This review, written by Glenda Mathes, completes our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
Calvin and Culture’s editors Hall and Padgett may have placed “Calvin as Journalist” in its penultimate position because the connection initially seems almost surreal. Author Warren Cole Smith acknowledges the obscurity of the correlation, particularly compared to Calvin’s influence on church polity:
“There is a straight and heavy line that connects Calvin to, for example, the forms of church governance and discipline used by many denominations today. But the line between Calvin and modern journalism is not quite so firmly etched. It requires the connecting of dots, both historically and intellectually” (p. 277).
Few people are more qualified than Smith to connect the dots between Calvin and journalism; he is the associate publisher of WORLD Magazine with over 20 years of professional experience, including a stint as the publisher and editor of the Evangelical Press News Service, and the author of the intriguingly titled A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church (Authentic, 2009).
Before Smith pinpoints ideas of John Calvin and links them to aspects of modern journalism, he relates a brief history of journalism that frequently cites Marvin Olasky, Rodney Stark, and others. Although the advent of the printing press is widely recognized as the technological impetus that accelerated journalism’s growth as well as the Reformation’s momentum, Smith emphasizes the courage of printers in addition to the convenience of the printing press. While famous Reformers could (and often did) flee for their lives, Reformed printers frequently risked their lives and livelihood, especially when Protestant areas came under Roman Catholic control.
I’ve often thought that anyone who characterizes Calvin as heartless or obtuse has never read his Institutes of the Christian Religion. As Smith details how Calvin became a man of letters, he points out that the Institutes especially “show us a writer who was journalistic in style and argumentation” and “drew praise, even in Calvin’s day, for a lively and readable style” (p. 282). These comments established Smith as a reliable narrator in my mind.
Calvin “built the foundation for modern journalism,” according to Smith, by devoting his life not only to “speaking truth to power but also to giving language and opportunity to millions of others who could and did speak truth to power” (pp. 283 & 284). Smith notes that this “notion of the reporter as prophet, as one who speaks truth to power” is “deeply rooted in the ethos of modern journalism” (p. 283) and remains true today.
Smith shows how the Reformation concept of God’s sovereignty unleashed the natural inquisitiveness of humankind and what he calls the “peculiar curiosity” of the journalist (p. 285). That natural and legitimate curiosity about all aspects of creation has degenerated in modern times to an often prurient interest that creates tension “between man’s God-given curiosity about the world and man’s tendency to overreach — to ‘become as God’ ” (pp. 286 & 287). Smith contrasts modern journalistic excess with the early “propriety” of The New York Times, established in 1851 by a “Bible-believing Presbyterian” (p. 288).
In his section on “The Rise of the Fourth Estate” (journalism), Smith draws parallels between Calvin’s influence on governing institutions (the Consistory, in particular) and the establishment of an American government with its provision for a free press. As Calvin became more powerful, his Consistory became “increasingly intrusive” (p. 290). Recognizing the “will to power” in himself, Calvin developed the Presbyterian system of church governance, which “distributes power rather than centralizes it” (pp. 290 & 291). This system came to secular expression in the federal system of checks and balances with three branches of government.
Admitting that Calvin “certainly did not invent or practice journalism,” Smith quickly adds “while Calvin may not have been the first modern journalist, his ideas and the institutions that came into being as a result of his ideas made modern journalism possible” (p. 291). Smith concludes that Calvin expressed the biblical promise about the truth setting us free in the famous opening line of his Institutes: “Nearly the whole of sacred doctrine consists in these two parts: knowledge of God and of ourselves” (p. 292). Smith’s last dot pricks the parchment as well as journalism’s collective conscience: “The truly great journalism of the past five hundred years has passionately pursued knowledge of both God and man. The extent that journalism can recover these twin pursuits clearly put before us by Calvin is the extent to which journalism can be great again” (p. 292).
Some of the lines Smith draws between these dots are heavier than others (the line in “The Peculiar Curiosity of the Journalist” seems heaviest, while the line in “The Rise of the Fourth Estate” seems most faint); however, Smith smoothly transitions from each topic to the next and clearly delineates each connection.
Smith enables Reformed readers, who easily visualize the lines between Calvin and modern theology or church polity, to open their eyes wider and discern previously unconsidered connections. His conclusion reminds Reformed writers and all curious Christians of journalism’s noble past and calls us to work toward a righteous future.
As an older, non-traditional student, Glenda Mathes graduated from the University of Iowa in 2006 with a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree. She has reported news for Christian Renewal since 2001 and has been the Managing or Contributing Editor for Mid-America Reformed Seminary’s newsletter, the Messenger, since 2003. She freelance writes and edits from her home near Pella, Iowa, where she and her husband, David, are members of Covenant Reformed Church (URCNA). She regularly blogs at Ascribelog.
Showing posts with label Calvin and Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Calvin and Culture. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
“Medicine: In the Biblical Tradition of John Calvin with Modern Applications” by Franklin Payne (Ch. 11)
This review, written by James Rusthoven, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
Author Franklin Payne is a retired associate professor of family medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta, Georgia in the US. He has published several books on medical practice and ethics, including Biblical/Medical Ethics (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1985) and Biblical Healing for Modern Medicine: Choosing Life and Health or Disease and Death (Augusta, GA: Covenant Enterprises, 1993). In this chapter, Dr. Payne sets out to show that modern science and medicine are direct legacies of John Calvin, that the Calvinist theologians Cotton Mather and Abraham Kuyper made considerable contributions to medicine, and that the Decalogue has considerable application to modern medicine. His attempt to blend theological themes and the lives of these formative Reformed theologians and scholars with aspects of modern medical care is laudable but at times is difficult to follow while important intermediate worldview and philosophical connections are lacking.
As a Christian, he addresses several fundamental concerns about contemporary medical practice in the American context. Two key premises of his critique are 1) a person’s health is greatly dependent on his belief system and 2) health care in the US has become an idolatrous worship of the body. The former is expressed through the belief that health and healing must be prescribed within biblical virtues such as love, patience, and self-control. The latter is demonstrated through factors such as high medical care costs, concrete manifestations of materialism exemplified by abortion and euthanasia, and failure to identify and translate the knowledge of God into a normative understanding of medicine.
I empathize with Dr. Payne’s criticism of prominent Christian scholars who support the revival of a transcendent and covenantal character for medicine grounded in the pagan Hippocratic Oath (though I don’t condone his intimation of blasphemy). I also agree that patients need to be informed fully about their illness and available treatments. However, I disagree on several important points. He fails to reference quotations but, more importantly, major concepts and positions suffer from insufficient depth and clarity of presentation. For example, Dr. Payne alludes to a book by Mather as “mostly a book on medicine” due to its small number of chapters devoted to sin, spiritual healing, and mental illness. This and other examples suggest an inherent conceptual dualism of medicine and spirituality in the author’s analysis. Ironically, in some sections he seems to consciously deny this perspective, claiming that human beings are a psychosomatic entity (which he interestingly distinguishes from a psychosomatic unity associated with pagan philosophical influences!).
Dr. Payne’s overall analysis is more theological than worldview in scope. Focusing on works of Mather and Kuyper, he fails to acknowledge the work of more contemporary Kuyperian successors who further characterize the structures of the created order beyond the five faculties he attributes to Kuyper. This leads to some serious analytical pitfalls such as the implication that all psychologists and psychiatrists are ‘materialist professionals’. He neglects to acknowledge the work of Reformed Christian physicians (including at least one psychiatrist [1]) with distinctly Reformed approaches to medicine. One in particular explores normative structures and directions of medical practice in a systematic effort to avoid reductionistic traps inherent in the materialist culture that Payne tries to critique. [2] Dr. Payne also confounds the normative role of government in health care. From a neo-Calvinist perspective, government need not withdraw from health care (e.g., the high cost of US health care that he largely attributes to government spending can also be attributable to private health care costs) but should rather provide better oversight of just and equitable availability of health care in society.
The author’s frequent appeal to Scripture would be strengthened by applying available intermediate conceptual connections between Scriptural teaching and medical practice such as a biblical covenantal ethic [3] and a multi-aspectual analysis of medicine drawn directly from the Kuyperian tradition. These could give a greater richness to the necessary critique that he has begun and thus lay stronger foundations for a Reformed Christian model for medical practice.
Dr. James Rusthoven earned his MD degree from the University of Illinois and his MHSc degree from the University of Toronto. He is currently Professor of Oncology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and is completing a PhD in theology and bioethics from Trinity College, University of Bristol, UK. Dr. Rusthoven is an active member of the first Christian Reformed Church of Hamilton, Ontario.
Footnotes
1. G. Glas, “Persons and Their Lives: Reformational Philosophy of Man, Ethics, and Beyond”, Philosophia Reformata v. 71 (2006) pp. 31-57 (online here or here). Dr. Glas is a Christian psychiatrist in the Netherlands and professor of philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam.
2. J. Jochemsen, “Normative Practices as an Intermediate between Theoretical Ethics and Morality”, Philosophia Reformata v. 71 (2006) pp. 96-112 (online here). Dr. Jochemsen is former director of the Lindeboom Institute, a Christian centre for biomedical ethics in the Reformed tradition in the Netherlands.
3. J. Rusthoven, “Understanding Medical Relationships through a Covenantal Ethical Perspective”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith v. 62 (2010) pp. 3-15 (available online).
Author Franklin Payne is a retired associate professor of family medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta, Georgia in the US. He has published several books on medical practice and ethics, including Biblical/Medical Ethics (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1985) and Biblical Healing for Modern Medicine: Choosing Life and Health or Disease and Death (Augusta, GA: Covenant Enterprises, 1993). In this chapter, Dr. Payne sets out to show that modern science and medicine are direct legacies of John Calvin, that the Calvinist theologians Cotton Mather and Abraham Kuyper made considerable contributions to medicine, and that the Decalogue has considerable application to modern medicine. His attempt to blend theological themes and the lives of these formative Reformed theologians and scholars with aspects of modern medical care is laudable but at times is difficult to follow while important intermediate worldview and philosophical connections are lacking.
As a Christian, he addresses several fundamental concerns about contemporary medical practice in the American context. Two key premises of his critique are 1) a person’s health is greatly dependent on his belief system and 2) health care in the US has become an idolatrous worship of the body. The former is expressed through the belief that health and healing must be prescribed within biblical virtues such as love, patience, and self-control. The latter is demonstrated through factors such as high medical care costs, concrete manifestations of materialism exemplified by abortion and euthanasia, and failure to identify and translate the knowledge of God into a normative understanding of medicine.
I empathize with Dr. Payne’s criticism of prominent Christian scholars who support the revival of a transcendent and covenantal character for medicine grounded in the pagan Hippocratic Oath (though I don’t condone his intimation of blasphemy). I also agree that patients need to be informed fully about their illness and available treatments. However, I disagree on several important points. He fails to reference quotations but, more importantly, major concepts and positions suffer from insufficient depth and clarity of presentation. For example, Dr. Payne alludes to a book by Mather as “mostly a book on medicine” due to its small number of chapters devoted to sin, spiritual healing, and mental illness. This and other examples suggest an inherent conceptual dualism of medicine and spirituality in the author’s analysis. Ironically, in some sections he seems to consciously deny this perspective, claiming that human beings are a psychosomatic entity (which he interestingly distinguishes from a psychosomatic unity associated with pagan philosophical influences!).
