Successful Blank Bible

Stephen Newell is the Associate Pastor of Louisville Baptist Deaf Church and a blogger. Currently his blog features a series documenting his successful Blank Bible project. The series is titled, The Blank Bible Chronicles, and Stephen took some nice photos of the entire process. I encourage you to check it out.

Patterned after the TSS Blank Bible series, he did a great job following our instructions with precision (note the gender stereotype undermined here).

Nice work on your Blank ESV, Stephen!

I am Calvinist (And so can you!)

Few things have been more surprising to me at TSS than the overwhelmingly positive response to the Humble Calvinism series we began at the start of this year. The series was birthed out of a personal interest in John Calvin — a man I knew was important, but for whom I had little direct exposure.

I should not have been surprised, though! The response to the series was a fitting illustration of the influx of Calvinism within the broader American Christian culture.

You’re probably already aware of this sharp increase in interest for Calvinism and the Reformed faith. Spearheaded by men like John Piper, Sam Storms, Wayne Grudem, C.J. Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, John MacArthur, Albert Mohler, Josh Harris and movements like Together for the Gospel, the Resolved conference, New Attitude, and a host of other conferences, aggressive church planting ministries, global evangelism, influential preachers, theologians and leaders, Calvinism is noticeably on the rise. Interestingly, this list of names and movements committed to Reformed theology includes diverse groups like Missional, Charismatic, Non-Charismatic, Baptist, Presbyterian, traditional and modern.

But most interesting to me, all of these characters and movements are having a strong impact on the 16-30 age group, sewing seeds of a Reformed theology that will blossom for many years to come. Christianity Today captured this trend in a cover story aptly titled, “Young, Restless, Reformed: Calvinism is making a comeback, and shaking up the church.”

The Church is shaking because Calvinism — an understanding of God as He acts and moves according to His own purposes and for His own glory — is on the move.

Roots of Calvinism

So the question many younger Christians are asking now is simply, What is Calvinism and where did it come from? And that probably explains why our series Humble Calvinism has caught the attention of so many blog readers.

Our goal in Humble Calvinism is not to explore the whole body of Reformed faith. Nor are we here trying to trace out the developments of Calvinistic theology. Our goal is simply to get back to our roots by familiarizing ourselves with the teaching of John Calvin, a reformer who lived between 1509-1564. We are not attempting to canonize Calvin’s works, nor induct him into the hall of sainthood. His teaching is only valuable to the level that it faithfully represents the Word of God.

John Calvin

No single individual is more central to Calvinism than John Calvin.

You would think this obvious fact would protect Calvin from neglect. Not so! Just this year a book was written that concluded with a lament over the neglect of Calvin’s sermons and commentaries by scholars [Herman J. Selderuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms (Baker Academic: 2007) pp. 284]. For all the talk of a sharp rise in Calvinistic theology in our culture, there is an odd silence over Calvin’s works among the academia.

What better time to study Calvin for ourselves?

If Calvin today suffers from neglect, he also suffers from inaccurate historical slander, too. The caricature of Calvin as a harsh, grumpy, heretic-burning fundamentalist bent on ridding the world of dissent is sadly misinformed fiction. Physically he may resemble an anemic Saruman, but his godliness is well documented, his compassion was rich, and his piety was genuine.

Yet slanderous caricatures of Calvin flourished throughout church history. One angry author wrote that Calvin was “a persecutor of the first class, without one humane or redeeming quality to divest it of its criminality or to palliate its enormity … one of the foulest murders recorded in the history of persecution” (Wallace; 1850). Ouch!

Truthfully, in an age of heretic-burning, Calvin’s Geneva was a place of compassion. During Calvin’s entire stay at Geneva only one man was burned for his heretical beliefs (Servetus). And this fate was decided by a secular lawcourt – Little Counsel – that openly opposed Calvin! But Calvin did play a role in Servetus’ arrest and this one burning was one burning too many.

Without glorifying Calvin’s errors here, this lone event must be contrasted to the myriads of executed Protestants by the hands of Rome (as fill the pages of Foxes’ Book of Martyrs). If we take care to understand the times, we see John Calvin was a man of compassion in an age of theological intolerance.

The truth is that Calvin was no stoic! He enjoyed jokes and publicly taught his people to appreciate laughter as a gift of God. And Calvin enjoyed the gift with a mouth wide open! But he also cried in the sorrows of life. Aware of God’s sovereignty in all things, Calvin was acquainted with grief, personal loss, and persecution.

Striking to me is John Calvin’s character. He was orthodox, magnetic, humble, beloved, followed, and esteemed. He attracted a large following, which accounts for the massive movement he left at his death. He led a theologically rich movement that — because of its biblical fidelity — continues to shake the Church!

So what did Calvin teach? Next time we resume this question. And more specifically we ask a question Calvin is ready to answer: What is genuine saving faith?

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Related: see all posts in the Humble Calvinism series index.

Precious

This morning I am overwhelmed with appreciation for my wife. Over the past week she has written some very helpful posts, giving you married male TSS readers a way to soften the year-end book budget surprise that’s coming when your wife compiles the final expenditures (you can’t say we didn’t warn you!).

I am blessed to have such a multi-skilled wife. Even with three small kids clawing and tugging at their mommy throughout the day like she was a rock climbing wall, and under normal online demands as a respected blogger in her own field, Karalee graciously added one more task into her busy schedule and served me for the past week by freeing me from TSS blog duties. And for that I say, “Thank you, precious!”

That’s what I call her – “my precious” (and sometimes in a less-than-romantic Gollum voice. Pray for me). For all your valuable help this past week I say, “Thank you, precious!” And to use a bit of proverbial elitism: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all” (Pro. 31:29).

Your charm, wit, and blogging skill I’ve come to love was evident in every post. And so it was no surprise to see the TSS blog authority on Technorati peaked to its highest point ever during the past week! Maybe – as was pointed out by our friend Steve Burlew– I should just let you do your thing and stay out of the way. That would be great for the stats, but most unreasonable and impractical (I cannot cook, for one).

Ahoy! I’m docked and anchored and back. You’re stuck with me. So sit back and together we’ll watch the TSS blog stats drop back to reality.

Tony