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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Calvin's Institutes. Why are they a big deal?
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
words like 'bibliolatry' are often tossed around as insults with little context and definition.
"Bibliolatry" really is a very silly expression.
All Christian traditions are dependent on the Bible.
No Bible = No Christianity.
Evangelicals and everyone else bring hermeneutical principles such as tradition, reason and experience to their interpretation of it, but in the end they are using them to try to understand the Bible, not bypass it or replace it.
No Christian ever says,"I don't care what the Bible says, here is my slant based entirely on tradition/reason/experience", but instead attempts to demonstrate that their angle is biblically based - even if it is based on an alleged biblical principle of trajectory, or progressive revelation.
In other words, all Christians are "bibliolaters" in that they all, implicitly or explicitly, defer to Scripture as the final court of appeal.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
"Bibliolatry" really is a very silly expression.
I think it sums up the attitude Jesus was talking about in Jean 5:39-40 quite well: quote:
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
words like 'bibliolatry' are often tossed around as insults with little context and definition.
"Bibliolatry" really is a very silly expression.
All Christian traditions are dependent on the Bible.
No Bible = No Christianity.
Evangelicals and everyone else bring hermeneutical principles such as tradition, reason and experience to their interpretation of it, but in the end they are using them to try to understand the Bible, not bypass it or replace it.
No Christian ever says,"I don't care what the Bible says, here is my slant based entirely on tradition/reason/experience", but instead attempts to demonstrate that their angle is biblically based - even if it is based on an alleged biblical principle of trajectory, or progressive revelation.
In other words, all Christians are "bibliolaters" in that they all, implicitly or explicitly, defer to Scripture as the final court of appeal.
I don't.
I don't have a "final court of appeal". "I don't know; I have a hunch, but no-one knows" is a perfectly fine response.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I read the Bible out of interest and to discover more about Jesus.
I don't defer to it in any way.
You can't - nobody can imo. To many contradictory passages and interpretations.
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Garden. Room. Walk
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Kaplan, one might equally say No Church, No Bible.
The Bible is the product if a faith community. It didn't come into being independently of that.
'The Church through the Bible and the Bible the the Church.'
Sure, accusations of Bibliolatry can be silly but in some instances they can be apposite, as Eutychus notes.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
"Bibliolatry" really is a very silly expression.
It's a perfectly good word for an actually existing thing.
In some parts of the world Christians handle snakes as part of divine worship. They derive this practice from Mark chapter 16 where the risen Jesus tells his disciples that they will be able to handle poisonous snakes and serpents without harm. It's fairly clear from the statistics regarding snakebite injuries among these congregations that the Risen Lord was speaking figuratively and it's fairly clear from analysis of the text that the verse was a later interpolation and not part of the original Gospel of Mark. If you insist that the text is self-interpreting then snake handling is a perfectly reasonable response to the Gospel of Mark. If you think that interpreting the text requires discernment then you are perfectly reasonable to describe the practice of snake handling as bibliolatry.
There won't, of course, be an exact agreement as to where the line between faithful witness to the authority of scripture and bibliolatry lies. But there are clearly instances where the authority of scripture ceases to become a principle and becomes a fetish.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
In some parts of the world Christians handle snakes as part of divine worship. They derive this practice from Mark chapter 16 where the risen Jesus tells his disciples that they will be able to handle poisonous snakes and serpents without harm. It's fairly clear from the statistics regarding snakebite injuries among these congregations that the Risen Lord was speaking figuratively and it's fairly clear from analysis of the text that the verse was a later interpolation and not part of the original Gospel of Mark.
This post illustrates my point.
An atheist would simply dismiss snake-handling, both the Marcan pericope and the practice, as an example of religion's looniness.
A Christian's response is to defend the integrity of Scripture, first, as here by looking at the canonicity of the passage, and then by examining whether it is being exegeted satisfactorily.
The fact that snakehandlers sometimes die is not in itself evidence that the passage is figurative, any more than the failure of some sick to recover after being anointed and prayed for is evidence that the admonition to follow those practices are non-literal, but it is certainly in principle correct to always look for alternative interpretations.
RCs adduce what many other Christians would regard as very dodgy biblical justifications for the papacy and the hyperdulia of Mary, but it would not be very helpful to therefore label them as bibliolaters.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The Bible is the product if a faith community. It didn't come into being independently of that.
The faith community but is the product of verbal testimony, both oral and written.
It did not come into being ex nihilo.
What we know as the NT was never defined by a council, but emerged organically (Christians believe under providential direction) as the grass-roots church gradually "canonicised" that testimony by which they had come into existence, and by which they were believing, living and worshipping.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The Bible is the product if a faith community. It didn't come into being independently of that.
