Westminster 09 1a

And here we are again at the Westminster Conference in Tottenham Court Road. The first paper was given
by Garry Williams of the John Owen Centre and was on "John Calvin's Agenda: Issues in the separation from Rome".
We looked first at Calvin's writings (the three central texts are The Reply to Sadoleto (1534), On the necessity of reforming the church (1543) and The Antidote to the Council of Trent (1547). These reveal that Calvin grasped the necessity of urgent reformation. He uses the image of the church having been rocked to sleep.
"What then? When we saw idolatry openly and everywhere stalking abroad, were we to connive at it? To have done so would have just been to rock the world in its sleep of death, that it might not awake."
"call to mind the fearful calamities of the Church, which might move to pity even minds of iron. Nay, set before your eyes her squalid and unsightly form, and the sad devastation which is everywhere beheld."
He saw temporal as well as eternal consequences for rejecting the gospel. "Even now, while your own eyes behold, it is half bent, and totters to its final ruin."
He would quote 1 Corinthians 11 and its reference to temporal judgements.
"But if we reflect how slight the error by which the Corinthians had vitiated the sacred supper was? If contrasted with all the defilements by which, in the present day, it is sullied and polluted amongst ourselves? It is strange not to perceive that God, who so severely punished them, is justly more offended with us."
"I admit that there cannot be too much dispatch, provided, in the meantime, the consultation which ought to be first, the consultation how to restore the church to its proper state, is neither neglected nor retarded. Already delays more than enough have been interposed. The fuel of the Turkish war is within, shut up in our bowels, and must first be removed, if we would successfully drive back the war itself."
We tend to avoid this sort of analysis but Calvin did not.
For Calvin then worship and doctrine were priorities. He was very concerned about the mode of worship "I would say, that rule in the church, the pastoral office, and all other matters of order, resemble the body, whereas the doctrine which regulates the due worship of God and points out the ground on which the consciences of men must rest their hope of salvation, is the soul which animates the body, renders it lively and active, and in short, makes it not to be a dead and useless carcase" (He was a Hebrew thinker not a Greek one).
He has a particularly high view of justification. "The safety of the church depends as much on this doctrine as human life does on the soul. If the purity of this doctrine is in any degree impaired, the church has received a deadly wound."
Beza "Seeing that the city stood greatly in need ... regular presbytery ..."
He had a deep posthumous disagreement with Zwingli who denied the instrumentality of external things for grace to be built up. Outward things can only affect the mind and do not have a direct impact on faith. It can only negatively restrain Zwingli thought.
Calvin had a higher view of things such as the sacraments to build up faith.
We are quick today to defend justification but we are not so concerened about the mode of worship. Calvin was vey much concerned over public worship. It is not simply a matter of being constant and serious. Are we actively engaged in thinking this through. Calvin kept reforming worship.
Garry then quoted a letter to Knox connecting baptism with the promise. This was rather lost on the Baptists present but the point was that he was a man carefully thinking about things.
Surely Calvin's approach was similar to the NT. Worship has an important public role and is also pedagogical. We then moved on to Calvi2. His practice - seeking unity. Calvin, of course, worked worked prolifically hard - preaching, teaching and in pursuing unity. He saw it as very important and poured himself into this in the 1540s, meeting with Bullinger, etc. Some remarkable agreements were drawn up.
Calvin wrote, regretfully, of "the vehemence of Luther's natural temperament, which was so apt to boil over in every direction," even to the point of "flashing his lightning upon the servants of the Lord."
Certainly this is a serious matter. The importance of fraternal realtions with other Bible believing Protestants. We should sit down and talk rather going in all guns blazing (sometimes we are not even as good as Luther).
Garry sought to apply this to Anglican/Nonconformist realtions.
Certainly many things we deplore in Anglicanism (eg Gafcon). The issues we disagree on do matter but we must still try to have relations with genuine believers. There is not that much hostility but there is ignorance and distance at times. What is our disposition?
Finally, we looked at the centre of Calvin's vision. Calvin was a great user of metaphors and similes. One pervasive metaphor he uses is to see everything in relation to the physical body of Christ. This is a lesser known feature of Calvin. What the Spirit unites does is to unite us to Christ's body.
"The flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain that pours into us the life springing forth from the Godhead into itself” (Institutes 4)
Calvin thought in very concrete terms. He spoke of unbelievers in these terms too.
"Let our opponents, then, in the first instance, draw near to Christ, and then let them convict us of schism, in daring to dissent from them in doctrine."
"Are we, then, to be silent when the peculiar dignity of Christ, the dignity which cost him such a price, is wrested from him with the greatest contumely, and distributed among the saints, as if it were lawful spoil?"
"he hesitates not to strip Christ in order that he may deck his Pope with the spoils."
"poor souls, which ought to have been ruled by the doctrine of Christ, are oppressed by cruel bondage; that nothing is seen in the Christian Church that is not deformed and debased; that the grace of Christ not only lies half-buried, but is partly torn to pieces, partly altogether extinguished. "
Surely this is again something that we do find in Scripture in several places. Every human being stands in some relation to the body of Christ. Let's avoid the fuzziness of today's feminised church.
The split with Rome was all about being near to Christ or far from him. The irony is that Romanism claimed to be able to do it but could not for that is by faith.
The discussion that followed focused on worship, including the Sydney view.