Can Anyone Tell Me What Calvin Wrote?

In the commandments of the Law [Matt 22:34–40, the Great Commandments], God does not look at what men can do, but at what they ought to do; since in this infirmity of the flesh it is impossible that perfect love can obtain dominion, for we know how strongly all the senses of our soul are disposed to vanity. Lastly, we learn from this, that God does not rest satisfied with the outward appearance of works, but chiefly demands the inward feelings, that from a good root good fruits may grow.

John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, trans. John King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956), 59.

Does anyone have access to the Latin (or was it French…?) standing behind that word “feelings”? Or, better yet, the original language for the whole paragraph? My research skills have failed me; I can’t find it, and I don’t own the Logos Bible Software John Calvin Super-Deluxe “This-Package-Buys-You” Package.

Update: Jeremy Patterson helped me track down the original French, which seems to call the English translation above into question at the very point I highlighted. “Inward feelings” in French is actually “l’affection exterieure.” Now I need to find a copy of the Latin to fully (?) unravel this mystery.

Top Five Reasons Why the BibleWorks 9 Upgrade is Worth $159

You should get the brand new BibleWorks 9. Let me give a count-down of the reasons:

5. Barry Beitzel’s Moody Atlas of the Bible. This is a quality resource.

4. The Use tab. BW9 automatically looks up all the occurrences of any word you have highlighted. Handy, because that’s something I do all the time.

3. CNTTS NT Critical Apparatus. I have not used this particular apparatus, and I wasn’t even familiar with the CNTTS (not to be confused with Daniel B. Wallace’s partner organization, the CSNTM, which I did know about), but I’ve often wanted to have an electronic apparatus that was more up-to-date than Tischendorf.

2. The BibleWorks Manuscript Project. Morphological searches of Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, etc.? This looks really cool. (If there’s one idea that tempts me away from critical-text orthodoxy it’s one I read from Stanley Porter that the critical text doesn’t exist fully anywhere in any manuscript and we might as well just use Sinaiticus. But I haven’t explored that idea.)

1. And the most important reason? BibleWorks needs the money. They’re worth your support. They’re the scrappy perennial underdogs who have a different approach from Logos and whose product continues to carry value that Logos doesn’t have. I love Logos, and Logos 4 had made me up my usage of that program considerably. It’s always running on my Mac and my PC. But so is BibleWorks. I have to be able to do quick searches in English, Greek, and Hebrew, and I have to be able to compare translations quickly. For close, text-level work, BibleWorks is my go-to tool.

The Western Creed

A new friend gave me a nice gift upon the successful defense of my dissertation, Horton’s new systematic theology.

Horton makes some artful statements in the intro. See if you can catch the ironic theme:

For over three centuries now, atheists and skeptics have catechized the West in the belief that as culture progresses, belief in God or at least in extraordinary divine intervention in nature and history will wane…. Once upon a time in the West, one could become an atheist or deist only with considerable difficulty; the widespread narrative within which everyone operated rendered unbelief implausible. Today, it is exactly the opposite. To believe in the triune God of Scripture who speaks and acts in history requires an act of apostasy from the assumed creed of our age. (15)

Atheists catechize, they do. And their catechism is made up of a series of beliefs, not “facts.” Our resolutely anti-religious age does in fact have a creed.

Masterful.

A Biblical Theology of Garment Tassels

A Jewish man in Israel with tassels on his shirt, a yarmulke, and prominent payot (ringlets of hair).
© Mark L. Ward, Jr., 2010.

I was just studying Numbers 15 for my church’s Sunday School, and I came across this little paragraph:

Tassels on Garments
The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God: I am the Lord your God.” (vv. 37-41)

What is a NT preacher supposed to do with this? For years I wasn’t sure. It was mostly just an obscure factoid. For that very reason I think it makes a good test case for figuring out what to do with OT texts. I see two major options.

Option 1: Direct Application

What if we just made a simple, direct moral application? The Israelites were required to do this, and so are contemporary Christians. We should all have tassels coming from our garments.

