Calvin at the Half-Millennium

John Calvin (1509-1564)

About the time I became a Christian one of the first teachers I heard warned, "Never form an opinion of anyone based on data supplied by their enemies." In context he was speaking of the Puritans. It’s especially important to heed that warning in the case of John Calvin (whom the Puritans revered) who was born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France. I remembered that when I read William Manchester's book 'A World Lit Only By Fire.' I admire Manchester’s work as a historian. As a theologian he is not to be recommended. Doubtless his theology improved just after his death a few years ago. Manchester ripped Calvin unmercifully and, I would guess, inaccurately. Calvin is one of the most vilified figures in Western history.
He is also one of the greatest.
He is to theology what Shakespeare is to literature.
Sadly Calvin is mistrusted and even reviled by large numbers of Evangelical Christians. For these and other reasons it is important to read Calvin himself. It’s even more important for those inclined to oppose him.
Full disclosure demands that I confess I have not read all of Calvin's Magnum Opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion, but what I have read is thrilling. Calvin maintains a variety, pace and intensity unparalleled in theological writing. Calvin speaks of what he calls "the exuberant goodness of God," and he himself writes with an exuberance which never flags. Other apologists cede much to unbelievers in seeking common ground for dialog and witness. Calvin conceded nothing. Every paragraph Calvin wrote burns with the conviction that the God of Israel is immaculate, matchless in His perfection, and unassailable in His judgments, while the sinner has nothing to commend himself in the face of God's holiness. For the sinner then the only hope can be a grace never merited, never deserved. Calvin was THE apologist of the Protestant Reformation par excellence. As a proclaimer, defender and expositor of God's sovereignty and majesty he has no peers.
In the Fourth and Thirteenth Centuries God gave the Church Augustine and Aquinas. That he would give Luther and Calvin in the same generation is proof of the grace which marked the era of the Reformation.
The greatest quote I know is from Calvin. I only learned it from a secondary source and if anyone can help in locating the original I'd be grateful. Nicholas Woltersdorf the distinguished Yale philosopher shared the quote in the volume "Philosophers Who Believe." Quoting Calvin he wrote:
"To be human is to be that point in the cosmos which responds to the goodness of God with gratitude."
One reason that insight rocks me is that it is so difficult to define what it is to be human. The Marxists claim the key is economic, the fascists racial, the Freudians psycho-sexual, and the Darwinians biological, but none of these keys fit the lock. The Bible teaches that Man (by which we mean man as male and female) is a steward, a fallen image-bearer who can be rescued only by a Wounded Healer. That Man is fallen accounts for the horrors even Christians are capable of. That Man is an image-bearer accounts for the nobility detectable in all, even those who don’t believe.
And here is Calvin nailing it. We are created for God's glory. To give Him glory we must find Him good. If we find Him good we must give Him thanks.
And the definition is not a mere abstraction. Prof. Woltersdorf was gripped by what Calvin wrote during the season of his own son's death at 25. When I read his essay he seemed to ask the question: "My son is dead. Is God still good? And am I still grateful?"
Whether we FEEL it to be so or not, the answer to the first question is always “Yes.”. God grant that we would always be able to give a “yes” answer to the second question as well even if sorely tested.
As much as any Christian who ever wrote Calvin helps move us toward the right answer.

