had nothing besides, should be sufficient for us. For it is dangerous and terrible to hear or believe anything against the united testimony, faith, and doctrine, of the entire holy Christian Church, as this hath been held now 1,500 years, from the beginning, unanimously in all the world. Whoso now doubteth thereon, it is even the same as though he believed in no Christian Church, and he condemeth thus not only the entire holy Christian Church as damnable heresy, but also Christ himself and all the apostles and prophets, who have established and powerfully attested this article where we say, "I believe in a holy Christian Church", Christ namely, Matthew 28:20: "Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world"; and Paul, 1 Timothy 3:15: "The Church of God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth."

Cited in Philip Schaff, The Principle of Protestantism, ed., Thompson & Bricker, 116-7

"Luther, the great exponent of sola Scriptura, was not a slave to the traditions of men. But he recognized an important point. He realized that when the Holy Spirit bore witness to the truth of a doctrine across all boundaries (geographical, chronological, ecclesiastical, etc.), a denial of that doctrine was essentially a denial of the perspicuity of Scripture. He and Calvin disagreed with each other concerning the exact mode of Christ's presence, but they agreed with the historic Christian church on the fact of that presence. Proponents of symbolic memorialism have adopted a doctrine that is a novelty in the history of the Christian church and an implicit denial of the perspicuity of Scripture."

Given for You pp266-7

Later Mathison continues:

The doctrine of symbolic memorialism is the dominant position within modern evangelicalism, but it is a historical novelty within the Christian church. Turning the historic doctrine of the Supper on its head, proponents of this view advocate a doctrine of the real absence of Christ from the Supper. Rather than being an objective means of grace, the sacrament is said to be a subjective act of mental recollection. Instead of being something that God gives to us, the sacrament becomes something that we give to God.

p268

Calvin and Music

You even get to hear James Jordan sing in this lecture!

Calvin's preaching style

As I recall Revd Dr Joel Beeke describing Calvin's preaching style (at JOC / LTS Calvin Conference) it went something like this:

Continuous sequential exposition of the text of the Bible.

Begin with a reminder of where we got to last time.

Exegesis and application. Repeat till time runs out. Stop. Resume next time!

Normallt Calvin's sermons would last maybe 40-60 mins and would cover 4 or 5 verses from the OT or 2 or 3 of the NT.

Beeke said we may have a sense that Calvin rushes to application and short-circuits some of the exegetical / theological / hermeneutical work we might want to see. Calvin wanted to get to the point!

No set piece introduction, funny stories or "illustrations" as such. Not usually a well worked out structure or honed points, just following the text - sometimes a main theme would be stated.

(Calvin did, however, make an effort to use lively vivid language).

Now, it is another question to what extent Calvin was a model in all this, but it did make me feel a bit better about my preaching which I sometimes feel should have more of a single purpose, tighter structure, honed points that make a pleasing whole, more brilliant introductions, illustrations and conclusions etc.! There is something to be said for here are some things I wanted to say from God's word this week. The flexibility to cover more or less in one go is very appealing.

So why did Calvin matter?

As I journeyed home from the John Owen Centre Calvin Conference yesterday, my taxi driver (who had also mentioned he could never really get on with books / wasn't much of a reader) asked me who Calvin was. I explained he was a preacher and theologian who lived in Geneva 500 years ago. And then he asked: "So why did he matter?". I can only plead that I was pretty tired but I'm sure I didn't make the most of the opportunity. I said something about Calvin rediscovering how great God was, his glory.

Does anyone want to offer a short response suitable for such everyday situations?