Why We're Still Talking About Calvin

In case you missed it, Michael Jensen had a great op-ed in yesterday's Australian on the decline of Calvin. The quote from Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson on Calvin's influence is worth repeating:

"Any reader of the Institutes must be struck by the great elegance, the gallantry, of its moral vision, which is more beautiful for the resolution with which its theology embraces sorrow and darkness.

...There are things for which we in this culture clearly are indebted to him, including relatively popular government, the relatively high status of women, the separation of church and state, what remains of universal schooling and, while it lasted, liberal higher education, education in the humanities. How easily we forget."

In reading Michael's op-ed, I was reminded of something I've been intending to mention for a while now. My friend Angus Courtney submitted his honours thesis last year in history. Not only is it a superb piece of work on the 17th Century English Civil and republicanism, but it provides a paradigm shifting argument against the weight of recent historical scholarship. Angus argues that although the puritans (a label many historians have conveniently avoided using when describing the republicans) were well versed in classics, they lived and breathed the bible and Calvinist theology. Here is an excerpt:

"The defining mark of the historiography of English republicanism is its insistence on the classical basis of English republican ideas. Drawing on the theorists of Greece and Rome––the argument goes––a handful of English writers in the mid seventeenth century articulated a vision of republican government infused with classical ideas and values. It is not an unreasonable argument, particularly considering that a number of English republicanism’s central writers, like John Milton, were prolific classicists who were widely familiar with ancient political theorists and historians. Just as significantly, they lived in extraordinary times that sparked an immense body of political re-examination.2 The result was to be a rich tapestry of republican thinking that was unparalleled in the seventeenth century. It was a unique (if fleeting) moment in English political history, in which ideas were developed that would become essential to eighteenth century political thought in England, the Continent, and America...But this approach makes a serious category error. The essential character of English republicanism was not classical. Although English republicans were familiar with classical texts and referred to––as Sidney put it––the ‘great masters of human reason’, these writers were rarely their primary authority, nor was their example primarily the republics of Greece or Rome. If we are prepared to take Milton at his word (as historians have been), this point is unmistakable. According to Milton, ‘The English people…were not inflamed with the empty name of liberty by a false notion of virtue and glory, or senseless emulation of the ancients.’ Rather, they formulated their republican vision and waged war against the king because of their purity of life and blameless character, in an effort to defend law and religion, rooted in a firm trust in God. At its core, English republicanism was a religious republicanism: a Puritan vision of total reformation that extended not only through the church but also to government. It was a vision inspired by Biblical Scripture, directed towards the godliness of the nation and the glory of God.

The radical nature of this proposition warrants its restatement: English republicanism was religious republicanism. Its central thrust was not towards classical republican government, but the government of God. Its purpose was not civic glory, but the godliness of the community for the glory of God. Regarding English republicanism as primarily classical is to overlook the context in which republicanism developed, the explicit goals for which it was used, and the clear biblical arguments that were used to justify its imposition. To appropriate a biblical metaphor, this overlooking of such a critical aspect is akin to having ‘strain[ed] out a gnat but swallow[ed] a camel.’ My assertion is not that classical republican ideas were absent from the English republican vision. Rather, it is that a much more significant aspect has been overlooked. This is an error in need of correction. We must recover the essential religious component of the English republican vision.

Disagreeing Well: Gregory the Great

Here is a wonderful example of why we still need to read books by dead people (h/t Michael - although admittedly it comes as a quote from a contemporary book). Gregory the Great (540-604) writes:

"Provided that it is in good faith, then, it is a mark of virtue to put up with superiors' faults. One should, nevertheless, if there is any prospect that the offending trait could be emended, make a humble suggestion to that effect. Yet one should take great care, when defending justice, not to go too far and cross the threshold of arrogance; not, in an ill-judged love of right, to forfeit humility, the mistress of right; not to forget that the person of whose action one happens to be critical is in fact one's senior. Subjects will discipline their minds to guard humility and avoid the swelling of pride, if they keep an incessant watch on their own weaknesses.

