Time for a Break

It’s summer time and that means it’s time for a blog-cation.  Next week my consistory has graciously given me time off from most of my pastoral duties to focus on writing.  I have three projects on the go:  getting my dissertation ready for the publisher, working on my book about Fort Babine and my missionary experiences there, and a critical translation of a debate between Guido de Bres and Francois Richardot for a theological journal.  My vacation officially starts on July 12 and I’ll be enjoying some time off with my family.  I’ll also be heading to Edmonton at the end of the month for my twenty year class reunion — I’m looking forward to that!  I can hardly believe it’s been twenty years.

So, I’m taking a break from blogging for a few weeks.  I hope to resume when I get back from my vacation in August.  Hope you all have a good summer!

Belgic Confession Oddities

A couple of weeks ago we had a Classis Ontario West where a number of recent seminary grads were being examined for candidacy in the Canadian Reformed Churches.  During one of the Doctrine and Creeds exams, a colleague asked one of the men something about article 15 of the Belgic Confession.  The aspiring candidate was asked to evaluate a change that the Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) had made to article 15.  The CanRC edition (along with the original and every other edition that I’ve checked) says this about original sin:

“It is not abolished nor eradicated even by baptism, for sin continually streams forth like water welling up from this woeful source.”

The examiner said that the word “baptism” was replaced with “regeneration” in the RCUS edition.  I’d never heard of that before.  I made a mental note of it.

When I got home, I checked the RCUS website to see this for myself.  However, this is what I found in article 15:

“Nor is it by any means abolished or done away by baptism; since sin always issues forth from this woeful source, as water from a fountain…”

Hmmm…..was the examiner wrong?  We had some e-mails back and forth and he was sure that they had changed it.  Giving my colleague the benefit of the doubt, I did some further research with the help of the Wayback Machine.  There I found it, on a 2006 version of the official RCUS website:

“Nor is it altogether abolished or wholly eradicated even by regeneration; since sin always issues forth from this woeful source, as water from a fountain…”

Further investigation by my colleague revealed that the RCUS did make the change, but somehow the changes have not been made on the most recent update of their website.

This amendment to article 15 is an odd, idiosyncratic change.  I have not yet heard a convincing reason for it.  “Baptism” was originally mentioned there because of the background of the struggle with Rome.  Rome claimed (and still claims) that baptism washes away original sin.  What is gained by swapping ‘regeneration’ for ‘baptism’?  Is there a new error being addressed?  What’s going on here?  If somebody could fill us in, it would be much appreciated.

The Sad Case of Francis Spira

In his little work on Spiritual Desertion, Gisbertus Voetius mentioned the case of Francis Spira as an example of those who have experienced the sense of being abandoned by God.  He says that his “history is well known.  This history ought to be read and can be read, since it is available in more than one language” (35).  I don’t think the name of Francis Spira is very well known today anymore.  It’s too bad that the editor of this modern edition didn’t provide a footnote with some background information.  I did the digging for myself and it is a sad story.

Francis Spira was an Italian lawyer from Venice.  In 1548, he converted to Protestantism.  Some sources claim that he was a Lutheran, but it may be that this was just a blanket-term for “Protestant.”  He was enthusiastic about his new religion and became an advocate for it.  However, he soon caught the attention of the Inquisition and before long they were turning the screws down on him and pressuring him to recant.  He did.  Afterwards he apparently began to hear the voice of Christ accusing him of apostasy and abandoning the gospel.  He became convinced that he was a reprobate, condemned to hell.  Despite the efforts of priests and exorcists, Spira could not abandon that conviction.  In this troubled state, he died — some think he may have committed suicide.

The case was well-known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  For instance, John Calvin wrote a preface to a Latin account of Spira’s story.  Calvin saw “the wreteched Spira” as an “example of divine justice.”  Voetius did not follow the same approach.  Just because Spira believed himself to be reprobate, it does not follow that he was.  Said Voetius of Spira and cases like his, “For certainly one must not give credence to their cries or confessions of despair, because that voice is not a voice of credibility or truth but of weakness; it is not making a statement but expressing a doubt” (53).  There is a lot more to this account and I hope to soon write something more substantial about it.  Stay tuned…

Luther: Take Hold of Those Ears!

I came across this quote yesterday in two books.  It’s in Volume 1 of Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics (190).  Then I also found it in a book I just received, Trials of Theology (ed. by Andrew Cameron and Brian Rosner) (30).  It’s classic Luther, speaking straight words to aspiring theologians:

But if you feel and think that you know it all and are tickled with your own booklets, your teaching and writing, as if you had produced something very precious and had preached admirably, and it pleases you much to be praised before others; if you are highly pleased when someone praises you in the presence of others, and would sulk or quit what you are doing if you did not get it:  if you have that sort of pelt, my friend, then take hold of your ears.  If you grab right, you will find a fine pair of large, long, shaggy ass’s ears; then risk the full cost and decorate yourself with golden bells, so that, wherever you walk, people can hear you, point you out , and say: ‘Look, look!  There goes that wonderful creature that can write such fine books and deliver such eloquent sermons.’  Then you are happy, and superhappy in heaven; ay, where the fire of hell is prepared for the devil and his angels!  To sum up, let us seek honor and be elated where it is in place.  In this Book the glory belongs entirely to God, and it says:  ‘God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  To whom be glory forever and ever.  Amen!” [Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.  Cui est gloria in saecula saeculorum.  Amen!].

Those are convicting words!  Pieper adds this exhortation:  “We advise all theologians and those who would become such to read Luther’s theological methodology repeatedly, in order to follow it by God’s grace, at all times.” (190)

The Liberation of 26 Hungarian Reformed Ministers

I’m currently reading Spiritual Desertion by Gisbertus Voetius and Johannes Hoornbeeck.  This seventeenth-century work  includes a helpful historical introduction by M. Eugene Oosterhaven.  In this introduction is a fascinating story that I’ve never heard of before, related to the picture above.  To set the context, Oosterhaven has another picture that includes this caption:

Among the theological students of Voetius and Hoornbeeck were scores of Hungarians who pondered the possibility of their kin and country being abandoned by God.  Muslim Turks had occupied Hungary since 1526.  Their cruelty and exploitation of the people shocked all of Europe.  However, Jesuits and Hapsburg rulers, in the service of Rome, were the cause of even greater suffering.

Then this is the caption that goes with the picture I’ve included above:

The liberation of Hungarian ministers at Naples by Admiral de Ruyter, 1676.  The men pictured had been sold to a Spanish fleet to serve as galley slaves.  Chained to oars day and night for nine months, some had struggled with the fear of abandonment by God as well as their fellow believers.  The twenty-six survivors sang Psalms 46, 114, and 125 as they were being transferred to a Dutch ship on February 11, 1676.  When the transfer was complete, they knelt on the deck in their rags and emaciated condition and sang Psalm 116.  The Dutch seamen, who seldom shed tears, wept openly.

How did the Dutch know that the Hungarians (who spoke no Dutch) were singing Psalms 46, 114, 125 and 116?  Because they were singing them in Hungarian on the Genevan tunes.  The Psalms are still being sung in Hungary in this fashion.