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.

rent situation which it conceives as being in urgent need of a theologically-grounded ethical response. Moreover, it is strikingly clear that the latter list has been gready influenced by the concerns of the global South, an area that it seemed possible to overlook in the commemorative papers of 1909.

Bearing all these things in mind, my method in what follows is to watch what Calvin does, and well as to hear what he says. In particular, I wish to argue that Calvin challenges today’s Church by the way in which he holds together things which ought to be held together, and too frequendy are not.

I

First, Calvin holds together the Gospel and the Church. John Hesselink quotes Calvin to the effect that ‘Christ did not first begin to be manifested in the gospel,’ adding in explanation, ‘As the eternal Son of God, one of the holy Trinity, he was continually present and at work in redemptive history.’10 In the Christian dispensation, however, the theme of union with Christ is central to Calvin’s Gospel. Who is this Christ? As Calvin remarked, he is the eternal Son of God and he is the second person of the Trinity; but it was in connection with Christ’s work that Calvin set in motion a fresh train of thought concerning Christ’s threefold office. Christ is prophet, priest and king;11 he only is God’s Word made flesh, he is the one only self-sacrificing Saviour, he is our only King and Lord. This doctrine, said Robert Franks, is ‘the really characteristic Protestant doctrine of the work of Christ.’12 13 It is on the ground of Christ’s mediatorial work that believers are called into union with him. Furthermore, says Calvin,

that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts — in short, that mystical union — are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed. We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us but because we put on Christ and are engrafted into his body - in short, because he deigns to make us one with him.12

In the opinion of Thomas Torrance, ‘It is around this doctrine of union with Christ ... that Calvin builds his doctrine of faith, of the Church as the living Body

H. Denny, ‘Calvin’s influence on educational progress’, and Frank T. Glasgow, ‘Calvin’s influence upon the political development of the world.’

10 I. J. Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law, 163, quoting Calvin’s Commentary John 5:29.

11 See J. Calvin, Institutes, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960, II.xv.

12 R. S. Franks, A History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ in its Ecclesiastical Development, London : Hodder and Stoughton, 2 vols., [1918], II, 441. Reprinted in one volume, London: Nelson, 1962. For Franks, English Nonconformity’s greatest twentieth-century theological scholar, see Alan P. F. Sell, Hinterland Theolog). A Stimulus to Theological Construction, Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008, ch.10 and passim. For a stimulating account of the threefold office see Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology, Cambridge: CUP, 2004, chs. 3-5.

13 J. Calvin, Institutes, III.xi.10.

82 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK