Observations on the Current State of Reformed Theology

ESSAY:
Observations on the Current State of Reformed Theology
by Gerhard Sauter
Professor of Theology, Bonn University, Bonn, Germany.

In 1980, I was asked to write a comprehensive article on dogmatics for the Theologische Realenzyklopädie, the most extensive theological encyclopaedia of our time. In order to get an adequate survey, I called the editor some time later to ask him who would be the contributor for Reformed theology. He replied: “Who is a really genuine, typical, and representative Reformed theologian in Germany today?” Then I realized that I could not answer the question satisfactorily. The editor told me just to include Reformed theology in my article. By the way: Some weeks later I called the editor again asking him about Roman Catholic dogmatics. His answer was the same: “Simply include it.” And so I tried to accomplish the survey after consultations with Catholic colleagues.

Of course, there are biblical scholars and church historians at departments of theology in German universities and seminaries who think of themselves as being Reformed. But in what respect is there a comprehensive, characteristic Reformed theology? Jürgen Moltmann, for example, claims to be linked with Reformed Theology and was sometimes a speaker at meetings of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC). Still—you may ask—what is really “Reformed” in his way of doing theology? Moltmann is devoted to a kind of political theology that seeks to open the future by permanently cutting off Christian traditions or transforming them into a striving for social change, for peace, and for social justice. Here, the Bible is sometimes understood literally as a blueprint for new social and international structures, e.g., reconciliation conceived as reparation of distorted relationships. Such a radicalized social ethics—with an immediate biblical frame of reference including directly applied images and symbols—has often been ascribed to Calvinistic traditions. In the later sixties, seventies, and eighties, the Moderamen des Reformierten Bundes (the association of Reformed parishes in former West Germany) argued for this kind of theology. The same was the main direction of Reformed theology in France many times. In the Czech Republic, the tradition of Jan Hus, which predates the Reformation, advances the social ethical orientation of theology and stresses the involvement of church and theology in critical social engagement. Nowadays, though, many younger Czech theologians are aware of the fact that at least between 1969 and 1989 there was hardly any space for constructive voices and realistic views even in the church and in theological education, but often only subordination to the interests of the government, alongside political oppression.¹

Of course, there is a wide range of perceptions of how Reformed theology can contribute to social ethics and respond to political challenges. Joachim Staedtke, who held the chair of Reformed theology in Erlangen (Bavaria) in the nineteen-sixties, emphasized a wide range of social issues, especially concerning public policy, in order to outline a profile of the task of Reformed theology in a strongly Lutheran oriented faculty. Hans-Joachim Kraus, who succeeded the distinguished Reformed theologian Otto Weber at Göttingen, understood biblical and systematic theology as a constructive enterprise for interpreting the kingdom of God as a historical process which produces peace, justice, and true, meaningful life.² Wallace M. Alston, a Presbyterian minister and the current director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, points to his teacher Paul L. Lehmann and states:

Michael Welker emphasizes the heritage of Reformed “covenantal theology” (God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, the New Covenant through Jesus Christ). He concludes that faith

What was and what is the impact of Karl Barth’s theology for Reformed theology? It would be a complicated and difficult task to seriously differentiate between the theology of Karl Barth and the Reformed tradition. When Karl Barth was called to Göttingen to take a professorship founded by American Presbyterians after World War One, first he studied the writings of Luther rather than of Calvin or Zwingli more intensely. Barth and his friends were mainly interested in the common substance of the theology of the Reformers in general because it was not really understood, or was misread, in recent theological education. I remember the prominent theologian Friedrich Gogarten, a contemporary of Karl Barth and at times one of his theological allies in the twenties. He told us that as a student at the beginning of the 20^th century the only class concerning the Reformation that he could attend during his study of theology focused on the buildings and the life-style in Wittenberg in the 16^th century. When Barth started to teach theology at Göttingen in 1921, he was forced by his rigid Lutheran colleagues to restrict his teaching to Reformed theology. In Münster and Bonn he taught systematic theology. In his Church Dogmatics (the first volume was published in 1932), he claimed to focus on a biblically grounded theology that could serve the entire membership of the Evangelical Church (evangelisch, in the German understanding: faithful to the euangellion, the Gospel). In Bonn he became familiar with a very traditional and rigid Reformed heritage, marked mainly by Hermann Friedrich Kohlbrügge (1803-1875), who had strongly emphasized the total sinfulness of all human beings, unable to face God’s glory and totally dependent on God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. Despite some similarities with his own theological enterprise, Barth, I was told,⁵ found himself out of line with this kind of Reformed piety, which was sometimes very conservative in political matters, too.