Israel - Again

Two of the more thoughtful Christians I know wrote short enigmatic responses to the entry of June 23rd.
I’m not sure what they meant exactly (perhaps we’ll talk soon) but I can guess.
One has spent his adult life as a Missionary to the Turkish people. The other is ethnic Lebanese (fully American in every sense) and Christian.
By emphasizing Israel I want to avoid understandable but erroneous inferences. There are two camps which define opposite perspectives on Israel among American evangelicals. One is the Replacement Camp. This view insists that the promises to Israel have been forfeited due to the national rejection of the Messiah. Those promises (amounting to prophecies in the Old Testament) which have to do with future Kingdom benefits to the Jews are spiritualized and rolled over to the Church. The promises to Israel are therefore rendered symbolic. This is in fact the majority view of Christian scholars since the Reformation. Recently I read a powerful exposition of this point of view by Herman Bavink the great Dutch theologian who died in 1921. Most who hold this position would deem it a grave error to posit any correlation at all between any current or future resurrection of national Israel and biblical prophecy. Dazzled as I am by many who hold this view I can’t get there. There are lots of reasons. I will mention only two.
After forty days of post-Resurrection instruction the Apostles had one last pre-Ascension question for the Lord. We may assume that many topics were addressed during those forty days. The Holy Spirit inspiring Luke the historian reveals only one. They were taught about the Kingdom of God. And that’s what the last question was about. The disciples wanted to know when the Lord was going to restore the Kingdom TO ISRAEL. The question (after being catechized for forty days) was not about replacement but restoration. Now if the view just outlined were the correct one I would have expected the Lord to say “Don’t you guys ever pay attention? There’s not going to be any restoration to Israel.” But He doesn’t say that at all. What He does say in effect is”The timing is not important for you to know.” (Acts 1:6-7). Also, if we spiritualize the promises to Israel and assign those promises to the Church, huge tracts of Holy Scripture are rendered unintelligible. This is true not only in the Old Testament but in the New Testament as well. Where are the correspondences to the 144,000 in the Church? On what conceivable basis could the Tribes mentioned in Revelation 7 and 14 be identified within the Church?
I would describe the other camp as Israel Boosters. It’s not a designation I wholly disdain for myself because I believe we can see good arguments not only for Israel’s right to exist but for Israel’s right to certain disputed territorial claims POLITICALLY. If we restrict ourselves to political arguments then I think Israel can make a very strong case indeed.
The problem is that the favor Israel enjoys among American evangelicals is not based exclusively or even primarily upon political arguments. The favor is tied to the notion that the Jews are God’s chosen people and we must favor Israel for that reason. Because I do expect a future for (a fully converted and Christian) Israel it would be easy to assume that I am planted firmly in this camp. But it is not so. It is a great mistake to rubber stamp with approval any policy adopted by an Israeli government. Let me reiterate that if we argue politically Israel may make strong cases. But if we approach the question from the biblical point of view alone (which as Christians we must do) then I draw the conclusion that Israel ought to give the land up. I know this seems inconsistent with a Premillennial perspective (the perspective I embrace). I would argue that it is not inconsistent at all, though it is certainly not in line with the way most premillennialists approach the question.
Israel is a socialist state dominated by secularists who have no theistic convictions at all. Those who do have religious convictions are mostly Orthodox Jews who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was an imposter. It is a grave error to think that God favors in any way whatsoever an Israel so disposed toward His Son. In writing this I realize that Romans 3:1ff must be carefully and faithfully interpreted because it can be construed so as to offer a refutation to what I have just written.
“Then what advantage has the Jew…
Great in every way…”
But instead of taking the space to try and explain Romans 3 in context I will simply offer the following: Those Israelis who reject Christ want the Kingdom without the King. It cannot and ought not to be. I believe the critical parable of Matthew’s Gospel is the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in Matthew 21. Let us be careful here. We must steer clear of any temptation to blame the Jews for the death of the Lord any more than we blame ourselves. I live in a part of the world where the history of anti-Semitism is shameful to a hellish degree. And the poison is not dormant. Often I plead with my Eastern European friends that however much they may be attracted to a political platform if that platform gives in to anti-Semitism in the slightest the thing must be condemned and resisted. That said, the Zionist Jews who spurn Jesus are in the precise position of the tenants in the parable (Matthew 21:33-46). You can’t have the Kingdom without the King. That’s why it’s a real Kingdom. There lives a real King. His Name is Jesus. The promises are only valid in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
On June 23rd my emphasis on Israel was purely to make the point that hope in the Lord’s soon coming has been based on real events in every generation. Before 1948 AD (the year Israel was reconstituted as a political entity) Christians found reasons to hope upon grounds which may have had little or nothing to do with Israel. But hope they did. My two correspondents because of who they are and what they do are vitally concerned with the evangelization of currently Islamized peoples. Any positive regard of Israel among those peoples is bound to offend and alienate. But we mustn’t abandon truth to placate unbelief. No lost people whether Jews or Muslims should dictate Gospel emphases. Our responsibility is to declare the whole counsel of God including Israel’s past favor, current condemnation, and future restoration. As for modern, not-yet-Christian Israel the dry bones are not yet alive. But they have been reassembled, are upright and walking. God grant that one day this walking skeleton may receive a heart of flesh. Meanwhile let us love, regard and highly esteem Arab believers, Christian believers in non-Arab Muslim countries and especially the Palestinian Christians who must surely feel like the loneliest and most forgotten Christians in the world at times.
It is certain that no Christian group or individual has flawlessly projected the coming prophetic scenario. After all John the Baptist (distracted by his own suffering) voiced doubts even about the First Coming (see Matthew 11) and he was the Forerunner of that Coming. It is folly not to allow for our own fallibility in this regard. We can be humble and irenic without retreating to a waffling tentativeness. The brunt of our apologetics ought always to rest on prophecy already fulfilled not that broad span of prophetic truth which awaits future fulfillment.
We believers may disagree on the particulars of prophecy but we are united around the larger reality.
This same Jesus, crucified, buried, risen and ascended will come again!
Personally, universally, finally, and undeniably He will return in the same body which hung upon the cross.
WHETHER IT WILL BE IN OUR GENERATION OR NOT WE DON’T KNOW.
But we can ask.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus

The Power of Pop Culture (part 2)

This morning in Budapest we awoke to look out upon a world without Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. They have joined what Woody Allen called “The Great Majority.” Like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson they died on the same day. And in America they are at least as well known as our second and third Presidents. Whether it will be so a hundred years hence I like to think not. The receptionist at my Hungarian doctor’s office asked me if I had heard Michael Jackson died. She looked stricken and on the verge of tears. She is about 75 years old. Such is the reach of American Popular Culture.
Michael Jackson came to Moscow while we lived there. Katie was a ninth grader in a secular German school. It seemed the end of the world for her not to go to that concert, not only because everyone else was going, but because Michael Jackson was, she informed me, “the best dancer in the world.” In Moscow it was an Event. For a 14 year old exiled from Munich to live in Moscow it was Everything. I had a bad feeling. It wasn’t just the revulsion of a Christian father over exposure to Michael Jackson. It was the concern of any father about what could happen in a crowd that size on a Moscow night. Moscow was a bit like the Wild West in those days. I could have handed down a decree from on high, but I didn’t. I negotiated. Finally she relented. I don’t remember what her compensation was, but it must have been stupendous. She may still think I owe her one. Maybe I do.
Did we ever hear the word "iconic” 20 years ago? I think rarely. Today the term is ubiquitous. First I read of the iconic television show Charlie’s Angels. I never saw the show. That may be the only boast I can make about a misspent youth. Then I read of Farrah’s iconic hair and her iconic 1976 poster. This morning I am told of Michael’s iconic 1993 Thriller Tour. That must have been the one which came to Moscow. To think that in Russia of all places I could have deprived my daughter of an iconic experience is ironic if I may be allowed to use a word that rhymes.
To my low Protestant understanding an icon is a thing invested with a kind of regard which ought only to be reserved for Deity. Not that I worry that it’s as bad as all that in most cases. It is certain though that the pain suffered by masses of secular people at the loss of celebrities would be substantially mitigated if a fit object for worship could be found. Are there many feeling that loss at this moment who would be pleased if a son or daughter made the choices Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett made? And speaking of sons and daughters Farrah’s son was in prison the day his mother died. They last met on a restricted prison visit in April. Now THAT’S sad.
And is it possible that Ed McMahon could have died the very same week? He and Johnny Carson (on the iconic Tonight Show remember?) used to play out a running gag where Carson pretended to be an old woman. One of the recurring jokes was that the woman would not allow any reference to death. Such references are always uncomfortable and seldom allowed in secular discourse. That we all die is a great embarrassment to non-transcendent philosophies which refuse to reckon with death.
But we all die anyway.
Even the rich and the famous.
Even the iconic.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Thus passes the glory of the world.

