A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, under different vocational aspirations, I spent a couple of years in seminary. One of those years included a summer internship for the required pastoral care course. I signed up for the stint which took place through the local Christian Mental Health facilities, Pine Rest and Wedgwood Christian Services. Not to take anything away from any of those experiences or the good intentions of those coordinating the program, but I really only had two instances in which I learned something of practical Reformed value.

 
The first was a rather mundane orientation session with my fellow interns at the Pine Rest campus. In a nicely polished room around a very conducive conference table, we met with a team of resident psychiatrists who treated the chemically dependant. My group of fellow interns included an older man of Hispanic descent with a fairly strong accent. For the life of me, I cannot remember his name but I do recall I enjoyed saying it. I also like to say “Guido,” so for the sake of this effort I will call him that. Unlike the rest of us twenty-something’s, Guido was somewhere awash in his forties. He had a very demonstrative disposition generally speaking, and quite fond of letting his love for Jesus be known. Not to diminish that love, but his was that favorite American spiritual-narrative of being saved from a life of drugs, alcohol and a general string of what many ordinarily deem very bad judgments. And his model for ministry was probably best thumb-nailed as that other favorite psycho-spiritual outlook, “Jesus beats beer.”

 
When Guido’s turn came to introduce himself it didn’t take long for it to turn into the same excited story we’d all heard many times before about his previous life of debauchery now reformed. (To be honest, it wasn’t too unlike one of those charismatic “Just Say No” speakers we got in the 1980s between fifth period chemistry and lunch, only this time with Jesus stapled on at the end). This venue, he claimed, was perfect for him because he, too, had been down and out on the sauce. Eventually the “Jesus is betta’ than drugs and don’ nobody need no stickin’ shrink to get betta’!” speech kicked into high gear. While most of my peers nodded in requisite affirmation, I looked at my feet as it went on and on, until a rather understated voice took advantage of Guido’s need to take a breath. It was one of the psychiatrists. I couldn’t see him from my angle.  “Well, actually,” he suggested, “what most of these folks need is precisely a psychiatrist. They really don’t benefit from the false hope that faith fixes their problems.” I nodded in requisite affirmation. I am not sure I have witnessed, up close and in person anyway, a finer example of Calvinism putting the kibosh on well meaning but misguided piety. I was as boosted by the doctor’s Calvinist correction as my peers were mesmerized by Guido’s revival. The meeting pressed on otherwise unremarkably.

 
The second instance happened during a stint in juvenile lock-down on the Wedgwood campus. These were the kids so bad that they lived in what can only be described as a small prison. One side of the building housed females, the other males. I was to go and spend time with the girls. They seemed like the too-cool-for-school adolescents I had when I taught high school literature, only times ten. It reminded me of just what turned me off about teaching high school in the first place. Frankly, I didn’t want to be there at least as much as them. This was during the WWJD craze when all the kiddos wore those bracelets meant to spark redeemed conversation.

 
Of all things, the cell-block curiously included one standard-issue pool table.  One girl, for whatever reasons, took up my offer for a round of eight-ball. After another awkward round laced with cynical, pre-pubescent undertones of anger and resentment for which I had relatively little patience, I decided to push the panic button, take a deep breath and ask what gave with the WWJD bracelet. Of course, having a slew of evangelical nieces and nephews, I knew the deal. And so did she: the wearer was obligated to “go Guido” on the inquirer.  I knew that she knew that I knew that she knew I was playing the asinine game set up by insipid spirituality in order to “connect with a teen” I really didn’t care to connect with and who could’ve cared less about my presence.  I think we both threw up a little bit. But she was the bigger man and mercifully played along for my sake: “It stands for Wedge Wood Juvenile Delinquent.”  That wasn’t exactly the sort of redeemed conversation the designers of popular piety had in mind. But I have always remembered that remark. And it’s not just because I’m a hopeless sucker for contrarian, sarcastic wit.  But also because, she, like the psychiatrist at Pine Rest, had probably a more realistic understanding of herself than any patronizing counselor who wanted her to be as in love with herself as God is reckoned by some to be.

 
And that’s what I learned at camp.

Given that he regularly prayed “not to be too tied to this world,” was Calvin really the fount of all things transformational? Can he really be claimed for the sunny projects of modernity that seek to make life, every day and in every way, better and better?

