The original miniseries V was broadcast when I was 12, and it’s probably my fondest memory of television in the 1980s. So I had mixed feelings about ABC’s new “re-imagining” of the series. But after seeing last night’s premiere . . . I loved it.

The new V begins much as the old one did: with the sudden appearance of gigantic flying saucers over the major cities of Earth. The underside of each mothership is a giant Jumbotron, which broadcasts the image of the Visitors’ high commander, Anna (Morena Baccarin), delivering a message of peace. The Visitors have travelled a long way and are asking for supplies of water and a mineral they require to sustain them. In return, they will provide new technology and medical services.

The arrival of the “V’s” is not universally welcomed. In New York City, FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) is investigating a terrorist sleeper cell that somehow appears to be connected to them. Meanwhile, her teenage son Tyler becomes infatuated with Lisa (Laura Vandervoort) who is organizing the New York chapter of the V’s “Peace Ambassador Program” for the local youth. The Vatican quickly pronounced the V’s to be part of God’s plan - a little two hastily for Father Jack Landry, who breaks ranks to preach that they really ought to earn humanity’s trust. Meanwhile, newscaster Chad Decker (Scott Wolf), apparently the one journalist to not bombard Anna with skeptical questions, is granted an exclusive one-on-one interview with her.

Original series creator Kenneth Johnson is writing for the new series, so it treats its source matter with respect. The characters are different, but the situation is basically the same: the Visitors come to earth and gain humanity’s trust, but all is not what it seems. One significant difference is our outlook on “ultimate evil” in the post-9/11 era. Gone are the Visitors’ militaristic uniforms and crypto-fascist insignias, replaced with fashionable business attire. The V’s are like an al-Qaeda sleeper cell. The cast was well selected, particularly Baccarin as Anna, who appropriately projects both serenity and menace.

The major problem with remaking such a landmark television program, though, is that the element of surprise is lost. Everyone knows the secret of the Visitors: they’re FREAKIN REPTILES IN DISGUISE WHO WANT TO EAT US. (Sorry for spoiling the surprise if you’re under 25.) But Vis off to a good start, and I’m looking forward to future installments. The thrill of seeing the lizards back on TV is almost the same as seeing Doctor Who again, four years ago.

Oh, brother:

Barack Obama – African American Bible Cover – Prayer Changes Things

This bible organizer is perfect for sporting your bible or favorite book.

Cover Reads: If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. II Chronicles 7:14

[Source]

You know, I’m all for celebrating a legitimate accomplishment - a black President was a long time coming in the United States - but, sheesh.

I’d be tempted to get a copy of The Audacity of Hope and slap a dust cover from a Bible on it. But I have the feeling that the satire would be wasted on many . . .

U.S. President Barack Obama is humbled by his Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him by the Norwegian Nobel committee “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between people.”

[Full Story]

Past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize include:

• Anwar el-Sadat (1978), who started the Yom Kippur War
• Yasser Arafat (1994), Palestinian terrorist
• Jimmy Carter (2002), for failing to find a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict
• Al Gore (2007), for environmentalism having nothing to do with peace

Ransom shares his No-Bel with the following:

• Mahatma Gandhi, seminal non-violent leader of the Indian independence movement
• Pope John Paul II, pacifist and anti-Communist
• Corazon Aquino, who restored democracy to the Philippines
• Vaclav Havel, Czech post-Communist democratic reformer

Pro-choice activism is now officially the new kindergarten.

On Tuesday night, pro-choice activists at McGill University unveiled their new campaign for abortion rights in Canada. It goes something like this:

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

And on this farm he had a cow, E-I-E-I-O

With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there

Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O

See for yourself:

Yes, this is exactly as irritating as it sounds, so I’m not going to post subsequent installations. In part 2, the videographer notes that he’s filming fascism in progress, as the “protesters” move from bad songs to bad jokes, then actually have the temerity to start complaining that they did not give permission to be filmed. (It apparently never occurs to them that no one was filming them outside.) The videographer does not give in - there are close to 20 installments, if you have the stomach for it.

There is, of course, not even a token attempt to reason with Jojo Ruba - who, despite their false assertions that he had no right to be there, was as usual an invited guest of a campus club at a sanctioned event. The purpose was to run out Jojo’s clock, nothing more.

Arguably the most iconic scene of the novel and movie The Godfather occurs when Corleone family lawyer Tom Hagen flies to Hollywood to reason with studio owner Jack Woltz, to persuade him to cast Don Corleone’s godson, singer Johnny Fontane, in a movie. Woltz refuses; he has a personal grudge over a girl that Fontane seduced away from him. The next morning, he wakes up and finds himself sharing his bed with the severed head of his prize race-horse.

In the past, Jojo and like-minded pro-life advocates have been able to air their views, whether via lecture or debate, without being drowned out. But as more and more pro-choicers find themselves on the losing end of effective arguments for life, they have abandoned any semblance of reason (Choose Life McGill tried to find a debating opponent for Jojo, but were unable) and gone instead for more direct action: what free-speech advocate Nat Hentoff has termed the “mob veto.”

The debates were reasonable. Singing “Old MacDonald” to shut a public speaker up is the horse head in the bed. And we’re going to see a lot more of it. Fortunately it will have the unintended consequence of showing how intellectal fascism has taken over the next generation of pro-choicers. This is what our universities are grooming, people.

Remember the dude last July who was nabbed for stealing over 125 manhole covers in Ottawa for their scrap value? The saga continues:

An arrest warrant has been issued for a man convicted of stealing manhole covers from Ottawa streets after he failed to show up at court for his sentencing.

[Full Story]

If there is any such thing as poetic justice, it’s not his fault. Maybe he just fell into an open manhole.

One of the few bits of vapid pro-choice pontification that randomly appears on Twitter’s #prolife hashtag:

When you force someone to do something, that is not choice. Prolife don’t care if women choose life- they will force her anyway.

Meanwhile, Jojo Ruba’s talk “Echoes of the Holocaust” is scheduled to begin as planned at McGill University in a little over half an hour, despite the official “censure” of the student blackshirts. I wonder if his audience will be free to exercise their choice to hear Jojo speak? Or will the SSMU force the closure of the event, as their counterparts at St. Mary’s did in February?

Pro-choice rhetoric: emptier than a vacuum chamber in geosynchronous orbit.

Remember last February, when Jojo Ruba’s talk “Echoes of the Holocaust” was shut down by spineless officials at St. Mary’s University after a handful of student fascists shouted him down for the better part of an hour?

It is starting to look like the pro-abortion damage-control apparatus is gearing up for Jojo’s upcoming talk at McGill University in Montreal, where the pro-life club Choose Life McGill will be hosting Jojo on October 6.

The Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) has recently granted Choose Life provisional club status. Basically, they are on a three-month probation during which they must hold a certain number of events and prove they are an active club, as a prerequisite to full club status being granted. This was not, naturally, well taken by the campus womyn:

Women’s Studies student Andrew Thorne, watching from the gallery, claimed Choose Life was a structurally violent group and opposed its legitimization through SSMU.

“Pro-life is inherently violent against women and against human rights,” he said of the ideological mandate of the group.

[Full Story]

During the debates over campus pro-life clubs at Carleton three years ago, we saw the same rhetorical tactic. It is irrelevant whether any actual violence takes place or can be attributed to the activities of “pro-life”; all the womyn have to say is that opposition to abortion on demand is “inherently violent against women.” (As I’ve asked before: if talking about abortion is inherently violent, what does that make an actual abortion?)

Choose Life McGill has already held one event: the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, in which a number of women told the story of their negative experiences with abortion. Predictably, this has already been denounced as “scare tactics” by the campus feministas, who were apparently freaked out by being forced to see graphic images of women holding an “I Regret My Abortion” sign. (Time to break out the smelling salts again.) And there were protestors on site as well:

“I am deeply disturbed…that someone might walk to class and encounter signs that target a difficult decision that they had to make…. Whether they are made to feel ashamed for a minute or for the rest of the year, it’s not okay,” they said.

Arts Senator Sarah Woolf (U2 Political Science and Women’s Studies) student participated in the pro-choice protest and agreed that Choose Life’s activities, including hosting SNMAC, are offensive.

“As a woman on campus, their activities are offensive to me. Within the context of their current activities, I don’t want them on campus,” Woolf said.

[Full Story]

We can’t have the poor dears be made to feel uncomfortable, can we? It’s ironic that the campus blackshirts should accuse Choose Life of being “manipulative”, while at the same time attempting to shame them off campus with manipulative emotional blackmail.

But never mind emotional blackmail: how about the normal kind? Last night, a motion - co-authored by the aforementioned Sarah Woolf - censuring Choose Life for scheduling Jojo’s talk was passed by the SSMU Council. Should they go ahead, apparently their eligibility for funding will be revoked. ProWomanProLife has the full text of the motion, including:

Whereas this event violates tenets of social justice, anti-oppression, and respect. . . .

Be it further resolved that the SSMU demand that the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson intervene in order to cancel the event regardless of any inconvenience this will cause Jose “Jojo” Ruba or the Choose Life Club.

