Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Monday, August 24, 2009

Ref21: Derek Thomas on Calvin's Institutes: 3.25.7-3.25.8




Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
3.25.7 - 3.25.8
Posted by Derek Thomas
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It is important for Calvin to stress that the form of bodily resurrection does not break with the present creation; rather, it will be creations completion. In the resurrection God proves himself as the Giver of Life (3.25.4). The notion that the resurrected soul will not receive the same body but something "new" and "different" is, for Calvin, "monstrous." Strong language for sure, and Lelio Sozzini (Socinus, as we know him in a Latinized version) is in Calvin's sights who had advocated the view. Continuity between this body and the resurrected body is essential: "as to substance we shall be raised again in the same flesh we now bear, but that the quality will be different" (3.25.8). Why the insistence? The answer is Christological. The body that was crucified on the cross must be the same body that enters into heaven and remains there: "He received again the mortal body which he had previously borne. And it would not profit us much if the body which had been offered as an atoning sacrifice had been destroyed and replaced by a new one" (3.25.7). Our present union with Christ consists of a union with both Christ's death and resurrection. The cases of Enoch and Elijah confirm Calvin's thesis. Their bodies were merely taken into heaven - the quality was changed but not the essence of the flesh.


Behind Calvin's defense of the nature of the resurrection body lie sixteenth century reformulations of the Platonist, Gnostic and Manichaean heresies which view the present world as a prison-house for the soul and cast the material universe itself as evil; goodness is only to be found in the spiritual or non-material realm. Instead, Calvin saw this world containing within itself the yearning for consummation and fullness.

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