In the former Prussian territories, theological education and research were shaped by the merger of Lutheran and Reformed Churches, which formed the Evangelische Kirche der Union (Evangelical Church of the Union) in the first half of the 19^th century. A remarkable influence of the Reformed heritage is to be found in the presbyterial-synodal constitution of this church. Now, however, the differences within theological education in Europe involve the question of whether the curriculum must be rooted in the biblical canon and in the theology of the Reformation or in the Neo-Protestant (“liberal”) theology of religious culture.

Especially revealing, it seems to me, is the situation in Hungary with its strong Reformed population, which in former times powerfully opposed the Austrian regime and its links with the Roman Catholic Church. In the convention hall of the famous old seminary in Debrecen, there is a chair in memory of the political revolutionary Lajos Kossuth (1802-1894). Many Reformed Protestants supported the national uprising Kossuth led. After the other uprising in 1956, a so-called “Theology of Service” was developed mainly by Reformed Church officials and theologians.⁶ Its intention was to avoid the mistake of the past: the nationalistic and often politically conservative attitude that had followed the breakdown of the Austrian Empire. Unfortunately, the result was a strange alliance of church officials and the Reformed seminaries with the regime that came into power after World War II. Divine providence was identified with the course of history and understood as an irresistible movement toward perfect socialism.

This kind of theology claimed to serve the needs of society but often lacked the sound theological judgment and precision that would have provided more clarity in ethical and political matters. Karl Barth sometimes criticized this theology of history for its similarity to the German Christian ideology condemned in the Barmen Declaration (1934), but his objections are found only in personal letters. After 1948, Barth interfered in some aspects of church politics by strengthening its so-called progressive tendencies. In Hungary, however, critical voices were silenced, and even the representatives of the World Council of Churches who visited Hungary were unable, or at least unwilling, to understand the real situation, in which ministers and parishioners⁷ were estranged from church officials and theologians who approved the “Theology of Service.” Friends who were pushed into the background told me they felt neglected and even betrayed by the politics of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and by the many Reformed theologians in the West who were mainly interested in the social impact of Christian faith and hope, but not in forming sound theological judgments concerning the very difficult social, economic, and spiritual issues facing the church.

Today, Reformed theology in Hungary has to rebuild a reliable teaching ministry nearly from scratch. Church and theology must deal with a situation in which the church has enormous opportunity, for example in higher education, but lacks the spiritual and intellectual resources to match its responsibilities. At the same time there is on the one hand a dangerous inclination to develop a merely private religious life, a kind of solitary personal religiosity. On the other hand, Christians today need a very individual (not individualistic!) spiritual life, embedded deeply in the life of the church while being aware of God’s acting in public and personal affairs.

Now, how can we exhibit the proper characteristics of Reformed theology in order to clarify and strengthen it not only in Hungary, but throughout central Europe and perhaps also in the United Kingdom, in America, Asia, and Africa, and do so without being merely traditionalist, confessionalist, and anti-ecumenical?

Recently, two instructive collections of essays have been published. The first, entitled Toward the Future of Reformed Theology, was edited by David Willis, a retired Reformed scholar of Princeton Theological Seminary, and Michael Welker, the former professor of Reformed theology at Münster, now professor of systematic theology at the University of Heidelberg.⁸ The second collection containing contributions to conferences sponsored by the Center of the Theological Inquiry in Princeton addresses the identity as well as the ecumenicity of Reformed theology.⁹

In their introduction to Toward the Future of Reformed Theology, the editors regret that they have been unable to present a fully representative survey of the actual state of Reformed theology throughout the world because many requests for cooperation were turned down. This may be the reason for a kind of one-sidedness: most contributions are from the United States and Germany. Regrettably, a contribution from Korea with its strong impact on Presbyterianism is missing, although the Presbyterian Churches in South Korea constitute the most rapidly growing sector of Presbyterianism in the world today. Furthermore, for many of his fellow countrymen it is questionable whether John W. de Gruchy’s “Toward a Theology of Liberation,” as representative as it is for a prominent trend, can cover all contemporary Reformed theology in South Africa and its future.¹⁰ It would have been instructive if more recent theologians from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and the Netherlands had analyzed the situation of the church and theological education in their countries more deeply and with greater theological reflection.¹¹ The second volume provides a more diverse and complex overview, but for a comprehensive evaluation I am concentrating on the first.

Toward the Future of Reformed Theology gives a significant impression of a new tendency in Reformed theology around the world: traditions, culture, and the church are criticized on the grounds of reliance on the creative power of the Word of God and the integrative action of the Holy Spirit. The volume shows how biblical theology—understood as a special way of doing theology in general—will lead to a renewal of church doctrines and to transformations of ethical directives. This is a modern type of sanctification, which always has a special meaning in Reformed theology. In comparison with former surveys,¹² however, it becomes evident that the characteristics of Reformed worship, the foundations of the parishes, and the regional church orders that replace an absent common confession¹³ are hardly discussed in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology. Moreover, the theological derivation of ethical directives is rarely examined. Yet all these components shape the Reformed church and its life. Everybody who is confronted with the Reformed church recognizes at first glance the characteristics of Reformed piety which mark the distinctions between the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Reformed churches.

Let us therefore start first with the structure of the Sunday service. It should concentrate on the proclamation of the Gospel. According to the order of worship, all hymns and prayers, the call to worship, the confession of sin, the prayer for illumination, the affirmation of faith, the doxology, and the benediction surround the promise of the Gospel and its directives. Reformed preaching has often been very close to mere instruction for Christian life. Mostly preaching and education were intertwined—for example, in the work of John Knox, the Reformer of Scotland. Or think of the institutions of higher education founded by Presbyterians in the British colonies and of the farreaching activity of Presbyterians in the United States and their overseas missions on behalf of education until recent times. I observed impressive examples in Korea. The Gospel was understood as an inexhaustible force illuminating all realms of life and thought.

What an enormously rich and precious tradition!¹⁴ But is it really alive today, not only to social needs and endangered humanity but also to promoting the challenges of liberty, peace, and the conservation of the creation? How can sound spiritual guidance in matters of everyday life be distinguished sharply enough from sheer religious information on the one hand, and from ethical indoctrination on the other? And in a culture that is overwhelmed with semi-information by the mass media, how can a preacher give sufficient attention to preaching that gives real guidance? The preacher needs to rely on an extended spiritual knowledge and a sound training in forming a well-founded viewpoint and an independent judgment.

Reformed worship cannot rely on a rich liturgy and its theological message. In some churches, for instance in Switzerland, it consists only of salutation, a hymn, a prayer before the sermon, another hymn, and the so-called dismissal of the congregation. How much depends on the ability to listen, to concentrate, and to meditate! Does this service really speak to the whole person, not only to the person’s intellect or willpower? Can it be helped that the sanctuary is confused with a lecture room or a room suitable mainly for performances?

