Smackdown Move On the Classical World

He says, “Come, follow Me.”


“In that classical world, there is hardly a chance that the fool will speak wisdom. ‘Greeks seek wisdom, and the Jews seek signs,’ says Paul with rare defiance, ‘but I preach Christ crucified, a stumbling stone to the Jews and folly to the Greeks!’ But the folly of God is wiser than men. Wiser even than Greeks. It slaps the staid old classical world silly. There, a man who loses his reputation loses everything. But Christ made himself of no repute, and took the form of a slave, obedient unto death; and he made all things new.”


Professor Anthony Esolen of Providence College, Providence, RI. Quote from Humor on the Move, an article in TOUCHSTONE, May/June, 2010.


G. Mark Sumpter

More on Introduction, Ground Work

Working through Olson


Dr. Roger Olson rightly warns in his book, Arminian Theology,  about setting our terms and their meaning. The larger sweeping one that he at first sets forth is Calvinism. He begins saying that Calvinism is the “theology that emphasizes God’s absolute sovereignty as the all-determining reality, especially with regard to salvation” (p. 15). That’s a fair rendering. I have been taught some similar things—something like this: a comprehensive system of God’s glory in creation and providence; or maybe something like this—a life system based on the revelation of the glory of the Triune God.


Dr. Bob Godfrey of Westminster Seminary of Escondido, CA worked in earnest to have us read through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion in our three-year cycle of classes in Church History.


BB Warfield wrote with the heart when he reminded us that a basic definition of Calvinism is “pure religion.” He goes on to illustrate this by a man on bended knee in prayer. In prayer man is utterly, completely in the place of dependency. He says, “The Calvinist is the man who is determined to preserve the attitude he takes in prayer in all his thinking, in all his feeling, in all his doing.” See Warfield’s Shorter Writings, v. 1, p. 390.


Olson said, “…God’s absolute sovereignty as the all-determining reality, especially with regard to salvation.”


G. Mark Sumpter

Bulimia Matters.19

Circumstances and Commentary about John Calvin and Frequent Communion

“The cause for conflict that eventually led to Calvin's expulsion from Geneva lay in the Lord's Supper. Calvin wanted it to be celebrated on a weekly basis. As the sign and seal of the Word, it was only to be expected that the Word would be followed by the sacrament. This had been a tradition established for centuries, so why should it be changed? The city council, however, considered this too radical a departure from what Bern and Zurich were accustomed to. They also thought it a little too ‘Romish,’ and feared the people might get the same impression. Calvin cleverly suggested instead that the Lord's Supper be celebrated once every four weeks, rotating among the four churches in Geneva. The council saw right through this proposal, however, and the syndics and councilors of Geneva decided that four celebrations per year would suffice. The millions of Reformed believers throughout the world who continue to uphold this practice are thus out of line with Calvin and are actually defending the position of the much less Reformed politicians of sixteenth-century Geneva.”


Herman J. Selderhuis (John Calvin: A Pilgrim's Life, 2009, 79-80)

HT: PCA Pastor, Jon Payne

G. Mark Sumpter

Eugene Peterson On Learning and Schooling

A little interaction on a blog entry from Pastor John Barach

Eugene Peterson, pictured right, is quoted by John Barach here:

Eugene Peterson says that we all suffer from “an unfortunate education,” which “has come about through the displacement of learning by schooling”:

“Learning is a highly personal activity carried out in personal interchange: master and apprentice, teacher and student, parent and child. In such relationships, the mind is trained, the imagination disciplined, ideas explored, concepts tested, behavioral skills matured in a context in which everything matters, in a hierarchy in which persons form the matrix…. The classic methods of learning are all personal: dialogue, imitation, and disputation. The apprentice observes the master as the master learns; the master observes the apprentice as the apprentice learns. The learning develops through relationships expressed in gesture, intonation, posture, rhythm, emotions, affection, admiration. And all of this takes place in a sea of orality — voices and silences” (Working the Angles 93).

As Peterson points out, what he is describing here is the way children — even infants — learn from their parents. Interestingly, I noticed that my son picked up the music of “Thank you” before he could say the words: he was imitating our pitches, first a higher one (“Thank”) and then the lower (“you”).”

I saw this quote by Peterson and then read through the commentary on the part of Pastor Barach.

The Deuteronomy 6 passage could not be more clear on this topic that Peterson addresses. Moses gives his charge to parents to carry out the teaching and nurture of children as a way of life and living. Specifically, the point of being together walking along the road or sitting at a table or in the living room in the home, and the lying down and rising up shows the daily life give-and-take of instruction and training. The points of the Peterson quote about learning developing through relationships are spot on the mark.

What makes the Peterson quote particularly engaging—and the point that Pastor John conveys about his son learning how to say Thank You—turns on the expressions Peterson uses to describe the ingredients of learning: gesture, intonation, posture, rhythm, emotions, affection, and so on. These are the ingredients that are found in the dialog of worship liturgy.

Pastor Barach mentions that his son, as a very young child, was learning to say Thank You with a musical-like intonation. That makes for a strong connection between Sunday worship and the Monday-Saturday walk of life. Maybe we can call it liturgically-based learning.

G. Mark Sumpter