But I wonder, speaking of transformers and life, given that Jesus will replace the sun with himself, dissolve our marriages and re-name us (three things I really like—well, I wish my folks had gone with something like “Wolf,” as in “Wolf Blitzer.” I bet that guy never pays for a drink with that name), what do transformational Calvinists make of biblical data that suggests we are to hate not only our dads and daughters should they get between us and Jesus, but our very lives should they do the same? Not only does this put a crimp in the family-values stuff, but it makes me seriously wonder yet again what stake conservative Calvinists have in the culture-of life-festivities. If natural life itself is finally to be despised because only super-natural life yields the intentions of our original design, and if the implication of becoming human at conception is to join the ranks of sinners born to die instead of privileged creatures entitled to rigorous protection against the ordinary pains and injuries of this mortal coil, then shouldn’t traditionalists who claim both the culture-of-life and Calvin (and Augustine) check their math?

It’s one thing for the culture-of-lifers to get one’s vote (depending heavily on the particulars), but it seems another to also make a grab for the Calvinist’s soul. After all, if conservative Calvinists can be rightfully skeptical about western notions of human goodness, freedom and the will, it routinely escapes me how the same folks mayn’t cast the same dim light on notions of this passing life and instead opt for brighter assumptions about what it means to put on flesh.

Regardless of what one thinks of Clinton’s political thumbnail, one must admit it is fairly workable, at least to those of us who prefer to only paint in broad strokes. When one wants to know what the difference is between a confessionalist and an evangelical it might be that, instead of the 60s, Billy Graham could be employed. If you think Billy Graham is mostly a good thing, you’re probably an evangelical. If you think Billy Graham is mostly a bad thing, probably a confessionalist.

More specifically, if you claim him but also think accounts of Calvin such as those marked out recently at Old Life are mostly causes for stumbling and hesitation, you’re probably evangelically Reformed. If you think they are edifying but lament their demise anymore, you’re probably confessionally Reformed.

Not worship but conversion.

The Calvinist has the reputation of being a strong logical reasoner; nevertheless, because he makes the Bible his ultimate foundation, he does not hesitate to include in his system ideas difficult for reason to harmonize, ideas which seem to be logical opposites, as long as the Bible gives him reason for doing so.

This fact is of great importance. It keeps the Calvinist from becoming a one-sided extremist. A few examples may serve as illustrations. Take the seemingly logical opposites of predestination and human responsibility. John Calvin and Calvinists believe wholeheartedly in absolute predestination. But nowhere do you find human responsibility stressed more emphatically than in Calvin’s writings and among Calvinists. If you should ask the Calvinist, “But how do you harmonize these two?” he would reply, “That is unnecessary! God reconciles them, and that is enough for me.” While he can illuminate this harmony to a certain extent, basically it is a mystery and he is content to let it be so.

Or take these two opposites: the doctrine of election, which stresses God’s activity, and the covenant of grace as a responsibility, which stresses man’s activity. Although the study presents problems, there is no group that maintains both as ardently as does the Calvinist.

Again, reflect upon these facts which to some appear as opposites, namely, sin and grace as they affect man. There is no system that puts man the sinner down so low as does the Calvinist with his doctrine of total depravity. But there is none that places the Christian on a higher pedestal or demands more of him than does the Calvinist.

You might adduce the eternal conflict about the relation between spirit and matter. The materialist is always trying to reduce spirit to matter. The idealist pantheist maintains that matter arose from spirit. The Calvinist does not hesitate to accept the dualism of matter and spirit. He maintains that these are distinct substances, created by the same God, but as distinct from one another as they are from God the Creator.

Another apparent conflict is the one between separation from the world and culture. Whereas the secular man feels nothing for separation from the world, some Christians lay all stress on separation from the world but do not realize their calling to share in the cultural development of the world and their duty to be leaven in human society. The Calvinist keeps his equilibrium by stressing both as the Bible demands.

A last example we call attention to the contrast between intellectualism and mysticism. Men are inclined to be either one-sidedly intellectual or emotional in their religious life. One of the very best attributes paid to Calvin and the Calvinistic movement in this respect is that they have been called by some intellectualists, by others mystics, and by still others voluntarists who stress the will in religion. Certainly Calvinists must be balanced Christians if they can be charged with stressing all three. It is needless to say that Calvinists have not always fulfilled the demands of Calvinism. They have at times been one-sided, stressing either the intellect or the will or the emotions. But in so doing they have not practiced a full-orbed Calvinism, which provides for a proper emphasis on all three.