Yep, you have to love the way the campus blackshirts think: in the name of fighting “oppression,” call upon the power of the university administration to ausrotten an ideologically impure lecture and public assembly.

Tuesday night, assuming it goes forward, is going to be interesting.

I’ve said many times that I have somehow become the intellectual equivalent of the opposite of a “chick magnet.” That is, instead of naturally attracting supermodels or society’s most brilliant thinkers, I seem to naturally attract kooks, cranks, and assorted weirdos.

My previous post managed to attract no less than its subject: Periander A. Esplana, the author of the mathemagical “miracle” that supposedly proves the divine origin of the 1611 KJV, even though it doesn’t actually work with the 1611 KJV. And then the roof fell in. My blog is strictly small potatoes, so it’s rare that I get even a handful of comments on any one post. But my previous, as well as its counterpart on the backup blog on WordPress, have already garnered a total of 29 comments as of now - including further rants by Esplana himself. (Nothing really seems to bring out commenters like a KJV-only post. I figure they must be trolling Google Blog Search just to find something to get indignant about.)

Meanwhile, Esplana has also discovered the Bible Version Discussion Board where, posting as “sciencephilosophyreligion,” where he continues to hawk his math trivia. Not only that, but he has taken his rebuttals to posts on that forum, and for some reason thrown them into an ebook instead of posting them to the forum directly, as though putting his opinions into a PDF file makes them seem more legitimate.

Espana continually crows that no one can answer his “Bible Formula Challenge.” Of course, I do have an answer. It’s two words, in Latin:

non sequitur.

This phrase means does not follow: in other words, the argument doesn’t lead to the conclusion.

The letter count of the first and last verses of the Bible simply doesn’t matter. Is it a statistical curiosity? Sure. Is it an interesting bit of trivia that the letter and vowel counts of Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:21 sum up to the same count in 1 John 5:7? Sure, why not? But what Esplana and other math magicians fail to show is how this proves the divine origin of the KJV. Scripture itself never says that the proof of its divine origin lies in letter counts. God commands faith, but he doesn’t point to 18th-century typography as proof of his existence.

Before Esplana can convince me that letter counts are proof of the divine origin of the Word of God, he has to demonstrate that it’s proof of anything. On the contrary, it’s completely arbitrary, and I won’t let numerological nitwits like Gail Riplinger, Peter Ruckman, or Periander Espana bind my conscience contrary to the Word of God.

It’s Crank Week, take 2!

If you put Harold Camping into a particle accelerator and fired him at near-lightspeed into Gail Riplinger so they fused together, what would you get? None other than Peter S. Ruckman, of course. Dr. Petey’s biblical hermeneutic, and I use that term most generously, combines the bombastic nuttery of Riplinger with the incomprehensible pseudo-mathematical hermeneutic of Camping.

Here’s a real gem of an “argument” I found courtesy of the evil Alexandrian Cultists plotting to overthrow Christianity at Bible Versions Discussion Board, from the June 2009 issue [PDF] of Dr. Petey’s newsletter, the Bible Believers Bulletin:

Now, do you want a bomb to put in your pocket to shut the mouths of these stupid idiots who deny the four Scriptural truths written in “the scripture of truth” (Dan. 10:21). Well, here it is: it is delivered by a Filipino Christian who came out of Manila. This is Periander Aban Esplana, who was 35 years old when he wrote it. His work is callled “The Bible Formula.” . . .

Bro. Espiana’s AV 1611 “Mathematical Formula” turns out to be anohter one of several hundred “advanced revelations” that were totally missed by A. T. Robertson, Kenneth Wuest. . . . The “formula” is as follows:

A. At the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 1:1 - 10 words, 44 letters 17 vowels, and 27 consonants - IN ENGLISH, not ANY Hebrew manuscript.

B. At the end of the Church Age in 1 John 5:7 - 22 words, 88 letters, 34 vowels, and 54 consonants IN ENGLISH, not ANY Greek manuscript.

C. At the end of the Bible in Revelation 22:21 - 12 words, 44 letters, 17 vowels, and 27 consonants - IN ENGLISH, not in ANY Greek manuscript.

The AV 1611 Mathematical Formula is as follows:

A-44 plus C-44 equals B-88

A-17 plus C-17 equals B-34

A-27 plus C-27 equals B-54

That is, the WORDS found in Genesis 1:1 added to the WORDS found in Revelation 22:21 (the beginning and the end are summed up in 1 John 5:7 by the Trinity.

The LETTERS found in Genesis 1:1 aded to the LETTERS found in Revelation 22:21 produce the total LETTERS in 1 John 5:7.

The VOWELS found in Genesis 1:1 added to the VOWELS found in Revelation 22:21 give you the total VOWELS in 1 John 5:7.

The CONSONANTS found in Genesis 1:1 added to the CONSONANTS found in Revelation 22:21 equal those CONSONANTS found in 1 John 5:7.

Got it? Explain it. Not one Hebrew or Greek manuscript found in 2,000 years displays that mathematical miracle.

“King James only! King James Onlyism! Heresy! Oh, God, save us from RUCKMANISM! Oh, what a cultic RUCKMANITE!”

Ahh, go stick you [sic] left hind leg in your right ear.

I’ll repent of that advice when you send me the EXPLANATION for that ADVANCED REVELATION God gve you through a 35-year-old Filipino. In the meantime, act like a gentleman, even though you are NOT. Go “strut your stuff” before some cloned robots like yourself, and don’t waste our time. We have “the holy scriptures“; you don’t.¹

Wooooooooow.

Paging Harold Camping.

But what’s to explain? Before someone can even begin to “explain” this pseudo-mathematical loblolly, Dr. Petey has to explain a few things himself. To wit:

• Who is Periander Aban Esplana, and why should I care?
• Why should I expect this apparent mathematical coincidence to have any significance at all?
• Why should we accept that 1 John 5:7 stands for the “end of the Church Age”? I suspect Dr. Petey takes some incomprehensible, hyper-Dispensationalist nitwittery for granted, but I remain not-convinced.
• Does the letter Y count as a consonant or a vowel?
• Does it work for spacing and punctuation as well, or just letters?
• Is this “mathematical miracle” truly unique, or would I find another one if I started searching for it elsewhere in the Bible - or, for that matter, any other English text that I happened to download, like the ridiculous “Bible codes” that were so popular 10 years ago?

More to the point, as I asked in another recent post: What possesses people to start hunting for these arbitrary patterns in the Bible and then ascribing some sort of theological meaning to them? Did it go something like this? “If only there were the same number of letters, consonants, and vowels in the first and last verses of the Bible, and when you added them together, you got the exact letter, consonant and vowel count of 1 John 5:7! That’d sure show those Bible skeptics, wouldn’t it. Say, I think I’ll try it. Whaaa -? Gasp! I - I don’t believe it, it’s absolutely true. It’s a miracle! I’ve got to call someone about this. Operator, give me the number for Bible Believers Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, and right away, the future of the human race is at stake!” Only, of course, it would be in Tagalog.

Well, you knew I was going to do some fact-checking, didn’t you? In fact, Dr. Petey’s/Esplana’s word/letter count is quite correct.

But wait a minute. It’s correct based upon the 1769 KJV - the revision of the KJV text made by Benjamin Blayney that is usually published today. But didn’t Dr. Petey say this an “AV 1611” mathematical formula? Does the logo on the Bible Believers’ Bulletin not have “AV 1611″ on it? Yes, it does.

No fair pulling a bait-and-switch and substituting the wrong Bible! Let’s see if this “mathematical miracle” works on the edition of the KJV that Petey says it’s supposed to. After all, as KJV-onlyists constantly harp, there’s no real difference between revisions of the KJV apart from corrections of spelling or punctuation. Well, suddenly, now we have a “proof” of the KJV’s inspiration that relies on the precise spelling of the text, so let’s see how it stacks up.

I looked up the images of the original KJV on SCETI, one of my favourite Web sites for this kind of work. Here’s the text as it originally appeared in 1611, along with the word, letter, vowel, and consonant counts:

In the beginning God created the heauen, and the Earth. (Gen. 1:1)

Whoops. Thanks to the peculiarities of early-17th-century typography, there’s a superfluous vowel in there. That means that this verse has a count of 10 words, comprising 44 letters, of which 18 are vowels and, obviously, 26 consonants. On to the last verse of the Bible:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. (Rev. 22:21)

This verse is letter-for-letter identical in both editions. Count: 12 words comprising 44 letters, of which 17 are vowels and 27 consonants.

So the total for the first and last verses of the Bible are: 22 words, comprising 88 letters of which 35 are vowels and 53 consonants. It’s all up to you, Iohn:

For there are three that beare record in heauen, the Father, the Word, and the holy Ghost; and these three are one. (1 John 5:7)

So sorry. That’s 22 words, 89 letters, 36 vowels and 53 consonants.

I guess we’ll just have to chalk this one up as yet another crackpot KJV-only goofy proof . . . of nothing.

You gotta laugh

Footnote

¹ Peter S. Ruckman, “A Mathematical Bomb for ‘Cloned Robots,’” Bible Believers’ Bulletin, Vol. 33 No. 6 (June 2009) (accessed 14 August 2009), 13, 19. Available at http://www.kjv1611.org/BBB/2009/jun-2009.pdf; Internet. Emphasis in original.