Dr. Payne’s overall analysis is more theological than worldview in scope. Focusing on works of Mather and Kuyper, he fails to acknowledge the work of more contemporary Kuyperian successors who further characterize the structures of the created order beyond the five faculties he attributes to Kuyper. This leads to some serious analytical pitfalls such as the implication that all psychologists and psychiatrists are ‘materialist professionals’. He neglects to acknowledge the work of Reformed Christian physicians (including at least one psychiatrist [1]) with distinctly Reformed approaches to medicine. One in particular explores normative structures and directions of medical practice in a systematic effort to avoid reductionistic traps inherent in the materialist culture that Payne tries to critique. [2] Dr. Payne also confounds the normative role of government in health care. From a neo-Calvinist perspective, government need not withdraw from health care (e.g., the high cost of US health care that he largely attributes to government spending can also be attributable to private health care costs) but should rather provide better oversight of just and equitable availability of health care in society.
The author’s frequent appeal to Scripture would be strengthened by applying available intermediate conceptual connections between Scriptural teaching and medical practice such as a biblical covenantal ethic [3] and a multi-aspectual analysis of medicine drawn directly from the Kuyperian tradition. These could give a greater richness to the necessary critique that he has begun and thus lay stronger foundations for a Reformed Christian model for medical practice.
Dr. James Rusthoven earned his MD degree from the University of Illinois and his MHSc degree from the University of Toronto. He is currently Professor of Oncology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and is completing a PhD in theology and bioethics from Trinity College, University of Bristol, UK. Dr. Rusthoven is an active member of the first Christian Reformed Church of Hamilton, Ontario.
Footnotes
1. G. Glas, “Persons and Their Lives: Reformational Philosophy of Man, Ethics, and Beyond”, Philosophia Reformata v. 71 (2006) pp. 31-57 (online here or here). Dr. Glas is a Christian psychiatrist in the Netherlands and professor of philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam.
2. J. Jochemsen, “Normative Practices as an Intermediate between Theoretical Ethics and Morality”, Philosophia Reformata v. 71 (2006) pp. 96-112 (online here). Dr. Jochemsen is former director of the Lindeboom Institute, a Christian centre for biomedical ethics in the Reformed tradition in the Netherlands.
3. J. Rusthoven, “Understanding Medical Relationships through a Covenantal Ethical Perspective”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith v. 62 (2010) pp. 3-15 (available online).
Friday, March 11, 2011
“Calvin and Music” by Paul Jones (Ch. 10)
This review, written by Theo Lodder, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
In chapter 10 of Calvin and Culture, Paul Jones, organist and music director at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, discusses Calvin from within the discipline of music. After briefly introducing Calvin’s worldview, which was characterized more by joy and less by austerity than is sometimes granted, Jones recounts Calvin’s colossal contribution to the retrieval of robust congregational singing, particularly psalm-singing. He traces in detail the development of the numerous psalters which Calvin published over the period of a quarter century, culminating in the Genevan Psalter of 1562. For the Canadian Reformed Churches, which claim the honour of publishing the first complete English version — the Anglo-Genevan Psalter — some 400 years later in 1972, this chapter provides crucial historical information about the formation of the Book of Praise which we use in our worship services and beyond from week to week. Jones also provides an intriguing survey of numerous historical contributors to music in the Reformed tradition in several lands as a further sampling of Calvin’s widespread impact.
In his discussion of Calvin’s famous “Preface to the Psalter” (1543), Jones remarks that Calvin, like Luther, “believe[d] that music can teach the Word of God as a concentrator of the text it carries.” His respect for the power of music, both for good and for ill, lay at the heart of Calvin’s caution about music and his misplaced fear of musical instruments in worship, according to Jones, a caution inherited from the patristic church. This respect for music’s power also motivated Calvin to engage the finest poets and musicians he could find to prepare a psalter.
Calvin’s choice of the ancient church modes for psalm-singing, Jones points out, was “intrinsically linked to Calvin’s program of restoring the face of the ancient church” and also reflected the influence of Renaissance musical values, such as “simplicity, a word-note relationship where music serves the text, clarity, intelligibility, and historical rootedness.” Thus, the Genevan Psalter was truly visionary and purposefully unlike the secular music of its day, aspects we should remember in our discussion about and use of this psalter in particular, and also in our thinking about and practice of liturgical music in general. The church needs to be the salt and light of the world also in her music and song.
Of particular interest to the Reformed musician, liturgist, and worshipper is the musical evaluation of the Genevan Psalter which Jones offers. According to him, the rhythms of the psalm tunes are the most captivating, characterized by “vitality and energy.” He also believes that “the breadth and quality of [its] melodies and metric forms [are] unmatched in any other metrical psalter.” These observations go a long way in explaining the growing interest in and use of the Genevan Psalter among many churches throughout the world. The Canadian Reformed Churches really do have something valuable in their psalter that is worth promoting and sharing with many others in the English-speaking world.
What about Calvin’s well-known objection to musical instruments in worship, including the organ? Jones points out two factors that one should remember when assessing Calvin’s position (and that of the Synod of Dort; Jones likely means the provincial and national synods of 1574 and 1578). The first factor, according to Jones, is Calvin’s stated dissent against how organs were used in the Roman services; the second factor is the reality that organs were concert instruments and not used for congregational singing in Roman churches either.
Jones also provides helpful guiding principles for Christian musicians drawn from Calvin’s theology and practice. Among these guiding principles are the centrality of the Word of God in the church musician’s labour and the importance of music in corporate worship. I fully agree with Jones when he claims that the church has a mandate, in line with the wise instruction and the good example of Calvin, to teach children psalms and hymns and to train young people musically. I also agree that church musicians, pastors, and other church leaders, such as seminary professors, should work closely together so that as church we may offer to God, through Jesus Christ, the jubilant music and song of which he is eternally worthy.
With an M.Div. from the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, Theo Lodder, pastor of Cloverdale Canadian Reformed Church in Surrey, BC, is about to graduate with his Doctor of Ministry degree from Covenant Theological Seminary (PCA). His dissertation is entitled “Musical Instruments and Musicians in the Worship of the Canadian Reformed Churches.”
In chapter 10 of Calvin and Culture, Paul Jones, organist and music director at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, discusses Calvin from within the discipline of music. After briefly introducing Calvin’s worldview, which was characterized more by joy and less by austerity than is sometimes granted, Jones recounts Calvin’s colossal contribution to the retrieval of robust congregational singing, particularly psalm-singing. He traces in detail the development of the numerous psalters which Calvin published over the period of a quarter century, culminating in the Genevan Psalter of 1562. For the Canadian Reformed Churches, which claim the honour of publishing the first complete English version — the Anglo-Genevan Psalter — some 400 years later in 1972, this chapter provides crucial historical information about the formation of the Book of Praise which we use in our worship services and beyond from week to week. Jones also provides an intriguing survey of numerous historical contributors to music in the Reformed tradition in several lands as a further sampling of Calvin’s widespread impact.
In his discussion of Calvin’s famous “Preface to the Psalter” (1543), Jones remarks that Calvin, like Luther, “believe[d] that music can teach the Word of God as a concentrator of the text it carries.” His respect for the power of music, both for good and for ill, lay at the heart of Calvin’s caution about music and his misplaced fear of musical instruments in worship, according to Jones, a caution inherited from the patristic church. This respect for music’s power also motivated Calvin to engage the finest poets and musicians he could find to prepare a psalter.
Calvin’s choice of the ancient church modes for psalm-singing, Jones points out, was “intrinsically linked to Calvin’s program of restoring the face of the ancient church” and also reflected the influence of Renaissance musical values, such as “simplicity, a word-note relationship where music serves the text, clarity, intelligibility, and historical rootedness.” Thus, the Genevan Psalter was truly visionary and purposefully unlike the secular music of its day, aspects we should remember in our discussion about and use of this psalter in particular, and also in our thinking about and practice of liturgical music in general. The church needs to be the salt and light of the world also in her music and song.
Of particular interest to the Reformed musician, liturgist, and worshipper is the musical evaluation of the Genevan Psalter which Jones offers. According to him, the rhythms of the psalm tunes are the most captivating, characterized by “vitality and energy.” He also believes that “the breadth and quality of [its] melodies and metric forms [are] unmatched in any other metrical psalter.” These observations go a long way in explaining the growing interest in and use of the Genevan Psalter among many churches throughout the world. The Canadian Reformed Churches really do have something valuable in their psalter that is worth promoting and sharing with many others in the English-speaking world.
What about Calvin’s well-known objection to musical instruments in worship, including the organ? Jones points out two factors that one should remember when assessing Calvin’s position (and that of the Synod of Dort; Jones likely means the provincial and national synods of 1574 and 1578). The first factor, according to Jones, is Calvin’s stated dissent against how organs were used in the Roman services; the second factor is the reality that organs were concert instruments and not used for congregational singing in Roman churches either.
Jones also provides helpful guiding principles for Christian musicians drawn from Calvin’s theology and practice. Among these guiding principles are the centrality of the Word of God in the church musician’s labour and the importance of music in corporate worship. I fully agree with Jones when he claims that the church has a mandate, in line with the wise instruction and the good example of Calvin, to teach children psalms and hymns and to train young people musically. I also agree that church musicians, pastors, and other church leaders, such as seminary professors, should work closely together so that as church we may offer to God, through Jesus Christ, the jubilant music and song of which he is eternally worthy.
With an M.Div. from the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, Theo Lodder, pastor of Cloverdale Canadian Reformed Church in Surrey, BC, is about to graduate with his Doctor of Ministry degree from Covenant Theological Seminary (PCA). His dissertation is entitled “Musical Instruments and Musicians in the Worship of the Canadian Reformed Churches.”
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
“John Calvin’s Impact on Business” by Richard Chewning (Ch. 9)
This review, written by John Boersema, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
The author of this chapter, Richard Chewning, is emeritus professor of business at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is a major contributor to the development of the integration of faith and business, being co-author of Business Through the Eyes of Faith (HarperOne, 1990), and editor of the seminal four-volume series Christian in the Marketplace (NavPress, 1989).
Chewning begins his chapter by sketching the practice of business between the end of the Roman Empire and A.D. 1600. “The breakup of the Roman Empire was followed by…instability…city states, feudal holdings and the divided lands of kings.” Safety and security disappeared, trade became hazardous, and common currencies and the rule of law disappeared. Survival through self-sufficiency within manorial estates and scattered towns became the norm. Economics was concerned with subsistence. The Church was the great pillar of stability, with economics subsidiary to the real business of life — salvation. Economic motives were suspect and needed to be repressed. Profits were considered sinful and lending money at interest was illegal. While over time, many forces necessary for a free market system had already been at work before Calvin, Chewning (similar to Terrell in Ch. 4) argues that Calvin made especially significant contributions to the flowering of capitalism. He focuses on Calvin’s pronouncements on (1) the value of work, (2) the payment of interest, and (3) a positive understanding of profits. [1]
Although both Luther and Calvin, according to Chewning, popularized the notion that work is a calling from God, Luther did not include the activities of merchants, bankers, and other business types in the category of “work,” because he “hated commerce and capitalism.” Calvin, however, also applied this Scriptural calling to the latter groups. Calvin argued that we should simply “work hard” in order to glorify God. Chewning makes it clear, however, that Calvin would not have agreed with the extension made subsequently by some of his followers that the wealth thus created was proof of salvation — an early form the “prosperity theology.” In any case, the focus on ordinary hard work was a major step forward from medieval Roman Catholicism. [2]
Chewning also makes the point that Calvin, in contravention of church doctrine at the time, “birthed the idea that charging interest could carry with it a sense of moral legitimacy.” The payment of interest for the use of capital was as reasonable as the payment of rent for the use of land (as long as it did not exceed the amount dictated by natural justice and the golden rule). Chewning makes the interesting suggestion that Calvin’s message possibly succeeded while earlier efforts had failed because (1) the time was ripe, (2) his thinking was logical and reflected common sense, and (3) Calvin’s overall teachings created the movement of “Calvinism” which carried his teaching throughout Europe and the New World.