For we neglect to examine our own strength honestly; and because we believe ourselves stronger than we really are, we judge our superiors severely. The less we know of ourselves, the more our field of vision is occupied by those whom we aspire to criticize." - Gregory the Great (540-604) Moralia, Book 25:16:36 in From Irenaeus to Grotius" ed O'Donovan and O'Donovan p. 202.

One of the most valuable things I learned at uni was: it is very easy to be right. It's much harder to be right and still be gracious and loving. Especially in the Sydney Evangelical culture in which I live (which I love, by the way). Yet that is what Paul urges us to do:

"I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Ephesians 4.1-6

Mission Exists Because Worship Doesn't?

The phrase "Mission exists because worship doesn't" has been often used in recent years to give a justification for mission. John Piper coined this phrase in response to Christians who feel ashamed or embarrassed about the strong conversionism tendencies in Christianity. He writes:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Mission exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God. (Let the Nations Be Glad, 2004, p.17).

I sympathise with piper on this point. Worship and the Glory of God definitely have something to do with mission. In Romans 1 God justly judges humans everywhere who neither thanked him or worshiped him. And a great eschatological vision in the scriptures is of "the whole earth being filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11.9 and Habbakuk 2.14).

But something in Piper's statement irks me. Maybe it's a reaction against Piper's reduction of everything to glory - I'm not sure what it is, but the biblical theologian in me whats to nuance Piper's thesis. Maybe something like: Mission exists because evil does. On reflection this does sound pretty similar to Piper, but I'm trying to locate mission within the framework of the biblical narrative. (I'm not convinced that Piper does this in Let the Nations be Glad, largely because the first reference to Genesis 12 is on page 30 and is talking about the Puritans. When he does get back to Gen 12 around page 130, this foundational text only rates a passing mention). Mission is God's plan to redeem humanity and creation from the captivity of evil and sin: idolatry, hatred, famine, death, etc. In the proto-gospel, the promise is the crushing of evil: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3.15). God works through Abraham and Israel and finally Jesus to make this happen. In Abraham all the nations will be blessed. Israel is a light to the nations (never mind for now that she constantly failed this) and the "nations will stream to her". And Jesus is able to totally obliterate evil cf. Colossians 2.15. My point is that mission is not just a New Testament concept, it's deeply ingrained in the story of the bible.

But then again, I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with: "Mission exists because evil does". Forgetting issues of theodicy for now, there is a sense in which mission exists because God does. God creates the world ex nihlo, making something out of nothing. He separates light from darkness, gives shape to a world that is formless and void. And just before God rests, he creates Man and Woman in his image and charges them with a mission: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1.28). I take it that this mission of reflecting the image of God into the world continues despite the 'the fall'. It's given fresh impetuous by Jesus who commanded his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations - so that everyone will hear that Jesus is King and we should reflect his image. And I take it that this will continue in some form in the new creation, after Jesus reigns unchallenged and sin and death are no more. And this to me seems to be a more complete "justification" for mission.

Podcasting and Cross Stitching

If you aren't a regular listener of the Pilgrim's Podcast, you might like to hear me be interviewed last Saturday. We ramble about blogging, CMS and many other things. You can listen here and here.

Or if Cross Stitching is more your thing, than you should check out my Mum's interesting blog. With a large international readership, it's quite successful.

The End is Near

Guest Post by Alison Moffitt
(My wife Alison handed in her last ever university assignment today. On her live journal she has been posting about the end of her time at uni. This is the seventh of these posts, which is about Vras, my former lecturer and employer.)

One of the best things about university has been the Assoc. Prof. Vrasidas Karalis. Here is a post about him.


"You are freaking me out!"

I'm going to say right out that Vras pretty much got me through my degree. My liberal studies degree required me to pass 5 semesters worth of a language. That sounded pretty straightforward after 5 years of Japanese at high school. I chose to study Modern Greek, because it would keep my grandparents happy and get me in touch with my cultural heritage etc, etc. I would not have passed Greek without Vras.