Got an amusing email overnight from a KJV-onlyist named Keith Whitlock, who wrote:

Thought you might be interested in a little laugh. Got a nice BMW in restoration right now. If you can come up with any errors in the KJV or any lies in Gail’s works I’ll deliver it to your door. Great deal, Eh? Good luck!

Glad to oblige, Keith. For reasons I explained in my previous post on Gail Riplinger, I don’t have a paper copy of New Age Bible Versions and cannot give a precise citation for this quote, apart from a chapter number and a corresponding footnote. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding the exact location from the information I provide, nonetheless.

Concering the papyrus P75, Riplinger writes the following in Chapter 35 of New Age Bible Versions:

[Bruce M.] Metzger says, “Papyrus 75 supports the majority text dozens of times. In relation to the [majority] text, P46 (about A.D. 200), shows that some readings . . . go back to a very early period . . . P66 [has] readings that agree with the [majority] . . . text type.” (emphasis added)

Riplinger cites this excerpt in footnote 38 of chapter 35 as coming from Metzger’s book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, pp. 64, 108. The full citation for this book is in footnote 9:

Bruce Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) . . .

Let me note, first, that Riplinger mis-cites this quotation. None of it appears on page 108 of Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, and some appears on page 64. So it’s a very badly formed citation - typical of Riplinger’s sloppy writing . but it isn’t, technically, a lie.

This is, however.

Note the section that I’ve emphasized, above. This phrase, “Papyrus 75 supports the majority text dozens of times,” does not exist - on page 64, 108, or anywhere else in Manuscripts of the Greek Bible. It simply isn’t there. And in any case, it contradicts what Metzger says about P75 elsewhere in the book, for example:

Textually the manuscript is of importance in showing that the Alexandrian type of text characteristic of the fourth-century codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus was current at the beginning of the third century . . . Furthermore, not only is the text of P75 Alexandrian, but it is closer to B [Vaticanus] than that of any other manuscript, while the influence of the readings of the Western type is almost non-existant. (Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, 68)

So, in short, Gail Riplinger manufactured a quotation from Bruce Metzger to say the exact opposite of what he actually says in the same book.

Certainly sounds like a lie to me.

So, Keith, once you’ve finished that restoration job, I’ll let you know where to deliver it. I guess we’ll see if you have the stones to be a man of your word. I doubt it, though. Riplinger sycophants and the KJV-onlyists who make the biggest boasts also usually have the biggest problem with integrity.

Postscript, 11:30 pm: Earlier this evening, after posting the first draft of this article, I emailed Whitlock back with a link to this post, adding:

Let me know when I can expect my car.

I reserve the right to make any further communication public.

To which Whitlock responded:

You do that. and in writing.

I am, of course, happy to oblige, so here it is. A couple of minutes later, Whitlock added:

So the Butcher never said P75 supports the Textus Receptus/Majority/ Byzantine? I’ll check it out. Anyway, what is your favorite color? Don’t get your hopes up.

(Believe me, I haven’t.) And then, a couple of hours later, he added:

P75 does support the TR in dozens of places. Kiln and Pickering researched that. Why don’t we ask the Butcher himself? I’ll email him.

Note the not-so-subtle shift of categories, from the content of Metzger’s book to the factuality of Riplinger’s fictitious quotation? These people don’t even try to be sneaky about their deception. I responded:

Hi Keith. I wondered how long it would take you to fabricate an excuse not to honour your offer after making it. Didn’t take long, did it? Not even three hours, and you’re already lying to my face.

Hypocrite.

Gail the Ripper said that the words:

p75 supports the Byzantine text dozens of times

appear in Bruce Metzger’s _Manuscripts of the Greek Bible_ on page 64 or 108. Those words do not appear in that book on those pages or elsewhere.

Gail the Ripper made up a quotation.

Therefore, Gail the Ripper lied.

It is disingenuous of you to try to claim now that my beef was with whether or not P75 supports the TR, when you know full well my beef is with manufactured quotations.

Try again. Can you find the following words in the 1981 edition of _Manuscripts of the Greek Bible_ by Bruce Metzger:

p75 supports the Byzantine text dozens of times

What’s that? They’re not there? Then man up, and give me my car.

I’m still not holding my breath, mind you. You have to wonder whether honesty is even in these dolts’ vocabulary.

You gotta laugh.

Post-postscript, 1:30 pm Aug. 15: Overnight I got three more emails from Keef, who really needs to learn to plan ahead instead of filling up my inbox with crap he could have sent in a single message.

Sent at 1:04 am:

KInd [sic] of weak eh? Allow me time to research the Butcher’s book and/or ask Gail about it. It is possibly a mistake not a lie. Gail is a woman of God not a liar.

Got any more “lies” What [sic] is the dictionary definition of a lie. [sic] To deceive correct. [sic] The chapter of her book is about the earliest papyrus manuscripts and their support of the KJV type manuscripts of which P75 is one.. [sic]

Metzger died in 2007. Did you catch that?

Actually, I did; note, however, that the Keefster was the one who offered, earlier last night, to “email the Butcher” himself. Confused, would we?

Then, at 1:41:

Got any more lies for me? Could you be fair and allow me the time to check it out myself? I’ll have to use inter-library loan. That may take a couple of weeks. I could ask Gail and she would set it straight but I need the practice ” iron sharpens iron” [sic]

The BMW is a 1974 2002. All new paint, interior, souped up engine & suspension, nice stereo. A really fun car.

Maybe J R could be of assistance

Is it just me, or are Keefer’s emails getting more incoherent as the night waxes late?

I’m not sending him any more lies. I’ve already met the terms of his challenge, and now he’s trying to backpedal.

The backpedalling continues at 2:29:

Up kind of late eh? I hope it is not because of me.

No, at this point I’d already been in bed for an hour. As I said, incoherent. Unaware of this, Keef continues:

Relax, if I find out that Gail’s qoute [sic] is a lie intended to deceive you as regarding the witness of ancient Papyri P75 for the common text, you will get your BMW.

Scott, this offer has been open to everyone for a few months. So far no one has been successful. You will not be either.

But I will welcome any honest attempt. What I really want is attempts to discredit the KJV.

Keefo is backpedalling so fast, I hope he’s installed rear-view mirrors on his bicycle.

My response, this morning:

You KJVers wouldn’t know “honesty” if it bit you in the ass, but thanks for playing MY game, Keefie. Have a day, thanks for the blog fodder, and enjoy your fictitious car.

It was fun when it started, but with Keef’s emails becoming consistently more whiny and desperate for attention, it’s time to move on.

Post-post-postscript, 1:40 pm: And while I’m writing this, I get yet another email from Keef, pleading with me to stay on the line. I swear this guy is worse than one of those phone psychics. Anyway, he writes:

Such verbal grace seasoned with salt. People consider “men” who beat up, slander and levy false accusations against little old ladies anything but stony.

Do your anti villification laws apply just to Canadians? Did not the Canadian Protestant Association endorse Gail’s NABV?

Here is a picture of the car in restoration. I’ll keep you all updasted on it’s progress.

And, of course, the email had a HUGE jpeg of his totally, sincerely, no-I-mean-you-can-really-have-this one-hundred-percent-genuwine BMW attached to it, just to be extra annoying.

Now, unless I get yet another email before I sign this off, I’ve had enough fun with the idiot man-child.

Any moment now.

Nope? Oh well.

I started the week with the numerological eccentricities of Captain Camping, and so I may as well finish it off with another bit of mathematical nitwittery, this time courtesy of the King James nuts.

This is Steven L. Anderson, a self-proclaimed “Baptist” “pastor” from somewhere near Phoenix. He rose to Internet infamy a while back, thanks to his unintentionally hilarious “sermon” in which he denounced all non-KJV Bibles for omitting the phrase “pisseth against the wall” from numerous locations. He has since posted dozens of clips from his asinine preaching. Unfortunately, ignorance begets ignorance, and Anderson now also has a small cadre of “young Baptists” who imitate his style.

More recently, Anderson diversified his career by adopting a “patriot” stance, which meant cruising around looking for police, border guards, or other authority figures to harrass, then post YouTube videos accusing them of harrassing him. This reached its climax a few months ago where he pushed a little too far at an internal checkpoint, and received a well-deserved tasing from the border patrol. Meanwhile, since he hasn’t appeared in court, gone to jail, or been shot, so I’m guessing that his fifteen minutes are up and he’s abandoned grievance-mongering as a career opportunity, and has gone back to posting blithering nonsense on YouTube again.

Here is the latest idiocy Stevie has posted:

For those who can’t be bothered to watch - and I can’t blame you - he prompts the congregation to count up the number of verses in the gospel of Mark in the New International Version of the Bible, according to the last verse number of each chapter. Added together, these total 678. He then points out that though the NIV includes the longer ending of Mark, it is a disputed passage, and significant enough that it warrants a textual note in the middle of the text rather than a footnote. This ending contains 12 verses.

And what is 678-12? You do the math, and cue the spooky music.

I hardly know where to begin commenting on this codswallop.

