Remembering Calvin’s Birthday

Lots of things have happened on July 10th. For instance: Dublin, Ireland was founded on July 10th, 988 CE; Death Valley, CA (USA) recorded the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United States on July 10th, 1913; John D. Rockefeller III died on July 10th, 1978; and Jessica Simpson (yes, that Jessica Simpson) was born on July 10th, 1980. Still, of all the things that have occurred on July 10th, the one for which I’m most thankful is the birth of John Calvin in 1509.

As those of you who have been readers of DET for any significant length of time know, I’m a big Calvin fan. This doesn’t mean that I consider myself a “Calvinist” in the usual sense of the term (I suspect that most “Calvinists” wouldn’t want to include me in their club, anyway), my theological thinking has been deeply impacted by Calvin. I have only become more interested in him as I have studied him over the past 8 years or so, and every new facet of him that I become acquainted with – whether it is his commentaries, his sermons, his biography, his civic accomplishments, etc – only serves to pull me in deeper.

There are a number of conferences and events taking place this summer to commemorate this 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. Information on such things is not hard to find. For my own part, I have written two pieces on Calvin and preaching for the two most recent issues of Homiletics, which I – of course – would be most vainly gratified if you happened to look up in your local theological library. But, I also wanted to take this opportunity to point you to some of the resources on Calvin to be found here at DET:

• There is, of course, the Calvin tag.


• One of my favorite posts on this blog has to do with what Calvin might say about celebrating the Lord’s Supper with Mountain Dew and Doritos!


• Then there is my sermon that deals with Calvin, the church, the government, and swords.


• My series on Reading Scripture with John Calvin cannot be forgotten. The entirety of Calvin’s commentary on 1 Peter has been examined. More in this series is coming sometime in the not-too-distant future.


• Finally, there is my post offering suggestions on how to go about beginning to study Calvin for yourself – entitled, “So, You Want to Read John Calvin?”

I look forward to posting more about Calvin in the future. For now, let’s all be sure to take some time out today and raise a glass of wine in Calvin’s memory!

P.S. My friend and colleague Darren is posting a series on Calvin’s christology in commemoration of this event. Be sure to check it out.

Reinhold Niebuhr on Religion

I'm not a huge Reinhold Niebuhr fan. I think the reason for this is that, by and large, he strikes me as similar to the early Barth - primarily interested in critical and negative endeavors rather than positive. Maybe with RN it is more that he is just best (as far as I'm concerned) at the negative stuff, not that he doesn't try to be more positive. But, such reflections are based on my very limited engagement with his corpus.

In any case, every now and then I come across a bit of his text that has some good traction. This is one such bit on religion, and the way in which can become the occasion and fruit of sin.

Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942): 200-3

“[R]eligion is not simply as is generally supposed an inherently virtuous human quest for God. It is merely a final battleground between God and man’s self-esteem. In that battle even the most pious practices may be instruments of human pride. The same man may in one moment regard Christ as his judge and in the next moment seek to prove that the figure, the standards and the righteousness of Christ bear a greater similarity to his own righteousness than to that of his enemy. The worst form of class domination is religious class domination…The worst form of intolerance is religious intolerance, in which the particular interests of the contestants hide behind religious absolutes. The worst form of self-assertion is religious self-assertion in which under the guise of contrition before God, He is claimed as the exclusive ally of our contingent self…

“Christianity rightly regards itself as a religion, not so much of man’s search for God, in the process of which he may make himself God; but as a religion of revelation in which a holy and loving God is revealed to man as the source and end of all finite existence against whom the self-will of man is shattered and his pride abased. But as soon as the Christian assumes that he is, but virtue of possessing this revelation, more righteous, because more contrite, than other men, he increases the sin of self-righteousness and makes the forms of a religion of contrition the tool of pride.

“Protestantism is right in insisting that Catholicism identifies the church too simply with the Kingdom of God. This identification, which allows a religious institution, involved in all the relativities of history, to claim unconditioned truth for its doctrines and unconditional moral authority for its standards, makes it just another tool of human pride. For this reason Luther’s insistence that the pope is Anti-Christ was religiously correct. A vicar of Christ on earth is bound to be, in a sense, Anti-Christ…

“But as soon as the Protestant assumes that his more prophetic statement and interpretation of the Christian gospel guarantees him a superior virtue, he is also lost in the sin of self-righteousness. The fact is that the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers may result in an individual self-deification against which Catholic doctrine has more adequate checks. The modern revival of Reformation theology may be right in regarding the simple moralism of Christian liberalism as just another form of pharisaism. But the final mystery of human sin cannot be understood if it is not recognized that the greatest teachers of this Reformation doctrine of the sinfulness of all men used it on occasion as the instrument of an arrogant will-to-power against theological opponents. There is no final guarantee against the spiritual pride of man. Even the recognition in the sight of God that he is a sinner can be used as a vehicle of that sin…

“Religion, by whatever name, is the inevitable fruit of this spiritual stature of man; and religious intolerance and pride is the final expression of his sinfulness. A religion of revelation is grounded in the faith that God speaks to man from beyond the highest pinnacle of the human spirit; and that this voice of God will discover man’s highest not only to be short of the highest but involved in the dishonesty of claiming that it is the highest.”