Plausibility and Unbelief

Bart Ehrman, the Moody and Wheaton grad turned apostate, delights in explaining the "reasons" why biblical Christianity cannot be true. Not long ago I heard him being interviewed on NPR's 'Fresh Air.' Ironic title that. As he spoke the atmosphere grew noticeably stale.
One of his arguments majored on the number of Christians in every generation who believed the Lord would come in their lifetime. Inside Prof. Ehrman’s formidable brain this constitutes a kind of “proof” which delegitimizes faith. For some reason the same phenomenon inclines me toward the opposite conclusion.
Is it not striking that the center and burden of prophecies separated from us by a distance measured in millennia should remain so frightfully current? That there could be multi-generational scenarios which plausibly fuel biblical hope is itself a kind of verification of Christianity’s truth claims. In the last few days three issues dominate the news-cycle:
1) The Israeli Prime Minister has conceded the possibility of a Palestinian State.
2) The validity of the reelection of a particularly rabid anti-Jewish savage in Iran is being disputed.
3) Al-Qaeda and the Taliban continue their grisly work of theologically inspired murder, including aid workers (women and children among them) in Yemen none of whom were American.
Does anybody still remember why these stupefying fiends began to hate us in the first place? It was because of an American presence on the Arabian peninsula. And it was because of an American sympathy for Israel.
Why do the heathen rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing?
What are the chances that the relevance of prophecies about Israel would survive the passage of time when Israel itself did not survive between 70 and 1948 AD? It would be an odd coincidence that current geo-political realities could be construed by ingenious exaggeration to adhere so closely to ancient prophetic forecasts.
Yet they do.
Israel matters.
Jerusalem matters, not just to the Jews and not just to those who live nearby.
There are two kinds of hearts. One believes the witness and opens itself up to what God is saying and showing in all ages. Such hearts incline toward a reverent but (hopefully) also sober and even scholarly calibration of what God proclaims in Scripture and what God performs in history.
By human reckoning two thousand years is a long time to wait for Jesus to come back. Just so two thousand years is also a long time to sustain any resemblance between the world of 2009 and the world now buried in the abyss of time where the original prophecies were uttered. In fact we are warned not to measure this particular expectation in terms of human notions of time. With the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day...
The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness...
Forty days was too long for some to wait on Moses to return from the Mountain. There were skeptics then though they'd been favored with the spectacle of miracles. There are skeptics now though some, like Professor Ehrman, have been favored with study at places like Moody and Wheaton.
The cleavage between the believing and the skeptical constitutes a divide more profound than that between the genders or the races.
One group will see the sky opened.
In Moses' generation the other group saw the opening of the ground.

A Phenomenon at Sunset

Every three years Inter-Varsity holds a meeting on the campus of the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. The goal is to encourage students to give themselves to Great Commission enterprises. I urged a group of new Christians to attend Urbana ‘76 with confidence they would be bowled over by at least one of the two great speakers featured that year. When they returned they could only rave about Helen Roseveare. I was mystified. I’d never heard of HR. Of course I asked for tapes. After listening I became a serious fan.

In 1983 the Ben Lippen Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, hosted Helen Roseveare at one of their Summer Conferences. Sadly Ben Lippen Conference is no more. It was operated by Columbia Bible College which is now called Columbia International University. In Britain Inter-Varsity has changed its name to Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. This year the meeting will be in St. Louis not Urbana. The trend toward name-changes among Churches and Christian Institutions is rampant. My own Mission, ‘Entrust’, used to be called BEE (Biblical Education by Extension) International. It’s a trend with which I sympathize having been sorely tempted to change my own name on numerous occasions. I don’t even have the option of retreating to the more serious “Ronald” as “Ronnie“ is the name on my birth certificate. Those of us born in the American South are often saddled with the names of young children which must be borne through adulthood. Just ask Billy Graham. In one Church I was informed that I would have to abandon “Ronnie” because it didn’t fit the sophisticated international city where I’d just landed. Initially I leaped at this opportunity. The prospect of having a name consonant with a nature as romantic and intellectual as my own (so obvious to all who know me) as well as a name worthy of that great city excited me immensely. Sadly I had to give it up in the end. However much I admitted the need, and however much I wanted to go through life being called “Sebastian Paradise” or “Crispin St. Cyr” (those were the two finalists- I decided that if I was going to change my first name I should go ahead and change my surname as well) I couldn’t imagine that it would go down well on my visits back to Norcross, Georgia. Where I grew up we usually leave these prerogatives to the mom and dad. Inter-Varsity and Columbia Bible College were held back by none of the considerations which inhibited me and I wish them well.