Immense treasures for the Reformed service and personal piety are the prayers of the Psalms.¹⁵ They contain the manifold forms of prayer: complaint, request, intercession, thanks, and praise. The person who prays gets in touch with the memories of God’s saving actions in the history of his people as well with his or her own existence under God’s judgment. Well-founded experiences of faith and hope are contained in the Psalms. Anyone who prays them regularly will learn bit by bit what it means to be a person before God. This will shape human self-perception. To discover and benefit from this richness will strengthen Christian anthropology. Another treasure is the doxology: a significant contribution of Reformed worship.¹⁶

The second step: I would like to question the administration of the church, especially the role of the presbytery and the synod.¹⁷ On the one hand, in Germany, in the thirties, there was the famous example of the gathering (coetus) of Reformed preachers in the German Rhineland, which started the theological opposition against the so-called German Christians, a group of church leaders, theologians, and laity close to the National Socialist movement. The gathering of Reformed pastors lead the to Barmen Synod in 1934, where Lutherans, Reformed and United theologians and church representatives agreed to the Barmen Declaration, the groundbreaking and pioneering consensus of obedience to the First Commandment in all realms of life, action, and thought. This was a fine example of independence in reasoning theologically, rooted in well-established and reliable structures of debate, mutual clarification and decision-making. On the other hand, I have often noticed recently in presbyteries and synods the temptation simply to follow political modes of discussion and decision-making. This can be decisive in periods of political oppression, as was the case in Hungary.¹⁸ It becomes urgent whenever there are factions in moral and in political issues—such as social unrest, gender problems and sexual ethics. How can we avoid theological judgments that are shaped by already rigid convictions that are merely decorated with theological motifs? Are there direct, immediate biblical analogies for the social and political issues of our times? What should be the theologically sound procedure in finding judgments for Christian ethics?

This leads us to a third marker of Reformed theology. We have to take into account the readiness to revise church doctrines by discovering the inexhaustible richness of biblical witness that is neither harmonized nor systematized. How can we think and act in a way that is shaped by sincere biblical theology, formed by the biblical narrative?¹⁹ Let us discover the constitution of theological arguments by being faithful to the Scripture that is faithful to us! The Reformed tradition directs our attention especially to the Old Testament as a witness to Jesus Christ and as a treasury of God’s promises.

Since Calvin, the Reformed study of the Bible has paid particular attention to the connections of biblical texts with one another and with Scripture as a whole. One form of sermon—which was taken over from the early church, and for a long time cultivated by the Reformed church—has contributed to the reading of the Bible. Single biblical texts were not considered in isolation but in their context of meaning and in their literary context.²⁰ The “homily,” the exegesis of larger sections of the Scripture Sunday after Sunday, helps those members of the parish who regularly take part in the service increasingly to understand the connections. This also helps to avoid one-sidedness, which would easily arise if only a few texts of the Bible were known and always repeated. By means of the homilies the congregation is educated to listen to the different voices of the Bible and to be open to the variety of spiritual insights, which enrich the parish and encourage the continuous and mutual dialogue of the parishioners today.

There is, fourth, the rational nature of Reformed theology²¹—a rationality that, for example, comes into effect when faithful people speak of having recognized God’s acting in history and in social affairs, or of God’s providence directing personal life and the fortune of a church or a nation.²² To be sure, this rationality can be in opposition to faithfulness to the Scriptures whenever it misuses biblical texts merely as information about true reality; this information—sometimes almost an indoctrination—may hinder listening to the living Word of God speaking in and through the Scripture. There was even a certain affinity between the rationality of Reformed tradition and the Enlightenment. There was and is also a distinctive Reformed habit of faithful dealing with its tradition while being at the same time critical of it and open to reshaping it, in order to be not only Reformed but always open to radical reform of church life and reformulation of theology.²³ How can we respect this heritage and at the same time avoid sheer rationalism and religious ideology? The Reformed emphasis on divine illumination may almost lead to identification with critical and self-critical insights, as was sometimes the case under the influence of the Enlightenment.

Another marker of Reformed theology is, fifth, the awareness of God’s sovereignty, expressed especially in the doctrine of predestination and election. This awareness includes two components: the glory of God as the ultimate direction of human life in all its acting and suffering—to sum it up as John Calvin said: “What is the chief end of human life? To know God”²⁴—and the complete dependence of human destiny on God’s will.

