Predestination is not the major part of his theological system anyway,

That’s right - only 4 chapters out of 80 dealing with predestination. I wonder why people associate him so strongly with predestination?

Yes, and what’s more he explicitly downplays the importance of predestination in the way he speaks about it. Far more important for Calvin is the authority of Scripture and the justifying death of Christ.

If you want to see fireworks on the subject of predestination check Luther’s The Bondage of the Will. When you begin to read, you think he’s gone mellow. Then about 3 or 4 paragraphs in, you realize that more is going on.

But on Calvin again, if people want to knock his books off the top 5, fair enough as long as your replace him with the relatively slimline Knowing God by Jim Packer, and let’s not forget Leon Morris’s The Atonement.

And I would lose Lewis and replace him with a straight talker like J.C. Ryle on Holiness. I am sure, when you read Ryle, that he was capable of literary beauty, but you are dealing with a man who ‘crucified his style’ for the sake of plain talking and the gospel.

What do you mean by literary beauty Gordon? Is that just speaking as a writer, or in comparison with the Puritans?

BTW, agree on Baxter… “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest” gave me some guidance in that mixed up time. To be fair on “The Institutes"… Calvin may have been “collateral damage” in the battle for my mind that began when I was handed John Colquhoun’s “True Repentance”. Colquhoun basically had me thinking I had never really repented. I mean, once one starts too much introspection… where does it stop? Aren’t we meant to be trusting in Christ rather than trusting in signs of our own repentance? This essay mentions Colquhoun and just glancing at it gives me the heebeejeebees.

Yeah, I don’t think the Puritans were all that helpful on the issue of Assurance. Bunyan’s “Grace Abounding the Chief of Sinners” is not a book I’d recommend to a young Christian…

Hi,

Craig said:
And having been written in latin, I find some of the sentences are needlessly convoluted and long.

Craig, that just means you have an antiquated or ordinary translation from the Latin. 8-)
Splitting up Latin sentences for contemporary English is generally not that hard; and I agree: slabs of English without paragraphs is a crime.

Gordon said:
But let’s take a bit of CS Lewis from the link on the previous page:

Gordon, I don’t think that is a fair comparison - the original Fern-seed and Elephants was a talk specifically to university theological students and intended to involve them at their own level.

Plus it was spoken so it would have been heavily “paragraphed” verbally - unlike the source from which your extract came.

Some of Lewis’s other Christian apologetic writings are aimed at a more general level.

Grace & peace,
Terry
[With minor edits]

Dave Lankshear - 02 May 2008 10:35 AM

What do you mean by literary beauty Gordon? Is that just speaking as a writer, or in comparison with the Puritans?

Most of the puritans were pretty turgid writers, unfortunately, according to Jim Packer anyway, and also my small level of exposure.

I mean that one of the nice things about reading CS Lewis is that he does write beautifully (as well as clearly); or if you want really wonderful writing check Kate Grenville or Tim Winton, or for clever and musical writing someone like Salman Rushdie.

But Joe Average just won’t pick up Rushdie, or Vikram Seth, or what have you, and indeed why should they? For Christian communication the test should be whether the writer can get the gospel message across without wasting your time, and Ryle can do that, no question. He’s a 19th century writer, but even though you know he’s not contemporary, it doesn’t sound olde worlde in any way.

(By ‘olde worlde’, I mean crusty and irrelevant and dry. Some of his expressions are clearly from another era, but that adds to the interest I think)

Check this, the intro from his Thoughts for Young Men:

When the Apostle Paul wrote his Epistle to Titus about his responsibility as a minister, he mentioned young men as a group requiring particular attention. After speaking of older men and older women, and young women, he adds this advice, “Encourage the young men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:6). I am going to follow the Apostle’s advice. I propose to offer a few words of friendly exhortation to young men.

I am growing old myself, but there are few things that I can remember so well as were the days of my youth. I have a most distinct recollection of the joys and the sorrows, the hopes and the fears, the temptations and the difficulties, the mistaken judgments and the misplaced affections, the errors and the aspirations, which surround and accompany a young man’s life. If I can only say something to keep some young man walking in the right way, and preserve him from faults and sins, which may hurt his prospects both for time and eternity, I shall be very thankful.

Interestingly, he was not in the least concerned that his talk of Satan would depress his sensitive young hearers, but let rip with full warnings about the dangers that lay in wait:

Your enemy is mighty. He is called “The Prince of this world” (John 14:30). He opposed our Lord Jesus Christ all through His ministry. He tempted Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, and so brought sin and death into the world. He even tempted David, the man after God’s own heart, and caused his latter days to be full of sorrow. He even tempted Peter, the chosen Apostle, and made him deny his Lord. Surely his hostility towards man and God is to be despised.

Your enemy is restless. He never sleeps. He is always going around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He is always going back and forth in the earth, and walking up and down on it. You may be careless about your souls: but he is not. He wants your soul to make you miserable, like himself, and will have your soul if he can. Surely his hatred towards men and God is to be despised.

And your enemy is cunning. For thousands of years he has been reading one book, and that book is the heart of man. He ought to know it well, and he does know it--all its weakness, all its deceitfulness, all its folly. And he has a storehouse full of temptations, such as are most likely to do the heart of man the most harm. Never will you go to the place where he will not find you. Go into the city--he will be there. Go into the wilderness--he will be there also. Sit among drunkards--and he will be there to help you. Listen to preaching--and he will be there to distract you. Surely such ill-will is to be despised.

