I've convinced my mom to let me do Church History as a class. So I'm reading books of my choosing and mom just has me write papers about them. Right now I'm reading Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion. Its awesome but really hard to understand and it takes forever to read. Forever meaning I can barely read twenty pages in an hour. His theology as near as I can tell is "play it safe" So all the "gray areas" of Christianity like dancing, secular music, drinking ect. He says "If they don't directly glorify God even though they may not be harmful they are not helpful and therefore are of no purpose." So he removes them from the church and you can judge for yourself whether the society he built at Geneva was good or not.
My favorite thing about him is that he not only writes this eleven hundred page volume as merely an introduction for new beleivers before they start reading the bible but he begans it with "God as the creator instead of the redeemer" He devotes the first two hundred plus pages to discussing God as a creator and the duty that humanity in general owes to its Creator and then he discourses on the redeeming quality of Jesus. So often in our modern culture were like Oh a good God who will save us and forgive us our sins and if we go to church and pay offering we can still do pretty much what we want and I love Calvin because his doctrine stands up to this modern heresy spits it in the face and shows its illogicality.
Calvin. Is. My. Best. Friend. Actually, that's a lie; John Piper is my best friend, which is probably better. =D
ReplyDeleteSince when has dancing been a gray area of Christianity? The bible encourages dancing in praise of the Lord many times in the Psalms (most notably Psalm 100).
ReplyDeletewell Peter I'm not going to try to defend Clvin's theology but he was trying to eradicate as many things as he could that had the potential for being a trap for beleivers. So he decided the potential danger of dancing outweigh the good that could be gained by worshiipping through it.
ReplyDeleteHope that made sense
Peter, I agree with you about dancing, but you have to remember the kind of wicked city Geneva was. To allow dancing was almost to encourage a lot of the sin in Geneva. It all depends on the context, remember what Paul says about the weaker members of the church. Just because I can drink wine and be just fine, doesn't mean I should drink it with a recovering alcoholic. In fact if I remember correctly Paul says that would be a sin, tempting the poor guy like that.
ReplyDeleteAmy