The faith community but is the product of verbal testimony, both oral and written.
It did not come into being ex nihilo.
If what the NT says is true, the faith community is the product of direct experience of the risen Christ. It came into being from the witnesses to the resurrection.
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
But why are you discussing this Calvin is not Bible only?
Indeed I have heard that he tends to give the last word to St Augustine rather than the Bible.
Why read? Because this text is pivotal between the medieval scholasticism and modern doctrinal theology
Because as it is so pivotal, Calvin's theology is one of the most misrepresented of any theologian.
For instance his doctrine of predestinarianism is not the product of a debate over freewill and determinism but rather on medieval notions of how the fact God exists in eternity can be understood by creatures constrained by time.
Jengie
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If what the NT says is true, the faith community is the product of direct experience of the risen Christ. It came into being from the witnesses to the resurrection.
Whose apostolic testimony was transmitted to subsequent believers such as you and me, who hadn't had, and after the Ascension couldn't have, a direct experience of the risen Christ.
[ 10. November 2016, 04:16: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
If what the NT says is true, the faith community is the product of direct experience of the risen Christ. It came into being from the witnesses to the resurrection.
Whose apostolic testimony was transmitted to subsequent believers such as you and me, who hadn't had, and after the Ascension couldn't have, a direct experience of the risen Christ.
Ah good, you have come around to my point of view.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Which is what I was also thinking.
'The Bible through the Church and the Church through the Bible.'
But as Jengie Jon says, it's Calvin we're talking about here not contemporary evangelicalism versus older traditions.d
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
'The Bible through the Church and the Church through the Bible.'
I believe in double procession.
The Church proceedeth from the Holy Spirit, and the Bible proceedeth from the Holy Spirit and the Church.
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The Church proceedeth from the apostolic testimony directed by the Holy Spirit
Fixed your post for you.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The Church proceedeth from the apostolic testimony directed by the Holy Spirit
Fixed your post for you.
Sorry, no. The church had direct contact with Christ at the beginning. Didn't needeth no apostolic testimony at first. It grew by apostolic testimony. It wasn't formed by it. So, your grade on your edit is a solid F–.
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Steve Langton
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# 17601
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Posted
The Bible, in its OT form, precedeth the Church....
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
The Bible, in its OT form, precedeth the Church....
No shitteth. And if we were Jewish, that would be the end of the conversation. But hey presto, we're not. At least I'm not. I'm referring to the New Testament. Which I had hoped was obvious but I underestimated something.
If the Old Testament created the church, then Jesus was unnecessary.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
MT, make thou me not to go all Elizabethan grammar Nazi on thine ass.
Do thou thy worst.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Post thou more grammatical solecisms and I shall rip thee a new one. Or hand thee thine head on a platter, if thou willst, sirrah.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Wakest thou me when thou hast thine army withal.
But come thou, let us reason together. We shall surely receive our heads, yea our very heads, upon a platter, an we cease not this tangent. Wherefore I shall not answer thee anon, save it be on the subject of this thread, or somewhat adjacent thereunto. Sirrah.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
He's right.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
I've used this analogy before and I borrowed it from someone else; it's not mine (can't quite recall who), but it's a good one that cuts through the entanglements of the arguments.
A teacher wanted his student to see the moon clearly and sat with him one evening. He raised his hand and extended his finger to point at the reality of the moon high in the sky above them. But the the student did not see the moon; he became fixated on the pointing finger - the means of viewing the moon - in such a way that he never actually saw the reality of the moon.
Now you can extrapolate that into all sorts of things, but for our purposes here, let's just say the scriptures are the pointing finger and God is the moon. We have to ask ourselves if we have become fixated upon the means of revelation rather than the revelation itself......if that makes any sense.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
I will repeat
Calvin was never BIBLE ONLY guy.
That this thread has become about that is exactly why you should read Calvin. Get to know what he says not what people tell you he says.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Which is why I'm reading him, Jengie, despite his soporific effects and the lack of a Wow! Factor.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Jengie:
quote:
I will repeat
Calvin was never BIBLE ONLY guy.
No need to repeat it seeing I don't think anyone has said specifically that on this thread. It has taken a different turn from Calvin's Institutes, but it's just a digression as far as I can see.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
But tangents tell us a lot about what people associate with the topic. The fact that when you know the topic the tangents are totally misplaced indicates how much people are brainwashed on this topic.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I wasn't anticipating a 'biblioatory' or 'Bible only, Solo Scriptura rather than Sola Scriptura type debate when I started the OP - but I think 'brainwashed' is too strong a term.
To an extent, it would seem that the only Calvinists many Shippies encounter in real life are the more strident sort, but whether they reflect the views of Calvin himself would be a moot point.
