tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post3818101217010150443..comments2024-03-27T14:45:28.176-05:00Comments on Adventus: Of TULIPs and TimberUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-37203110979727643722012-10-30T17:27:25.650-05:002012-10-30T17:27:25.650-05:00Rick--
I don't know if Presbyterian clergy st...Rick--<br /><br />I don't know if Presbyterian clergy students still read the Institutes. My guess is: no. But of course, I could be wrong.<br /><br />My link to CT is purely as a) a starting point (I cheat like that) and b) an illustration of the usual level of discussion on can find on the interwebs (so far as I know). I don't want the hypertechnical arena of a group of Calvin scholars (I couldn't stand up among them), but neither do I accept easily (or gladly) fools who prate as if their ignorance were a substitute for any knowledge whatsoever. And I find "Calvinism" to be the most offended against of all those subjects, since everybody knows something about TULIP and assumes they know it all.<br /><br />And so we get to Weber and the PWE. As a spiritual descendant (through confession and ordination) of the Puritans (the Congregationalist side of the UCC), I have more than a bit of sympathy for them, and know they weren't the caricature they are portrayed to be.<br /><br />The concern for the poor is another topic, and one I'll have to come back to.Rmjhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06811456254443706479noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-36467176579401934082012-10-30T16:56:38.028-05:002012-10-30T16:56:38.028-05:00Geesh, maybe I should have just read those just br...Geesh, maybe I should have just read those just brilliant comments at C.T. and not this obviously uninformed, superstitious post and comment. <br /><br />That was sarcasm.<br /><br />The little of Chauvin I've read, mostly from my favorite living author's essays and following up with looking up those, was pretty shocking. Given the extreme generosity to the poor he taught, far more generous than the extremely stingy pittance generally grudgingly given by even the self-defined enlightened folks and socialists scientifically dosed out like bitter medicine that won't make the receiver any better off. I'd call that doing good works. The Thought Criminalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01381376556757084468noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9479398.post-82214879967306426602012-10-30T13:35:19.921-05:002012-10-30T13:35:19.921-05:00It has always seemed to me that Calvinism must nec...It has always seemed to me that Calvinism must necessarily be what Calvin said, and I suppose I am one of the few who has both read the Institutes and would praise it while finding it quite wrong.<br /><br />Like you I grew up Presbyterian, and, when the term "predestination" was occasionally broached, it was explained as God's foreknowledge of choice--which it emphatically was not for Calvin (or for Luther). As a third year law student I audited a course on Calvin as a lark in the next-door divinity school and learned how little I knew him, how powerful a writer he was, and how little I agreed with him. But since Presbyterian communicants need not then have been of any particular "stripe" (as opposed to clergy), it made no particular difference in my churchgoing at that time.<br /><br />Your original cite to the Crooked Timber discussion was enlightening if only for the assured assumption that people participate in religion in the rational and calculating ways set out. I suppose some might. But I doubt that the vast, vast majority come close to thinking in that fashion.<br /><br />I've never read Weber, but I just finished a biography of Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, and it occurs to me that the rise of banking and long-range commerce was well under way long before Calvin in Catholic Europe. I've also started reading Luther's An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, a rather white-hot diatribe against the corruption of the Church under Lorenzo's son, Leo X. Only an economist, I think, could read that heat, or Calvin's more pointed biblical exposition, as promoting a means to create wealth, or an an apologia for great riches, or to interpret wealth as a sign of God's favor. The one thing that everyone agreed on, whichever side of the barracade they ended up on when the great religious wars began, was that the corruption of the Church, and the wealth and wealth-creating potential of the popes and cardinals and prince-archbishops, had to be eradicated, either through Reformation or Counter-reformation.<br /><br />I am afraid that Calvinism is probably dead as a system of Christian belief. There used to be a guy on the radio--R.C. Sproul?--who was a real Calvinist, and obviously there must be some groups who continue to adhere to it. Baptist theology, and, perhaps more importantly, its revivalist practice, couldn't be more opposed to the Calvinist predestinarian/sacramental conjunction. The mega-churches, if they have any theology, are watered-down opportunistic Baptist. And I assume that the Presbyterian clergy no longer need assent to even the later Westminster standards, though I would welcome correction if I am wrong about that.<br /><br />Aside from theology, I think the great gift of the Puritans was political. Willingly or not, they got rid of kings as surely as they got rid of bishops; they cut off King Charles' head, and the crowns have never since been secure. I hope I can disown their theology, then, without being grateful for at leat one of its side effects. rick allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07612435616018593956noreply@blogger.com