But I digress.

After hearing Helen Roseveare speak six times on Jonah I concluded that she was the best speaker I’d ever heard. I knew it grated whenever I expressed that opinion. Comparisons, as Will Shakespeare noted, are odious. Plus she’s a woman. When I gave the Jonah tapes to a Marine Sergeant in our North Carolina Church he protested “Why are you giving me tapes by a woman?” I simply asked him to fasten his seat belt and pay attention. The next day he called and said “You told me about the seat belt; why didn’t you tell me about the crash helmet?” That Marine (who’d not attended college at the time) now holds a PhD and is on the Faculty at a Christian College. I like to think Helen Roseveare inspired him on his way.

It’s probably not wise to say that Helen Roseveare is the best speaker I’ve ever heard because of the way the opinion provokes controversy and comparisons. Better to say she moves me more than anyone I’ve ever heard. The question is “why?” Three things stand out:

First: Great gifts. This is pretty much a commonplace. We would expect great gifts from those invited to speak at Urbana. We run into great gifts fairly often though we’d like to encounter them even more. She is a gifted thinker. She is a gifted theological processor and, supremely, she is a gifted speaker. Her sense of dramatic moment, intonation and emphasis are perfectly calibrated and combine for maximum effect.

Second: Great commitment. Her intellectual gifts earned her an MD from Cambridge University. Women had to be overqualified to be considered for Medical School in the 40’s. But it was her great commitment which brought her into the great danger where she made her impact. Instead of settling down into the middle class routine which physicians could expect in Post-War socialist Britain she set out for Africa. From 1953 to 1973 she practiced Medical Missions in the Belgian Congo which was later called Zaire which is now called Congo .(Our name change motif persists). She built a clinic in a place called Nebabongo where she embraced obscurity, danger and difficulty as a way of life.

The third great element is suffering. Great gifts plus great commitment plus great suffering. The first two we may frequently witness but how seldom the three in combination. We are all dealt a measure of suffering, but for her it has been GREAT suffering. Helen Roseveare was kidnaped and tortured by rebel soldiers in the mid-sixties and during the five months of her captivity was subjected to ordeals worse than death.

In that crucible was forged a witness to Christ’s sufficiency in the cruelest of situations. She faced her agony with this prayer, repeated like a refrain in a hymn of praise:
“Lord, I thank You for trusting me with this experience, even though You haven’t chosen to tell me the reason why.”

Two years ago I told some fellow-missionaries that HR was the best. It never occurred to me that we should invite HR to our next Conference for the same reason it never occurred to me to invite the Beatles to my birthday party. I thought it would be overreaching. I knew it would be futile. But two of my colleagues did invite her and she accepted. And so we heard her in Sopron Hungary on April 22-26. When she was invited neither she nor we knew that Sopron would be her last speaking engagement. It’s a decision we pray God overrules but the reality invested our time with a solemnity and sense of occasion we’d not anticipated. We heard Helen Roseveare in the sunset of what has been a remarkable career of faithfulness to the King of Kings.

I thank God for Helen Roseveare. And I thank God that the state of media technology in the 20th and 21rst Centuries make it possible to hear her voice after retirement.

I wish I could have heard the voices of Edwards and Whitefield and Spurgeon.

But the voice of Helen will suffice.

Passing It On

Skip and Barbara Ryan were the featured speakers at the first annual Danube International Church Retreat in Cserkeszőlő, Hungary April 17-19. Skip is the Chancellor of Redeemer Theological Seminary in Dallas.