Young men, this enemy is working hard for your destruction, however little you may think it. You are the prize for which he is specially contending for. He foresees you must either be the blessings or the curses of your day, and he is trying hard to effect a place in your hearts early in your life, in order that you may help advance his kingdom each day. Well does he understand that to spoil the bud is the surest way to mar the flower.

etc. etc!

Gordon Cheng - 01 May 2008 07:41 PM

Calvin Version 1.0 (there were 6) in 1536 was written for French peasants. I was about to say, illiterate French peasants, but I realized that wouldn’t make sense.

Hi Gordon,
I don’t think you are quite right there....you may have picked up a romantic myth somewhere...8-)

According to Wikipedia, the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes was published in Latin in1536 and the second Latin edition followed in 1539.

It was the second Latin edition of 1539 that he translated into French for publication in 1541.

So the Institutes was not particularly “written for the French peasants”, who, by definition, did not read or understand Latin.
(And how many actually read French is a good question....)

Wikipedia’s summary of the chronology is:
Calvin wrote five major Latin editions in his lifetime (1536, 1539, 1543, 1550, and 1559). He translated the first French edition of the Institutes in 1541, corresponding to his 1539 Latin edition, and supervised the translation of 3 later French translations.....The final edition of the Institutes is about five times the length of the first edition.

Grace & peace,
Terry
[Edited sllightly for clarity]

Apologies for the exaggeration; I realize that the French population was largely illiterate (as were most people back then)! But it was, however, written for a lay readership and specifically not as an academic treatise in the scholastic tradition.

And really, the Reformers on the Continent and in England were writing for the general population. Tyndale wanted the Bible available in the hands of the ploughboy, and the Reformers were writing for people like that, not their scholastically trained peers.

If they couldn’t read, maybe the churches could have built little statues and reliefs to illustrate the gospel or something....

;-)

J C Ryle :Knots Untied

Jeremy Taylor: Holy Living and Holy dieing (I only read a little of it, perhaps its on the net today but its one very power ful book)

The Cheng seems to object to Lewis’s proof of God from the existence of the concsience. Why is that a problem? St Paul writes that way in Romans 1 19ff

Folks,

To take a different stance:

1. On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin,
2. The Prince - Nicolo Machiavelli,
3. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith,
4. Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx,
5. Common Sense - Thomas Payne.

In an age when virtually nobody reads, those who do read have read these books and they have formed the worldview our society inhabits. With the exception of Machiavelli they are all a hard read.

If we want to understand our society and have any real chance of making inroads in evangelism then this is the starter list (in my humble...).

On Christian authors Calvin, Luther, Ryle, Packer, Bunyan and Lewis have all been valuable to me in my christian walk.

James Flavin.

James—no Sigmund Freud?

Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto is a wonderful piece of writing, combining resentment and wishful thinking in equal measure.

Speaking of wishful thinking I enjoyed reading Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

Gordon Cheng - 02 May 2008 01:34 PM

Apologies for the exaggeration; I realize that the French population was largely illiterate (as were most people back then)! But it was, however, written for a lay readership and specifically not as an academic treatise in the scholastic tradition.

And really, the Reformers on the Continent and in England were writing for the general population. Tyndale wanted the Bible available in the hands of the ploughboy, and the Reformers were writing for people like that, not their scholastically trained peers.

Hi Gordon,

No worries...however to expand on a couple of points:

+ at the start of the Reformation Luther wrote mainly in Latin because Latin was the language of theological and general intellectual discourse in Western Europe at that time and for the previous 1,000 years;

+ in 1520 Luther wrote 3 key documents: 2 in Latin and one in German; the german one was addressed to the German “nobility” - obviously he thought he would communicate better with this less intellectual audience in German;

+ subsequently Calvin wrote his Institutes in Latin probably for similar reasons to Luther although he was writing some years later;

+ the “lay readership” of these Latin writings would have been a quite thin layer of the university-educated and some of the brighter upper classes;

+ the Reformers certainly tried to translate into the people’s languages whenever they felt they could and they wrote in those languages when it made sense;

+ the Reformers did indeed have a passion to see the Bible translated from the original languages into the main languages of the peoples of Europe;

+ in summary, overall the Reformers used the most appropriate language tools for the task at hand as they fought the greatest religious and cultural battle in Europe in over a thousand years.

Grace & peace,
Terry

I only got halfway through “Origin of Species”, but I found it remarkably dull. I could certainly detect none of the anti-theistic sentiment that some people had assured me was there. It just seemed like a boring biology book to me…

Terry Gallagher - 04 May 2008 10:45 PM

+ subsequently Calvin wrote his Institutes in Latin probably for similar reasons to Luther although he was writing some years later;

It’s also the case that he translated them into French (as you pointed out). There was a distinct break with the in-house debates of medieval scholasticism, where the writing really was being done by scholars, for scholars. And not just scholars in the sense that they’d been taught to read, but scholars who had been trained in the philosophical debates of the era so that they could understand the form and content of what they read.

UIltimately both Calvin and Luther wrote to be read by as many people as could read. Which I’m sure is the reason why we can pick up their work today (in translation) and still read it with profit. They were writing to be understood, not to impress.

I always like to turn to a Calvin commentary when I’m preparing a sermon, and not just because he has a nice turn of phrase sometimes. He is often easier to read than modern technical commentaries because he doesn’t feel compelled to interact with all the latest theories on the meaning of a verse or a word. He just reads the passage (in the original language) and tells you what he thinks it means.

That too was revolutionary for his period, even compared to Luther.