I know exactly what happened. Gang-like activities. I became involved with a mildly predatory nocturnal set. The arrangements required a certain social dexterity to avoid parental scrutiny. It was my earliest experience with what we now refer to as strategic planning. Who had time for reading?
Later, as a Dartmouth College freshman, I discovered that there were people still on earth who expected me to read again. Unreasonable, but nonetheless a fact. And, as a result, I came to conclude that reading was an ineffable, strange business. Far too subtle to be taught in school.
There is some degree of truth to the theory that book learning in general got upgraded with Christians. Relaunched with Origen and Eusebius, restyled with the contemplative writers and scholastics of the medieval past, and becoming explicit with the dogmatics of the Reformation years, books have never been the same since Jesus. One thing this turns out to suggest is that the Protestant Reformation and the Puritan movement were reading events.
How long did it take Calvin to write a book? It varies. But if we consider The Institutes, Calvin laid down his pen on the first edition in 1535, published it in 1536, and sent forth his last draft on his final edition in 1559. But there is still more to be said. Before beginning to write he had read deeply in the classic theologians of the early church, as well as in the works by his near contemporaries, Luther, Zwingli, Erasmus, and Bucer. It is evident in what he wrote.
And what this left me wondering was not only how little was lodged within my own head but how much of his bibliography should be required reading for all of us who like to sing his hymn. It did implant the humbling consideration that anyone who wanted to reform the church some more should begin by reading what he read and asking what happened when he read it.
The historical context in which Calvin lived led him to realize that, until all of the church polity abuses got out of hand, the most influential of its writers had drunk consistently from wells sunk deep within the underlying water table of Christian doctrine. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) put in his spade, and Symeon the New Theologian (11th century) and Gregory of Palamas (14th century) continued to draw the water. Dionysus (6th century) opened up the soil, and Albert, Aquinas, and Eckhart continued to be nourished.
Is that not an intriguing thought? There are no solo prospectors producing gold in the church’s stream. When Calvin pondered Scripture and wrote his books, his theological ancestors were strolling with him in the byways of his mind. As so he continues to trouble us with his diligence. What midnight companions, we ask, open up the acknowledged avenues of grace for us before we begin to speak of the mysteries no one has seen?
For those of us who unfortunately first encountered Christian doctrine as squarely chiseled hunks of stone, Calvin’s anguish cries out from between the lines. The prayers he must have offered in tears can be sensed playing like St. Elmo’s fire across the lines. You turn some pages and you walk into rooms where something like electricity is still dancing around the walls.
Who among us is up for this? Christian doctrine rightly taught is the most subtle of crafts. If you tried to read it once and it died within you, read the church mystics for a while and it will become alive, like a varmint you once thought dead, leaping in your hands. Doctrine and prayer dance together down the hallways of our minds.
When sin reaches up into our thought, its power is often unfolded in transcendent, cosmic terms. And is this not because we feel it sucking at the sinews of our lives in ways which we cannot define? Sin can not be measured completely in empirical terms. Impacted by our hurts and angers, regrets and passions (as the Orthodox put it) and the unmistakable taint of unfaithfulness, the serpent’s bite is hard to understand much less release.
And here is where Calvin still demonstrates that he must teach us all how to read again. He invites us to the slow dance of reading our way into the doctrines once thought buried. The more we begin to read as carefully as he wrote, edition following edition until he got it right, the more we see that God alone really deals with sin. It is the ravine that our practical skills can never bridge. For all of Calvin’s concern for church polity and ethical issues when it comes to the wound that never heals he returns to the classic Christian doctrines. Christ, the Trinity, sin and redemption are filled with possibilities. They do not merely represent the heritage of the truth; they become realities inseparable from cleansing and restorative power. They reach to the root cause that our best efforts never touch.
Locked away in old books? This is hardly the case. But as Calvin read his way into these old sources he found through them the confidence that he was indeed on the right track. John Calvin’s accomplishments illustrate the old maxim that “we are what we read.”
Who, however, has time to read any more? Life moves at a fast pace. Problems call for solutions. Strategic plans are needed. Gang-like, well-intended groups await and tensions mount. And this is when Calvin takes us gently by the hand. “I still have something you might not like at first,” he says. “Reading lessons. The church needs you to sink deep wells. It may seem unreasonable, but it is a fact. Drill now, as someone has recently said, but drill beyond where I myself have gone. My fascination with Christian doctrine can be exceeded even by your own.”
Richard A. Ray is chairman of the Board of Directors of the Presbyterian Heritage Center in Montreat, N.C., and general editor of the Kerygma Bible Study Program.