Chewning further notes that although “profit is to business what a healthy blood count is to the body,” until the time of Calvin profit was most often considered to be sinful — “neither necessary nor the Christian thing to do.” Calvin, however, taught that profits were the fruit of one’s labour — a person’s good work. His teachings were transforming, setting people free to work hard and reap the benefits that followed from it. Business people influenced by Calvin thus accepted wealth from diligence but also promoted the morality of thrift. Investing one’s savings for productive purposes became an “instrument of piety.” In this way, the old medieval “‘ideal’ of economic and social stability was replaced by the acceptance of economic growth and material improvement for everyone.” Chewning is, no doubt, correct in concluding that Calvin by “nurturing such basic values as work, wealth accumulation, thrift, investment, risk assumption, competition, and productivity…had a profound impact on the formulation and acceptance of a new worldview regarding commerce.”
Chewning concludes his chapter by recognizing that although Calvin’s economic thoughts still influence us today, they have frequently been perverted and misinterpreted. Hard work and its fruits (wealth) became the “self-assuring measure of one’s right standing with God. The work ethic has been transformed into “workaholism” with entrepreneurs, particularly, developing a faith in their own efforts — the worldview of the secular humanists. The heart and soul of Calvin’s teaching that works are “for the glory of God” has been lost. Concerning interest, Chewning makes some useful comments about current disclosure requirements. He further stresses that whereas in Calvin’s days the issue concerned the paying of interest for money borrowed for productive purposes, today’s society accepts the paying of interest by consumers “for the purpose of consuming tomorrow’s income today” — “clearly poor stewardship of one’s resources.” He further points out that Calvin’s idea of “profits meeting the needs of the poor” has been lost in today’s marketplace.
Terrell and Chewning tend to agree on the basic contribution that Calvin has made to the field of economics and business. They do so, however, in quite different ways. Both are strongly recommended.
John Boersema, a professor emeritus at Redeemer University College, holds a Ph.D. in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church.
Footnotes
1. It is not surprising that these three points have similarities to those of Terrell. After all, economics is the theoretical underpinning of business.
2. In this, Chewning agrees with Terrell although Chewning does not explicitly deal with the Weber thesis.
The author of this chapter, Richard Chewning, is emeritus professor of business at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He is a major contributor to the development of the integration of faith and business, being co-author of Business Through the Eyes of Faith (HarperOne, 1990), and editor of the seminal four-volume series Christian in the Marketplace (NavPress, 1989).
Chewning begins his chapter by sketching the practice of business between the end of the Roman Empire and A.D. 1600. “The breakup of the Roman Empire was followed by…instability…city states, feudal holdings and the divided lands of kings.” Safety and security disappeared, trade became hazardous, and common currencies and the rule of law disappeared. Survival through self-sufficiency within manorial estates and scattered towns became the norm. Economics was concerned with subsistence. The Church was the great pillar of stability, with economics subsidiary to the real business of life — salvation. Economic motives were suspect and needed to be repressed. Profits were considered sinful and lending money at interest was illegal. While over time, many forces necessary for a free market system had already been at work before Calvin, Chewning (similar to Terrell in Ch. 4) argues that Calvin made especially significant contributions to the flowering of capitalism. He focuses on Calvin’s pronouncements on (1) the value of work, (2) the payment of interest, and (3) a positive understanding of profits. [1]
Although both Luther and Calvin, according to Chewning, popularized the notion that work is a calling from God, Luther did not include the activities of merchants, bankers, and other business types in the category of “work,” because he “hated commerce and capitalism.” Calvin, however, also applied this Scriptural calling to the latter groups. Calvin argued that we should simply “work hard” in order to glorify God. Chewning makes it clear, however, that Calvin would not have agreed with the extension made subsequently by some of his followers that the wealth thus created was proof of salvation — an early form the “prosperity theology.” In any case, the focus on ordinary hard work was a major step forward from medieval Roman Catholicism. [2]
Chewning also makes the point that Calvin, in contravention of church doctrine at the time, “birthed the idea that charging interest could carry with it a sense of moral legitimacy.” The payment of interest for the use of capital was as reasonable as the payment of rent for the use of land (as long as it did not exceed the amount dictated by natural justice and the golden rule). Chewning makes the interesting suggestion that Calvin’s message possibly succeeded while earlier efforts had failed because (1) the time was ripe, (2) his thinking was logical and reflected common sense, and (3) Calvin’s overall teachings created the movement of “Calvinism” which carried his teaching throughout Europe and the New World.
Chewning further notes that although “profit is to business what a healthy blood count is to the body,” until the time of Calvin profit was most often considered to be sinful — “neither necessary nor the Christian thing to do.” Calvin, however, taught that profits were the fruit of one’s labour — a person’s good work. His teachings were transforming, setting people free to work hard and reap the benefits that followed from it. Business people influenced by Calvin thus accepted wealth from diligence but also promoted the morality of thrift. Investing one’s savings for productive purposes became an “instrument of piety.” In this way, the old medieval “‘ideal’ of economic and social stability was replaced by the acceptance of economic growth and material improvement for everyone.” Chewning is, no doubt, correct in concluding that Calvin by “nurturing such basic values as work, wealth accumulation, thrift, investment, risk assumption, competition, and productivity…had a profound impact on the formulation and acceptance of a new worldview regarding commerce.”
Chewning concludes his chapter by recognizing that although Calvin’s economic thoughts still influence us today, they have frequently been perverted and misinterpreted. Hard work and its fruits (wealth) became the “self-assuring measure of one’s right standing with God. The work ethic has been transformed into “workaholism” with entrepreneurs, particularly, developing a faith in their own efforts — the worldview of the secular humanists. The heart and soul of Calvin’s teaching that works are “for the glory of God” has been lost. Concerning interest, Chewning makes some useful comments about current disclosure requirements. He further stresses that whereas in Calvin’s days the issue concerned the paying of interest for money borrowed for productive purposes, today’s society accepts the paying of interest by consumers “for the purpose of consuming tomorrow’s income today” — “clearly poor stewardship of one’s resources.” He further points out that Calvin’s idea of “profits meeting the needs of the poor” has been lost in today’s marketplace.
Terrell and Chewning tend to agree on the basic contribution that Calvin has made to the field of economics and business. They do so, however, in quite different ways. Both are strongly recommended.
John Boersema, a professor emeritus at Redeemer University College, holds a Ph.D. in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church.
Footnotes
1. It is not surprising that these three points have similarities to those of Terrell. After all, economics is the theoretical underpinning of business.
2. In this, Chewning agrees with Terrell although Chewning does not explicitly deal with the Weber thesis.
Friday, March 4, 2011
“Calvin and Science” by Don Petcher (Ch. 8)
This review, written by Gerrit Bos, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
Don Petcher, professor of physics at Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, Georgia) and co-author with Tim Morris of Science & Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences (Crossway, 2006), makes the case that science is a wonderful enterprise for a scientist in the Calvinist tradition. Calvin’s worldview gives a high or special place to the Scriptures, but leaves much freedom for science. Petcher rejects the warfare hypothesis (science and religion are at war) and advocates a return to Calvin, setting the stage for a common sense approach to and a rich understanding of science. Petcher rightly points out the centrality in Calvin’s theology of God’s sovereignty over all creation. He figures God’s providence fits within His sovereignty and within that yet again, God’s “radical sustenance,” which includes all creation, not just supernatural events. This helps us to understand how to view laws of nature. Petcher then works with writings of Davis A. Young, William J. Bouwsma, R. Hooykaas, James Orr and others to describe Calvin’s principle of accommodation. God accommodates limited human understanding by using everyday understandable language. E.g. Calvin explains that Moses referred to ‘greater’ and ‘lesser lights’ on the basis of their appearance to us, and does not address the fact that Saturn is larger than the moon. Petcher and the other authors consider the accommodation principle a doctrine, and build approvingly on it to include the Big Bang theory, long age of the earth and non-literal six days of creation. After mentioning some recent scientific discoveries, and a short critique of the Intelligent Design movement, as well as Young Earth Creationism, Petcher concludes by saying: “Thank God for the wonderful grace of the scientific enterprise.”
This chapter presents quite a few things which can be readily agreed to such as Calvin’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty, his worldview which sets the stage for a rich understanding of science, and God’s occasional accommodation of our limited understanding by using everyday language. But as Petcher extends the occasional accommodation into a principle, and then a doctrine, it seems to acquire an overriding role in his understanding. Instead of God accommodating our limited understanding, the doctrine increasingly takes on a meaning of God’s Word accommodating changing scientific understanding. Thus Petcher’s final position of a long-age of the earth contradicts Calvin’s explicit writing that the earth is no more than 6000 years old (e.g. Institutes 1.14.1). And while Calvin nowhere explicitly denies the possibility of extended-length creation days, it is beyond doubt that he understood the creation days to be normal days. I base this conclusion on his discussions of whether the first day began with evening or morning (Commentary on Gen. 1:5), creation accomplished in six days, not in one moment (e.g. Institutes 1.14.2), God creating the world in six days, resting on the seventh, manifests His works and creates a model for us to imitate (Commentary on Fourth commandment – Ex. 20:8) and even his discussion on whether the seventh month might have been the first month, the month of creation (Commentary on Fourth commandment – Lev. 23:24). Calvin likewise criticizes those who “reconcile the doctrine of Scriptures with the dogmas of philosophy” to “avoid teaching anything which the majority of mankind might deem absurd.” (Institutes 2.2.4) These contradictions seem irreconcilable.
What to do with these things as a reformed academic? Well, take heart; science is indeed a wonderful vocation, and a Calvinist, reformed world-view allows it to flourish, rather than be still-born as in many other world-views. God’s creation has infinite areas to research, use, steward, and understand. Follow these with all your hearth, thought, and mind. Avoid thinking more highly of yourself than you ought, and eschew human precepts which would lead to pride. Live the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation, and use scriptural understanding to determine the object of your scientific enterprise, as well as the methods employed in it. Rejoice and give thanks for it, but continue to see its place subordinate to God’s and Scripture’s authority. Read literature like what is reviewed here with discernment; retain that which is good, discard that which is not.
Gerrit Bos graduated from the University of Guelph with a BSc in Engineering in 1987, and is currently the Information Technology Security Officer there, member of Emmanuel CanRC in Guelph, and chairman of the board of Covenant Canadian Reformed Teachers College.
Don Petcher, professor of physics at Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, Georgia) and co-author with Tim Morris of Science & Grace: God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences (Crossway, 2006), makes the case that science is a wonderful enterprise for a scientist in the Calvinist tradition. Calvin’s worldview gives a high or special place to the Scriptures, but leaves much freedom for science. Petcher rejects the warfare hypothesis (science and religion are at war) and advocates a return to Calvin, setting the stage for a common sense approach to and a rich understanding of science. Petcher rightly points out the centrality in Calvin’s theology of God’s sovereignty over all creation. He figures God’s providence fits within His sovereignty and within that yet again, God’s “radical sustenance,” which includes all creation, not just supernatural events. This helps us to understand how to view laws of nature. Petcher then works with writings of Davis A. Young, William J. Bouwsma, R. Hooykaas, James Orr and others to describe Calvin’s principle of accommodation. God accommodates limited human understanding by using everyday understandable language. E.g. Calvin explains that Moses referred to ‘greater’ and ‘lesser lights’ on the basis of their appearance to us, and does not address the fact that Saturn is larger than the moon. Petcher and the other authors consider the accommodation principle a doctrine, and build approvingly on it to include the Big Bang theory, long age of the earth and non-literal six days of creation. After mentioning some recent scientific discoveries, and a short critique of the Intelligent Design movement, as well as Young Earth Creationism, Petcher concludes by saying: “Thank God for the wonderful grace of the scientific enterprise.”