I haven't read much more of the Institutes since I posted last but will persevere ...
Perhaps I ought to coin a new TULIP acronym ...
T - Turgid prose
U - Unending boredom
L - Let me out of here ...
I - Isn't it need the end yet?
P - Perseverance of the saints in actually getting to the end of it ...
Seriously, I'm not finding it particularly boring but simply rather pedestrian.
Not come across any surprises so far.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Which translation are you reading?
I read the McNeil and do not find it particularly turgid.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I was teasing.
I needed a T for the T in TULIP.
What could we have in its place?
Torpid?
Tortoise-like?
Tumescent?
Terrific?
No, I don't find it turgid. It flows fairly well and it's a lot less discursive than other material I've read from that period.
No, I don't have an issue with the style but so far am finding the content underwhelming.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Jengie jon;
quote:
Calvin was never BIBLE ONLY guy.
Calvin - like Tyndale who I've quoted before on the point - clearly understood that Biblical interpretation shouldn't be done in a vacuum divorced from the human circumstances that produced the Scriptures.
But if you were trying to claim that there was Papal or similar authority that could claim a kind of monopoly on interpretation and tell everybody else how they had to interpret the Bible - as opposed to simply reading it to see what it said - well in that context Calvin was, I think, very much a BIBLE ONLY guy
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
by Jengie jon;
quote:
Calvin was never BIBLE ONLY guy.
But if you were trying to claim that there was Papal or similar authority that could claim a kind of monopoly on interpretation and tell everybody else how they had to interpret the Bible - as opposed to simply reading it to see what it said - well in that context Calvin was, I think, very much a BIBLE ONLY guy
Not really, at least if you mean that Calvin thought everyone could read the Bible for themselves and come to their own conclusions about what it was saying. Calvin rejected that idea. His view was that interpretation of Scripture properly happens in the community, the church, by which he would have meant not only the church of the time but the Church Fathers and others of the church past.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Steve Langton, I submit that you are constructing a Calvin in your own image.
I'm no expect, Jengie Jon and Nick Tamen know a lot more about Calvin and the Reformed tradition than I do, but even from what I've read so far - and I'm still ploughing my way through, it's clear that Calvin isn't a Bible-Only Guy in the way you have portrayed him here.
Even with the idea of a Papal Magisterium there's still the concept that there's a more collegial thing going on - only with the Magisterium as the ultimate arbiter.
With Calvin, you've got the idea that there's a collective arbiter - the witness of the Church (as he understood it in his ecclesiology) which included the accumulated wisdom of the Fathers and so on ...
In a somewhat different kind of way, perhaps, you get that also in Lutheranism and Anglicanism.
Although, Catholics and Orthodox would obviously claim that it doesn't go far enough in terms of the collegial and conciliar aspects and can lead to the individual setting himself up as his or her own Pope ...
At the risk of introducing a Lutheran tangent, I was surprised to learn the other day that Luther doubted that Erasmus of Rotterdam was even a Christian because of his difference of opinion over On The Bondage of The Will ...
Ok, you've got to be careful with Luther because of his aggressively polemical style - not untypical of his era. But what's happening here? Was Luther setting himself up as the ultimate arbiter of who is or isn't a Christian?
Is Luther becoming his own Magisterium, his own Pope?
Coming back to Calvin, whatever else we may or may not say about him, I don't think we can assume he took the same approach as the radical reformers did - nor that he was all for simply looking at the text and saying, 'Right-ho, that's it ...'
If that was the case he wouldn't have spent years revising the Institutes.
If the scriptures were as blindingly obvious and clear cut as you seem to suggest with your Tyndale analogy, then there'd be no need for seminaries or any form of theological training.
We'd simply use the Bible as some kind of bar-code or formula with a robotic set of instructions. That's not how it works. Calvin knew that too.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
by Nick Tamen;
quote:
His view was that interpretation of Scripture properly happens in the community, the church, by which he would have meant not only the church of the time but the Church Fathers and others of the church past.
I think that is also the Anabaptist view, though for them the interpretation would be lodged in the Church in the sense of the 'ekklesia', the congregation, rather than any idea of some over-arching institution that has a monopoly on interpretation.
The problem in many ways is precisely that over and over again, attempts at 'Church' authority over against the Scripture have essentially failed - most notably with the 4th Century Church and it's acceptance of Constantine (ironically a point where Calvin definitely got it wrong!). In essence the only 'Church' that could make such a claim of authority was the 4thC church (at that point still undifferentiated RCC and Orthodoxy combined) - and precisely because they so demonstrably got it wrong, essentially there is no credible claim of such authority over Scripture.
by Gamaliel;
quote:
If the scriptures were as blindingly obvious and clear cut as you seem to suggest with your Tyndale analogy, then there'd be no need for seminaries or any form of theological training.