First: so what? There is precisely one context in which the number 666 has a negative connotation: that is John’s cryptic identification of the Antichrist in Revelation 13:18. Outside of that context, 666 means . . . six hundred and sixty-six. As Freud is rumoured to have remarked, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Second, so what? Chapter and verse references are not part of the original, inspired text; they were added to the New Testament in the 13th and 16th centuries by Stephen Langton and Robert Estienne, respectively, to make it easier to look up specific passages. To ascribe any specific theological meaning (e.g. “The NIV is evil!”) to these divisions would be equivalent to saying that revelation was added to the Bible during the Middle Ages.

Third, Anderson’s math is selective. There are all sorts of footnotes throughout the Gospel of Mark noting minor textual variants: a word here, a word there. Add them together, and they probably make up the equivalent of two or three verses. But Anderson doesn’t focus on what is actually not there; he inexplicably subtracts what is there.

Finally, Anderson’s math is wrong. There are, in fact, five complete verses found in the KJV’s Gospel of Mark that are not in the NIV: 7:16, 9:44, 9:46, 11:26, and 15:28. The remaining verses are not renumbered (since concordances and other helps wouldn’t work if they were), so adding up the last verse numbers of each chapter doesn’t give an accurate count of the entire book. Of course, if his total comes to 661, Stevie can’t rant and rave about the “mark of the beast.”

I want to know what dimbulb actually thought counting verses in the NIV, to try and total the Spooky Number of Evil, actually proves something. Also, if you’re going to be obsessive and superstitious, is it too much to ask that you be accurate, as well?

A few years ago, I wrote a post about the history of my exposure to KJV-onlyism: especially the way I have seen the movement’s nonsensical claims, when left unchecked, tend to escalate into greater heights of foolishness.

This post generated about 9 or 10 comments. For a relatively low-traffic blog such as mine, that’s a pretty decent number. Of course, being a low-traffic blog, once a post disappears from my front page, by rights it’s pretty much forgotten, even by me.

Nonetheless, every so often a new comment will pop up on even a 3-and-a-half-year-old post like that one. This happened about two weeks ago, when a poster calling himself/herself “KT” (I assume the latter) wrote:

Oh just thought someone might like to know that in the book The Encyclopedia of Witches & Witchcraft (I know I shouldn’t have it…) the Hermes Club is noted and it was clearly occultic through and through and praised in this secular book. W & H [i.e. B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort] were members according to your article. I don’t think from the looks of things they were doing too much stuff on Greek and Roman culture in this club!!!

The second edition of The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft¹ is available from Amazon.com and has a limited preview of the contents available. While it did not include any pages from the H’s, it did at least have the complete index, so I was able to look up any references to the Hermes Club. There were none, although there are multiple references to Hermes, Hermes Trimestigus, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This aroused my suspicion. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean the book said nothing about the Hermes Club, only that it hadn’t been indexed.

A quick check of the local public library’s online catalogue confirmed that it holds both the first and second editions of The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, so I requested both, and waited for them to be transferred to my local branch. I had the opportunity yesterday to sit down with these volumes and inspect them for myself.

I wasn’t surprised with the results. Neither edition mentions the Hermes Club of which B. F. Westcott was a member while an undergraduate. There are multiple mentions of the Greek god Hermes, of course, usually in an entry on some aspect of Greek pagan mythology: not at all surprising in a book on this subject matter. But how can The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft note that it was “clearly occultic and praised through and through” if it doesn’t mention it at all?

The following excerpt, however, is notable information from the entry on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which may shed some light on how KJV zealots think:

The key founder of the Golden Dawn was Dr. William Wynn Westcott, a London coroner and a Rosicrucian. In 1887 Westcott obtained part of a manuscript written in brown-ink cipher from the Rev. A. F. A. Woodford, a Mason. The manuscript appeared to be old but probably was not. From his Hermetic knowledge, Westcott was able to decipher the manuscript and discovered it concerned fragments of rituals for the “Golden Dawn,” an unknown organization that apparently admitted both men and women.

Westcott asked an occultist friend, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, to flesh out the fragments into full-scale rituals. Some papers evidently were forged to give the “Golden Dawn” authenticity and a history. It was said to be an old German occult order. Westcott produced papers that showed he had been given a charter to set up an independent lodge in England. The Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established in 1888, with Westcott, Mathers, and Dr. W. R. Woodman, Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of Anglia, as the three Chiefs. The secret society quickly caught on, and 315 initiations took place during the society’s heyday, from 1888 to 1896.²

Well, there you go. Guiley says nothing about the Hermes Club co-founded by Brooke Foss Westcott, but it has plenty to say about the Hermetic Order co-founded by William Wynn Westcott. Obviously our friend KT is not telling the truth. Whether she is lying, or reporting unreliably because of sloppy reading, I leave to the Loyal Readers to decide for themselves.

But KT is merely following in the footsteps of KJV-only high priestess Gail Riplinger, who never met a fact she couldn’t distort. Gail the Ripper also cannot keep her Westcotts straight. She attempts to connect B. F. Westcott with occultic practices, writing: “Westcott took the wand and relayed it into the 20th century.”³ In a lengthy footnote, she then explains how

[t]he articles on Hermetic doctrine in Blavatsky’s Theosophical Dictionary “were contributed at the special request of H. P. B. by Brother W. W. Westcott.” She mentions B. F. Westcott, the subject of this last chapter, several times in her other books. B. .F. Westcott’s son points out that his father’s signature was almost always read as W., not B., preceding his last name. . . . The similar identity of these two is not a matter of historical record.

Only at the end of this footnote (and never in the main body of the text) does Riplinger admit:

The connection between B. F. Westcott and the activities attributed to the possible allonym W. W. Westcott are speculation on my part.⁴

Well, there you have it. In the alternate universe where KJV-onlyists spend their waking hours, similar means same. What matters is not factual accuracy, but how well a factoid supports KJV-onlyism. Supporting the system trumps integrity. So what if the lives of Brooke Foss and William Wynn Westcott are well known, and there’s no way they are the same person. Hey, close enough.

So what was the Hermes Club? If we are to believe Riplinger, it was an occultic secret society, as she writes in a section titled “Hermes: Alias ‘Satan’”:

As a Cambridge undergraduate, Westcott organized a club and chose for its name “Hermes.” the designation is derived from “the god of magic . . . and occult wisdom, the conductor of Souls [sic] to Hades . . . Lord of Death . . . cunning and trickery.” . . .

Author of the Occult Underground cites Hermes as the entry point of scholars and philosophers into the occult. Westcott’s “Hermes” club met weekly for three years from 1845-1848, discussing such topics as, the “Funeral Ceremonies of the Romans,” “The Eleatic School of Philosophers,” “The Mythology of Homeric Poems,” “the Theramines” [sic] and numerous undisclosed subjects.⁵

Sounds spooky, until we realize that Riplinger is trumping up charges again. All too frequently, reality is quite boring, which is why we need conspiracy theorists to invent a more interesting one. Riplinger frequently cites the biography of Westcott written by his son - usually wildly inaccurately, but I assume she at least takes it seriously as a reliable source. Here is what Arthur Westcott has to say about the Hermes Club:

Westcott’s most intimate friends during his career as an undergraduate were J. Llewelyn Davies, C. B. Scott, and David J. Vaughan. These four, together with W. C. Bromhead, J. E. B. Mayor, and J. C. Wright, were the original members of an essay-reading club, which was started in May 1845, under the name of “The Philological Society.” At a later date the society took the name of “Hermes.” The society met on Saturday evenings in one or other of the members’ rooms, when a paper was read, and a discussion, not infrequently somewhat discursive, ensued. The following were the subjects of papers read by my father: - The Lydian Order of the Etruscans; The Nominative Absolute; The Roman Games of (or at) Ball; The so-called Aoristic Use of the Perfect in Latin; The Funeral Ceremonies of the Romans; The Eleatic School of Philosophy; The Mythology of the Homeric Poems; The Theology of Aristotle; Theramenes.” . . .

At times the philosophic gravity relaxed, as witnesses the following entry in the minute-book under date 8th May 1848: “Mr. Vaughan having retired to his rooms, and Mr. Davies within himself, the rest of the society revived the ludus trigonalis [i.e. a Roman ball game], and kept it up for some time with great hilarity.” Presumably Westcott took his share in this hilarious revival, though it did not form part of the discussion on his paper concerning Roman Games of (or at) Ball. . . .

The last recorded meeting of the society took place on 15th May 1848. . . . Whether the society survived to discuss the character of Philopœmen or not is not apparent. Probably not, for the four faithful members of the club had now graduated. There is an entry in the minute-book which indicates that in March the end was near. Above the initials B. F. W. occur these words: “Let me here offer my heartfelt tribute to a society from which I have derived great pleasure, and, I trust, the deepest good - not least under the feelings of today.” The subject that evening had been “The Condition of Women at Rome”; but the discussion had wandered over a wide field, and, in its latest stages, was concerned with a comparison of Plato and Aristotle.⁶

Well, that’s a lot less spooky. The Hermes Club was simply an essay-reading club, formed by some schoolmates, to discuss topics of interest to classics students. When most of them had graduated, the group dissolved. Of course, essays on Roman ball games and Latin verb tenses don’t quite convey her negative sentiments, so she simply omits them from her citation.