His messages connected here. We don’t want to hoard the insights in our part of the world. They need to be circulated. Here are some thoughts which appealed to me especially:

Fear is a refusal to live in the present.
It costs us much to lose everything but when we lose everything we begin to live.
While you’re lying to God you can’t experience His love.
Adversity introduces me to myself.
Every addiction leads to stealth. And stealth makes betrayal inevitable.
It is the love of Christ which breaks us.
Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die (I’d heard this said of blame).
Humility was not considered a virtue in the ancient world. For Paul to elaborate upon Christ’s great humility in emptying himself and refusing to cling to the prerogatives of Deity (Phil. 2:4-11) was counter-cultural to a considerable degree.
Manual labor was not considered an acceptable occupation for a man of consequence. For Paul to publicize that he made tents was equally counter-cultural.
What somebody else thinks of me is none of my business.

Personally I find the first and last insights to be the most provocative. I find the last to be especially liberating. It’s one thing to be reminded (as we often have been) that we oughtn’t to worry about what other people think. It delivers a fresh jolt to be told that what others think is actually none of our business!

One confirmation of Christian truth comes when we meet people of widely divergent backgrounds who share the same experience of having the core of their personality and history dissected and defined by what Scripture reveals .That happens when we compare notes with our other believers. Further confirmation comes when we see a commonality of experience with those figures we encounter in Holy Scripture. It is certainly possible to gain marvelous insights about human personality when we read other ancient literature like the Odyssey or the Aeneid. But the Bible takes us to another level. Those other ancient writings do not unmask and convict us. Nor do we find in them the power to effect personal transformation.

The proper word a (bit overused in recent years) is resonance. Much of our shared experience would remain static, discrete, random and ultimately lost if not clarified by the infinite reference point which is the Word of God mediated by the Spirit of God. Skip led us in those kind of shared discoveries and affirmations. For that we are grateful.

And from that we share.

The Power of Pop Culture

Wednesday night Beyoncé performed at the Sport Palace in Budapest. Earlier that day I boarded a train for the Czech Republic. In my early youth I would have cursed my fate. At age 58 I simply view it as good timing. I’m not familiar with Beyoncé’s music, but I did catch her in the first Pink Panther movie which starred Steve Martin. Probably Beyoncé is not familiar with Exodus 3. If she were she would not have called her spring travels the “I Am Tour”. At least I hope she wouldn’t. Seems I remember that in 2008 Beyoncé and her husband earned only slightly less than the gross domestic product of Paraguay. Such is the power of Pop.

Speaking of the new Inspector Clouseau, a Christian leader who never comments on my sermons rushed forward to congratulate me for quoting Steve Martin in my opening remarks a few Sundays ago. (A banjo was featured in our worship that morning.) That kind of thing happens quite often. People are more likely to talk about something not related to the exposition of Scripture. A wonderfully effective women’s teacher once confided to me that nearly 100% of the women who wanted to speak with her after she taught were seeking counsel on personal and family problems. They almost never registered interest in implications and applications from the text. Of course, if we hope to help anyone with their problems we’d better be ready with implications and applications from the text. It’s always amazed me that if I mention a film or a line from a song it almost never fails to elicit comment.

Popular culture is a force to be reckoned with. It is often a negative thing. It can be a neutral thing. It is seldom a positive thing, though its lessons can be shaped for edifying purposes by thoughtful believers. I realize that I too am influenced by popular culture, but I hope not as much as I used to be. I have no desire to listen to Beyoncé, but I’m glad I saw the Beatles live when I was 14. When I was a university student I had not one but two posters of Bob Dylan on my wall. Almost any jingle-jangle morning I would have followed him. Then one day I realized he wasn't kidding when he sang "...there is no place I'm going to” (Mr. Tambourine Man). Whether the change came about because I became a Christian or because I was growing up, I don’t know; maybe it was a bit of both.

As far as ministry in the 21st century goes we may take more than one approach to popular culture. Some churches gauge the direction of the cultural wind and begin to pedal hard in that direction. We may congratulate them for their alertness. But there’s a difference between heeding and leading. Those churches are much more likely to show a clip from a film than they are to quote from someone like Augustine or Calvin. Another approach is to always learn from culture but never give in to it. It is prudent and it is sometimes necessary to note cultural markers which a majority of the congregation are thinking about. Then, having duly noted those cultural influences which affect our thinking, we give ourselves to the hard task of bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

I vote for option two.