I think most Christians sense that there’s something wrong with that. But what? Some Christians might say, “This was for Jews, not for Christians.” But why? The answer might come back, “Because this is a ceremonial law.” But I’m not so sure that’s the case. Why not call it a moral law? It has a very moral purpose: to make God’s people remember God’s commandments, to keep them holy. That’s what Numbers 15 says. Don’t Christians need that same kind of reminder?

A Christian might say, “Okay, it still has binding force on us, but culture has changed and now we have other ways of making ourselves remember—like having framed verses or listening to scripturally rich music.”

I’m still not completely comfortable. I’m sure it’s a good idea for us to place reminders around ourselves that we are God’s people. There’s a good reason to have Scripture verses in calligraphy on our walls, on index cards in our cars, and even perhaps—if you absolutely must—on a necktie.

But the most direct parallel to doing that would seem to be God’s command in Deuteronomy to bind God’s words ” as a sign on your hand” and “write them on the doorposts of your house” (Deut 6:4–9)—the commands which gave rise to the contemporary and ancient Jewish custom of wearing phylacteries.

And God said tassels. That’s not culturally impossible for us to do. So what right do we have to turn tassels into calligraphy and neckties?

As you can see, there are some problems with trying to apply this passage more or less directly. I think there is truth in this kind of direct application, because OT Jews and NT Christians are both touched deeply by sin; we need all the help we can get to be truly holy.

Option 2: Redemptive History

But Biblical Theology (or a near equivalent in this context, Redemptive History) changed my perspective. It has helped me remember that OT Jews and NT Christians, despite their similarities, have some very significant differences. Those differences help me see how this little command to wear tassels isn’t just a factoid; I can go from tassels to Christ without doing any violence to the text. In fact, I’ll be doing a sort of violence to it if I don’t go to Christ.

Let me explain by pointing out a difference between evangelical Christians and other religious groups that you may never have thought much about: a lot of religions specify particular garments that must be worn, but we don’t. (Culottes don’t count.) Many groups of Muslims, though apparently not all, have their women wear the head-covering known as the hijab. The men wear a skull cap. Catholics have all sorts of vestments for priests, cardinals, and popes—along with certain kinds of dress for monks and nuns. Buddhist monks, too, have traditional garb. Jewish men wear yarmulkes; some groups of Jewish women are required to wear wigs when they get married. I hate to point it out, but it’s unavoidable: Mormons have holy undergarments.

Numbers of conservative Protestant women wear head-coverings, but that’s not quite the same as tassels. Head-coverings aren’t worn at all times, they’re only for one sex, and they serve a more specific purpose: honoring male leadership in the home (1 Cor 11:2–16). These tassels in Numbers served a very general purpose: they were a physical reminder that the people belonged to God.

So why don’t Bible-believing evangelical Christians have anything equivalent? Why don’t we have any distinctive religious clothing?

There’s an answer, and it comes from remembering that Scripture is a story, a story with progress. Let’s zoom-out to the macro level of that big story. Looking at all of Scripture, what are the biggest differences between us and OT Jews? Simply put, New Covenant believers don’t need constant external reminders that we are God’s people because we have constant internal ones. The story of God’s redemption has progressed since Numbers 15. The Old Covenant did not include a provision for heart change, but New Covenant believers have God’s law written on their hearts (Jer 31:31–34). New Covenant believers, as part of their union with Christ, are all permanently indwelled by the very Holy Spirit of God. We don’t have ritual clothing because we have taken off the old man and have been clothed in a new self (Eph 4:22–24). Gal 3:27 says we have “put on Christ”—just like we put on clothes (cf. Rom 13:14).

Conclusion

Now, even OT Jews were supposed to take external, physical reminders like tassels or verses on doorposts (mezzuzoth) and internalize them. Deuteronomy 6 and Numbers 15 both say this. And Christians have to do the same with our reminder, the Lord’s Supper. We’re warned not to let it be merely external (1 Cor 11:27–32.). But we’re starting with a major advantage over OT Jews. We don’t need tassels; praise God, we have something far better.

