Calvin for the 3rd millennium Calvin for the 3rd millennium hans mol Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/calvin_citation.html National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Mol, Hans, 1922- Title: Calvin for the third millennium / Hans Mol. ISBN: 9781921313974 (pbk.) 9781921313981 (web) Subjects: Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564. Presbyterianism--Sermons. Dewey Number: 230.42092 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by Teresa Prowse Cover Illustration courtesy of the H.H. Meeter Centre for Calvin Studies, Calvin College and Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed by University Printing Services, ANU This edition © 2008 ANU E Press Table of Contents PREFACE vii PERFECTION and RESURRECTION: PHILIPPIANS 3:10-12 1 TRINITY and TRUTH: JOHN 16:13 5 ETERNITY: FACT or FICTION?: 1 TIMOTHY I:16 11 DREAMS: DANIEL 5:12 17 A HOLY STRUGGLE for POWER: MATTHEW 20:25-26 23 AUTHORITY from within or AUTHORITY from without: MATTHEW 21:24 31 GOD and CAESAR: MATTHEW 22:21 39 COVENANT and FAITH: MATTHEW 25:10 47 The CLOAK of INTEGRITY: ISAIAH 61:10 55 SCATTERED LIKE A CROWD OF FRIGHTENED SHEEP: MATTHEW 9:36 61 RESTORING the BALANCE: JOHN 6:51 67 CALVIN’S DOGS: MARK 7:27 71 PAWNS, PUPPETS AND PIETY: JOB 42:6 77 GROWING in WISDOM: LUKE 2:52 83 RESTORED SOULS: PSALM 19:7 89 CORRUPTING POWER: 1 KINGS 21:22 95 MISPLACED MILITANCY: LUKE 17:10 103 GRATITUDE from a FOREIGNER: LUKE 17:18 111 PEACE and POWER: PSALM 72:3 119 ABUSE of RELIGION: MATTHEW 21:13 127 MARTYRDOM and SELF-DENIAL: ACTS 7:59-60 133 The GRACE of GOD: ROMANS 5:2 141 ORDER and DISORDER: JOB 25:2 149 WORK: MATTHEW 20:12 157 The VIRGIN BIRTH: LUKE 1:35 165 The LAMB OF GOD and THE TREE OF LIFE: REVELATION 22:1-2 173 THE BEGINNING and THE END: REVELATION 22:13 181 JESUS: REFUGEE or KING?: Matthew 2:13 189 v CALVIN FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM ROOTS and ROOTLESSNESS: MATTHEW 13:6 195 FREEDOM from OPPPRESSION: ACTS 10:38 201 PREDISTINATION or ELECTION?: ROMANS 8:29 205 BEING CHRIST’S LETTER: 2 CORINTHIANS 3:3 211 JESUS in the WILDERNESS: ISAIAH 40:3 217 IMPRISONED, YET FREE: 2 CORINTHIANS 3:17 223 SACRIFICING LIFE: JOHN 15:13 229 SEPARATE, YET TOGETHER or the TRAGEDY and TRIUMPH of DIVERSITY: ACTS 15:8 235 THE SIMPLICITY of FAITH: 2 CORINTHIANS 11:3 243 AUTHORITY and MINISTRY: ISAIAH 42:3 249 The HARMONY of FAITH: 1 CORINTHIANS 1:13 255 HEAVEN, the HABITATION of ORDER: PSALM 119:89 261 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 267 OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR 269 POSTSCRIPT 271 vi PREFACE There is a section of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion which has always stuck in my mind as central to his view of the relation between religion and the sciences. It deals with reason and faith (Book II, Chapter ii, sections 16-18). To Calvin reason is the most excellent blessing of the divine spirit and `one of the essential properties of our nature.' God will punish those lazy believers, he says, who do not make use of the works of the ungodly in physics, symbiotics, mathematics and other similar sciences. To Calvin there is nothing inherently wrong with reason as such. His peer is the Renaissance. And yet the reasoning about God by philosophers `invariably savours somewhat of giddy imagination.' Some of them are `blinder than moles', he states, and if there is any light in what they say, it is as rare and useless as a single flash of lighting in a dark night. He hints that momentary insight is lost in the enveloping darkness of the night and falls short of an enduring comprehension of the entire landscape of existence. Yet reason and science are so precious to Calvin that in his interpretation of Genesis 1:16 he sides with the astronomers' view of creation and dismisses the Genesis account because Moses `being an ordained teacher as well of the unlearned and rude as of the learned, could not otherwise fulfil his office than by descending to this gross method of instruction (Calvin 37 sermon).' Calvin, following his hero St Augustine, regards God as representing order. It is rather central in his thinking. He interprets God `placing it in the heavens ¼ a habitation subject to no changes (exegesis of Psalm 119:89 in Calvin 40 sermon).' However Calvin does not want that separation to be so severe as to jeopardize its relevance; God's celestial order impinges on man's disorder, he thinks. To him the prophets in general and Jesus in particular bridge the gap. For instance