Here let us again look at Toward the Future of Reformed Theology. Election has replaced predestination, probably under the influence of Karl Barth’s doctrine of election. Thus the theological intention has changed noticeably and profoundly. Calvin’s doctrine of predestination cannot be thought of without his doctrine of damnation: but everything had to be based on God’s judgment and acting. Often this was seen—contrary to Calvin’s intention—as drawing a clear dividing line between the faithful and the unbelievers and therefore marking the boundaries of the church, whereas Barth considered the election grounded in Jesus Christ as a far-reaching event that transcends human divisions. In addition, Calvin’s doctrine was pastorally motivated: people who wondered about their destiny, which God had decided before all time, had to learn to ask for God’s will throughout their entire life. They would not be able to rule out their own damnation all the time. This could culminate in a kind of scrupulous self-examination that frequently provoked a hopeless, fearfully uneasy conscience.

In his novel In the Beauty of the Lilies, John Updike describes a Presbyterian minister who had studied at Princeton Theological Seminary with “the two Hodges, and Benjamin Warfield . . . sitting down there in fox-hunting country, surrounded by estates and lettuce farms.”²⁵ Pressed by the incessant questions of a parishioner as to whether he could really die with the assurance of election, the minister himself begins to doubt his own faith. Has he ever had an incontestable experience of the presence of Christ? He cannot claim this, hence pure confidence in the grace of God is no longer sufficient. How can he go on preaching? How can he minister to the dying? This seems impossible to him, and he leaves his profession.

Here a man fails because of “the cruelty of a theology that sets us to ransacking our nervous systems for a pass to Heaven, even a shred of a ticket.”²⁶ Such a misery of the soul that could mold the religious conscience shaped by Reformed theology is, of course, a caricature. But it mirrors a picture of Reformed piety that is prominent in Western European culture and in the United States. It is foreign to Calvin’s theology and would be unthinkable for Karl Barth. However, as far as I can see, one characteristic of American Presbyterianism and its understanding of predestination is prominently reflected in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: There is a strong consciousness of one’s individuality, a confidence in one’s ability that can sometimes certainly include earthly success-seeking and at the same time a high degree of social responsibility. I have seen these impressive traits of character especially in older American Presbyterian lay people as well as in the Korean Bible studies and prayer services.

But in general, Calvin’s pastoral and individual-ethical approach which, at an earlier stage, influenced the Reformed doctrine of predestination is replaced in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology by a concept of election that will evoke trust in the creative-dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit and in the Spirit’s many-faceted powers. This confidence also motivates cultural criticism by means of the Word of God: to change creatively a world that is always in danger of falling prey to human stubbornness and reactionary thinking, urgently demands a constant critical attitude. But we have to keep in mind that God’s election does not allow us to show hostility to other churches and religions but rather makes us sensitive to the particularity of the church.

This leads us to the sixth special mark of Reformed theology, an unusually far-reaching doctrine of the Holy Spirit, especially of his boundless presence. That differs from classic Roman Catholic pneumatology, which tends to identify the Holy Spirit with the Roman Catholic church and its sphere of influence.²⁷ It differs as well from the traditionally strict and exclusive link of God’s Spirit with God’s Word and the mediation of the revealed Word of God to the present time and situation in the Lutheran tradition.²⁸ John Calvin extended the notion of the work of the Holy Spirit to the world, to society, and to culture.²⁹ And I am convinced that renewed attention to this topic would lead us above all to the insight that the notion of the diverse forms of God’s activity helps us to understand Christ’s presence as the Coming One in the Lord’s Supper.³⁰