In first year I enrolled in beginner's Greek. We had two teachers - Martina, a lovely gentle but cool young teacher, and Vras, who appeared to me to be the pinnacle of insanity. Our first week was terrifying for me. Martina and Vras stood at the front of the class room trying to weed out the fluent speakers who were too good for beginners. I don't think they got them all. It felt like most of the class, even though they weren't fluent, could still understand Martina and Vras when they accidently slipped into complicated Greek. I spent that year sitting with my friend Amanda. The four hours with Martina were fine. She would give us worksheets, explain grammar to us, ask us questions that were at our comprehensions level. The last hour of the week was with Vras. He would charge into the classroom like a whirlwind, single out one of the girls:

"My, you're looking very radiant today!"

and then sit on a desk and proceed to rant about the evils of university bureaucracy, the politics of the local Greek community or the shortcomings of that year's Eurovision contestants. Vras never seemed to have a lesson plan. He would just tell outrageously hilarious or disturbing stories about his life and occasionally link them into our language study by translating the odd word into Greek and scrawling it across the chalkboard. Then he would ask a ridiculous question that was way beyond my Greek knowledge. Amanda and I would cower in the back row, hoping that he wouldn't call on us for an answer.

"Tell me you love..."

After about six or seven weeks of uni, Vras decided to teach us the verb agapo. which means love. Vras wondered around the room pointing randomly at students crying out "Tell me you love your mother!" "Tell me you love your father!". He got to me and paused. That day was one of the first days I had been brave enough to wear my EU shirt. "Tell me you love God!" I wasn;t really sure whether he was mocking me or giving me a chance to share my faith with people. Vras was proving to be a little bit obscure with matters of faith. He would tell very obscene stories and then turn around and talk about the New Testament Greek course that he ran after our class finished. He would tell stories about the time he went on a cruise and did lots of things that he found very pleasurable, and then tell one of the boys in our class in all earnestness that he should really read the book of Matthew in the bible, because it would be good for his soul.

"Forget about it"

At the end of the year I followed him up about the New Testament Greek course and summoned the courage to ask him if he was a Christian. Vras looked at me with surprise.
"Of course!"
"Oh. Why do you tell all of those stories?"
Vras paused and then answered (I think he was trying to be cryptic)
"Sometimes a dog's bark is worse than its bite".

Whatever that meant.

We talked for awhile and it turned out that Vras was potentially some kind of amazing heretic. He had been excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox church a couple of years beforehand and was struggling to renew his Greek passport. He sent me a copy of an article he had written, a very scathing history of the Greek Orthodox church. At the time he had decided instead to go the the Anglican church near where he lived in Glebe, although I'm pretty sure he has moved on from there. He doesn't like Calvinists, and most Anglicans in Sydney fall squarely into that category.

"Do you have a friend called Zoe?"

New Testament Greek the next year was an absolute scream. I started realising that Vras had different personas depending on who he was teaching. He still liked stirring people up and freaking people out, but this time, in front of Christians, his weapon of choice was not explicit sex stories but outrageous heresy. Most of what he said went way over my head, but Matt was in that class with me, as well as our friend Ryan and both of them are very keen amateur theologians. They would push back on every point they didn't like, and also some that they just enjoyed arguing over. My friend Dan was also in that class with me. He would try to speak up too, although is preferred method of voicing his opinion was to try and answer every and any question that Vras asked of the class.

Vras' favourite method for teaching vocab was to help us link the Greek word with their English words. So, classes went something like "The word for light is phos! Do you know any English words that come from phos? Yes! Photography". Or like "The word for earth is ygis. Do you know any English words that come from ygis? Yes! Geology, Geography." Or "The word for life is zoe. Do you have a friend called Zoe?". Yes, I did, but I didn't have any friends called Thanatos, which means death.

What a difference a year made. Instead of hiding at the back that year, it was a real joy to answer Vras' questions. I was much less self conscious. Dan kept a score sheet of who volunteered the most answers or comments. If you answered a question really well, Vras would reward you with

"Ryan, you are a star."

It was the highest compliment you could receive, until one day, after a very intense round of questioning, Dan was rewarded with

"Dan, you are a constellation!"