This chapter presents quite a few things which can be readily agreed to such as Calvin’s emphasis on God’s sovereignty, his worldview which sets the stage for a rich understanding of science, and God’s occasional accommodation of our limited understanding by using everyday language. But as Petcher extends the occasional accommodation into a principle, and then a doctrine, it seems to acquire an overriding role in his understanding. Instead of God accommodating our limited understanding, the doctrine increasingly takes on a meaning of God’s Word accommodating changing scientific understanding. Thus Petcher’s final position of a long-age of the earth contradicts Calvin’s explicit writing that the earth is no more than 6000 years old (e.g. Institutes 1.14.1). And while Calvin nowhere explicitly denies the possibility of extended-length creation days, it is beyond doubt that he understood the creation days to be normal days. I base this conclusion on his discussions of whether the first day began with evening or morning (Commentary on Gen. 1:5), creation accomplished in six days, not in one moment (e.g. Institutes 1.14.2), God creating the world in six days, resting on the seventh, manifests His works and creates a model for us to imitate (Commentary on Fourth commandment – Ex. 20:8) and even his discussion on whether the seventh month might have been the first month, the month of creation (Commentary on Fourth commandment – Lev. 23:24). Calvin likewise criticizes those who “reconcile the doctrine of Scriptures with the dogmas of philosophy” to “avoid teaching anything which the majority of mankind might deem absurd.” (Institutes 2.2.4) These contradictions seem irreconcilable.
What to do with these things as a reformed academic? Well, take heart; science is indeed a wonderful vocation, and a Calvinist, reformed world-view allows it to flourish, rather than be still-born as in many other world-views. God’s creation has infinite areas to research, use, steward, and understand. Follow these with all your hearth, thought, and mind. Avoid thinking more highly of yourself than you ought, and eschew human precepts which would lead to pride. Live the Sola Scriptura of the Reformation, and use scriptural understanding to determine the object of your scientific enterprise, as well as the methods employed in it. Rejoice and give thanks for it, but continue to see its place subordinate to God’s and Scripture’s authority. Read literature like what is reviewed here with discernment; retain that which is good, discard that which is not.
Gerrit Bos graduated from the University of Guelph with a BSc in Engineering in 1987, and is currently the Information Technology Security Officer there, member of Emmanuel CanRC in Guelph, and chairman of the board of Covenant Canadian Reformed Teachers College.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
“Calvin, Politics, and Political Science” by Paul Marshall (Ch. 7)
This review, written by Michael Wagner, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
Paul Marshall is an internationally-recognized expert on issues related to religious freedom and persecution. Currently a fellow of the Hudson Institute (an American think tank), he is the author of over 20 books on religion and politics and is highly respected in the field.
The main burden of his article is to disprove the modern notion that John Calvin made no distinct contribution to political thought. Quoting from Calvin himself as well as other scholars, Marshall convincingly demonstrates that “Calvin’s key contributions to the study of politics come not from the detailed particulars of legal theory but from the way he embedded politics in a Christian, particularly Protestant, worldview or cosmology.”
Calvin’s emphasis that each person could relate directly to God through Jesus Christ had anti-hierarchical and egalitarian implications for politics and society. No longer was the Church seen as the “highest body” of society and no longer were ecclesiastical vocations seen as more spiritual than other tasks. Furthermore, the Church was organizationally separate from the state.
Calvin favoured a form of government where citizens shared in political power to a certain degree, an “aristocracy tempered by democracy.” Monarchy (the dominant form of government at his time) could degenerate too easily into tyranny. Calvin’s view included “a system of checks and balances,” an idea that would later significantly influence American constitutionalism. In sum, his thought “led to a stress on moving politics from being simply an elite occupation to one that is participatory.”
Marshall also discusses the thought of Johannes Althusius (1563-1638), a philosopher who developed some of the implications of Calvin’s political views. Althusius played a key role in the creation of federalism (a system where political power is divided between a national authority and constituent regional authorities). He also may have coined the term “political science.”
The material presented by Marshall is helpful for demonstrating Calvin’s importance to political science and Western societies. It’s a worthy contribution to a volume on Calvin’s impact on the modern world. Personally, I would like to have seen greater attention placed on aspects of Calvin’s thought that confront powerful trends in the Western nations such as the marginalization of Christianity and the widespread acceptance of abortion and promiscuous sexuality of various kinds. As he argues in the Institutes, political rulers are not to be neutral with regard to religion but “should labor to protect and assert the honor of Him whose representatives they are, and by whose grace they govern.”
In two places Marshall quotes a certain passage from the Institutes showing that Calvin did not believe the judicial law of the Old Testament should be carried over into modern societies. Of course, this is true. Calvin did not believe that the judicial law could be transplanted from the Jewish people of the Old Testament to modern nations. In his view, each nation must have the latitude to make laws and punishments that suit its particular situation.
However, he did expect those laws to reflect God’s moral law. As he puts it, “together with one voice, they pronounce punishment against those crimes which God’s eternal law has condemned.” Calvin calls the moral law “the true and eternal rule of righteousness, prescribed for men of all nations and times, who wish to conform their lives to God’s will.” The Ten Commandments are normative for all mankind and all nations.
That is not a message that people will want to hear today. But is Calvin wrong? Is God’s moral law an enduring standard for political ethics? Or need we look to another source? It’s a stark choice, and an answer reflecting historic Reformed thought will not be popular even in some Christian circles. Clearly, faithfulness to God requires submission to His moral law.
In Calvin’s view the chief purpose of man is to glorify the one true God, even in political matters. And it is this God, as he puts it, “to whose will the desires of all kings ought to be subject, to whose decrees all their commands ought to yield, to whose majesty their scepters ought to be submitted.”
Michael Wagner holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Alberta. He is an independent researcher and writer, the author of Standing on Guard for Thee: The Past, Present and Future of Canada’s Christian Right (Freedom Press, 2007), and is a member of the Puritan Reformed Church of Edmonton.
Paul Marshall is an internationally-recognized expert on issues related to religious freedom and persecution. Currently a fellow of the Hudson Institute (an American think tank), he is the author of over 20 books on religion and politics and is highly respected in the field.
The main burden of his article is to disprove the modern notion that John Calvin made no distinct contribution to political thought. Quoting from Calvin himself as well as other scholars, Marshall convincingly demonstrates that “Calvin’s key contributions to the study of politics come not from the detailed particulars of legal theory but from the way he embedded politics in a Christian, particularly Protestant, worldview or cosmology.”
Calvin’s emphasis that each person could relate directly to God through Jesus Christ had anti-hierarchical and egalitarian implications for politics and society. No longer was the Church seen as the “highest body” of society and no longer were ecclesiastical vocations seen as more spiritual than other tasks. Furthermore, the Church was organizationally separate from the state.
Calvin favoured a form of government where citizens shared in political power to a certain degree, an “aristocracy tempered by democracy.” Monarchy (the dominant form of government at his time) could degenerate too easily into tyranny. Calvin’s view included “a system of checks and balances,” an idea that would later significantly influence American constitutionalism. In sum, his thought “led to a stress on moving politics from being simply an elite occupation to one that is participatory.”
Marshall also discusses the thought of Johannes Althusius (1563-1638), a philosopher who developed some of the implications of Calvin’s political views. Althusius played a key role in the creation of federalism (a system where political power is divided between a national authority and constituent regional authorities). He also may have coined the term “political science.”
The material presented by Marshall is helpful for demonstrating Calvin’s importance to political science and Western societies. It’s a worthy contribution to a volume on Calvin’s impact on the modern world. Personally, I would like to have seen greater attention placed on aspects of Calvin’s thought that confront powerful trends in the Western nations such as the marginalization of Christianity and the widespread acceptance of abortion and promiscuous sexuality of various kinds. As he argues in the Institutes, political rulers are not to be neutral with regard to religion but “should labor to protect and assert the honor of Him whose representatives they are, and by whose grace they govern.”
In two places Marshall quotes a certain passage from the Institutes showing that Calvin did not believe the judicial law of the Old Testament should be carried over into modern societies. Of course, this is true. Calvin did not believe that the judicial law could be transplanted from the Jewish people of the Old Testament to modern nations. In his view, each nation must have the latitude to make laws and punishments that suit its particular situation.
However, he did expect those laws to reflect God’s moral law. As he puts it, “together with one voice, they pronounce punishment against those crimes which God’s eternal law has condemned.” Calvin calls the moral law “the true and eternal rule of righteousness, prescribed for men of all nations and times, who wish to conform their lives to God’s will.” The Ten Commandments are normative for all mankind and all nations.
That is not a message that people will want to hear today. But is Calvin wrong? Is God’s moral law an enduring standard for political ethics? Or need we look to another source? It’s a stark choice, and an answer reflecting historic Reformed thought will not be popular even in some Christian circles. Clearly, faithfulness to God requires submission to His moral law.
In Calvin’s view the chief purpose of man is to glorify the one true God, even in political matters. And it is this God, as he puts it, “to whose will the desires of all kings ought to be subject, to whose decrees all their commands ought to yield, to whose majesty their scepters ought to be submitted.”
Michael Wagner holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Alberta. He is an independent researcher and writer, the author of Standing on Guard for Thee: The Past, Present and Future of Canada’s Christian Right (Freedom Press, 2007), and is a member of the Puritan Reformed Church of Edmonton.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
“Calvin’s Legacy in Philosophy” by William Davis (Ch. 6)
This review, written by Bill DeJong, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
One of the rich ironies of history is that the theology of John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Genevan reformer, has attained a level of recognition, if not prominence, within the guild of contemporary North-American Christian philosophers. What is so staggering about this phenomenon is that in his writings Calvin often spoke critically of the enterprise of philosophy and never, throughout the entirety of his life, developed anything that approaches a philosophical system. In this chapter William C. Davis, professor of philosophy at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, shows us with acumen and clarity the surprising legacy that Calvin has in the realm of philosophy, especially in the areas of epistemology and metaphysics.
In his assertions about human knowledge of God and human self-knowledge, Calvin “opens a new chapter in Western epistemology” (117). The first hallmark of this new chapter is the place Scripture should occupy in the acquisition of knowledge. That the Word of God is the authority by which all knowledge claims are to be judged is attested, Calvin alleged, by the Word of God itself. Though philosophers sometimes balk at the circularity of the argument, Davis rightly regards it as “philosophically tight” (119). No other authority could authorize the Word of God but God himself. Calvin’s view of Scripture as self-authenticating has been acknowledged and embraced not only by Cornelius Van Til and John Frame in their constructions of a presuppositional apologetic, but also by Alvin Plantinga is his philosophizing about the warrant for belief.
The second hallmark is the inevitability of human belief in God or what Calvin called the sensus divinitatus. Though some theologians and philosophers insist that knowledge of God’s existence is attainable only through demonstration and proof (e.g., Charles Hodge, R.C. Sproul), others with more indebtedness to Calvin allege that demonstrative proof is unnecessary to justify belief in God. Among the latter, Alvin Plantinga is especially prominent for his position that the sensus divinitatus is analogous to the otherwise reliable faculties of sight and hearing. Also in line with Calvin, Plantinga posits that faith is a God-given module by which certain truths beyond the knowledge of God’s existence can be apprehended and believed.
The third hallmark is the noetic effects of the fall whereby human powers are now not only inept, but distorted and liable to lead us astray. In line with Calvin, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd argued that sin’s influence on our noetic equipment is most disruptive in religious affairs and therefore especially in academic disciplines such as economics and ethics where religious dispositions are at the forefront, and less so in, for example, math and physics, which tend not to be as influenced by religious convictions.
In the area of metaphysics, John Calvin’s theology is far less appreciated, especially in view of the widening embrace of open theism. Few tolerate Calvin’s compatibilist position of affirming both meticulous providence and morally responsible human behaviour. Davis thoughtfully interacts with the most commonly raised problems with Calvin’s compatibilism — namely, how humans can be responsible for acts decreed by God and why meticulous providence is not fatalism. These problems are addressed wisely and biblically by Davis who encourages, as Calvin did, a humble embrace of the teachings of God’s Word, especially in areas where human comprehension is transcended.