H. Henry Meeter, The Basic Ideas of Calvinism, Pgs. 41-42

John Calvin that is.

MP3 HERE

This is the radio station I produce for. I suggested to one of our reporters that he should do an interview for John Calvin’s 500th. He thought it was a good idea because this is Grand Rapids and Calvin College is here. I suggested he talk to Richard Muller at Calvin Seminary. He tried, no answer. Then I suggested he talk to Joel Beeke and Puritan Seminary but this reporter wanted someone from the namesake college or seminary. He ended up speaking with Karin Maag. I had never heard of her but I think she did a pretty good job. I chuckled when she talked about predestination and said, “There’s even evidence for it in Scripture” almost as if she can’t believe it (or is apologizing for it?).

Mind you, this is not Christian radio, the interviewer pleads ignorance because he truly doesn’t know much at all about Calvin.

Institutes 2.11.3 is exactly what Kline is talking about with his term Intrusion.:

This is why we read that the saints under the Old Testament esteemed mortal life and its blessings more than we ought today. Even though they well knew they were not to stop there as at the end of their race, yet because they recognized what the Lord had imprinted on them to be marks of divine grace to train them according to the measure of their weakness, they were attracted by its sweetness more than if they had contemplated his grace directly. But as the Lord, in testifying his benevolence toward believers by present good things, then foreshadowed spiritual happiness by such types and symbols, so on the other hand he gave, in physical punishments, proofs of his coming judgment against the wicked. Thus, as God’s benefits were more conspicuous in earthly things, so also were his punishments. The ignorant, not considering this analogy and congruity, to call it that, between punishments and rewards, wonder at such great changeableness in God. He, who once was prompt to mete out stern and terrifying punishments for every human transgression, now seems to have laid aside his former wrathful mood and punishes much more gently and rarely. Why, on that account they even go so far as to imagine different Gods for the Old and New Testaments, like the Manichees! But we shall readily dispose of these misgivings if we turn our attention to this dispensation of God which I have noted. He willed that, for the time during which he gave his covenant to the people of Israel in a veiled form, the grace of future and eternal happiness be signified and figured under earthly benefits, the gravity of spiritual death under physical punishments.

“More” than what?  More in Israel than in non-theocratic common eras before and since (2.10.23): “Christ the Lord promises to his followers today no other ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ than that in which they may ’sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’ [Matt. 8:11].”

And what was the lesson God wanted us to learn from Israel?  How to build an earthly nation that God would prosper?  On the contrary (2.10.20):

I shall warn my readers beforehand to remember to open up their way with the key that I previously put into their hands. That is, whenever the prophets recount the believing people’s blessedness, hardly the least trace of which is discerned in the present life, let them take refuge in this distinction: the better to commend God’s goodness, the prophets represented it for the people under the lineaments, so to speak, of temporal benefits. But they painted a portrait such as to lift up the minds of the people above the earth, above the elements of this world [cf. Gal. 4:3] and the perishing age, and that would of necessity arouse them to ponder the happiness of the spiritual life to come.

I’d say more than that, but why would I want to?

 
In 1740 New Sider Gilbert Tennent preached the notorious sermon entitled “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” The gist was that any who had the audacity to question the New Side were not just misguided, under-tutored or even wrong. They were, in fact, unconverted. He eventually repented of the low-ball of desperation. Doubtless, though, he likely scaled back his indictment to match what the Old Lights had said of his side: wrong.

At Reformation21 Phil Ryken relays the take John Piper has on the phrase “born again” and why someone needs to, evidently, step up to the plate and get everything cleared up. Thus, per Ryken, Piper writes:

“When the Barna Group uses the term ‘born again’ to describe American church-goers whose lives are indistinguishable from the world, and who sin as much as the world, and sacrifice for others as little as the world, and embrace injustice as readily as the world, and covet things as greedily as the world, and enjoy God-ignoring entertainment as enthusiastically as the world — when the term ‘born again’ is used to describe these professing Christians, the Barna Group is making a profound mistake.

