So, here I sit in my livingroom in Chicago. Right now large snowflakes are falling from the sky. Flurries. Yesterday we had the windows open because it was 60 degrees outside. Weather is insane this time of year. This last 24 hours only serves to prove that peculiarity.
I want to share a little Calvin with you guys, something from one of his letters, but before I do this, Robyn, draws our attention to the emerging church. She has some good questions that bear attending before we move on.
So, head on over. John Calvin and I will wait here while you read her post.
Go ahead. We'll wait. Really.
So, you're back? Good. Here is what John and I were discussing this morning.
STRASBOURG, 24th October 1538It is so good to know that nothing new exists under the sun. So, when do we confess our sins against one another? What does it mean that we have to be reconciled to one another before we come to the table? Does the priest/pastor have to be a flawless godly person or are they just a s fallible as the rest of us? What of schism? Calvin sets up the reality. It is anathema and yet it happens, "that among Christians there ought to be so great a dislike of schism, as that they may always avoid it so far as lies in their power." But power is the issue. In Calvin's time of great ekklesial confusion and a dissolution of traditional structures, the powerbase was rent assunder. The situations were deeply confusing. Even Calvin, who often appeared to insist that the scriptural prerequisites to communion were gifts from God to maintain right Spirit and order in the Body, recognised that it was all simply more complicated than that....Whether it is lawful for himself, and others similarly situated, to receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper from the hands of the new ministers, and to partake of it along with such a promiscuous assemblage of unworthy communicants.
In this matter I quite agree with Capito. This, in brief, was the sum of our discussion: that among Christians there ought to be so great a dislike of schism, as that they may always avoid it so far as lies in their power. That there ought to prevail among them such a reverence for the ministry of the word and of the sacraments, that wherever they perceive these things to be, there they may consider the Church to exist. Whenever therefore it happens, by the Lord's permission, that the Church is administered by pastors, whatever kind of persons they may be, if we see there the marks of the Church, it will be better not to break the unity.
Nor need it be any hindrance that some points of doctrine are not quite so pure, seeing that there is scarcely any Church which does not retain some remnants of former ignorance. It is sufficient for us if the doctrine on which the Church of God is founded be recognized, and maintain its place. Nor should it prove any obstacle, that he ought not to be reckoned a lawful pastor who shall not only have fraudulently insinuated himself into the office of a true minister, but shall have wickedly usurped it. For there is no reason why every private person should mix himself up with these scruples.
The sacraments are the means of communion with the Church; they must needs therefore be administered by the hands of pastors. In regard to those, therefore, who already occupy that position, legitimately or not, and although the right of judging as to that is not denied, it will be well to suspend judgment in the meantime, until the matter shall have been legally adjudicated.
Therefore, if men wait upon their ministry, they will run no risk, that they should appear either to acknowledge or approve, or in any way to ratify their commission. But by this means they will give a proof of their patience in tolerating those who they know will be condemned by a solemn judgment. The refusal at first of these excellent brethren did not surprise nor even displease me. In truth, at a time of so great excitement, which could not fail to produce an ebullition in the minds of men, a schism in the body of Christ was the infallible result. Besides, they were still uncertain whither at length this tempest would drive them, which for the time put everything in confusion and disorder.
This will be important when I get to look at the Genevan liturgies. Reconciliation was ongoing work. The churches in Geneva were idealistic, striving to return to a rigorous following of the scriptural mandates, and yet there were these realities evident in their communities. Confusion is nothing new.
So, now I am off to that glorious and schismatic church, the baptist church. God bless us schismatics! We live into confusion with a fervor undenyable! Huzzah!
Posted by tripp at March 21, 2004 07:36 AM