I’m aware that what I’ve written may sound like it’s just another clever, creative way to wrest something practical out of obscure OT passages. But I think you’ll find that following this method of looking at the whole story of Scripture and relating every OT passage to it yields genuine insights that are reproducible by others. I have to admit that the particular connections I have made I could not find elsewhere—but I’m still looking.

Is This What We Were Made To Do?

Evangelicals Are Top Highlighters in Kindle Books

Evangelicals are the top highlighters of Kindle books. Five of the top ten highlighted books are Bibles or Christian books (Radical by David Platt is no. 9):

Three self-help books, one debauched fiction title (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and one crazy piece of conspiracy fiction (The DaVinci Code) round out the list. Evangelicals are the most readily recognizable presence on the list—they may even be the reason The DaVinci Code made it!

I wonder if evangelicals made it so high because, especially when reading Scripture, they have greater reason to want to remember what they read. People reading the three self-help books are doing the same, of course. Those books are the best bibles they have.

I’m not sure how Stieg Laarsson’s book got on here, then… Probably just because it’s so incredibly popular that a few highlights here and there times a couple million people who bought it equals a high ranking.

What an interesting world we live in.

A Truly Good Deal on an Exceptionally Good Series of Books

The New Studies in Biblical Theology series has the equivalent of a conservative Protestant imprimatur: “Edited by D.A. Carson.” (A J.I. Packer blurb was the going imprimatur, but he became a little too profligate with it [see no. 7 here] and we had to pick a new standard.) WTS Books is now offering a really fantastic deal on the whole set and on individual volumes: 50% off if you buy 5 or more; 52% off if you buy the whole set.

The books I’ve read are both excellent: Dominion and Dynasty: A Study in Old Testament Theology was an advanced primer, you could call it, in viewing the OT through a redemptive-historical, biblical-theological lens. This is a hot topic nowadays, but it’s not a fad: people outside the Reformed tradition are recognizing that the Bible tells one story, and this is a great thing. There is an antinomian ditch on that side of the road, but right now most people I know need to hear the message of books like this—they’re in the moralistic ditch and need to come to the middle.

The other book I’ve read from the series is A Clear and Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture in a Confused World. Just last night I spoke to a prospective United Methodist clergyman who was emphasizing the ambiguities of Scripture and concluding that he would remain a “moderate” rather than go the liberal or conservative routes. I found this book to be very helpful in explaining just how sure our word of prophecy is in this postmodern world. The phrase that has really stuck with me is that though clarity in our understanding of Scripture is often “hard-won,” that does not mean it is unclear.

I also own the following and have read here and there in them:

• Possessed by God: A New Testament Theology of Sanctification and Holiness
• God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery
• Shepherds after My Own Heart: Pastoral Traditions and Leadership in the Bible
• Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God’s Unfolding Purpose

I’m buying five more to take advantage of the 50% off deal. Take a look at the prices on those five compared to Amazon, the only other place I ever buy books, pretty much:

This is your best chance to get some good works from this set—or spring for the whole set of 26 for $293.28.

ST vs BT

I saved this little quote in my draft folder for some time, and when I pulled it out again I forgot where I got it. It sounded like John Frame, and I did a Google Books search for it fully expecting to see Frame’s Doctrine of the Word of God come up.

But no, it was Vos. Interesting.

Read and learn.

The difference between biblical and systematic theology is not that “one would be more closely bound to the Scriptures than the other. In this they are wholly alike. Nor does the difference lie in this, that the one transforms the Biblical material, whereas the other would leave it unmodified. Both equally make the truth deposited in the Bible undergo a transformation: but the difference arises from the fact that the principles by which the transformation is effected differ. In Biblical Theology the principle is one of historical, in Systematic it is one of logical construction. Biblical Theology draws a line of development. Systematic Theology draws a circle. Still, it should be remembered that on the line of historical progress there is at several points already a beginning of correlation among elements of truth in which the beginnings of the systematizing process can be discerned.”

Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1975 [Orig. Eerdmans, 1948]), 15–16.