What the research shows instead, according to Piper, “is not that born-again people are permeated with worldliness,” but “that the church is permeated by people who are not born again.” 

Does the spirit of Tennent live on, now with an eye toward the sheep instead of the shepherds?

What is curiously absent Piper’s analysis is the notion that “born-again-ism” has a lot less to do with the alleged antinomianism (which proves degeneracy) of certain folk and instead more to do with an accent placed heavily upon inward experience. But he seems to want to go with the former.

This kind of thing seems ubiquitous and quite popular.  One sees it all the time, the idea that ours is an age that would “make Babylon blush.” And to some extent I get it. I watch TV, too. But why does it always seem that when the trigger is pulled on social/cultural/religious critique the chosen target is always how “seedy” we all are with the implication to “do better”? Given that the Pauline antithesis is this age/next age it would seem that we might have just as much chance at misguided virtue as natural vice. This tendency to call into question the alleged antinomianism of certain folks, after a while, begins to look a lot like the stuff of urban legend because it’s actually much easier to find legalists than antinomians. After all, human beings were originally made for law. It’s not only in our nurture but quite in our nature. We come by it honestly enough. Recall that Eve was our first legalist. She could have done lots of things with the fruit, up to and including bringing it home and placing it on her mantle as a conversation starter. But in responding to the serpent’s bidding she added to God’s law by saying something about not being able to touch it. God never said that. Could it be that to make “born-again-ism” turn on behaviorism instead of experientialism is a signal that what is roaming the earth seeking whom it may devour is actually what prompted Eve to initiate the “don’t handle, don’t touch” rule?

If what is supposed to distinguish believers from non- is that the former are somehow appreciably less given to greed, lust, injustice, coveting and all the rest along come our confessions:

• Belgic Confession

Art. 24: “…we can do no work but what is polluted by our flesh, and also punishable; and although we could perform such works, still the remembrance of one sin is sufficient to make God reject them.”
• Westminster Confession of Faith

13,2 “This sanctification is throughout, in the whole man; yet imperfect in this life, there abiding still some remnants of corruption in every part….”

16,2 “These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith….”

16,5 “…and as they [good works] are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment.”
• Westminster Larger Catechism

Q and A 78: “…their [believers’] best works are imperfect and defiled in the sight of God.”

• Heidelberg Catechism

Q and A 62: “…the righteousness which can stand before the tribunal of God must be absolutely perfect and wholly conformable to the divine law, while even our best works in this life are all imperfect and defiled with sin.”

Q and A 114: “…even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience….”

It would seem to me that, if our confessions are right, there isn’t a whole lot to brag about, and the proposed template for distinction begins to diminish hand over fist. It appears that we should expect to be more sinful than not, even those we might think are the holiest of us and those works we would dare call our “best.” Why do I get the feeling with Piper that classes of believers are about to be arranged, those who are carnal and those who are top-flight?

 
As tempting as Piper’s implication is, it may actually be that what distinguishes believer from non- is that the former heed word and take sacrament which affirm time and again that we are finally no different from the pagan but that only there by the grace of God go we.

I know I said my vacation was to be unplugged. But, in my defense, I did say it would be relatively unplugged. My wife is glaring at me as I type. And after reading the first few chapters of Harry Stout’s critical history The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism I couldn’t help but share a bit. (If it makes my wife feel any better, the two dudes wearing John-Deere caps and wife-beaters around the pool also gave me rather getting off-putting looks as I read such an Urkel-y titled book. They later exchanged whispers on the ferry ride to Downtown Disney. Maybe I should have been more Whitefield-like as he traversed the Atlantic on his way to Georgia with all those salty sailors and soldiers he determined to convert?)

Whitefield had an extensive background in theatrical performance. It became one of the things with which he had a love-hate relationship. In the introduction, which helps begin sketch out what the remaining chapters portray as a man more at home on stage than in a pulpit,  Stouts writes:

Before Whitefield, everybody knew the difference between preaching and acting. With Whitefield’s preaching it was no longer clear what was church and what was theater. More than any of his peers or predecessors, he turned his back on the academy and traditional homiletical manuals and adopted the assumptions of the actor. Passion would be key to his preaching, and his body would be enlisted in raising passions in his audience to embrace traditional Protestant truths.