Seventh, last but not least, there is the difficult and troublesome relation between eschatology and history. The eschatological course of Reformed theology began with Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich, rather than with Calvin, and was fully developed by Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669), who taught theology at Bremen (Northern Germany), Franeker and Leiden (Netherlands).³¹ This theology is based on the view that God has established several covenants, starting with the creation, or with God’s initiative after the fall of Adam and Eve, and culminating with the covenant of grace of God, Father and Son. These covenants divide history, and the biblical witness to them enables us to grasp all history and to understand momentous historical events in relation to the coming of the Kingdom of God. This conception of progressive salvation-history is a fruit from the tree of Reformed construction of our world in light of divine revelation. It traveled from the Netherlands up the river Rhine to Switzerland. In Zurich, the Reformed minister Johann Jacob Hess (1741-1828) developed a doctrine of the Kingdom of God according to the course of world history.³² It fit nicely with the idealist religious philosophy of history established especially by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. His philosophy merged—through the mediation of the Reformed minister and professor Christian Krafft (1784-1845)—with the Lutheran theology of salvation history (John Christian Karl von Hofmann, 1810-1877) at Erlangen. It became very influential throughout the 19^th century and is similar to American dispensational theology.³³

Failure to understand the clear connection between eschatology and theology of history has been, as I have tried to explain elsewhere,³⁴ one of the deficiencies of theology in recent times. It can also become, if soundly revised, one of the most important contributions of Reformed theology to the ecumenical dialogue.

These few remarks can only be a sketch, mainly of open questions that call all of us to be jointly engaged in drawing a fuller and more adequate picture. As Blaise Pascal said, “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what has to be put first.”³⁵

¹ Dr. Jan Stefan, who now teaches systematic theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the Charles University Prague (the former Comenius seminary, which honors the Moravian tradition), calls it the renewal of the old enthusiastic dream of “reforming the deformed church and world”: “Prager Notizen,” Evangelische Theologie 55 (1995): 239-43, esp. p. 240

² Hans Joachim Kraus, Systematische Theologie im Kontext biblischer Geschichte und Eschatologie (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1983).

³ Wallace M. Alston Jr., The Church of the Living God: A Reformed Perspective (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2002), p. 97.

⁴ Michael Welker, “Reformation Theology and the Reformed Profile,” The Bulletin of the Institute for Reformed Theology 3/1 (2003): 1, 4-9,16, quotation is from p. 7.

⁵ My late colleague J.F. Gerhard Goeters, a Reformed church historian at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at Bonn University and editor of the Reformed Books of Confessions, gave me this information.

⁶ See the documentation of Zoltán Balog: Mitarbeiter des Zeitgeistes? Die Auseinandersetzung über die Zeitgemäßheit als Kriterium kirchlichen Handelns und die Kriterien theologischer Entscheidungen in der Reformierten Kirche Ungarns 1967-1992, ed. G. Sauter (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997).

⁷ My late friend Ervin Vályi-Nagy and his disciples often explained this to me.

⁸ Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: Tasks, Topics, Traditions, ed. David Willis and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1999).

⁹ Reformed Theology: Identity and Ecumenicity, ed. Wallace M. Alston Jr. and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003).

¹⁰ See also his book Liberating Reformed Theology: A South African Contribution to an Ecumenical Debate (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans/Cape Town: David Philip, 1991).

¹¹ For Hungary, see István Szabó, “Einige Informationen zum Verständnis des ungarischen Protestantismus im 20. Jahrhundert,” Verkündigung und Forschung 38(1993): 73-81; idem, “Ungarischer Protestantismus—heute,” ibid., 81-85; Zoltán Balog, “Beobachtungen zur theologischen Neuorientierung in der Reformierten Kirche Ungarns seit 1989,” Evangelische Theologie 55 (1995): 217-29. For Romania, Tamás Juhász, “Zur Lage der Reformierten Kirche in Rumänien,” Evangelische Theologie 55 (1995): 229-38.

¹² E.g., Ferdinand Kattenbusch, “Protestantismus,” in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3^rd edition ed. Albert Hauck, vol. 16 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905), pp. 135-82, esp. 165-73.

¹³ A certain exception is The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which contains a Book of Confessions (Louisville: Office of the General Assembly, 1991). This Presbyterian Church is aware, as perhaps never before, that its confessional documents have a history and there is a responsibility for bearing witness to the Gospel not only in continuity with the confessional heritage but also with a critical consciousness of the tasks and issues confronting the church today. This consciousness is documented in the Confession of 1967, which concentrates on theological resources for critical social issues.