Riplinger’s latest tree-slaughtering missive, Hazardous Materials, promises more of the same. The Highland Host has been reading it (under duress, I am certain) and posting some of his impressions. In his latest, he accurately notes that Riplinger’s usual modus operandi is simply to cast her enemies in as bad a light as possible. The general thrust of this new book appears to be to try and discredit any study of the original biblical languages. The most recent issue of the Riplinger Report, her email newsletter, touts HazMat thusly:

Learn about the corrupt source of new versions and the problems with: . . . Greek-English Lexicons by Moulton, Thayer, Danker, and Liddell. . . .

All Greek-English New Testament lexicons plagiarize the first Greek-English lexicon written by Scot and Liddell. He [sic] harbored the pedophile author of Alice in Wonderland (who yet today remains a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case). This lexicographer permitted him to take improper photographs of his daughter Alice, for whom he [sic] named the famous child’s story.

I’ll leave the historical inaccuracies regarding the relationship between Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, Alice Pleasance Liddell, and her father Henry Liddell to others. I shall pause only to snigger that Riplinger actually takes the claims that Dodgson was Jack the Ripper seriously. I do wonder why she sees the need to discredit Liddell and Scott, as this is the standard lexicon of classical Greek, not the koine dialect of the Bible. Perhaps she feels that studying Aeschylus in the original is just as fruitless. (I wonder which translation of Seven Against Thebes is the inspired one?) But go back up to my citation of the Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, and note that W. W. Westcott consulted with a Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

Spooky. Is there a relationship? Can Riplinger trump one up quickly enough for her next book?

Hey, close enough.

Footnotes

¹ Rosemary Ellen Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft (New York: Facts on File, Checkmark, 1989).

² Ibid., 156.

³ G. A.  Riplinger, New Age Bible Versions (Munroe Falls, OH: AV Publications, 1993). I do not own a paper copy of this work. Shortly after its publication, and presumably with the approval of the author, a KJV-onlyist fan of Riplinger made an electronic copy of NABV available on his bulletin-board system, which was active for most of the 1990s. Any page numbers I refer to therefore correspond to the electronic copy, and I will also include a chapter number to assist in locating the source of the citation. This quotation appeared on page 852 (in Chapter 30).

Any KJV-onlyist feeling I should cite a more authoritative edition of NABV is invited to remedy the situation, at his expense.

⁴ Ibid., 866-68 n. 128.

⁵ Ibid., 809-10 (chapter 30).

⁶ Arthur Westcott, Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, vol. 1 (London: MacMillan, 1903), 46-48.

If you’re familiar with the Bible, you’ve probably seen Bishop James Ussher’s famous chronology of the Bible. Doing a careful calculation of the years which the biblical narrative comprised, he concluded that Creation took place on the night before October 23, 4004 BC. In these supposedly more enlightened days, we tend to dismiss Ussher’s most famous work as eccentric. This is unfair: it doesn’t take Ussher’s rigorous literary, biblical, and historical scholarship into account. The Irish bishop’s considerable intellect was regarded as one of the finest of his day.

This chart represents Ussher’s chronology. Reading Genesis 5 in its plainest sense, and assuming Ussher’s date of 4004 BC for Creation, the time from Adam’s creation to Noah’s death is about 2006 years (4004-1998 BC), and the Flood occurred at about 2348 BC:

Fast forward to 2009. Harold Camping, the president of Family Radio and its primary Bible teacher, has also calculated a biblical chronology, which can be found in his book The Biblical Calendar of Creation.¹ This chronology is the linchpin of Camping’s suborthodox eschatology, claiming that the church age ended in AD 1988 and that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011.

Due to Camping’s unusual reading of the text, his own timeline bears no resemblance to Ussher’s. He dates creation to 11,013 BC, the time from Adam’s creation to Noah’s life as 6373 years (11,013-4640 BC), and the Flood to 4990 BC. Other significant events in his chronology include the day of the Crucifixion, April 1, AD 33; the end of the church age in 1988, precisely 13,000 years after creation; and the Rapture on May 21, 2011, precisely 722,500 days after the Crucifixion. This is significant to Camping, who notes the coincidence of 722,500 factoring “into exactly two pairs of enormously significant spiritual numbers”² [i.e. (5 × 10 × 17) × (5 × 10 × 17) = 722,500]. No, I’m serious.

How does Camping manage to stretch out the first ten generations of the human race more than three times as far as Ussher did? For most of the generations between Adam and Noah, instead of overlapping the lifespans of the patriarchs (as you would expect in normal father-son relationships), he simply stacks them end-to-end, like this:

The justification for this arrangement, argues Camping, is the “clue phrase,” “called his name” (Heb. qara), which he claims “invariably . . . is indicative of parent and child.”³ This phrase occurs in Gen. 4:26, 5:3, and 5:28, and therefore it indicates that the relationships of Adam and Seth, Seth and Enosh, and Lamech and Noah are all father-son. As for the rest of the patriarchs, since the Bible does not use the term qara with respect to the relationships between them, they are not immediate father-son pairs, but merely ancestors or descendants. Their lifespans are actually successive generations of history named after the significant figure of each period, and the terms “father” or “son” used in reference to them are figurative of an undetermined ancestor-descendant relationship.

This system makes no sense.

Take the following passage as typical of the generations of Genesis 5:

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. And after he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died. (Gen. 5:9-11)

The plainest sense of this passage is that Enosh was the father of Kenan, born to him when he was 90 years old, and then he lived 815 more years and died at the age of 905. However, Camping is arguing that it actually means something like this:

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the ancestor of Kenan. And after he became the ancestor of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other descendants. Altogether, Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died.

What does it even mean? If Enosh is the ancestor of Kenan, was he not always the ancestor of Kenan? Of what relevance is the fact that he “became” such at 90 years of age - unless the point is to state that Kenan was born when Enosh was 90? In that case, it doesn’t matter whether Enosh is Kenan’s father, grandfather, or father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate: Kenan is still 90 years younger than Enosh.

Camping’s novel reading of the text either argues for the traditional chronology in spite of himself, regardless of the significance of qara, or it turns the biblical text into gibberish. Either way, he is wrong, and if his chronology fails, so do his predictions of the end of the world.

During James White and Harold Camping’s radio debate last week, and in various places on the Net since, I have seen Campingites attempt to validate the chronology by claiming that they worked the figures out for themselves, independent of Camping, and reached exactly the same conclusion. I don’t buy it. To reach the same dates, you have to buy into too many of Camping’s faulty assumptions about the Bible. I call shenanigans. Rather, I think what has happened is that Camping’s false air of authority has wowed a bunch of listeners who now ascribe mathematical super-powers to him. In my mind, I’ve started calling him “Captain Camping” for his superhuman number-crunching and listener-boring abilities.

Shortly after the Iron Sharpens Iron series wrapped up, blogger TurretinFan
posted his own observations about the fatal flaws in Captain Camping’s chronology, focusing on the time Israel spent in Egypt, and the genealogy of Moses. TurretinFan notes, for example, that Camping is flatly wrong when he asserts that Amram was merely the ancestor of Aaron and Moses rather than their father, and he points out that qara often does not indicate a direct parent-child relationship: it is also used, for example, with respec to a wife, a foster child, and a rock.

Camping’s oddball biblical history simply cannot withstand close scrutiny. As much as I would like to think that Camping will realize the irreparable errors in his system and abandon the whole thing, I seriously doubt that is going to happen. In the past whenever his predictions have failed, he has simply “discovered” some previously unaccounted-for “new evidence” and recalculated. So when May 21, 2011 comes and goes with nary a Second Coming in sight, not long afterward we’ll surely hear that it was really supposed to be sometime in 2014, because that is 25 years after 1988, and 25 is 5 × 5, and that’s very significant. I wonder how many times Captain Camping has to be proven wrong before he clues in that it’s the scheme, not the details, that is a complete failure.

Footnotes

¹ Harold Camping, The Biblical Calendar of Creation (Family Radio, 1985, accessed 5 August 2009); available from http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/calendar/calendar.pdf; Internet.

² Harold Camping, We Are Almost There! (Family Radio, 2008, accessed 5 August 2009), 61; available from http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/waat/waat.pdf; Internet.

³ Camping, Biblical Calendar of Creation, 1.

There was a time, some years ago, when Family Radio figurehead Harold Camping was relatively normal.

Yes, his droning delivery on the radio was definitely soporific. He relied too much on an allegorical and numerological method of reading the Bible that was so dry it sucked the humidity out of the hot, summer Waterloo air. He was a hyper-Calvinist and a bit overly strict on the issue of divorce. But really, at the time, he wasn’t any weirder than any of the dozens of radio preachers you could tune into at any time of day.

Then, 1994 - and his book 1994? - happened. This was what made Camping’s reputation, and it wasn’t positive. In the early 1990s, Camping began predicting the end of the world sometime in September of 1994. This catapulted him to, if not exactly worldwide fame, at least a greater helping of notoriety than he would otherwise have had. He appeared on Larry King Live and embarrassed himself. And when September 1994 came and went, relatively Rapture-free, Harold Camping should have quietly sunk into a well-deserved obscurity.