The only shortcoming in this chapter is Davis’s neglect to direct readers to debates regarding some of the issues he raises. Whether Plantinga has correctly understood Calvin on the sensus divinitatus, for example, is disputed by, inter alia, James K.A. Smith in Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). The extent to which Calvin was a compatibilist (an anachronistic term) is debated in Willem J. van Asselt, ed., Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought) (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).
This demurral notwithstanding, Davis’s chapter on Calvin’s legacy in philosophy is erudite and judicious and a wonderful sample of Christian scholarship. Those in the Reformed tradition will be reaffirmed in their views about the central place of Scripture in the enterprise of philosophy, about the role of faith in apprehending truth, and about the devastating influences of the fall on human reasoning. What is especially exciting is that each of these affirmations, some more than others, is more palatable to postmoderns than they ever were to moderns. Lastly, Davis provides Reformed believers some philosophical and biblical ammunition to defend classic theism in view of the surging popularity of open theism.
With an M.Div. from Mid-America Reformed Seminary, Bill DeJong is pastor of Cornerstone Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, ON and a Ph.D. student in Christian theology at McMaster Divinity College.
One of the rich ironies of history is that the theology of John Calvin, the sixteenth-century Genevan reformer, has attained a level of recognition, if not prominence, within the guild of contemporary North-American Christian philosophers. What is so staggering about this phenomenon is that in his writings Calvin often spoke critically of the enterprise of philosophy and never, throughout the entirety of his life, developed anything that approaches a philosophical system. In this chapter William C. Davis, professor of philosophy at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, shows us with acumen and clarity the surprising legacy that Calvin has in the realm of philosophy, especially in the areas of epistemology and metaphysics.
In his assertions about human knowledge of God and human self-knowledge, Calvin “opens a new chapter in Western epistemology” (117). The first hallmark of this new chapter is the place Scripture should occupy in the acquisition of knowledge. That the Word of God is the authority by which all knowledge claims are to be judged is attested, Calvin alleged, by the Word of God itself. Though philosophers sometimes balk at the circularity of the argument, Davis rightly regards it as “philosophically tight” (119). No other authority could authorize the Word of God but God himself. Calvin’s view of Scripture as self-authenticating has been acknowledged and embraced not only by Cornelius Van Til and John Frame in their constructions of a presuppositional apologetic, but also by Alvin Plantinga is his philosophizing about the warrant for belief.
The second hallmark is the inevitability of human belief in God or what Calvin called the sensus divinitatus. Though some theologians and philosophers insist that knowledge of God’s existence is attainable only through demonstration and proof (e.g., Charles Hodge, R.C. Sproul), others with more indebtedness to Calvin allege that demonstrative proof is unnecessary to justify belief in God. Among the latter, Alvin Plantinga is especially prominent for his position that the sensus divinitatus is analogous to the otherwise reliable faculties of sight and hearing. Also in line with Calvin, Plantinga posits that faith is a God-given module by which certain truths beyond the knowledge of God’s existence can be apprehended and believed.
The third hallmark is the noetic effects of the fall whereby human powers are now not only inept, but distorted and liable to lead us astray. In line with Calvin, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd argued that sin’s influence on our noetic equipment is most disruptive in religious affairs and therefore especially in academic disciplines such as economics and ethics where religious dispositions are at the forefront, and less so in, for example, math and physics, which tend not to be as influenced by religious convictions.
In the area of metaphysics, John Calvin’s theology is far less appreciated, especially in view of the widening embrace of open theism. Few tolerate Calvin’s compatibilist position of affirming both meticulous providence and morally responsible human behaviour. Davis thoughtfully interacts with the most commonly raised problems with Calvin’s compatibilism — namely, how humans can be responsible for acts decreed by God and why meticulous providence is not fatalism. These problems are addressed wisely and biblically by Davis who encourages, as Calvin did, a humble embrace of the teachings of God’s Word, especially in areas where human comprehension is transcended.
The only shortcoming in this chapter is Davis’s neglect to direct readers to debates regarding some of the issues he raises. Whether Plantinga has correctly understood Calvin on the sensus divinitatus, for example, is disputed by, inter alia, James K.A. Smith in Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). The extent to which Calvin was a compatibilist (an anachronistic term) is debated in Willem J. van Asselt, ed., Reformed Thought on Freedom: The Concept of Free Choice in Early Modern Reformed Theology (Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought) (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010).
This demurral notwithstanding, Davis’s chapter on Calvin’s legacy in philosophy is erudite and judicious and a wonderful sample of Christian scholarship. Those in the Reformed tradition will be reaffirmed in their views about the central place of Scripture in the enterprise of philosophy, about the role of faith in apprehending truth, and about the devastating influences of the fall on human reasoning. What is especially exciting is that each of these affirmations, some more than others, is more palatable to postmoderns than they ever were to moderns. Lastly, Davis provides Reformed believers some philosophical and biblical ammunition to defend classic theism in view of the surging popularity of open theism.
With an M.Div. from Mid-America Reformed Seminary, Bill DeJong is pastor of Cornerstone Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, ON and a Ph.D. student in Christian theology at McMaster Divinity College.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
“Calvinism and Literature” by Leland Ryken (Ch. 5)
This review, written by Ben Faber, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
“Calvinism and Literature” is written by Leland Ryken, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College. Ryken is justly appreciated for his work on John Milton and on the Bible as literature, and for his involvement with the English Standard Version. Ryken’s contribution to the ESV led to the publication of his The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Crossway, 2002), which argues that “only an essentially literal translation of the Bible can achieve sufficiently high standards of literary criteria and fidelity to the original text” (10). Aesthetic criteria and faithfulness to Scripture are at the heart of Ryken’s earlier book, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts (Shaw, 1989), which first presents the Reformed doctrinal framework that is summarized in this chapter.
Ryken begins by noting that the absence of a “Calvinistic school” of literary theory is not attributable to the lack of suggestive material in Calvin’s theology. The resources in Calvin’s theology need to be converted, not only into a world view, but into workable concepts for literary theory and critical practice. Ryken then proceeds to construct a Reformed approach to literature from Calvin’s theology: the knowledge of God and of ourselves is the basis of Calvin’s view of culture, from which Ryken extrapolates an aesthetic theory that is applicable to literature.
The doctrines that Ryken identifies as crucial to a Calvinist approach to literature are the cultural mandate; the nature of vocation; the image of God; the common experience of God’s grace; the beauty of God and his creation; the symbolic representation of truth; and the divine standard of evaluation. These doctrines are relevant to literature only by inference and deduction. For instance, God commands humans to be culturally active; the making and receiving of literature is cultural activity; therefore, participation in literature is a cultural imperative. The doctrine of vocation is another example of such logic: God dignifies human work as “calling”; creative writing is work; therefore, the vocation of literature is approved by God. Ryken cites Calvin’s commentary on Exodus 31, regarding Bezalel’s work on the temple, as biblical evidence of art as vocation. This is typical of Ryken’s method throughout the chapter: he describes Calvin’s doctrines in terms of principles for cultural engagement and then relates these to literature. In so doing, Ryken is in line with other Calvinistic writers on culture, such as Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, Calvin Seerveld, Henry Van Til, and Andy Crouch, as well as Henry Zylstra and Clarence Walhout on literature.
If the reader is looking for a concise apology for art in Calvin’s theology, this chapter hits the nail on the head. However, if one is looking for insight from Calvin on issues in literary theory more specifically, or for a biblical response to contemporary practices, then this is not the place. First, Ryken can only gesture toward Calvin’s doctrines of the incarnation and the sacraments in dealing with the “incarnational” or “sacramental” dimension of literary representation; more needs to be worked out from Calvin (and Augustine) to be fully descriptive of a Reformed approach to literature. Second, Ryken is writing a justification of literature for the Christian community, rather than a polemic against secular theories of interpretation. This chapter, then, should be read as laying the foundation for a more comprehensive exploration of Calvin’s theology as it relates to language and literature, framed in the context of contemporary literature, theory and criticism. That is a project far more ambitious and specialized than a short chapter in a volume commemorating Calvin’s contribution to the arts and learning can achieve.
Ben Faber holds a D.Phil. in English literature from Oxford University. He is assistant professor of English at Redeemer University College, and is a member of Cornerstone Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Calvinism and Literature” is written by Leland Ryken, Clyde S. Kilby Professor of English at Wheaton College. Ryken is justly appreciated for his work on John Milton and on the Bible as literature, and for his involvement with the English Standard Version. Ryken’s contribution to the ESV led to the publication of his The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation (Crossway, 2002), which argues that “only an essentially literal translation of the Bible can achieve sufficiently high standards of literary criteria and fidelity to the original text” (10). Aesthetic criteria and faithfulness to Scripture are at the heart of Ryken’s earlier book, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly about the Arts (Shaw, 1989), which first presents the Reformed doctrinal framework that is summarized in this chapter.
Ryken begins by noting that the absence of a “Calvinistic school” of literary theory is not attributable to the lack of suggestive material in Calvin’s theology. The resources in Calvin’s theology need to be converted, not only into a world view, but into workable concepts for literary theory and critical practice. Ryken then proceeds to construct a Reformed approach to literature from Calvin’s theology: the knowledge of God and of ourselves is the basis of Calvin’s view of culture, from which Ryken extrapolates an aesthetic theory that is applicable to literature.
The doctrines that Ryken identifies as crucial to a Calvinist approach to literature are the cultural mandate; the nature of vocation; the image of God; the common experience of God’s grace; the beauty of God and his creation; the symbolic representation of truth; and the divine standard of evaluation. These doctrines are relevant to literature only by inference and deduction. For instance, God commands humans to be culturally active; the making and receiving of literature is cultural activity; therefore, participation in literature is a cultural imperative. The doctrine of vocation is another example of such logic: God dignifies human work as “calling”; creative writing is work; therefore, the vocation of literature is approved by God. Ryken cites Calvin’s commentary on Exodus 31, regarding Bezalel’s work on the temple, as biblical evidence of art as vocation. This is typical of Ryken’s method throughout the chapter: he describes Calvin’s doctrines in terms of principles for cultural engagement and then relates these to literature. In so doing, Ryken is in line with other Calvinistic writers on culture, such as Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, Calvin Seerveld, Henry Van Til, and Andy Crouch, as well as Henry Zylstra and Clarence Walhout on literature.
If the reader is looking for a concise apology for art in Calvin’s theology, this chapter hits the nail on the head. However, if one is looking for insight from Calvin on issues in literary theory more specifically, or for a biblical response to contemporary practices, then this is not the place. First, Ryken can only gesture toward Calvin’s doctrines of the incarnation and the sacraments in dealing with the “incarnational” or “sacramental” dimension of literary representation; more needs to be worked out from Calvin (and Augustine) to be fully descriptive of a Reformed approach to literature. Second, Ryken is writing a justification of literature for the Christian community, rather than a polemic against secular theories of interpretation. This chapter, then, should be read as laying the foundation for a more comprehensive exploration of Calvin’s theology as it relates to language and literature, framed in the context of contemporary literature, theory and criticism. That is a project far more ambitious and specialized than a short chapter in a volume commemorating Calvin’s contribution to the arts and learning can achieve.
Ben Faber holds a D.Phil. in English literature from Oxford University. He is assistant professor of English at Redeemer University College, and is a member of Cornerstone Canadian Reformed Church in Hamilton, Ontario.