We'd simply use the Bible as some kind of bar-code or formula with a robotic set of instructions. That's not how it works. Calvin knew that too.
Did you actually read what I quoted from Tyndale - who also very evidently didn't think of the Bible as you suggest????
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Ok. Fair point on Tyndale.
On the other points, you're making a value judgement on what more 'Catholic' and non-Anabaptist reformed churches believe to be the 'ekklesia'.
I'm not getting into potential DH territory though.
I want to talk about Calvin and why the Institutes are seen as important.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Why so important?
Before Calvin you have Medieval Scholastic
After Calvin you have Doctrinal Dogmatics
That is it and it really does not matter which branch of the Western Church you are in. You can see him as the first of the Dogmatic theologians (the popular view) or the last of the Scholastics (the academic view)
Calvin is not a Reformer in the sense of Luther, Zwingli or Farel. No great conversion, no fiery preacher, no leading a city to new conviction and he will flee rather than stand although fiercely loyal to friends. He is the systemiser, the formulator, the consolidator. He changes the world through doing that.
Jengie
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fletcher christian
Mutinous Seadog
# 13919
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Posted
Posted by Jengie:
quote:
He is the systemiser, the formulator, the consolidator.....
...and yet is coming late to the party if you look at the grand scheme of things in the wider context of the Renaissance. Although there is a certain comfort in seeing that even the Reformation came late to the church. It gives me a certain curious hope for the church today. But he does also become part of that trajectory towards a new way of thinking in the West that many are now beginning to argue is in fact a bankrupt way of thinking. It would be impossible for me to explain this in a short post here, but it comes down to that idea that is essentially borne in the Renaissance that you can strip everything back to get at a central truth; a hard core if you like. I'm putting it very crudely, but it is a concept of 'hard truth' that pervades so many different areas of life and philosophical thinking, art, literature and science etc etc. I'll stop before I get into a further digression, but he is therefore important in his own context but also in terms of what he sparks. he is not of course alone in it; to suggest that would be plain stupid, but the effect he has on theology is obvious. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you read him today and find him a bit dull and not terribly enlightening it is essentially because you are readings him as an enlightenment thinker - your thinking has already changed, and in part at least, because of him and his ilk.
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'God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe'
Staretz Silouan
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The Church proceedeth from the apostolic testimony directed by the Holy Spirit
Fixed your post for you.
Sorry, no. The church had direct contact with Christ at the beginning. Didn't needeth no apostolic testimony at first. It grew by apostolic testimony. It wasn't formed by it. So, your grade on your edit is a solid F–.
Sorry, no.
If there had been no authoritative apostolic testimony, there would have been just a group of people who had known Christ personally, followed perhaps by some conflicting splinter groups with their jealously guarded idiosyncratic and esoteric interpretatons, a bit like the Gnostics.
No grade, just a "Could do better".
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
The Church proceedeth from the apostolic testimony directed by the Holy Spirit
Fixed your post for you.
Sorry, no. The church had direct contact with Christ at the beginning. Didn't needeth no apostolic testimony at first. It grew by apostolic testimony. It wasn't formed by it. So, your grade on your edit is a solid F–.
Sorry, no.
If there had been no authoritative apostolic testimony, there would have been just a group of people who had known Christ personally, followed perhaps by some conflicting splinter groups with their jealously guarded idiosyncratic and esoteric interpretatons, a bit like the Gnostics.
No grade, just a "Could do better".
You missed the "at first." Not worthy to grade anything I write.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Sounds like a false dichotomy to me, Kaplan ... but what do I know?
Meanwhile, back to the main plot ...
Yes, I can see what you are saying Jengie Jon and also think I 'get' what Fletcher Christian is driving at ...
And yes, of course I'm an Enlightenment - or post-Enlightenment thinker - and yes, of course Calvin has helped shape my world-view.
How could it be otherwise for someone brought up in a milieu shaped by the Reformation and its 'bastard child' (or legitimate child?) the Enlightenment.
Even if I were to ditch all that and try and find some kind of pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment approach then I'd still be carrying baggage from where I've been.
One of the issues that converts to Orthodoxy have, according to an Orthodox priest I know (not one who has been on here to my knowledge) is that they 'choose' or select Orthodoxy as an affiliation using Enlightenment/Post-Enlightenment criteria. They kind of reason their way into it in a very 'Western' kind of way ... so consequently their 'convert' Orthodoxy takes on that kind of hue.
He was including himself in on that.
But that's by the by - and something of a tangent.
Jengie Jon is answering the questions I was angling at in the OP and Fletcher Christian is raising some interesting issues in relation to that.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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