Only he didn’t. And bad theology has, as so often happens, turned into worse theology in the meantime.

• Camping has adopted a radical version of sola Scriptura in which he disdains any extrabiblical works as reliable helps in interpreting the Bible. In his book First Principles of Bible Study, for example, he asserts that the Bible is its own dictionary and grammar book, and even the rules of Greek or Hebrew grammar “based on secular evidence cannot stand until they are subjected to the scrutiny of the Bible.”¹.
• Camping disdains the grammatico-historical hermeneutic on the supposed grounds that it is not found in the Bible. Instead, he justifies his allegorization and convoluted numerologies by appealing to verses such as Matthew 13:34: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them” (KJV), as though it applies not to its own context (Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom), but to the whole Bible.
• Camping has recently adopted an annihilationist position, denying that the final fate of the wicked is eternal punishment in hell; some of his more recent books now disclaim his understanding of God’s justice, as he expressed it at that time.
• If Camping is not now denying the doctrine of the Trinity in favour of the ancient heresy of Modalism, then he is very confused about his theology proper. And if Camping isn’t being too forward about his anti-Trinitarianism, his disciples certainly are: I recently encountered a pro-Harold Camping supporter on James White’s IRC channel #prosapologian; he argued in no uncertain terms that Jesus, being God, is Father and Holy Spirit as well.
• Along with his Modalism has come a variation of Adoptionism: Camping says that Jesus “became” the Son when he was raised from the dead.
• Jesus also died twice, according to Camping. Once was before the foundation of the world, as the Lamb (citing Revelation 13:8). The second death was the one on the cross, as the man Jesus. Only the first death atoned for sin; the second had no salvific effect, serving only to demonstrate that Jesus had suffered for sins.

This is all pretty bad – and enough to get Harold Camping fairly excommunicated from any church that practiced biblical discipline. But it isn’t what he’s best known for these days: declaring the end of the church, and the imminent end of the world. The former of these prompted James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries to pen a short book, Dangerous Airwaves: Harold Camping Refuted and Christ’s Church Defended (Calvary Press, 2002). And finally, last week he had a chance to debate Camping directly, on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program on WNYG in New York.

ISI devoted a total of four days to this debate, moderated by program host Chris Arnzen: on Tuesday and Wednesday the debate proper took place; on Thursday and Friday, White and Camping appeared in turn to answer questions from callers (all links are to MP3 podcasts of each episode):

• On Tuesday, after technical difficulties ate up almost a half hour of show time, the deejay who normally followed ISI offered a half hour of his program, and the debate actually wound up going a few minutes longer. The format consisted of five-minute opening statements by Camping and White, and then alternating three-minute responses for the remainder of the time. This was probably the most useful day: White pointed out numerous flaws with Camping’s arguments, noting that the real issue is how one handles the Bible. Camping tried to interact with his arguments, but was quite weak in my opinion: he kept returning to his mantra that “Jesus spoke in parables” and therefore a grammatico-historical hermeneutic was not to be found.
• On Wednesdayhe other, and he basically used his own time to continue to present his own theories. As the hour progressed, these presentations became increasingly bizarre, arcane, and mathematical. My brain actually went numb from drivel overload.
• On Thursday, James White was the guest as he answered questions from callers. The majority were “Campingites” trying to rebut White’s presentation, but he held his own.
• On Friday, it was Camping’s turn to field calls. However, by and large the program was “testimony time” as again, the majority of callers were Campingites calling to praise Camping and Family Radio for helping him see the light. A few critical calls came through, but had no real opportunity to develop their disagreements properly. Also, I swear Camping feigned deafness to avoid the last caller.

As White has said many times about his debates: Nothing helps demonstrate the truth better than laying it side-by-side with error. As frustrating as Wednesday’s program was to listen to, it does prove the point. Compare White’s pointed criticisms and biblical interpretation with Camping’s oblivious monotone and judge for yourself which one is faitful teaching of the Bible.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Both of these errors, the alleged end of the world and the alleged end of the church, hinge on Camping’s interpretation of biblical chronology, as expressed in his book The Biblical Calendar of History. This history is odd, to say the least, and I will have more to say in a future post. Camping dates creation to 11,013 BC, the Flood to 4990 BC, and the crucifixion to AD 33. Exactly 13,000 years after creation was the end of the church age, in 1988; 23 years after that comes the end of the world, in 2011: May 21, to be precise, will be the day of the Rapture.

Yes, that’s weird.

Now, your average datesetting crank would see a mathematically significant date like 1988, supposedly exactly 13,000 years after creation, and stop. “There’s your rapture,” he would say. But by the time Camping worked all this out, we had already passed the magic year. No problemo: he simply found another 6 years (Daniel 8:14), and voila: 1994.²

Unfortunately, September 1994 came and went with nary a Rapture in sight. So suddenly Camping had to “discover” some miscalculations in his scheme. Now the Rapture was to take place in or about September 1995! Well, no. But, as the saying goes, enough research will always tend to support your theory. So a few years ago, Camping revisited 1988, added 23 to that (since 23 is the number of judgment, or something), called it the Great Tribulation, and declared the end of the world for May 21, 2011.

Interestingly, back in 1993-94, Camping would frequently get critical calls to the Open Forum program, asking how he could be so confident of the date of the end, when Jesus said no man could know the day or the hour. His response - in a rare display of biblical literalism - was that Jesus didn’t say they couldn’t know the month or the year. I guess that if he’s now predicting a specific date, he’s thrown that last remaining vestige of literal reading under the bus.

If we believe Harold Camping’s teaching about the end of the church age, then logically we must also discard about half the New Testament. The letters of Paul, for example, are written to local churches throughout Asia Minor and Europe, with instructions for dealing with various issues that have arisen in their midst. His “pastoral” letters to Timothy and Titus are directions to his two protegés for organizing and administering new assemblies. Even the apocalyptic Revelation begins with seven circular letters to the churches in the major cities of Asia Minor.

Along the way, Paul delivers a theological rationale for the church. It is not merely a human institution; it is a divinely appointed one, instituted not merely for the assembly of the saints, but to be paradigmatic for other human relationships as well. In his letter to the church in Ephesus, for example, Paul writes that husbands are to love their wives (Eph. 5:23-33). How does he do this? He shows that the relationship of man and wife is analogous to the relationship of Christ and the church. Christ is the head of the church, which is his body (Eph. 1:22-23). All who are called by God to be in Christ are part of this body. No one hates his body; rather, he loves and takes care of it. Similarly, a man ought to love and care for his wife because Christ loves and cares for his church.

And because we are all part of Christ’s body, we all fit together, each with our own particular gift, given to him by the Holy Spirit for the service of the church. This is Paul’s argument in his first letter to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 12:12-31). He argues: Can any part of the body decide not to be part of the body? Or, can one part decide it has no need of the others? Of course not.

But according to Harold Camping, this is no longer true. God no longer functions through the church. The ministry of the Word is no longer effective; the Holy Spirit no longer works within the walls of the local assembly to bring either conviction of sin or assurance of salvation. Instead of loving and nurturing his bride, Christ, we must assume, now despises her. The head has severed itself from the body. What does this do for Paul’s marriage analogy? Instead of loving their wives, are husbands now to hate them, separate themselves from them, or dismember them? Does Camping still teach the sanctity of marriage? If so, on what grounds?

Of course that is ridiculous. The Bible does not teach that God has destroyed the church. On the contrary, the Bible says:

loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Eph. 5:25-27)

Has Christ purified the church? Has she been presented to him holy and unblemished? If so, then either Christ has failed, or the church still exists. Clearly, the former is impossible.

Consider also Paul’s instructions concerning the Lord’s Supper, in which he says:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Cor. 11:23-26)

The Lord’s Supper is one of the ordinances, along with baptism, that are given to the church. Jesus gave his instructions at the Last Supper to the disciples, who then represented the whole church. Paul’s instructions are to the church, correcting abuses within the Corinthian church and regulating the manner in which the Eucharistic meal was to be conducted. But he specifically says that this ordinance was to be practiced “until he comes.” I’m sure that unless Harold Camping has added full preterism to his catalogue of heresies, he does not believe that Christ has yet returned. Does it not stand to reason, then, that there must still be a local church in which to participate in the supper? Camping denies it, with some handwaving and a declaration that it is merely part of ceremonial law, but he has no proof of this.

And I feel fine

It may very well be that on May 21, 2011, Christ will return. But if so, it will be in spite of, not because of, Harold Camping’s mathematical predictions. His system is too arbitrary and inconsistent to provide accurate information about the Bible. I’ll make a prediction of my own: when May 22, 2011 comes, there will be Christians still around, and a lot of embarrassed Campingites wondering what happened. In an ideal world, Camping will have cried “wolf” for the last time and will disappear into a well-deserved obscurity. But this isn’t an ideal world, and more likely he will keep his gulls interested when he suddenly discovers more “evidence” that his calculations were mistaken. There are, after all, plenty of numbers in the Bible.

