Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Calvin on the Fathers

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Moreover, they unjustly set the ancient fathers against us (I mean the ancient writers of a better age of the church) as if in them they had supporters of their own impiety. If the contest were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory—to put it very modestly—would turn to our side. Now, these fathers have written many wise and excellent things. Still, what commonly happens to men has befallen them too, in some instances. For these so-called pious children of theirs, with all their sharpness of wit and judgment and spirit, worship only the faults and errors of the fathers. The good things that these fathers have written they either do not notice, or misrepresent or pervert. You might say that they only care is to gather dung amid gold.

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 18.

In the pages that follow, Calvin provides examples to substantiate his claim.

Calvin on Miracles 2

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Calvin also warned against false miracles:

When we hear that [miracles] were appointed only to seal the truth, shall we employ them to confirm falsehoods? In the first place, it is right to investigate and examine that doctrine which, as the Evangelist says, is superior to miracles. Then, if it is approved, it may rightly be confirmed from miracles. Yet, if one does not tend to seek men’s glory but God’s [John 7:18; 8:50], this is a mark of true doctrine, as Christ says. Since Christ affirms this test of doctrine, miracles are wrongly valued that are applied to any other purpose than to glorify the name of the one God [Deut. 13:2 ff.].

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 17.

Calvin on Miracles

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In demanding miracles of us, they act dishonestly. For we are not forging some new gospel, but are retaining that very gospel whose truth all the miracles that Jesus Christ and his disciples ever wrought serve to confirm. But, compared with us, they have a strange power: even to this day they can confirm their faith by continual miracles!

. . . . . . . . . .

Perhaps this false hue could have been more dazzling if Scripture had not warned us concerning the legitimate purpose and use of miracles. For Mark teaches that those signs which attended the apostles’ preaching were set forth to confirm it [Mark 16:20]. In like manner, Luke relates that our ‘Lord  . . . bore witness to the word of his grace,’ when these signs and wonders were done by the apostles’ hands [Acts 14:3 p.]. Very much like this is that word of the apostle: that the salvation proclaimed by the gospel has been confirmed in the fact that ‘the Lord has attested it by signs and wonders and various mighty works [Heb. 2:4 p.; cf. Rom 15:18-19]

John Calvin, “Prefatory Address to King Francis,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 16.

It seems from what Calvin says here that he believed that miracles were given during the giving of revelation as a sign of its authenticity. It also seems that he believed there to be no more need for signs after the revelation had been first given.

Mark Noll, Biblical Literalism, and Slavery

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Michael Ruse writes in the November/December Books and Culture:

Thanks to scholars like Mark Noll (in America’s God), we now know how deeply the racism of 19th-century America was connected with and supported by biblical literalism—especially the ways in which the Bible was used to justify slavery.

Michael Ruse, “In the Land of Nod,” Books and Culture (Nov/Dec 2008): 39.

Does the evidence presented by Noll actually indicate that Biblical literalism lies at the root of Christian justifications for antebellum slavery?

“Literal” is a tricky word. Does it mean non-allegorical interpretation? Does it mean non-metaphorical? Noll seems to mean neither in America’s God. His use of “literal” denotes a superficial, surface reading of Scripture that fails to probe the Scriptures in a theological or synthetic manner. Noll makes a causal link between common sense realism and this approach to Scripture (America’s God, 379-385). It seems the claim that biblical literalism was used to justify slavery must be qualified by a careful definition of “literalism.” Without this definitional limitation, the claim that “biblical literalism” supported racism and slavery is in danger of slandering those who currently hold to what may be called “biblical literalism.”

What does Ruse mean by “biblical literalism”? He says, “The Sermon on the Mount hardly justifies slavery, so it is not the case that one has to reject the Bible to fight against the vile practice, but many passages of the Bible taken literally seem to support it” (p. 39f.) Does he mean “taken superficially and without theological intertextual considerations”? This would cohere with Noll’s usage, but it is not consistent with typical usage. Ruse could mean “that sense of interpretation (of a text) which is obtained by taking its words in their natural customary meaning, and applying the ordinary rules of grammar” (OED, 3.a).

Though Ruse appeals to Noll, it seems more likely that he means by “literal” not the non-standard meaning used by Noll but the more common meaning found in the OED. The fact that the article deals with the Creation/Evolution debate strengthens this supposition.

If this is the case, Ruse’s claim that biblical literalism is the culprit for 19th century racism and slavery fails. In The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, the book-length treatment of the material Ruse refers to in America’s God, Noll indicates that racism was something read into (not out of) the biblical texts (cf. p. 52, 54).

