John Calvin is Old, and Not Looking a Day over 500

I am still awed by the deep reverence Calvin displays in his views on the Holy Spirit, even as a fellow Arminian!

Hi Bill:

Indeed I have noticed that Bill, and of course most of the Dispensational Calvinists are cessationists, by which I mean they believe the charismatic gifts died off with the apostles, so a lack of emphasis on the Spirit is no surprise from them.

Blessings,

BW3

Ben,

Thanks for your graciousness and winsome approach to this important-yet-secondary area of difference in the Christian community. This sort of approach to what can be a difficult topic will hopefully enchance charitable dialogue and make things more palatable overall. I look forward to your writings on the topic!

The next several years will be fraught with 500th anniversaries. So here's to Jean Calvin - and to his little toy tiger too!

Thanks for this; great memories you share. I look forward to the CT piece, and though I'm a Calvinist and work at Calvin College, I doubt I'll disagree with all of it :) But for now I'm less interested in theological arguments about Calvin than about the personal caricature of him that persists: here's my blog post today on how John Calvin has been miscast as a sourpuss and egghead, when in fact he preached and wrote with palpable pastoral heart: http://www.bit.ly/jcalvin500

The Episcopal Church has just added Calvin to its liturgical calendar. I, however, remain a raging Arminian.

Ben,
I am curious as to whether you set out intentionally to write commentaries on each book of the Bible before writing a NT theology because of Calvin's direct example, or did you begin and then later realize that you were following his pattern?
God bless you!
Chuck (yuckabuck)

Hi Bill:
You'll need to abide your soul in patience. Sept. will be here soon, and any way it is a two volume project. The second volume is the collective witness--- what would a theology and ethic of the whole NT look like? The first volume tells you what each NT volume plus Jesus contributed to the discussion.

And Chuck, I knew of Calvin's work, but in fact he did some OT volumes I am unlikely to do, and he did not do Revelation. When I realized no one in my Arminian tradition had even attempted commetaries on the NT, I was off and running with double motivation.

BW3

Jeremy I don't care for generalizations about people. I have met foaming at the mouth Calvinists and likewise with Arminians. What I do find more frequently with the Uber-Reformed is that they place so much confidence and trust in their theological system that often exegesis suffers as a result, because 'that text just couldn't be saying that' since our theological system is inerrant.

BW3

Ben,
What is a dispensational calvinist? Those almost seem opposite terms to me.

Jerry

There is an array of approaches to Calvin, as to any theologian. One may examine the man himself, his life and history, his good, his bad, and his ugly. One may examine the scholar, and his approach to his subject matter, which most theologians will find respectable and thorough. One may examine the content of the subject matter itself, to determine whether one is of the same mind or not. Or one may examine the effects of any of the above on individuals, in church and/or in a community. It is in the latter, among the ordinary circles of suburbia, among those whose theology is generally handed to them second-hand that we've found the "foaming at the mouth" types, although it may be handed to them from the upper eschelons who also foam. Friends of ours had an 8th grader coming home from school in tears every day last year because her private school teacher -- instead of teaching the academic subjects he was supposed to cover -- insisted to the children that "Jesus didn't die for everybody." Despite objections from her parents to the headmaster, they eventually had to just pull her out and home school her. I've also had "friends" for whom an admiration for Calvin is a must. To hold another opinion is a pure deal-breaker, as if one had denied Christ.

When I came to read your reflections and personal recollections here on Calvin, I was tending to favor a latitudinarian appreciation from an Arminian point of view (in my jagged and ragged path of learning - and I am not at all young), and for the most part I was inclined to say 'amen to that'. But when I went to the article by Serene Jones via the link you provided, I was more appalled than I can say. If the sentiment or slogan "Reformed and Always Reforming" means anything useful, it means "having returned to the authority of the Apostles, and seeking always to return to the authority of the Apostles." The only other possible meaning is making the faith into whatever we want it to be, and being content that our great-grandchildren will make it into whatever they want it to be. When I read her Pickwickian (striving here for a charitable word) selection of representatives of the "reformed spectrum", I could hardly imagine a lot more likely to be disavowed by the Apostles. (And when she spoke of someone as occupying the opposite end of the political spectrum from Rick Warren, I was puzzled as to what sort of end she was referring to, since Warren seemed to me the closest thing to a political centrist on her list.) Jesus did some occasional foaming-at-the-mouth himself, and His threats of damnation were most likely to be directed at religious leaders too pridefully wrapped up in their own agendas to be humble before God. It may well be true that the neo-Calvinists of today neglect the Holy Spirit in their theologies. But we also live in a time in which hypocritical clergy invoke the Holy Spirit as a convenient cover for the rankest, most cynical and self-interested apostasies. This finishes off a week of reading encounters for me which leave me crying, "The Catholics must be right! Pope and Magisterium are our only refuge in an insane world."