Blogger Sheila Schoonmaker, apparently a Campingite, blogged the following in advance of the debate, seemingly to poison the well in Camping’s favour:

Harold Camping is the president of Family Radio stations. Family Radio has been on the air for 50 years without any need to air commercials (it still depends on donations offered by those inspired by God to operate). WNYG 1440 — The Spirit of New York radio station depends on advertisements to stay on the air. Camping’s printed material is offered free of charge, whereas White sells his books for profit.

This is a non-argument, really, considering that one could just as easily argue that Mormons give away books for free, whereas the Bible never condemns the sale of radio airtime or books. Nonetheless, I perused the Family Radio Web site and indeed found a number of free books by Camping. But I noticed that 1994? wasn’t among them. Curious. I wonder whether Family Radio will be making that one available soon? Probably not. And sometime after May 22, 2011, the free downloads of Time Has An End and others will, undoubtedly, have an end as well.

Footnotes

¹ Harold Camping, First Principles of Bible Study (Oakland: Family Stations, 2008, accessed 30 July 2009), 35; available from http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/study/principles.pdf; Internet.

² Gary DeMar, “Harold Camping: 1994 and 2011″ (American Vision, 18 Feb 2008, accessed 1 August 2009), available from http://74.255.56.30/blog/?p=18; Internet.

A man in the United States popped out to his local petrol station to buy a pack of cigarettes – only to find his card charged $23,148,855,308,184,500. . . .

He says his appeals to his bank first met with little understanding, though it eventually corrected the error.

[Full Story]

I’m sure the bank has heard every excuse. Who hasn’t tried to lie their way out of a $23 quadrillion overdraft? I know I have.

Since I heard of this story from the channel rats on #prosapologian, it’s only fitting that I should respond according to the latest channel craze, a haiku:

Unreal overcharge.

Moral of the story is:

Smoking’s bad for you.

For the last three days, this blog has been celebrating the 500th birthday of one of history’s most influential Christians, the Reformer John Calvin. Today I wrap up the series with the fourth and final installment: some of the influences that John Calvin’s life and theology has had on our time.

Separation of church and state

Calvin believed that the church was not subject to the state; nor was the state subject to the church. Both church and state are subject to God’s law, and both have their own God-ordained spheres of influence. For example, the church does not have the authority to impose penalties for civil offenses, although it can call on the civil authorities to punish them. Conversely, the state may not intrude on the operations of the church. However, it has a duty to protect the church and its ability to function as the church.

Calvin was a magisterial reformer. He thought of the state as a Christian nation, rather than a secular one. He did not advocate religious freedom in the same sense as the Baptists, for example, later would: this is why he did not oppose the death penalty for heresy for Miguel Servetus. However, his ecclesiology sowed the seeds of the modern secular democracy.

Missiology

It is often assumed that vigorous evangelism or missionary activity is contradictory to Calvinism. If so, someone forgot to tell John Calvin.

Geneva became a safe haven for Protestant refugees: from Calvin’s homeland of France, but also from over Europe. Calvin founded a school to train men in Reformed theology, and then to preach the Gospel and plant churches at home. The city became the nucleus of missionary activity in Europe. In 1561, for example, 140 missionaries are recorded as having left Geneva.

Calvin’s evangelistic concern was mainly for France, but Geneva’s missionary influence extended all over Europe: to Scotland, home of the Presbyterian Church (whose founder John Knox had been an expatriate in Geneva), England, northern Italy, the Netherlands, and even Poland. Calvin also commissioned the first two overseas missionaries in the history of Protestantism: an expedition to Bazil in 1556.

Bible translation

Bible translation is closely linked with missions and evangelism: a Bible in the common language, that can be read and understood by all, is a major aid to bringing knowledge of God to a culture. Not surprisingly, John Calvin had his hand in creating vernacular Bibles.

Calvin assisted his cousin, Pierre Oliver, to translate the Scriptures into French; the result was the Olivétan Bible, which had the same influence on French Protestantism as Luther’s Bible had had in Germany. Calvin himself wrote the preface.

In England, the accession of Mary I to the throne resulted in the restoration of Roman Catholicism as the official state religion, and the persecution or execution of hundreds of Protestant dissenters. Many English Puritans fled to Geneva to escape “Bloody Mary” and the flames. While there, they produced an English translation under Calvin’s supervision: the so-called Geneva Bible was first published in 1560. Until legislation made its publication illegal, in its day the Geneva Bible was more popular than the later, officially sanctioned Authorized Version. This was partly because of the Calvinistic explanatory notes in the margins. When the Pilgrims sailed to the New World on the ”Mayflower” in 1620, they took the Geneva Bible with them.

The Protestant work ethic

Calvin repudiated the distinction between “sacred” and “secular” duty, and the conventional wisdom that work was a necessary evil. Instead, he taught that all work is a calling from God. Therefore, it glorifies God to work diligently and joyfully. One of the rewards of hard work is wealth. Calvin did not invent capitalism, but his philosophy of work allowed capitalism to flourish where it was practiced.

That wraps it up for this all-too-brief look at the life and work of one of history’s most significant figures. This material was originally presented as a Sunday school lesson at my church on July 4, 2004 (almost exactly 1/100th of the time since Calvin’s birth). If you are interested in exploring this subject further, my sources were:

• Alister E. McGrath, A Life of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Western Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
• Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 8. Readable online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
• James White’s Church history Sunday school lessons, given at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, which I had been enjoying at the time.

Until next time, thanks.

July 10th was the 500th anniversary of the reformer John Calvin’s birth. This is the third post in a series about his life, theology, and legacy. Today, I will summarize the key points of John Calvin’s theology.

John Calvin was a prolific writer of theology. His most notable work was the Institutes of the Christian Religion, the first edition of which was published in 1536, when he was 26 years old. Calvin revised the Institutes thoroughly several times. The first edition was a small, compact work of a single volume that could be carried in a pocket. However, the final edition, published in 1559, was a thorough systematic theology comprising four volumes.

Calvin’s biblical commentaries cover most of the Bible. His Old Testament commentaries excluded the historical books after Judges and most of the wisdom literature (he did comment on the Psalms). His New Testament commentaries are complete except for 1 and 2 John, and Revelation.

God

Calvin said that there could be no knowledge of self without knowledge of God. All men have a natural awareness of divinity, which is both planted in their minds and made evident through creation. However, man has suppressed or corrupted this knowledge, and confused the creation with the Creator.

Paradoxically, without knowledge of God there can be no knowledge of self. It is only when men contemplate the greatness of God that they can come to realize their own inadequacy.

God is providentially in control of all things that come to pass, including evil things. However, this does not make him the author of sin or evil.

Man

Man is created in the image of God. This image has been marred by the Fall, but not destroyed. Before the Fall, man’s will was truly free; however, because of the Fall it is now corrupt and enslaved to sin.

Jesus Christ

The person of Christ provides the solution to this moral dilemma. Christ, being God made man, is the only possible bridge between God and men.

In the Incarnation, God and humanity were joined inseparably in one person, though not in such a way that the divine and human were confused. The relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures is paradigmatic for Calvin’s theology whenever the divine touches upon the human.

Calvin was the first person to describe the work of Christ in terms of the threefold offices of prophet, priest, and king:

• As prophet, Christ’s teachings are proclaimed by the Apostles for the purpose of our salvation.
• As priest, Christ’s sacrifice of himself, and his mediation before the Father, secures the salvation of men.
• As king, Christ rules the Church spiritually in the hearts of its members.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit unites men to Christ when Christ is apprehended through faith in the promises of Scripture. The Spirit leads men to Christ; without him, saving faith is impossible.

Justification by faith

Justification by faith is called the material principle of the Reformation. It is based upon the mercy of God, not the merits of humanity. Although the doctrines of election and predestination are linked with Calvin’s name, the doctrine of election actually plays a relatively minor part of Calvin’s theology. As a second-generation Reformer, his primary concern was organizing and governing the church, rather than theology. Nonetheless, Calvin believed in unconditional election and double predestination.

The sacraments

Calvin taught two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s supper. He differed from sacramentalists, such as Roman Catholics, who believe that the sacraments were a means of receiving justifying grace. Rather, he said, they are the badges, or marks, of Christian profession, testifying to God’s grace.

Calvin was a paedobaptist, believing that infants were the proper objects of baptism. He differed from Catholic and Lutheran paedobaptists in arguing that baptism did not regenerate infants. Rather, just as circumcision symbolized entrance into the Old Covenant, baptism did into the New Covenant. His argument for infant baptism draws many parallels between the two signs.

Luther and the Roman Catholic church believed that Christ’s body was literally present in the Eucharist, while Ulrich Zwingli taught that the Lord’s Supper was a mere memorial. Calvin took a middle ground between the two positions. The elements were a symbol, and therefore could not be the thing they signified; the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation confused the symbol and the substance. On the other hand, Zwingli’s memorialism divorced symbol and substance completely. Calvin taught that when one receives the bread and wine, which are literal food and drink, in a spiritual sense he receives the spiritual food and drink of the Christian. Christ is spiritually present when the Eucharist is received by faith.

Church polity

Calvin is the founder of the presbyterian system of church government.