Friday, February 18, 2011
“Calvin’s Contributions to Economic Theory and Policy” by Timothy Terrell (Ch. 4)
This review, written by John Boersema, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
The author of this chapter, Timothy D. Terrell, is associate professor of economics at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
In introducing this chapter, Terrell argues that it would be difficult to envision the development of Western market-oriented civilization without Calvin and his followers. Recognizing that while Calvin “certainly retained some errors of his time, his work improved economic theory and policy and led to enduring moral defenses of liberty.” Terrell, obviously a free-market enthusiast, argues that Calvin’s work enhanced the case for economic freedom in three main ways, namely by (1) his defense of the occupations of merchants and industrialists (as part of his general view of occupation as “calling”), (2) his stance on interest and usury, and (3) his recognition of limits on the civil magistrates.
Terrell begins the exposition of his first point by drawing on the Weber thesis that “Protestantism led to capitalism by elevating ascetic stewardship to a virtue for all Christians in their callings, not just monks.” Calvin’s idea of a calling in all lines of work led Protestants to be more focused on the practical aspects of this world than was the case in other religions. While recognizing exceptions, he mentions the relative economic success of nations with Calvinistic backgrounds (e.g. Britain and its colonies) as opposed to that of Catholic Spain and Portugal (and their Central and South American colonies). Terrell rightly deals with some critics of Weber; he cautiously concludes that “Calvinism may have encouraged the accumulation of capital” (an essential element for modern economics) since it praises diligent, purposeful labour while de-emphasizing consumption. Accumulation of capital, Terrell argues, generated a group of capital owners who had an interest in protecting property rights over against thieves and the state, thus emphasizing individual rights (which Calvin explicitly supported) instead of a coercive state. Terrell further cites with approbation authors who attribute economic growth to the Protestant/Calvinist form of worship with fewer resources devoted to churches and less productive work lost through church-sanctioned holidays. In fact, the removal of the all-encompassing authority of the Roman Catholic Church created room for more experimentation and initiative.
Terrell explains that although Calvin did criticize the activities of businessmen, he, unlike others of his time, e.g., Luther, did accept merchant activity as a vocation. He affirmed the exchange of money and goods; money was an institution God had provided for the good of humanity. Calvin’s Geneva showed a remarkable increase in the numbers of merchants. While Calvin believed that wealth must be used to benefit the poor, this was to remain a voluntary act. Nevertheless, Calvin saw ample scope for governments to intervene in the economy by regulation – even of prices. In fact, Terrell notes there is much in Calvin’s work to provide ammunition for the Christian Left and interventionism. Terrell, however, attributes this to Calvin’s continuing immersion in the milieu of sixteenth-century Christian social thought — “the substantial burden of remaining error in Calvin.”
While Terrell recognizes that Calvin was not the first to attack the medieval church’s usury prohibitions, he supports the view of others that Calvin’s criticism of this “unbiblical and socially destructive” ban contributed to a “lasting advance in economic thought.” Calvin, according to Terrell, appealed to people’s conscience, asserting that the government could not restrict the terms of a lending agreement. He further contradicted the argument of the time that money as such was “sterile” but that use of money would allow the borrower the ability to buy and sell at a profit. Calvin recognized that the interest prohibition in Mosaic law was not applicable today except that interest should not be charged to the poor. Terrell does point out some lingering inconsistencies in Calvin’s view, e.g. his objection to professional money lenders.
In his final point, Terrell argues that Calvin’s belief in a limited role of the civil magistrate “may have been one his most important and lasting contributions.” Calvin (though somewhat inconsistently) recognized some of the dangers inherent in unlimited government power, which Terrell sees as “providing the groundwork for Western society’s institutional bulwark against central planning.”
Overall, Terrell has made an important contribution by showing that Calvin’s work has much wider implications than his theology alone, particularly since these contributions are not frequently recognized by students of economics. His chapter should encourage others to study the area further. In one sense, the chapter is limited. Rather than “contributions to economic theory and policy,” the focus appears to be on the implication of the work of Calvin, his followers and his critics to the development of the free market. Terrell’s own free market position is quite evident in this treatment. Given the nature of the book, it is not surprising that a large section is based primarily on secondary sources; it would have been more helpful to see more references to Calvin’s own work, but Calvin’s language makes that difficult. In any case, the chapter provides important food for thought.
John Boersema, a professor emeritus at Redeemer University College, holds a Ph.D. in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church. He is the author of Political-Economic Activity to the Honour of God (Premier, 1999).
The author of this chapter, Timothy D. Terrell, is associate professor of economics at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
In introducing this chapter, Terrell argues that it would be difficult to envision the development of Western market-oriented civilization without Calvin and his followers. Recognizing that while Calvin “certainly retained some errors of his time, his work improved economic theory and policy and led to enduring moral defenses of liberty.” Terrell, obviously a free-market enthusiast, argues that Calvin’s work enhanced the case for economic freedom in three main ways, namely by (1) his defense of the occupations of merchants and industrialists (as part of his general view of occupation as “calling”), (2) his stance on interest and usury, and (3) his recognition of limits on the civil magistrates.
Terrell begins the exposition of his first point by drawing on the Weber thesis that “Protestantism led to capitalism by elevating ascetic stewardship to a virtue for all Christians in their callings, not just monks.” Calvin’s idea of a calling in all lines of work led Protestants to be more focused on the practical aspects of this world than was the case in other religions. While recognizing exceptions, he mentions the relative economic success of nations with Calvinistic backgrounds (e.g. Britain and its colonies) as opposed to that of Catholic Spain and Portugal (and their Central and South American colonies). Terrell rightly deals with some critics of Weber; he cautiously concludes that “Calvinism may have encouraged the accumulation of capital” (an essential element for modern economics) since it praises diligent, purposeful labour while de-emphasizing consumption. Accumulation of capital, Terrell argues, generated a group of capital owners who had an interest in protecting property rights over against thieves and the state, thus emphasizing individual rights (which Calvin explicitly supported) instead of a coercive state. Terrell further cites with approbation authors who attribute economic growth to the Protestant/Calvinist form of worship with fewer resources devoted to churches and less productive work lost through church-sanctioned holidays. In fact, the removal of the all-encompassing authority of the Roman Catholic Church created room for more experimentation and initiative.
Terrell explains that although Calvin did criticize the activities of businessmen, he, unlike others of his time, e.g., Luther, did accept merchant activity as a vocation. He affirmed the exchange of money and goods; money was an institution God had provided for the good of humanity. Calvin’s Geneva showed a remarkable increase in the numbers of merchants. While Calvin believed that wealth must be used to benefit the poor, this was to remain a voluntary act. Nevertheless, Calvin saw ample scope for governments to intervene in the economy by regulation – even of prices. In fact, Terrell notes there is much in Calvin’s work to provide ammunition for the Christian Left and interventionism. Terrell, however, attributes this to Calvin’s continuing immersion in the milieu of sixteenth-century Christian social thought — “the substantial burden of remaining error in Calvin.”
While Terrell recognizes that Calvin was not the first to attack the medieval church’s usury prohibitions, he supports the view of others that Calvin’s criticism of this “unbiblical and socially destructive” ban contributed to a “lasting advance in economic thought.” Calvin, according to Terrell, appealed to people’s conscience, asserting that the government could not restrict the terms of a lending agreement. He further contradicted the argument of the time that money as such was “sterile” but that use of money would allow the borrower the ability to buy and sell at a profit. Calvin recognized that the interest prohibition in Mosaic law was not applicable today except that interest should not be charged to the poor. Terrell does point out some lingering inconsistencies in Calvin’s view, e.g. his objection to professional money lenders.
In his final point, Terrell argues that Calvin’s belief in a limited role of the civil magistrate “may have been one his most important and lasting contributions.” Calvin (though somewhat inconsistently) recognized some of the dangers inherent in unlimited government power, which Terrell sees as “providing the groundwork for Western society’s institutional bulwark against central planning.”
Overall, Terrell has made an important contribution by showing that Calvin’s work has much wider implications than his theology alone, particularly since these contributions are not frequently recognized by students of economics. His chapter should encourage others to study the area further. In one sense, the chapter is limited. Rather than “contributions to economic theory and policy,” the focus appears to be on the implication of the work of Calvin, his followers and his critics to the development of the free market. Terrell’s own free market position is quite evident in this treatment. Given the nature of the book, it is not surprising that a large section is based primarily on secondary sources; it would have been more helpful to see more references to Calvin’s own work, but Calvin’s language makes that difficult. In any case, the chapter provides important food for thought.
John Boersema, a professor emeritus at Redeemer University College, holds a Ph.D. in Business and Applied Economics from the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Ancaster Canadian Reformed Church. He is the author of Political-Economic Activity to the Honour of God (Premier, 1999).
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
“The Arts and the Reformed Tradition” by William Edgar (Ch. 3)
This review, written by Harold Sikkema, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
As do so many who discuss Calvin and the arts, William Edgar, Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, begins tentatively. “The Arts and the Reformed Tradition” is uniquely titled among the chapters in Calvin and Culture in that it lacks Calvin’s name, almost as if to distance him from the arts. Edgar reminds us of Calvin’s qualification of painting as “a tedium of idleness,” and speaks of Calvin’s reputation in the arts as one requiring “rehabilitation efforts.” As an artist, I am admittedly sceptical about these efforts, but as a Christian, I appreciate their redemptive spirit as well as Edgar’s work (his Honours B.A. in Music from Harvard serves him well here) in highlighting the Reformer’s more nuanced aesthetic moments.
We find in Edgar’s writing an effort to balance modern and postmodern historiographies. He appreciates the worldview framework used by Kuyper, Rookmaker, Schaeffer, and others: that culture emanates from worldview. He also suggests correctives to this framework in that “the search for an ethos…that characterizes a given era can lead to oversimplifications.” Two approaches in hand, Edgar proceeds practically, looking at Calvin’s views on both religious and secular arts, and at the concrete aesthetic implications of a Calvinist worldview.
Calvin’s violence against “superstitions of Popery” is spun neatly into context, such that iconoclastic precedents and Swiss politics — but especially a robust theological basis — serve, for Edgar, to defend his iconoclasm. It was never pure vandalism, he says, but intended as reform, publicly measuring local preparedness for Word-based worship. The “robust theology” is partly Augustinian, in that images supposedly “remove fear and add error,” but Calvin connects image-prohibition also to God’s glory, and to Christ, whose fulfillment of Old Testament figures instituted “simpler” worship, with only two representations: Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Calvin’s musical minimalism was also Word-based, with instruments belonging to the “spiritually immature” Old Testament, and the Psalms alone, as “prayers given by God himself,” maintaining the gravity and majesty of singing in worship.
Calvin’s opposition to images, Edgar rightly maintains, was not all-encompassing: he listed “the useful arts” among God’s gifts, seeking the “pure and legitimate use” of painting and sculpture. Together with Christopher Richard Joby, Edgar sees in Calvin’s restrictions a counterbalancing call for imagination, as in the metricized Psalmody. Illustrated Bibles, anti-Catholic cartoons, Protestant engravings, stained glass, and decorated communion cups all demonstrate for him “a deep respect for poetry and visual interpretation” among Calvinists. He also notes that Calvin’s theology resulted in more relational worship spaces: God meets us through his Word, as is symbolized by the centrality of the pulpit.
In terms of Calvinist influences on the broader arts, Edgar compares several perspectives. Christian Tumpel sees Dutch painting as a fundamentally Protestant contribution, because of its “biblical histories rendered…in a psychological or applicatory way.” Hans Rookmaker highlights Rembrandt’s unique successes here. Dutch landscape art also connects to a Calvinist creation theology: for Maarten de Klijn as it flows from an understanding of nature as God’s “second book,” and for Boudewijn Bakker as a “song of praise to God the Creator.” For the sake of balance, Edgar reminds us that Reindert L. Falkenburg sees Dutch landscape art not as a product of Calvinism so much as of Enlightenment secularism.