Contained in this theater-driven preaching was an implicit model of human psychology and homiletics that saw humankind less as rational and intellectual than as emotive and impassioned. In eighteenth century actors’ manuals, the individual psyche was divided into a triad of feelings, intellect, and will in which feelings reigned supreme. An unfeeling person is a   nonperson, a mere machine with highly sophisticated mental functions. It is the passions that harmonize and coordinate intellect and will. In fact, they control and direct all the faculties.

We are familiar with the traditional Protestant formulation of understanding the human agent as being one comprised of intellect, affect and will, where the intellect (not the emotions) “reigns supreme” and is that which “harmonizes and coordinates emotions and will” and “controls and directs all the faculties.”  Note how instead of theological assembly Whitefield took the cues of theatrics, as well as slight-of-hand, and came up with a formula that helped make him what is arguably the Godfather of a modern revivalism which has, however apparantly slight, a fundamentally different and necessary arrangement on the human psyche.

So brilliant was Whitefield at acting instead of preaching, later Stout writes about the close relationship between Whitefield and deist Benjamin Franklin. He describes Whitefield as so absolutely masterful at his itinerant tasks and  theatrics that Franklin paid good money in order, as Tina Fey might say, to meet the felt need “to want to go to there.” What is remarkable is that Franklin did not believe one word of what the otherwise Calvinist Whitefield preached.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would hope that if I were to ever have the weighty charge of preaching God’s Gospel it would give me great pause to know that  a perfect pagan wanted to hear me as much as  he didn’t believe me. It would suggest to me that what I was doing had more to do with me than my appointed task or he to whom I meant to point.

As my family and I will be in Florida on a relatively unplugged winter break for a spell, this is a re-post.

Forrest’s mama always described the hole in his life most of us call “dad” as he who was eternally ”on vacation.” In her masterful and indelible performance, it was never clear just what Sally Fields meant by that phrase, though we likely could narrow it down a skosh. It was a mystery we were supposed to endure along with Forrest. Don’t worry, my kids are very much with me on this vacation…as well as my wife…who, by the way, is also named Jenny. And seeing as how Jen utterly detests Michigan in the winter, mama’s definition of “vacation” would probably suit her just fine:

Forrest to Mama: “Mama, what’s ‘vacation’ mean?”

Mama to Forrest: “‘Vacation’ is when you go away…and you don’t ever come back.”

Anyway…

One of my favorite movies is (don’t laugh) Forrest Gump. I usually take it in the teeth for admitting that. I am not sure why, but it has not kept me from still ‘fessing up. While I am hesitant to look for bits of Christian truth in popular, secular culture I can’t help always to wonder if Forrest might do Calvinism better than some Calvinists. You recall what Forrest said when Jenny prayed that God would make her a bird but retained her knees instead of sprouting wings:

“God is mysterious.”

And when Jenny died he admitted over her grave:

“ I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but, I think maybe it’s both.”

Maybe it takes something of a mental midget to be able to live with a both-and sort of answer, to be at ease with that sort of tension, indeed to be a Calvinist. I wonder what it says about my own mental state that the older I get the better able I am to live with what is commonly called mystery. But if my own comfort with it increases I can’t help but sense forces that would rather I don’t.

Reformed Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology R. Scott Clark toggles between mystery-immune phenomenon using two acronyms. QIRC (Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty) is defined as “the search for absolute certainty through finding the one fact, truth, or explanation of reality which gives coherence to all other facts or phenomena.” He offers a couple of examples of this rationalist impulse shows itself. In the face of multitudinous Bible translations in the modern era that some think signal an erosion of biblical authority, he cites the “King James only” phenomenon as a sort of Protestant version of “Latin only” in the Roman Mass. Stick with what is not only familiar but has a layer of abstrusely and the dam against uncertainty will hold. Or take the more ubiquitous notion that the Bible is a handbook for all earthly endeavor from child rearing to civil government or moral reform instead of the “infallible and inerrant revelation of God’s saving work and Word in history.” Make revelation relevant to any and all human endeavor and we may be at ease. But as Clark points out, there is a difference between the classical Reformed view of Scripture (i.e. sufficient for “faith and life”) and the mistaken idea that it has something direct and obvious so say about ordering this temporal world.