One more try to post this....

I've had close Calvinist friends for thirty years, and I've come to suspect that the delicately polished system of their Godview appeals most to a certain kind of personality type. Calvin himself was not this way, but those who gravitate toward Reformed systematic theology are so often Spocks rather than Kirks. (argument ad pop culture; sue me.)

Calvinism was an inevitable development of the Age of Reason colliding with the Reformation. People with a strong logical and mathematical bent are drawn to/comforted by a portrait of God that can be assembled by Scripture plus Socratic deduction. The problem is that God is above our equations and formulations. If there's anything he seems to enjoy doing throughout Scripture and history, it's flying in the face of logic. And there is no strand of tidy dialectic that can take in love or grace, which form the sheer heart of the New Testament. God is love--put that in your Piper and smoke it.

In college, when I would get into lengthy (and silly) drawn-out debates with Calvinist friends, I noticed they would resort to logic more often than not ("Doesn't it follow that if God is absolute..."), while I would point to the character of God so fully laid out in the gospels and epistles. The debates always ended with my friends saying, "Ah, well, if God wants you to understand this, surely He will make you understand it."

To this day I have a healthy fondness for a great number of Reformed believers, writers, and preachers. I myself need constantly to be reminded of the awesome, infinite God that they depict so well. Sproul points out that in the historic tug of war, his team has Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Jonathan Edwards and others on its side. As that great cloud of witnesses yank the rope and pull me into the mud, I hang onto my end, which is inscribed with John 3:16, and the phrases "the world" and "whosoever"--that rope feels good to the touch.

Dr. Witherington,

I have been a student at DTS for 2 years and have hardly encountered your caricature of the profs here, so "most of those folks" is a huge blanket statement and sweeping generalization. I have yet to hear one prof who says the present state of Zionistic Israel is a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, and most of the profs warn against that line of thinking and completely go against where the whacky dispensationalists have traditionally gone (and make fun of many of their forebears, mind you). As far as being cessationist Calvinists, I could spout off five professors off the top of my head who are vehemently against Calvinism, and more than that who nuance their view of cessationism to probably make it comparable to a position like you hold.

I find this caricature of DTS quite common among many, though I find it surprising with you given your interactions with Darrel Bock et al. This may have been the DTS of the 70s and 80s, but it is hardly the DTS of today. If it were, I wouldn't be here ;-) You probably wouldn't appreciate it if I said Asbury Seminary is full of fundamentalists who fire excellent scholars like Joel Green because he pushes the envelope and doesn't believe in penal substitution. It would also be akin to me saying that Asbury seminary is not academically challenging and intellectually stimulating because they're Methodists, and Methodists are shallow and naive.

Dr. Witherington,

I heard a professor not to long ago who said that the belief of limited atonement fit well within Paul’s statement of a curse for those who alter salvation. I am interested to know, how do you feel about the matter? I actually find myself in agreement with the professor the more that I think about it. I honestly don’t think that Jesus would be happy with those teaching that he only died for a select few. I try not to be so dogmatic in my conversations with my more Calvinistic friends. However, I still wonder if this is not something that needs a stern response considering that it radically changes the idea of salvation.

Jeremy S. Crenshaw

Good for you, Ben, regarding your comment about Michael Servetus. Do you think he was a brother in Christ? Reformed church historian Philip Schaff did. He says Servetus "worshipped Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior" (HCC, 8:789). You obviously think Calvin was a brother. The world turned against him about the Servetus matter, yet he vigorously defended his dastardly deed the rest of his life. No repentance, yet in the last hours of his life Servetus repented of all of his mean rhetoric directed at Geneva's Master Calvin and asked for the Reformer's forgiveness for this, which the tyrant (as many think) would not do. We read in Scripture, "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death.... Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love" (1 John 3.14; 4.8). How do you assess Calvin in light of these texts? Servetus the Evangelical Author of The Restitution of Jesus Christ