Edgar finishes with a call to ongoing work: to further compare Protestant and Catholic sensibilities, and to study “cultural appropriations.” He joyfully notes that Calvinists are increasingly asking how to engage with the visual arts (rather than “whether” to engage them), and leaves artists with the challenge to articulate our misery but also our hope in the Lord.
I’m deeply grateful for the ground Edgar covers with such balance in this chapter. I found most enlightening what he gathered from Kuyper: that the Reformation, in spite of its iconoclasm, actually set art free to find its own way. I did find myself wondering why he so emphasised the Netherlands. Japan has at least as much to offer today in Makoto Fujimura, an artist (and elder in the PCA) who articulates precisely that sort of misery and hope for which Edgar asks. He does so through the visual languages of abstract expressionism, and Japanese Nihonga painting, two disciplines which do not neatly fit into Calvin’s scheme of images as either “historical” or “pictorial,” but through which he nevertheless seeks, in line with Calvin, to glorify God. His collaboration with Crossway to produce a set of Illuminated Gospels, while standing fully in the tradition of Protestant creativity, also brings to the table the lessons that art history would have us learn, through common grace.
Edgar’s final encouragement connects for me with what Andy Crouch reminds us of in Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP Books, 2008): that it’s not enough to critique, to copy, or to consume culture; the Christian calling, “be fruitful and multiply,” has always included responsibility for cultural creativity. And although this aesthetic imperative has indeed found expression in Calvin, it must continue to flourish in new ways among those called to be his successors.
Harold Sikkema holds a B.A. in Art and Multimedia from McMaster University, and practises visual art in Hamilton, Ontario, where he attends Providence Canadian Reformed Church.
As do so many who discuss Calvin and the arts, William Edgar, Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, begins tentatively. “The Arts and the Reformed Tradition” is uniquely titled among the chapters in Calvin and Culture in that it lacks Calvin’s name, almost as if to distance him from the arts. Edgar reminds us of Calvin’s qualification of painting as “a tedium of idleness,” and speaks of Calvin’s reputation in the arts as one requiring “rehabilitation efforts.” As an artist, I am admittedly sceptical about these efforts, but as a Christian, I appreciate their redemptive spirit as well as Edgar’s work (his Honours B.A. in Music from Harvard serves him well here) in highlighting the Reformer’s more nuanced aesthetic moments.
We find in Edgar’s writing an effort to balance modern and postmodern historiographies. He appreciates the worldview framework used by Kuyper, Rookmaker, Schaeffer, and others: that culture emanates from worldview. He also suggests correctives to this framework in that “the search for an ethos…that characterizes a given era can lead to oversimplifications.” Two approaches in hand, Edgar proceeds practically, looking at Calvin’s views on both religious and secular arts, and at the concrete aesthetic implications of a Calvinist worldview.
Calvin’s violence against “superstitions of Popery” is spun neatly into context, such that iconoclastic precedents and Swiss politics — but especially a robust theological basis — serve, for Edgar, to defend his iconoclasm. It was never pure vandalism, he says, but intended as reform, publicly measuring local preparedness for Word-based worship. The “robust theology” is partly Augustinian, in that images supposedly “remove fear and add error,” but Calvin connects image-prohibition also to God’s glory, and to Christ, whose fulfillment of Old Testament figures instituted “simpler” worship, with only two representations: Lord’s Supper and Baptism. Calvin’s musical minimalism was also Word-based, with instruments belonging to the “spiritually immature” Old Testament, and the Psalms alone, as “prayers given by God himself,” maintaining the gravity and majesty of singing in worship.
Calvin’s opposition to images, Edgar rightly maintains, was not all-encompassing: he listed “the useful arts” among God’s gifts, seeking the “pure and legitimate use” of painting and sculpture. Together with Christopher Richard Joby, Edgar sees in Calvin’s restrictions a counterbalancing call for imagination, as in the metricized Psalmody. Illustrated Bibles, anti-Catholic cartoons, Protestant engravings, stained glass, and decorated communion cups all demonstrate for him “a deep respect for poetry and visual interpretation” among Calvinists. He also notes that Calvin’s theology resulted in more relational worship spaces: God meets us through his Word, as is symbolized by the centrality of the pulpit.
 |
| Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son |
Edgar finishes with a call to ongoing work: to further compare Protestant and Catholic sensibilities, and to study “cultural appropriations.” He joyfully notes that Calvinists are increasingly asking how to engage with the visual arts (rather than “whether” to engage them), and leaves artists with the challenge to articulate our misery but also our hope in the Lord.
 |
| Makoto Fujimura’s Charis Seat from his Countenance collection. |
Edgar’s final encouragement connects for me with what Andy Crouch reminds us of in Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP Books, 2008): that it’s not enough to critique, to copy, or to consume culture; the Christian calling, “be fruitful and multiply,” has always included responsibility for cultural creativity. And although this aesthetic imperative has indeed found expression in Calvin, it must continue to flourish in new ways among those called to be his successors.
Harold Sikkema holds a B.A. in Art and Multimedia from McMaster University, and practises visual art in Hamilton, Ontario, where he attends Providence Canadian Reformed Church.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
“Law, Authority, and Liberty in Early Calvinism” by John Witte Jr. (Ch. 2)
This review, written by Ian Moes, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
In this chapter, John Witte Jr., Director of the Center for the Study of the Law and Religion and Professor of Law at Emory University Law School, illustrates how Calvin influenced the legal arena both during his life and after. He focuses on Calvin’s main legal teachings and the unique models of law and liberty, authority and discipline, and church and state that Calvinists later developed from Calvin’s writings.
Witte highlights that central to Calvin’s teaching is a basic separation between church and state, but not a division between religion and politics. The church, Calvin argues, is responsible for governing itself without state interference. The state is responsible for making and enforcing laws that encompass the biblical principles of love for God and neighbour, but not for embracing biblical laws per se.
Witte explains how this worked practically for Calvin, who described three uses for the “moral law,” i.e., the moral commandments engraved on the conscience and summarized in the Decalogue:
From these three uses, Calvin argued that it was the church’s responsibility to teach the “spiritual norms” that are distinctly Christian, and the state’s responsibility to enforce the “civil norms” that are common to all persons.
In this regard, Calvin argued that the church was its own distinct legal entity and held “doctrinal power” to determine its own confessions, “legislative power” to ensure orderly administration, and “jurisdictional power” to enforce its own laws and church discipline. Only if the church’s spiritual jurisdiction failed should the state be called upon to enforce civil and criminal sanctions. In doing so, Witte notes that Calvin struck a unique balance between “law and liberty, structure and spirit, order and innovation, dogma and adiaphora.”
In reading Witte’s overview of Calvin’s contributions to the legal arena, one can see how Calvin’s teachings are still evident today in both internal church relations and church-state relations. For example, Canadian courts are notably reluctant to interfere with internal church matters. This is something Calvin would applaud as it recognizes the church’s “jurisdictional power.” Additionally, Canadian courts have historically refrained from passing judgment on the validity of doctrinal beliefs, but have instead focused on whether a particular belief is sincerely held in determining whether it merits protection. Again, this is something Calvin would applaud as it recognizes the church’s “doctrinal power.”
The challenge arises, however, that we are living in an increasingly pluralistic society. There is an increasing sentiment, both judicially and socially, that the freedom to hold religious beliefs is broader than the right to practice them publicly. The courts are increasingly called upon to “balance” religious rights with other rights and to adjudicate on whether there are legal limits on religious freedoms that are “justified in a free and democratic society.” In this way, religious beliefs are increasingly marginalized to be practiced within the four walls of the church building.
In this context, do Calvin’s teachings provide any guidance? I think they do. While Witte notes that Calvin assumed each local community would have a single faith wherein both the church and the state would cooperate in the governance of a godly polity, Calvin’s primary emphasis was that the state should not apply biblical laws per se, but the (biblical) principles of love, justice and equity. We should be encouraged to continue Calvin’s urging on the state to reflect these principles in its law making and adjudication.
Ian Moes earned his LL.B. from the University of Alberta Law School and is a lawyer in Vancouver, BC, where he practices in civil, constitutional, and church law matters. He is a member of Langley Canadian Reformed Church and a director of the Geneva Society for Reformational Worldview Studies.
In this chapter, John Witte Jr., Director of the Center for the Study of the Law and Religion and Professor of Law at Emory University Law School, illustrates how Calvin influenced the legal arena both during his life and after. He focuses on Calvin’s main legal teachings and the unique models of law and liberty, authority and discipline, and church and state that Calvinists later developed from Calvin’s writings.
Witte highlights that central to Calvin’s teaching is a basic separation between church and state, but not a division between religion and politics. The church, Calvin argues, is responsible for governing itself without state interference. The state is responsible for making and enforcing laws that encompass the biblical principles of love for God and neighbour, but not for embracing biblical laws per se.
Witte explains how this worked practically for Calvin, who described three uses for the “moral law,” i.e., the moral commandments engraved on the conscience and summarized in the Decalogue:
- Theological – to condemn all persons in their consciences and compel them to seek God’s liberating grace;
- Civil – to restrain the sinfulness of nonbelievers; and
- Educational – to teach believers the means and measures of sanctification.
From these three uses, Calvin argued that it was the church’s responsibility to teach the “spiritual norms” that are distinctly Christian, and the state’s responsibility to enforce the “civil norms” that are common to all persons.
In this regard, Calvin argued that the church was its own distinct legal entity and held “doctrinal power” to determine its own confessions, “legislative power” to ensure orderly administration, and “jurisdictional power” to enforce its own laws and church discipline. Only if the church’s spiritual jurisdiction failed should the state be called upon to enforce civil and criminal sanctions. In doing so, Witte notes that Calvin struck a unique balance between “law and liberty, structure and spirit, order and innovation, dogma and adiaphora.”
In reading Witte’s overview of Calvin’s contributions to the legal arena, one can see how Calvin’s teachings are still evident today in both internal church relations and church-state relations. For example, Canadian courts are notably reluctant to interfere with internal church matters. This is something Calvin would applaud as it recognizes the church’s “jurisdictional power.” Additionally, Canadian courts have historically refrained from passing judgment on the validity of doctrinal beliefs, but have instead focused on whether a particular belief is sincerely held in determining whether it merits protection. Again, this is something Calvin would applaud as it recognizes the church’s “doctrinal power.”
The challenge arises, however, that we are living in an increasingly pluralistic society. There is an increasing sentiment, both judicially and socially, that the freedom to hold religious beliefs is broader than the right to practice them publicly. The courts are increasingly called upon to “balance” religious rights with other rights and to adjudicate on whether there are legal limits on religious freedoms that are “justified in a free and democratic society.” In this way, religious beliefs are increasingly marginalized to be practiced within the four walls of the church building.
In this context, do Calvin’s teachings provide any guidance? I think they do. While Witte notes that Calvin assumed each local community would have a single faith wherein both the church and the state would cooperate in the governance of a godly polity, Calvin’s primary emphasis was that the state should not apply biblical laws per se, but the (biblical) principles of love, justice and equity. We should be encouraged to continue Calvin’s urging on the state to reflect these principles in its law making and adjudication.
Ian Moes earned his LL.B. from the University of Alberta Law School and is a lawyer in Vancouver, BC, where he practices in civil, constitutional, and church law matters. He is a member of Langley Canadian Reformed Church and a director of the Geneva Society for Reformational Worldview Studies.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
“1929 and All That, or What Does Calvinism Say to Historians Searching for Meaning?” by Darryl Hart (Ch. 1)
This review, written by George Alkema, is one of our series of reviews of chapters of David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R, 2010). We welcome your engagement and responses.