Then there is QIRE (Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience). Clark basically defines this age-old impulse to be the “quest to experience God apart from the mediation of Word and sacrament,” or as Luther put it, “the quest for the vision of God (visio Dei)…the desire to see God ‘naked’ (Deus nudus).” Clark cites as examples those phenomenon from medieval mysticism to “Anabaptist-spiritualist movements in the early 16th century, in the spiritualism of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, in pietism in the 17th and 18th centuries, and finally in modern revivalism in the 18th and 19th centuries.” To the extent that we use words like “relationship” over “fellowship” with God; seek to groom our inward lives with God to the relative neglect of Word and sacrament; herald the self in interpreting the Bible over confessional forms in creed, confession and catechism; or otherwise break down the mediatory nature of true religion, we may be more affected by this Quest than we think.

It strikes me that both Quests are equally discomforted by that which might be understood as the mysterious. They are at home with concepts like absolute certainty and jell-like mysticism, but not mystery.

Or take something like Sinclair Ferguson’s “6 Ways to Discovering God’s Will.” With all due respect to a Reformed stalwart like Ferguson, I have always found these approaches to piety really quite odd. I won’t rehearse the Ways here, since I am sure most reading are familiar with such formulas. Suffice it to say that when I dig far enough I find within them the same operating principles I find when I observe parents outfitting their children in head-to-toe crash gear before peddling a block to school. I am all for the stuff of safety, sobriety and well thought out plans. Just ask my much more spontaneous and slightly annoyed wife. But there seems a difference between common sense and insulating ourselves in decision making from initial uncertainty or final regret—and in thinking we have figured out God to boot. The 6 Ways stuff has always been cause for more questions than answers for me. What are we supposed to be able to conclude after applying the 6 ways? That because we saturated something in the 6 Ways that it is all right to proceed, or that we ought not to fret that we did the wrong thing? And what are Calvinists to make of this idea that we may live relatively free of regret? What does that do to the idea of confession of sin? Are we really to believe that we have figured out the secret and infinite counsels of God? What about Dt. 29:29 that says “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law”? What about John Calvin’s idea that the secret counsels of God are “a labyrinth from which there is no hope of return”? And if these questions are an overreaction to the principles of something like the 6 Ways, what is it exactly we should be getting from them? If I ought not to assume I am going to plumb the secret mysteries of God maybe the title should change. But to what: 6 Ways to Sort of Get a Handle on What God Might Want You to Do but Don’t Count on It Since Who Really Knows? One wonders if such a project as that is now worth the effort. In the end, whatever else this sort of piety seems to imply—that we may significantly diminish uncertainty or regret and thereby increase creaturely comfort—it also seems too suggest that we may live without that discomforting thing called mystery. But for my part, I have become rather relieved to know that I may say “I don’t know” a lot.

Or take the latest Synod of the CRC where it saw overtures to allow parents to refrain from administering baptism to their covenant children. This isn’t anything new. Old School American Presbyterians have called this phenomenon in their circles “Bapterianism.” The forces that seem stocked against the sacrament of paedo-baptism are varied: individualism, low views of the sacraments, rationalism, and mysticism. All these could be unpacked. But what has lately struck me is what might run through all of these, namely an aversion to mystery. There is a discomfort at having to grow into something that may not be immediately understood. Maybe it will never be understood. At the risk of sounding too speculative, I don’t really understand how one plus one equals two. But I don’t fight it much and have found that a workable posture most days. I don’t understand how water, bread and wine are supposed to nurture my faith. But God and His Church seem to think the two go hand-in-hand. John Calvin said of the other sacrament, the Supper, “I’d rather experience it than understand it.”

There is another great wrestling match with mystery—human responsibility and God’s sovereignty. How do these things work together? Many seem like Luther’s drunken horse-mounter, falling off one side or the other in trying to solve with this tension. Some emphasize one or the other. But as I go on as a Calvinist it seems that even here we are offered relief from the tortured ways of these drunkards; there is solving these tensions and then there is simply living with them. Scripture never seems to give up on either our responsibility or God’s sovereignty. Coupled with the high view of Scripture we have, my conclusion is that neither are we to give up on either. As a Calvinist, I have always conceived of these two conceptions to disappear behind a big, black circle and I have no idea what happens behind it. The real Quest seems to be a measure of comfort with mystery, not a discomfort needing to be relieved.