in his exegesis of Acts 2:17 (sermon four) he calls them accurate observers of their times who spoke figuratively `before their time' and applied their `style unto the capacity of their time.' Science and reason are not comprehensive enough to Calvin's way of thinking. To achieve the state of enlightenment and comprehension of the entire landscape of existence one has to venture beyond the fleeting and vain power of the intellect and seek the foundation of truth. And to Calvin the only source of truth is God's grace without which God-given reason is vain. These sermons delivered at St Andrew's attempt to be true to the basic meaning of the scripture passages of the lectionary for each particular Sunday and to their interpretation in Calvin's forty-odd volumes of commentary in my library. Yet they are also strongly informed by what, I am sure, Calvin, if he were alive today, would call the social sciences of the twentieth century: ungodly. My vii CALVIN FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM forty years of academic writing and teaching in the social scientific study of religion will hopefully add patches of enlightenment. The sermons represent my fundamental understanding of biblical functionality. Yet they also prevent `slothful' neglect of up-to-date scholarship in the anthropological psychological and sociological disciplines. Hans Mol, 1 June 2008 viii CALVIN 01 PERFECTION and RESURRECTION All I want to know is Christ, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share his suffering ¼ (but) I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. Philippians 3:10-12 Today (2/4/1995) is a very special day for me personally. It is exactly fifty years ago that I was liberated by the Canadian armed forces. All relatives and friends had given me up for dead. Anybody taken to Nazi Gestapo camps for `undermining the German war machinery' was very unlikely to get out alive. Yet here I was, liberated and still alive. That day also happened to be Easter Monday in April 1945. Since that day Easter, or the resurrection in our text, has meant freedom and liberation to me. It meant and means to me, even now, that death has been left behind. I was twenty-one when the Gestapo picked me up and twenty-three when World War II finished. I had grown up on a bankrupt farm in a small Dutch village, where I occasionally played the organ in the mediaeval church. The minister there was a learned and powerful preacher. He would hold forth on sin and crucifixion, but it didn't mean much to me at the time. I went to church for the music. I felt that Bach's music reflected the anxieties and the turmoil of my teenage years. I attended a high school too demanding for my mediocre talents (the Gymnasium in Tiel failed thirty percent of students each year, mainly because it insisted on the mastery of six languages). Organ music to me was consolation, particularly when I could play it myself on our twelve-stop organ. But whatever was said from the pulpit went in one ear and out the other. To me it was drivel. What I lived by was the latent ideology in both high school and university; a philosophy built on reason and Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism. That fitted with my experiences of the humanistic liberalism of secondary education in the Netherlands and not at all with Christian theology. And then I was plunged right into the immense suffering of the Gestapo camps and prisons. It was not just physical survival I needed. It was also backbone and spine to face it all. It was then that the preaching of this learned minister came back to me. I began to realise that I could cope with all the pain and hurt and the problems that were part of living towards the end of the Second World War in German camps and prisons if I could see myself in the larger context of sin/breakdown and salvation/wholeness. Morale needed bolstering even more than ability to survive physically. Just as important, what I remembered of the 1 CALVIN FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM sermons in the village church of Ophemert fitted better with my war experiences than French existentialism. But I don't want to talk too long about my personal story. The excerpts of the crucifixion from Bach's St John's Passion before the sermon and of the resurrection from Handel's Messiah later are more important today. Yet this illustration of my own experiences fits in both with the music, and what St Paul says in the third chapter of the epistle to the Philippians.