That Calvin was drawn to Clio, the muse of history, was betrayed by a matched pair of intellectual Freudian slips tucked away in his commentaries: History, he taught, is “the teacher of life” and even the “mistress of life.” Editors Hall and Padgett note these descriptions in the book’s introduction, but Darryl G. Hart, visiting professor of church history at Westminster Seminary in California and historical contributor to the volume Calvin and Culture, will have none of it. Calvinist historians, he contends, are not equipped by their faith to understand the final meaning of historical developments. He in fact implies that their Christian viewpoint may be an impediment to understanding the significance of historical events. Reformed scholars, says Hart, need “epistemological humility,” by which he means a distinct reticence in interpreting history. (Hart’s reference to 1929 highlights two influential events of that year, the stock market crash and the reorganization of Princeton seminary, which would lead to the establishment of Westminster Seminary.)
Professor Hart rests his thesis on Calvin’s concept of divine providence, by which a good God rules sovereignly over all that occurs in history and in the lives of his children. Nevertheless, in spite of our belief in divine direction and control, events appear to us mortals, says Calvin, as “fortuitous.” That “chance” quality of events is enormously significant. As Calvin points out, Moses wrote that the secret things belong to God (Deuteronomy 29:29) and not to us. We do know that all things will work to the consummation of the divine plan, but we can’t penetrate the manner of its working out. For his use of the doctrine of providence and its implications, Calvin was dependent on Augustine, who was well-respected for his philosophy of history as set out in The City of God. Not a bad ally to have, especially when intellectual frustration is implied.
Christian scholars, then, Hart teaches, don’t possess a key to understanding the significance of specific events, and can’t know how these contribute to the advancement of God’s kingdom. They are at times tempted, however, to be over-confident, because Scripture reveals the aim of history, the middle of history, and history’s end. Hart provides examples of recent and contemporary Christian (and Calvinist) historians who have practiced their craft in a manner that for him crosses the line into stating too much and making claims that are really unsustainable. Ronald Wells, for instance, wrote some nasty prose about the humanism of the Enlightenment and its implications for the subsequent history of the west. [See Ronald Wells, History Through the Eyes of Faith (Harper, 1989) and Ronald Wells, ed., History and the Christian Historian (Eerdmans, 1998).] He in fact declared that the Enlightenment led mankind down a blind alley of “moral and spiritual blackness.” Hart terms this sort of pronouncement “moral judgment,” and as such inadmissible. Indulging in it, he believes, can derail the historian’s purpose and blind her to the “variety, complexity, and mystery of the past” (p. 4). It violates the interpretive humility and the intellectual modesty that, in his view, Calvin’s doctrine of providence imposes on the historian.
Thus Hart has put Calvin into the traces of a decidedly minimalist cart. Calvinist historians must accept the limits of their competence and refrain from kicking against the goads. One may well question, however, whether this is really the emphasis we need. After all, are we known for extravagant claims and wild-eyed enthusiasms? Hardly, I would say. What is needed, rather, is a spirit of encouragement, so that as Christian historians we work with robust analysis and discernment, and with a keen understanding of the significance that historical ideas, events, and movements naturally contain. Our task is to establish connections between our faith and historical events. Let’s take as an example (more or less arbitrarily chosen) the Battle of the Boyne of 1690. This battle saw the defeat of James II and of absolutism in England: The victorious William III was willing to sign the Bill of Rights which de facto initiated limited monarchy and provided for the growth of parliamentary institutions. Are we not obligated to notice God’s providential guidance in such events?
The calling of Christian historians requires them also to defend the faith from the vicious and often faddish calumnies of secular historians bent on defaming Christianity with false representations of past events. For this and for their interpretative tasks they have the necessary tools, for Scripture affords us wisdom in the estimation of humankind and its deeds. History, “the mistress of life,” is a great teacher when her story is told with the discernment that biblical insight can provide. A pity that Daryl G. Hart does not see this.
George Alkema is head of the History Department of Guido de Brès Christian High School in Hamilton, ON. He holds an M.A. in Ancient and European History from McMaster University (1975).
That Calvin was drawn to Clio, the muse of history, was betrayed by a matched pair of intellectual Freudian slips tucked away in his commentaries: History, he taught, is “the teacher of life” and even the “mistress of life.” Editors Hall and Padgett note these descriptions in the book’s introduction, but Darryl G. Hart, visiting professor of church history at Westminster Seminary in California and historical contributor to the volume Calvin and Culture, will have none of it. Calvinist historians, he contends, are not equipped by their faith to understand the final meaning of historical developments. He in fact implies that their Christian viewpoint may be an impediment to understanding the significance of historical events. Reformed scholars, says Hart, need “epistemological humility,” by which he means a distinct reticence in interpreting history. (Hart’s reference to 1929 highlights two influential events of that year, the stock market crash and the reorganization of Princeton seminary, which would lead to the establishment of Westminster Seminary.)
Professor Hart rests his thesis on Calvin’s concept of divine providence, by which a good God rules sovereignly over all that occurs in history and in the lives of his children. Nevertheless, in spite of our belief in divine direction and control, events appear to us mortals, says Calvin, as “fortuitous.” That “chance” quality of events is enormously significant. As Calvin points out, Moses wrote that the secret things belong to God (Deuteronomy 29:29) and not to us. We do know that all things will work to the consummation of the divine plan, but we can’t penetrate the manner of its working out. For his use of the doctrine of providence and its implications, Calvin was dependent on Augustine, who was well-respected for his philosophy of history as set out in The City of God. Not a bad ally to have, especially when intellectual frustration is implied.
Christian scholars, then, Hart teaches, don’t possess a key to understanding the significance of specific events, and can’t know how these contribute to the advancement of God’s kingdom. They are at times tempted, however, to be over-confident, because Scripture reveals the aim of history, the middle of history, and history’s end. Hart provides examples of recent and contemporary Christian (and Calvinist) historians who have practiced their craft in a manner that for him crosses the line into stating too much and making claims that are really unsustainable. Ronald Wells, for instance, wrote some nasty prose about the humanism of the Enlightenment and its implications for the subsequent history of the west. [See Ronald Wells, History Through the Eyes of Faith (Harper, 1989) and Ronald Wells, ed., History and the Christian Historian (Eerdmans, 1998).] He in fact declared that the Enlightenment led mankind down a blind alley of “moral and spiritual blackness.” Hart terms this sort of pronouncement “moral judgment,” and as such inadmissible. Indulging in it, he believes, can derail the historian’s purpose and blind her to the “variety, complexity, and mystery of the past” (p. 4). It violates the interpretive humility and the intellectual modesty that, in his view, Calvin’s doctrine of providence imposes on the historian.
Thus Hart has put Calvin into the traces of a decidedly minimalist cart. Calvinist historians must accept the limits of their competence and refrain from kicking against the goads. One may well question, however, whether this is really the emphasis we need. After all, are we known for extravagant claims and wild-eyed enthusiasms? Hardly, I would say. What is needed, rather, is a spirit of encouragement, so that as Christian historians we work with robust analysis and discernment, and with a keen understanding of the significance that historical ideas, events, and movements naturally contain. Our task is to establish connections between our faith and historical events. Let’s take as an example (more or less arbitrarily chosen) the Battle of the Boyne of 1690. This battle saw the defeat of James II and of absolutism in England: The victorious William III was willing to sign the Bill of Rights which de facto initiated limited monarchy and provided for the growth of parliamentary institutions. Are we not obligated to notice God’s providential guidance in such events?
The calling of Christian historians requires them also to defend the faith from the vicious and often faddish calumnies of secular historians bent on defaming Christianity with false representations of past events. For this and for their interpretative tasks they have the necessary tools, for Scripture affords us wisdom in the estimation of humankind and its deeds. History, “the mistress of life,” is a great teacher when her story is told with the discernment that biblical insight can provide. A pity that Daryl G. Hart does not see this.
George Alkema is head of the History Department of Guido de Brès Christian High School in Hamilton, ON. He holds an M.A. in Ancient and European History from McMaster University (1975).
Reviews of Calvin and Culture
Back in September, we posted a book notice about Calvin and Culture, a new volume that is relevant to nearly every Reformed academic. We found a number of people willing to write brief reviews of many of the chapters, and today we begin rolling these reviews out, leaving some time after each one as an opportunity for discussion. Some of our contributors submitted their summaries and critiques some time ago, and others have provided their evaluations with very short notice upon our invitation, and we heartily thank all of our reviewers.
We plan to post the reviews following the sequence of the chapters. As will become clear in the brief summaries and reflections offered by our contributors, few historical figures have matched Calvin’s impact in terms of breadth and longevity. We expect you will agree that the legacy of Calvin in the academic disciplines is strong and worthy of our continued examination, participation, and advancement.
As you can see from the chapters listed at our book notice, several fields of academic study were not included, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics/language, theology. Certainly much has already been written on Calvin’s theology, but if you have any ideas on Calvin’s impact in these other areas, your contribution would be very welcome!
We hope you, our readers, will value and interact with each of these reviews. Part of the calling of the Reformed academic is to be aware of issues in other disciplines instead of being only narrowly focussed on his or her own particular area of teaching and research, and cross-fertilization of ideas is rewardingly fruitful and helps avoid reductionism.
We plan to post the reviews following the sequence of the chapters. As will become clear in the brief summaries and reflections offered by our contributors, few historical figures have matched Calvin’s impact in terms of breadth and longevity. We expect you will agree that the legacy of Calvin in the academic disciplines is strong and worthy of our continued examination, participation, and advancement.
As you can see from the chapters listed at our book notice, several fields of academic study were not included, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics/language, theology. Certainly much has already been written on Calvin’s theology, but if you have any ideas on Calvin’s impact in these other areas, your contribution would be very welcome!
We hope you, our readers, will value and interact with each of these reviews. Part of the calling of the Reformed academic is to be aware of issues in other disciplines instead of being only narrowly focussed on his or her own particular area of teaching and research, and cross-fertilization of ideas is rewardingly fruitful and helps avoid reductionism.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Book Notice: Calvin and Culture
We would like to draw our readers’ attention to a valuable wide-ranging new book relevant to every Reformed academic: David W. Hall & Marvin Padgett, Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview (P&R Publishing, 2010). A wonderful heritage of Calvinism, as compared to many other branches of Christianity, is that it has unpacked the breadth of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ: it is much more than the salvation of human souls, but is something for each of us (including the academic) to be involved in for the glory of God and the benefit of man as we shape and reshape culture.The book, part of the Calvin 500 series, contains one 20- to 40-page chapter each on how Calvin or Calvinism relates to the academic disciplines:
Ch. 1. 1929 and All That, or What Does Calvinism Say to Historians Searching for Meaning?, by Darryl G. Hart
Ch. 2. Law, Authority, and Liberty in Early Calvinism, by John Witte Jr.
Ch. 3. The Arts and the Reformed Tradition, by William Edgar
Ch. 4. Calvin’s Contributions to Economic Theory and Policy, by Timothy D. Terrell
Ch. 5. Calvinism and Literature, by Leland Ryken
Ch. 6. Calvin’s Legacy in Philosophy, by William C. Davis
Ch. 7. Calvin, Politics, and Political Science, by Paul Marshall
Ch. 8. Calvinism and Science, by Don Petcher
Ch. 9. John Calvin’s Impact on Business, by Richard C. Chewning
Ch. 10. Calvin and Music, by Paul S. Jones
Ch. 11. Medicine: In the Biblical Tradition of John Calvin with Modern Applications, by Franklin E. (Ed) Payne, MD
Ch. 12. Calvin as Journalist, by Warren Cole Smith
Ch. 13. The Future of Calvinism as a Worldview, by David W. Hall
We know that there are members of the Canadian Reformed churches who have academic degrees in many of the areas represented in this publication. And so we sincerely invite your reviews of this book. By special arrangement with the publisher, we are able to send you a chapter of your choice at no charge, and would like to have your concise (three- to five-paragraph) review completed for publication here on the blog. To participate, please contact us at ReformedAcademicBlog@gmail.com.
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