Edwards on Church Music, the Ordinances, and our Affections

The “sacraments” or “ordinances” of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, in part, little pieces of art: miniature dramas that highlight precious truths. They are parallel in a significant way to church music, as Jonathan Edwards explains in his classic book, The Religious Affections,

The duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned why we should express ourselves to God in verse rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only that such is our nature and frame that these things have a tendency to move our affections.

The same thing appears in the nature and design of the sacraments which God hath appointed. God, considering our frame, hath not only appointed that we should be told of the great things of the gospel and of the redemption of Christ, and instructed in them by his Word; but also that they should be, as it were, exhibited to our view, in sensible representations, in the sacraments, the more to affect us with them.

That’s Why They Call it Pop

Very interesting!

Does anybody in New York listen to classical music? The closest we got was Sinatra! (Or Terry Gross, I suppose.)

HT: Jason Kottke

HT: Alan Jacobs

Another Problematic KJV Rendering

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” All modern translations render that last phrase with another word: “who suppress the truth.”

In contemporary English, to “hold the truth” means to believe it, to establish it as a tenet for oneself. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

The Greek word translated hold (κατέχω) means exactly that in 1 Cor 15. “I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”

So the KJV translators certainly have some justification in using the word hold in Rom 1. But what do they think this verse means? There are ungodly people who hold fast to the truth, who take it as a personal tenet—but they do so unrighteously? I suppose that’s possible. But suppress makes much better sense.

Usage Determines Pronunciation, Even of Obscure Old Testament Names

My post on Puritan names brings up an incidental point. I have heard preachers and laypeople alike trip up many times over the pronunciation of obscure Old Testament place and people names. I myself recently flubbed “Kibroth-hattaavah” in Sunday School. Who can blame us? These words just aren’t normal!

People often say, however, “I wonder how this word is supposed to be pronounced,” and the impression I get is that they believe the answer comes from a true knowledge of Hebrew or Greek. If I can find out how people in Bible times pronounced a word, I’ll know how I should pronounce it.

But we’re very unlikely to pronounce many ancient names the way they were pronounced by ancient people (and some of them even disagreed!). Our language does not include some of the sounds they commonly used. Pronouncing certain words “correctly” could actually be offensive; people might think you were getting ready to spit.

There’s a better way to pronounce Bible proper names. It starts with recognizing that Kadesh-Barnea, Kiriath-Jearim, and Maher-shalal-hashbaz are now, effectively, English words. It doesn’t matter—for purposes of preaching in English—how they were pronounced by ancient Jews or Greeks. The “right way” to pronounce them is determined by all the Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and—dare I say it—Catholic speakers of English who read the Bible today. What do most of them say? Usage determines pronunciation.

Does God Have Feelings? Does God Have a Body?

In a section of my dissertation critiquing the view that God has no emotions, I wrote the following:

If God is impassible, Zephaniah 3:17 is puzzling: “[The Lord] will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” God would have no reason to pile up these emotional descriptives—rejoice, love, gladness, exult, loud singing—if His emotional life had no correspondence with the one He gave to the human race. He gives explicit indications in Scripture that He has no body, and that descriptions of “His mighty arm” are therefore anthropomorphisms; but there are no such explicit statements to override the straightforward meaning of Zephaniah 3:17.

I inadvertently assumed a position that one of my committee members, Dr. Layton Talbert (author of two excellent books), finds objectionable. I decided to change it, after reading his comment:

[The concept of] anthropomorphism suffers the same deficiencies as anthropopathism. It confuses literalness with physicality. Anthropopathism runs into difficulties when you move from jealousy to love, hate, joy, etc. Anthropomorphism runs into difficulties when you move from arm to mouth, eye, or face. Spirit is not the same as “no body parts” (how would we know?), just no physical body parts. In any case, God does not give explicit indications in Scripture that descriptions of Him are anthropomorphisms. That is a theological construct.

Well. That persuaded me, at the very least, to drop my comment about anthropomorphisms in Scripture. No time to give this full consideration now, and I do wonder what a non-physical body part is. But I can’t deny that such a thing exists. This issue will have to go into the hopper; as I read the Bible it will come up now and again for evaluation.