Calvin all the way

No-one can argue that Calvin's five hundredth birthday has not been well and truly marked in this year. Another three Calvin things for you to digest.

1. Last Sunday we were invited to join Andrew Hill and the folk over the hill at Highgate Road Chapel to hear Garry Williams on the subject "Is the world out of control?". I think we were about twenty. With consummate skill Garry eschewed and academic consideration of suffering and ploughed a practical apologetic furrow, drawing on Calvin's life (being a refugee, an oft hated man, a widower, at death's door, etc) and labours as well as his writings (about the sovereign God who is also a Father to all in need adn who is seen best in Jesus Christ) to say that God is in control although it does not seem so at times. An excellent time of questions followed. We were only sorry not to be able to stay for tea. (Garry drew partly on his paper at the Banner this year. See here).

2. On Monday we were at the Westminster Fellowship where Hywel Jones, recently returned from the USA, was the speaker. He preached first and then spoke on Calvin and his preaching - especially whether he preached Christ enough. After lunch we spent the time in discussion of the paper. The sermon was on John 16:23, 24 and specifically Christian prayer, prayer in Christ's name. Dr Jones's preaching does have a certain Chinese food quality (in that when he speaks he seems to open up vistas but when you try to describe what he has said it can sound rather ordinary).

The paper and the discussion was stimulating. He suggested that Calvin often didn't preach Christ as much as we would have expected. The factors here he suggested (I think) were

1. Human factors - he preached as appropriate to the situation

2. Use of terms - we can't assume a failure to mention the word Christ means not preaching him

3. The covenantal structure of Scripture so that when preaching on the Old Testament the mention of Christ is minimised

4. The very fact that he preached Old Testament sermons to a more convionced audience

5. The reality of there beuibf but one olive tree

He also had interesting things to say about Calvin preaching the Vox Dei as well as the Verbum Dei and the actual tones of God's voice. Also, declaring a trinitarian authroite, vivacite, familiere. He used an interesting quotation from T H L Parker who suggests that Calvin's commentaries are charactarised by abrupt moves from one end of the exegetical continuum to the other:

"For page after page he can look like Calvinus Judaeus (something he was called not long after his death) and then suddenly show that, in his voluntary exile among the men of the Old Covenant, living with them in shades and shadows, he has not forgotten the Sun of righteousness who, as he himself already knows, will in their future rise with healing in his wings."

(Calvin's Old Testament Commentaries, 1986).

3. The third thing I want to do is to draw attention to what may be the last conference of the year with dose of Calvin (from Garry Williams again and Don Carson) - The Westminster Conference here in London in December. More here.