It was during that year that Matt and I started going out and eventually got engaged. Matt used to tie my shoelaces to the desk during Vras' lectures.

The outrageous stories kept coming. His favourite one to retell was about the time that he was in Iceland and was so very depressed that he wanted to kill himself. But then he went for a walk and found a little Greek Orthodox church in the middle of nowhere, with some monks or priests inside who talk to him and made him feel better. My favourite story he often told was about his days as a student in Germany. He studied under Joseph Ratzinger (you may know him now as Pope Benedict XVI) and he would recount the theological arguments that they had. I thought it was sweet being taught by a man who has fought with the pope.

"This is off the planet."

Now even the smartest of men must have his point of weakness. For Vras it was PowerPoint software. He didn't really start using it until I took the New Testament subjects, and once he started there was no return. Every week he had learnt a new function or found a cooler template. Every week there were shouts of frustration as, once again, the PowerPoint slides had mangled his Greek text into a whole lot of boxes and squiggles. I think to this day he still hasn't realised that it is not PowerPoint's fault but the fault of the university computers that don't have his Greek font installed. But I digress. One week he had discovered the transition technique where each letter comes up one by one and every letter spins a cartwheel before settling on the screen. It took a while to get through the slides that day. We would score extra marks for including the maximum number of pictures during our tutorial presentations.

"Now I know most of you were only born a few years ago, but some of you might remember what happened in 1396."

And so it went on and on. Matt got a short gig being his research assistant, and I enrolled and enrolled and enrolled in Vras' classes, eventually passing enough MGRK courses to get my degree! Plus more to spare. Byzantium: Between East and West. Greeks in the Diaspora. Greece and the European Imagination. They all rocked, and we would spend countless hours watching B-Grade Greek films, reruns of Acropolis Now and video clips from aging Greek film stars.

"How very Freudian!"

This year one of my classmates took two hours to get through her presentation. She was analysing the representation of Greece in the musical Mamma Mia. Each time she showed us a section of dialogue of the movie, Vras would insist that we continued watching to the next song.

"Ooh! I love this one! Gimme Gimme Gimme a man after midnight! Madonna sang this one too you know."

So I will really miss being in his classes. Even though I have absolutley no memory of a structured class with Vras, he has been one of the most influential and interesting teachers I've had. I may not know how to speak Greek and I may have forgotten a lit of information about Justinian and Homer, but I have really come to appreciate the things you can learn when you question things that are assumed. Vras was very good at getting us to do that. One of the people in his appreciation group on facebook put it this way:

"He knows full well that the best way to teach someone is to get them laughing."

To sum up, I thought I'd leave you with some of the hilarious quotes that have been collected on Facebook. Enjoy!

-------------------------------------------
15 min into our exam, Vras says "Are you all finished yet?" then pushes clock forward - "Don't ask me any questions I'm conversing with Plato..."

"Those Egyptians were very nasty people! They killed and raped and ate the human flesh and blood! They were cannibals! Have you tasted human flesh?" [to an Egyptian student]

"Have you read 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy...? You haven't?! Oh my goodness people, we don't live in a vacuum!"

"You have to be nice to me because I'm writing my magnus opus on violence so I need affection people!"

"The purpose of an institution like university is to produce intellectual disability"

"Look at your shoes...you can jump to your death from them" (said to a student with high heels).

Student (vehemently): The Greeks gave the light of civilization to the world! (ta fota tou politismou).
Vras (deadpan): Was it Philips or General Electric type lights?

"Justinian loved building walls around things...no doubt as a psychological reaction to his wife who was having sex with half the Empire"

(while talking about sex, Vras stops and looks at a student)
Vras: How old are you?
Student: 19
Vras: You look 14.
(someone tries to start up the sex topic again)
Vras: please, not in front of the minor.

"Elate paidia. Sit closer. Konta! Konta! I don't bite, I don't eat human flesh anymore!"

"Don't you have a friend called Theodora or Zoe?"

"Do you have a friend called Thanatos?"