The more successful biblical arguments against antebellum slavery did not depart from a biblical literalism (as defined by the OED above). Noll notes this was especially true among African Americans who had a view of Scripture that was much higher than many white abolitionists (p. 64).

It is true that these biblical literalists did not argue against slavery per se. They noted instead the many ways in which biblical slavery differed from that practiced in the antebellum South. In other words they recognized a difference between a non-race-based slavery of no more than six years after which the former slaves were provided for liberally upon release (Ex. 21:2; Deut 15:12-18) and a race-based slavery founded on man-theft in which the slaves and their families could be held in perpetuity.

The difficulty was not that “many passages of the Bible taken literally seem to support [slavery]” (p. 40). The problem was a lack of careful attention to the specifics of the text.

Vatican II, Church Tradition, and Hermeneutics

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Recently a segment of evangelicals has been pushing for the abandonment of sola Scriptura in favor of a theological approach that relies on both Scripture and Church Tradition.

D.H. Williams is a key figure moving some evangelicals this direction. Here’s a quote that captures some of his concerns and hints toward his proposed solution:

Despite the recent attempts of a few evangelical writers to inculcate a theory of sola scriptura as the real intent of the early church, there was no question in believers’ minds that Scripture could or should function in the life of the believer apart from the church’s Tradition. Were it to do so, there was scarce assurance that an orthodox Christian faith would be the result. While many parts of Scripture were inherently perspicuous and able to be understood with little outside assistance, post-apostolic Christians would have anathematized the principle set forth in Buswell’s systematic theology, ‘The rule is then give the Bible an opportunity, in you own mind, to interpret itself,’ as setting the stage for heretical aberrations.

D. H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 98

The October 2008 issue of First Things contains an article which reveals the difficulty of using tradition rather than Scripture as the touchstone of orthodoxy. Richard John Neuhaus’ article, “What Really Happened at Vatican II” evaluates two books about Vatican II that present different visions of the council.

Included in the article is this section which focused on a quote from Benedict XVI about the council:

The question is one of hermeneutics, says the pope. There are, he suggests, two quite different ways of understanding the council: ‘On the one hand, there is an interpretation that I would call ‘a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture’; it has frequently availed itself of the sympathies of the mass media, and also one trend of modern theology. On the other, there is the ‘hermeneutic of reform,’ of renewal in the continuity of the one subject, the Church that the Lord has given us. She is a subject that increases in time and develops, yet always remains the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”

p. 25

This of course raises the question: If the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church struggles over the interpretation of a church council, how can it solve the problem of rightly interpreting Scripture. Or to put it another way, how does an authoritative interpretation of Scripture help when people can’t agree on the interpretation of the interpretation.

The Emerging Church or Old Liberalism?

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This temper of mind is hostile to precise definitions. Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms. . . . Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith; but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by these terms

J. Gresham Machen, What is Faith? 13-14 cited in John Piper, Contending for our All, 135.

There are places here where I have gone out of my way to be provocative, mischievous, and unclear reflecting my belief that clarity is sometimes overrated, and that shock, obscurity, playfulness, and intrigue (carefully articulated) often stimulate more thought than clarity.

Brian MacLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, 22-23.

Machen on Doctrine and Christianity

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But, it will be said, Christianity is a life, not a doctrine. This assertion is often made, and it has the appearance of godliness. But it is radically false, and to detect its falsity one does not even need to be a Christian. For to say that ‘Christianity is a life’ is to make an assertion in the sphere of history.

. . . . . . . . . .

About the early stages of this movement [that is, Christianity] definite historical information has been preserved in the Epistles of Paul, which are regarded by all serious historians as genuine products of the first Christian generation. The writer of the Epistles had been in direct communication with those intimate friends of Jesus who had begun the Christian movement in Jerusalem, and in the Epistles he makes it abundantly plain what the fundamental character of the movement was.

But if any one fact is clear, on the basis of this evidence, it is that the Christian movement at its inception was not just a way of life in the modern sense, but a way of life founded upon a message. It was based, not upon mere feeling, not upon a mere program of work, but upon an account of facts. In other words, it was based upon doctrine.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Eerdmans, 1923), 19, 21.

Machen on Liberalism

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Machen on why liberal concessions to naturalism were wrongheaded:

In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, (Eerdmans, 1923), 7-8

John Carrick on Edwards’ Preaching

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The Jonathan Edwards Center notes a new book, The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards, by John Carrick of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Carrick has also written a helpful “theology of sacred rhetoric,” The Imperative of Preaching. This along with a lecture posted at the GPTS website provides a helpful balance to an over-reaction by some to the moralistic approach to Scripture critiqued recently (and rightly) by Mark Ward.