Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)
2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Sell, Alan P. F.: Milyen megoldásra váró feladatok elé állítja Kálvin a 21. századi egyházat?
Sell, Alan p. F. did not give due place to the priesthood of all the believers together — gathered under the sole Lordship of Christ in that credal assembly, the Church Meeting, where they seek his will for their witness and service, and to find unanimity in him (this is no democracy).103 Again, while in principle Calvin sought to preserve the distinction between Church and state, in practice the lines became blurred in Geneva, where the officers of the state, having, according to the theory, been accorded their positions by God, were involved in the enforcement of doctrine deemed pure, the election of ministers and elders, and in the maintenance of good order.104 It was left to such as the English and Welsh Puritan Separatists, who would not opt into the Church of England ‘by law established’ to insist upon honouring the sole rights of the Redeemer in his Church — even at the cost of their lives.105 While Calvin welcomed refugees and visitors from many lands, some of whom, like Knox, returned home revitalized;106 and while he conducted a comprehensive mission to the immediate world around him, he was long dead before the Evangelical Revival laid the whole world upon the consciences of Christians in a clamant way;107 and the not uncommon twenty-first century experience of societies which are religiously plural was beyond the purview of one who could still make the assumption of Christendom. Calvin was sharp enough in deploying a battery of inner-churchly arguments against Roman Catholics and others, but he did not have to face the apologetic challenges to the Christian faith flowing down from the Enlightenment that confront us (though I suspect that were he here he would tackle them head-on in a way that some of his quite well-known theological heirs have, on dogmatic grounds, dogmatically declined to do). But for all that, I hope to have shown that in holding together the Gospel and the Church, the Spirit and the Word, the Word and the Church, the Word and the sacraments, preaching and pastoral care, and doctrine and ethics, Calvin not only bequeathed us models for theological reflection and churchly life, but also set us a series of challenges which the one Church to which he devoted himself is far from fully meeting even after the passage of nearly five hundred years. 103 In recent decades, and not least in the World Council of Churches convergence document, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Geneva: WCC, 1982, the ‘ministry of the people of God’ is extolled. But in large tracts of the Church there is no provision for this in polity. Of course, for it to be practicable it is necessary to know who the enrolled saints are. 104 See Institutes, IV.xi.3; IV.20.2. 105 When Henry VIII was given ‘supreme power in all things’ by ‘inconsiderate men’, Calvin was grievously vexed: ‘they were guilty of blasphemy when they called him the chief Head of the Church under Christ.’ See Commentary on Amos, 7: 10-13, trans. J. Owen, 338-352. 106 See J. Vanden Berg, ‘Calvin and missions’, in Jacob T. Hoogstra, ed.,John Calvin Contemporary Prophet, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1959, ch. 10; Philip E. Hughes, ‘John Calvin: director of missions,’ in John H. Bratt, The Heritage of John Calvin, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973, ch. 3; W. S. Reid, ‘Calvin’s Geneva: a missionary centre,’ The Reformed Theological Review, XLII no. 3, September-December 1983, 65-74. 107 Though see R. Pierce Beaver, ‘The Genevan misson to Brazil,’ in John H. Bratt, op.cit., ch. 4. 98 Sárospataki Füzetek
