Month: August 2009

Why read Calvin?

Calvin reminds us that to break bread and drink wine and tell the story about which they bear witness, to embrace the refugee, to spend oneself for those who can offer nothing in return, to put the cause of the gospel before career and comfort, to do justice and to love mercy, is for the Church to participate in the prophetic action of the triune God, and in God’s love for the world. Calvin bequeathed to us a robust theological foundation and ministry example grounded upon the magnificent news that God is determined to self-disclose to us, and that in such a way that God might be ‘heard’ and received. But there is more, for to read Calvin is to be confronted with the possibility that creature’s might be made to be participants in the divine self-disclosure given in the sheer carnality of God, that Spirit and flesh are not so foreign to each other that their co-ministry might not be the means by which broken and hostile creatures are drawn into the knowledge and purlieus of the Father’s reconciling love.

There’s more, of course. Lot’s more … and it’s not all anywhere near as flattering (although this too is valueble). And, no doubt, there are countless other theologians who have borne witness, and are bearing witness, to the kinds of realities to which Calvin so eloquently directed our gaze. We should read these too.

Still, can anyone think of a better reason to read Calvin?

On the relation between the pulpit and the academy

‘[I]f God speaks, and if God speaks in the church, then on some subjects sermons are not popularized products of more basic scholarly reflection. Rather scholarly reflection is an academized product of the more basic proclamation of the gospel … Thus, for the Christian community, sermons are a first-order, not a second-order, activity … As worship is more fundamental in the church than theology, so kerygmatic proclamation is more basic and often more pertinent than scholarly reflection’. – Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 46.

By the way, I’ve succumbed: readers of Per Crucem ad Lucem can now follow the blog via Twitter.

[Update: Rick has posted a great rant reflection on this Partee quote here]

Why Vampires Never Die

Just to show that I’m not only reading Calvin these days, yesterday’s New York Times included a fascinating piece on vampires by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. Here’s a snippert:

‘Today … we stand at the rich uncertain dawn of a new level of scientific innovation. The wireless technology we carry in our pockets today was the stuff of the science fiction in our youth. Our technological arrogance mirrors more and more the Wellsian dystopia of dissatisfaction, while allowing us to feel safe and connected at all times. We can call, see or hear almost anything and anyone no matter where we are. For most people then, the only remote place remains within. “Know thyself” we do not.

Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that “Dracula” allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane “reality show” lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying’. – Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, ‘Why Vampires Never Die’.