I love the way Barth describes his struggle with Calvin. I know something of this delightful feeling, when you encounter a new thinker and he blows you out of the water. He wrote in a letter: “Calvin is a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power, something directly down from Himalaya, absolutely Chinese, strange, mythological. I lack completely the means, the suction cups, even to assimilate this phenomenon, not to speak of presenting it adequately. What I receive is only a thin little stream and what I can then give out again is only a yet thinner extract of this…
Category: Calvin
Two Calvin Quotes
Calvin, commenting on Exodus 34:6-7, writes: “Thereupon his powers are mentioned, by which he is shown to us not as he is in himself, but as he is towards us; so that this recognition of him consists more in living experience than in vain and high-flown speculation” (Quoted in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, edited by Bruce McCormack [Baker Academic, 2008], p. 9.) As I have reflected on this quote over the last week, it has helped me see in a new way the danger of an overly philosophical and intellectual approach to theology. In Scripture, the…
Stott versus Calvin on the Saving Efficacy of Christ’s Resurrection
I’m a huge fan of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, but I think a weakness of the book is its relative neglect of Christ’s resurrection. Not only does Stott have very little treatment of the resurrection throughout the book, but when he does discuss it, he explicitly downplays its importance. Especially telling is the section on pages 232-234, where he interacts with Michael Green’s The Empty Cross of Jesus on the question of the relative roles of Christ’s resurrection and his death within his saving work. Stott argues here that the soteriological role of the resurrection is limited to…
Bruce Gordon’s biography of Calvin
I just picked this up at Barnes and Noble and read the preface and last chapter yestereday – so far looks very interesting. Update: read Sean Lucas’ review.
Thoughts on the extra Calvinisticum
As I was reading Timothy George on Calvin he made reference to his famous extra Calvinisticum doctrine. Extra Calvinisticum is Latin for “Calvin’s doctrine of the outer/beyond.” It means that during his earthly life, the Son of God retained existence outside his earthly body. He remained infinite while becoming finite: he remained omnipresent while becoming localized. Think of it like this: was the second member of the Trinity, the eternal Word of God, God the Son – was he still “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Heb. 1:3, cf. Col. 1:15) in the year 15 AD? Calvin (with Athanasius)…