Six Principles on Reading

Here are some principles for Christians on reading:

1. Read the Bible. And pray that the Word of God would dwell richly amongst us as we "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" the scriptures.
2. Read theology. I despair sometimes at people who simply refuse to read theology. Whilst no substitute for scriptural reading, good books provide a grounding in Christian knowledge and living. And reading these books introduces to a language that you would otherwise be excluded from.
   
3. Read widely. Their is a treasure trove of wealth out there...sitting here in my lounge room I'm surrounded by some pure gold on my bookshelves. But it can be very easy to fall into a pattern of reading books only from a select few publishers or authors. I know, I've done it myself (and if I was still doing it I would never of read some of these books). It is important to read books that come from a variety of traditions and ideas. Because we don't read books so that we can tick them off as confirming to our theology. No way. We read books to grow in our love and knowledge and service of Jesus, his people and his world. Which means that we even read book by authors that we strongly disagree with, taking the ideas that are good and right whilst rejecting what's wrong.
4. Related to this, we need to make sure we read books written by dead people. Right now is an exciting time to be alive as a Christian, with such a globally vivid Christian publishing world. But there are many good books written decades, centuries and millennia ago. To not read the writing of Ryle, Wesley, Calvin, Anselm, Augustine, Athanasis, Ireneaus etc. not only drowns out the voice of the church down the centuries, it silences our brothers and sisters through time. And ultimately you're robbing yourself of the wisdom they have to offer. The advice C.S. Lewis gave was to read one contemporary book, followed by an older book written by some now dead.
5. Don't stop reading fiction. Being culturally engaged means reading great novels, because it is through fiction that society spreads an ideas and thinks through concepts. According to Kim Fabricius over at Ben Myer's blog, a great novel is a "resource for moral and spiritual formation...with its enchantment of the everyday, whether tragic or comic; its discernment of the sacred in the secular; its disinterested rather than pragmatic take on human existence; its purposive narrative structure and focus on character, virtuous and vicious. You might say that if literature without theology is empty, theology without literature is blind."
   
6. Remember, keep feeding your heart and imagination as well as your head. These are not distinct, but neither are they identical. (h/t Byron)

Is there anything I've missed? What would you add? I don't think that this is a principal, but something that I've found really helpful over the years is to read in community (i.e. book clubs, reading groups). They've been really insightful and formative for me.

A Vision For Christian Theology and Life

"...a faith that is bigger and deeper than "Jesus saves": trinitarian in basis, christological in focus, cosmic in scope, graciously ethical in direction, generous in difference and with a resurrection hope." - Byron Smith

I find this to be a quite apt and exciting description of how my theology and life should be shaped.

Question: ecclesia reformata...

Question: does any one where the phrase 'ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda' come from? I've searched for it in Google, but couldn't find a source, although some people would argues it originates from the 17th century.

Often translated as 'reformed and always reforming', I have heard it used as a justification for change in church: "The reformers strongly believed in 'reforming and always reforming' as their heirs, we want to make that true today...so we're going to replace the pews with comfy chairs." (On this issue refer to MPJ).

Since so much weight has been given to this statement, it would be nice to now where it came from.

Also, if we're going to throw this idea around, it would be worth quoting it in it's entirety: ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda secundu Verbum Dei. Church always needs to be shaped by the Word of God, and if we forget this, then I can easily see ecclesia reformata est semper reformanda used to justify a whole range of culturally releveant but biblically prohibited things in church. Think about it.

Public Meeting Friday X

In recognition of Sunday being Trinity Sunday, this week's Public Meeting talk is Peter Jensen's 'This We Believe: The Trinity'. This was part of the EU's Book of the Year series in 2005 of talks on the EU's doctrinal statement. The 'This We' Believe' series was also part of the EU's 75th anniversary celebration.

The talk itself was great (although it did seem strangely familiar to anyone who has done Doctrine 1 in Moore's correspondence course). However, the recording is pretty dodgy...if you know of a way to fix it, please let me know.

Enjoy (if you have ears to endure):

This We Believe: The Trinity