¹⁴ As it is explained, e.g., by Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship Reformed According to Scripture, rev. and expanded ed. (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2002).

¹⁵ Cf. Patrick D. Miller, They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994).

¹⁶ Hughes Oliphant Old, Themes and Variations for a Christian Doxology: Some Thoughts on the Theology of Worship (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992), esp. pp. 121-31.

¹⁷The Ministry of the Elders in the Reformed Churches. Papers Presented at a Consultation Held in Geneva in August 1990, ed. Lukas Vischer (Berne, Evangelische Arbeitsstelle Oekumene Schweiz, 1992).

¹⁸ See Bogárdi Szabó István, Egyházvezetés és teológia a Magyarországi Református egyházban 1948 és 1989 Között [Church leadership and theology in the Reformed Church in Hungary between 1948 and 1989], Societas et Ecclesia, vol. 3, (Debrecen: Ethnica, 1995), with an English summary.

¹⁹ Cf. Michael Welker, “Biblical Theology and the Authority of Scripture,” Theology in the Service of the Church. Festschrift Thomas W. Gillespie, ed. Wallace M. Alston Jr. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 232-41.

²⁰ See Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scripture in the Worship of the Christian Church, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, forthcoming).

²¹ See Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, ed. Hendrik Hart, Johan van der Hoeven, and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Lanham, MD/London: University Press of America, 1983).

²² For corrections, see John H. Leith, The Reformed Imperative: What the Church Has to Say That No On Else Can Say (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988), chapter 4: “God’s Providing, Ordering and Caring.”

²³ Cf., e.g., Brian A. Gerrish in his introduction to Reformed Theology for the Third Christian Millennium (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox, 2003), esp. p. 5, and his article “Tradition in the Modern World: The Reformed Habit of Mind,” reprinted in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology, pp. 3-20.

²⁴ Calvin’s Geneva Catechism (1542) in his Tracts and Treatises, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1958), p. 33.

²⁵ John Updike, In the Beauty of the Lilies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), pp. 75f.

²⁶ Op. cit., p. 44.

²⁷ E.g. (with helpful corrections in consideration about the Second Vatican Council and its “move toward the world” and openness to other churches and religions): Yves Congar, Je crois en L’Esprit Saint (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 1979-80), ET: I believe in the Holy Spirit, trans. David Smith (New York: Seabury Press/London: G. Chapman, 1983).

²⁸ See Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator, trans. John M. Jensen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1953).

²⁹ Documented in different ways by Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1956); in the theology of the Dutch Arnold Albrecht van Ruler, especially Calvinistic Trinitarianism and Theocentric Politics: Essays toward a Public Theology, ed. John Bolt, Toronto Studies in Theology, vol. 38 (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1989), chapters 1, 2, and 5; and by Michael Welker, God the Spirit, trans. John F. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994).

³⁰ Cf. Michael Welker, What Happens in Holy Communion? trans. John F. Hoffmeyer (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2000).

³¹ Gottlob Schrenk, Gottesreich und Bund im älteren Protestantismus, vornehmlich bei Johannes Coccejus: Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Pietismus und der heilsgeschichtlichen Theologie (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1923).

³² Johann Jakob Heß, Kern der Lehre vom Reiche Gottes: Nach Anleitung des biblischen Geschichtsinhalts, 2^nd ed. (Zurich: Orell Füssli & Company, 1826).

³³ Clarence Bass, Backgrounds to Dispensationalism: Its Historical Genesis and Ecclesiastical Implications (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1960); B. C. Norman Kraus, Dispensationalism in America: Its Rise and Development (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1958).

³⁴ G. Sauter, What Dare We Hope? Reconsidering Eschatology, (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999) pp. 9-18, 126-59.

³⁵ Blaise Pascal, Pensées and Other Writings, trans. Honor Levi (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 177 (fragment 740).

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, FALL 2004, VOL. 4, #2

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