2009 Barth Blog Conference: Update

I've been very busy with non-blog stuff lately, but that doesn't mean that the 2009 Barth Blog Conference is not making progress. Here is the schedule as it now stands:

• Day 1: Introduction (yours truly)


• Day 2: Calvin and Barth on the Exegesis of Romans 1.18-20 (yours truly; response by Jason Ingalls)


• Day 3: Exegeting Romans 1: A Critical Appraisal (title tentative: Shane Wilkins)


• Day 4: Barth’s Exegesis of Romans 1 in his 2nd Edition of Romans (title tentative: David Congdon; response by Halden Doerge)


• Day 5: Resurrection in Barth’s Rejection of Natural Theology: Romans 1.4 in Barth’s 2nd Edition of Romans (title tentative: Nathan Hitchcock, University of Edinburgh; Response by John Drury)


• Day 6: Barth’s Exegesis in the Shorter Commentary on Romans (title tentative: Shannon Smythe, Princeton Theological Seminary)

I'm planning on holding the conference in late August. But, there are still a couple slots open for responses. If you are interested in supplying a response, please contact me ASAP, whether by e-mail or by a comment on this post. Remember that responses are very minimal commitments - all I ask is 500-750 words - so don't hesitate to sign up.

I'm looking forward to another great Barth Blog conference!

PTS Barth Conference: Over

And, that's a wrap! Another successful Barth conference. Clifford Anderson and his team of mis-fit conference organizers (who did a great job, despite being misfits!) have done it again, and deserve our thanks. Next year's theme will be Barth and Mission.

In terms of this morning's activities, Boulton's presentation this morning was especially well done, and provocative in its own way. I am looking forward to reading his book (mentioned in the previous post) sometime later this summer. Perhaps Darren will provide some comments on his talk. The closing pannel discussion unfortunately produced no real fireworks, but it did provide a context for the various speakers to address each other (and be addressed by the conference attendance as a whole) and find some common ground.

As has been the case every year, the part of this conference that will endure with me is that time spent with others outside of the organizes sessions (although those sessions are necessary to get such a great group of people together). It is great to have an opportunity like this to meet and spent time with scholars from around the world. Aside from the usual PTS crowd, I was happy to spend some time with Matthew Boulton, Mark Lindsay, Ben Myers, Paul Nimmo, and others.

PTS Barth Conference: Day 4 Dawns

The last day of the conference is upon us. I dropped the ball yesterday in terms of substantive coverage, at least for the most part. Luckily for all of us, Darren as a couple of posts` up covering such things. One thing that Darren wasn’t able to cover was Mark Lindsay’s talk last evening. I was there, but I was in charge of audio recording the talk and so did not take notes. But, here are a few recollections.

Mark’s talk was on Markus Barth’s treatment of Israel, with tangential reference to Karl as well. Mark showed that Markus (fun with alliteration) advocated a position of critical solidarity of Christians with Jews and with the modern state of Israel. Markus held this position for exegetical and theological reasons, which boiled down finally to the fact that Jesus was a Jew. But, Markus’ solidarity was highly critical, and Mark related a number of political and military events in the life of the state of Israel that Markus condemned. The Q&A saw, among other things, an interesting exchange between Mark and Ben Myers, the latter of which pushed the former on whether the holocaust can be considered as the bearer of greater theological significance than any other historical event. Mark thought that it did, considering the theological significance of who this historical event happened to. In any case, this is an important question to consider, and an especially interesting one from a Barthian perspective.

I’m currently in Princeton Theological Seminary’s Cooper Conference room, waiting for the morning session to begin. It will feature Matthew Myer Boulton, who recently published a book on God Against Religion. More to come before all is said and done.

Photos from the Barth Conference

In lieu of another substantive update today, here are some picture that I took this morning after Katherine Sonderegger's session. Time for a rousing game of "Name That Theologian!" It will be a little tricky because some of the shots are from behind or the side, etc. But, let's see what you - the collective readership of DET - can do! I'll tell you when you are right or wrong, or if no one really participates, I'll give out the answers in a week or so. Name tags may help you some if you zoom in.

Barth Conference Day 3: Mid-day Update

I missed Katherine Sonderegger’s session this morning because I was at my son’s 9-month doctor visit, but it must have been good since the Q & A went about 15 minutes over the allotted time. So, her paper will be something in particular to look forward to when the volume from this conference finally hits the shelves. The second session this morning was by Richard Fox Young, a professor of the history of religions here at Princeton Theological Seminary, and opened with some personal reflections on his early interaction with Barth’s thought. Some of this reflection centered on Young’s time in India, where an Irish Presbyterian rekindled his interest in Barth. In general, Young seems to see some development in Barth on the topic of religion, contrasting what Barth had to say in §17 with some later statements in Barth’s Gesprache (part of the Gesamtausgabe). For a fuller account you will, as with Sonderegger, want to consult the published volume when it becomes available.

Young distributed a handout with a number of quotes reflecting on Barth from a number of personages with which he engaged. Here are the first two, which form a nice pair. The first is an anecdote from a Sri Lankan Tamil thinker, and the second explains what Barth was on about in this anecdote, although not addressing this episode in particular (at least as far as I know).

Daniel Thambirajah Niles, “Karl Barth—A Personal Memory,” The Journal of South East Asia Theology 11 (Autumn, 1969): 10-11.

I can recall one item of conversation in this first meeting [in Basel, 1935] which may be of some interest. Barth talked to me about our Christian communities in Asia living in the midst of men of other faith. In the course of the conversation, he said, “Other religions are just unbelief.” I remember replying with the question, “How many Hindus, Dr. Barth, have you met?” He answered, “No one.” I said, “How then do you know that Hinduism is unbelief?” He said, “A priori.” I simply shook my head and smiled.

David Lochhead, The Dialogical Imperative: A Christian Reflection on Interfaith Encounter (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988): 34.

Barth’s judgment is not about Hinduism but about ‘Religion.’ It applies to Christianity as much as it does to Hinduism and has nothing to do with whether or not there are godly or saintly individuals who are Christians, Hindus, Muslims, or anything else. The point is not an empirical one but a theological judgment about all human activity.