At the local level, Calvin’s system involved a council of pastors representing the local assembly, and responsible for teaching and shepherding the churches. The Consistory, a larger council comprising pastors and lay elders elected according to district, was responsible for maintaining church discipline and watching over the moral lives of church members. At the regional level was the presbytery, then above this were provincial and national synods.

This system, intended to function in a time of persecution, is an efficient and flexible one. The local church appointed its own officers and could continue to function with the loss of a minister. Alternatively, if the presbytery/synod failed to meet, the church could continue at the local level.

Church government is closely tied to church discipline. Discipline is the ordering of church life in obedience to Christ in response to the teaching of Scripture. It has a threefold aim: the glory of God, the purity of the Church, and the correction of the offender.

The power of the Church to punish offenders was limited to excommunication. Typically, this meant denying them the Lord’s Supper, baptism for them or their children, or marriage. While these punishments might sound rather trivial today, they would have been significant in a community that had only recently abandoned Roman Catholic sacramentalism, in which baptism and the Eucharist were seen as the means by which divine grace were conferred.

Calvin and Calvinism

Calvinism is the system of understanding soteriology that was codified at the Synod of Dort in 1618-19, in the so-called Five Points of Calvinism. Calvin himself was not the source of these articles. A later Protestant reformer, James Arminius, opposed his teaching on predestination. A number of his followers drew up a document in 1610, titled the Articles of Remonstrance, in which they outlined five points of disagreement with Calvin’s soteriology. In response, the Reformed churches convened in Dort in 1610 to answer the Remonstrants with five points of their own, which are remembered by the acrostic TULIP:

• Total depravity: Man’s whole being is corrupted by sin, such that he is an enemy of God, unable and unwilling to come to God and be saved.
• Unconditional election: God chooses men for salvation based on his own good pleasure, not because of any foreseen merit they possess.
• Limited atonement (or particular redemption): Christ’s death on the cross was specifically designed to secure the salvation of the elect, and has no salvific benefits for the reprobate.
• Irresistible grace (or effectual calling): Those whom God calls to salvation and extends his saving grace, will certainly come to him and be saved.
• Perseverance of the saints: Having secured the salvation of the elect, God keeps them in a state of grace such that they will never finally and irreversibly fall away from faith.

There is some debate whether Calvin himself affirmed all these five points. In his writings, he explicitly affirms total depravity, unconditional election, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. However, his affirmation of limited atonement is implicit at best. Some scholars, such as Norman Geisler, have denied that Calvin believed in limited atonement; others, such as Roger Nicole, say that he affirmed all five points. Personally, I am persuaded that he did believe in a limited atonement, based on excerpts such as the following, which comes from a treatise he wrote against a Lutheran theologian, Tilemann Heshusius, and his view of the Lord’s supper:

I should like to know how the wicked can eat the flesh of Christ which was not crucified for them, and how they can drink the blood which was not shed to expiate their sins.

Tomorrow I will wrap up this series on John Calvin with a brief look at the legacy he left the church and the world to this day.

Yesterday, July 10, was the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great Protestant reformer, John Calvin. I blogged about his early life and ministry. Today, I continue with the latter part of his life. In subsequent installments, I’ll discuss Calvin’s theology, and his legacy.

Calvin had been banished from Geneva in 1538, after he defied an order, issued by the adversarial civil government, not to preach on Easter Sunday. After two years, the Genevans decided they were worse off without him, and entreated him to return, which he did in September 1541. Calvin’s invitation to return to Geneva was a clear mandate to reform the church and the community. His previous conflict in Geneva had shown that he lacked pastoral experience, but after three years ministering to French evangelicals in Strasbourg, he was a more seasoned churchman.

This second Genevan period has been mischaracterized by many historians as a virtual reign of terror, with John Calvin as the dictator of the city. In fact, even though they begged him back, the civil authorities in Geneva were no happier to have him in the city. He was not a citizen, but a legal resident alien - a habitant - and tolerated as pastor only because no native Genevans were qualified. His political influence extended only as far as his powers of persuasion would carry it. In fact, the next 13 years were marked by constant conflict between Calvin and the city council. They attempted to interfere with the operation of the church, and Calvin opposed their encroachment on what he argued was his rightful sphere of authority.

In 1549, Calvin’s wife Idolette died after an illness, leaving him to raise his two stepsons alone. Calvin and Idolette had had only one child together, a son who died in infancy.

The continouous conflict between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Geneva is best exemplified by the controversy over the arrest and execution of Miguel Servetus. Servetus was a Spanish physician, credited with first describing the operation of pulmonary circulation. But his scientific accomplishments were overshadowed by his theological innovations. Servetus was a heretic: in 1531 and 1532, he had published three works denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity. He had also developed an interest in the young John Calvin. In 1534, he had arranged to meet with Calvin in Paris. Calvin, thinking perhaps he could be of assistance to Servetus, returned in secret to Paris, but Servetus did not meet him.

In 1553, Servetus was arrested, imprisoned and condemned to death in France for his anti-Trinitarian theology. He escaped and fled to Geneva. However, when he attended church while Calvin was preaching, he was recognized and arrested. He was tried, convicted, and again sentenced to death by burning at the stake.

Though Calvin is commonly assumed to have been responsible for Servetus’ execution, in reality he simply did not have that authority. The civil government enforced the civil law, which included laws against heresy. Calvin was a pastor, so his authority was limited to exercising church discipline, which might involve withholding of communion or baptism to children, or at the most excommunication from the church. It was his civic duty to denounce Servetus to the authorities and, as the city pastor, to be an “expert witness” in theology at the trial. In fact, in his capacity as pastor, Calvin tried as far as he was able, to assist Servetus. He visited him in prison and attempted unsuccessfully to persuade him to recant his heresy. He also pled with the city council to have Servetus beheaded, a faster and more humane form of execution than burning. Predictably, they refused, and Servetus was executed at the stake on October 27, 1553.

We must judge Calvin’s consent to Michael Servetus’ death according to the prevailing wisdom of the day, rather than by today’s more progressive standards of religious liberty. In the 16th century, heresy was considered both an ecclesiastical and a serious civil offense that threatened public peace. Servetus had already been convicted and condemned in a Roman Catholic country. The opinions of other governments and reformers were sought - incuding Bucer, Farel, Philip Melancthon, and Theodore Beza - and they unanimously agreed that Servetus must die. In hindsight, nearly everyone now agrees that the burning of Michael Servetus was a serious error. However, John Calvin was not the one responsible for his death. He is vilified for it by those who despise his person and his theology, not because he bore any more responsibility for Servetus’ death than any other religious or civil authority in that day. Conveniently for Calvin’s detractors, he could be blamed because the incident occurred in Geneva during his service as pastor, and because he seemingly lacked the foresight to see that his theology would lead to the idea of religious tolerance a few centuries later.

But the political situation in Geneva was changing. Over the years, the number of French-born bourgeoisie had increased. These were resident aliens who had bought the right to vote. In 1555 (two years after Servetus’ execution), they had sufficient numbers to elect a city council sympathetic to Calvin and his reforms. Finally, John Calvin was able to do his pastoral work without the distraction of government interference. He also turned his attention to foreign missionary work, particularly in his homeland, France. Between 1555 and 1562, hundreds of missionaries were sent from Geneva into France, where they established 1200 evangelical churches, as well as many others all over Europe.

In 1564, Calvin’s health began to deteriorate. On April 24, he wrote out his last will and testament, in which he wrote:

First, I give thanks to God, that taking compassion on me whom he had created and placed in this world, he not only delivered me by his power out of the deep darkness of idolatry, into which I was plunged, that he might bring me into the light of his gospel, and make me a partaker of the doctrine of salvation, of which I was most unworthy; that with the same goodness and mercy he has graciously and kindly borne with my multiplied transgressions and sins, for which I deserved to be rejected and cut off by him; and has also exercised towards me such great compassion and clemency, that he has condescended to use my labor in preaching and publishing the truth of his gospel. I also testify and declare, that it is my full intention to pass the remainder of my life in the same faith and religion, which he has delivered to me by his gospel; having no other defense or refuge of salvation than his gratuitous adoption, on which alone my safety depends. I also embrace with my whole heart the mercy which he exercises towards me for the sake of Jesus Christ, atoning for my crimes by the merits of his death and passion, that in this way satisfaction may be made for all my transgressions and offenses, and the remembrance of them blotted out. I further testify and declare that, as a suppliant, I humbly implore of him to grant me to be so washed and purified by the blood of that sovereign Redeemer, sited for the sins of the human race, that I may be permitted to stand before his tribunal in the image of the Redeemer himself. I likewise declare, that according to the measure of grace and mercy which God has vouchsafed me, I have diligently made it my endeavor, both in my sermons, writings, and commentaries, purely and uncorruptly to preach his word, and faithfully to interpret his sacred Scriptures. I testify and declare that in all the controversies and disputes, which I have conducted with the enemies of the gospel, I have made use of no craftiness, nor corrupt and sophistical arts, but have been engaged in defending the truth with candor and sincerity.

On May 27, 1564, John Calvin died at the age of 54.

In tomorrow’s installment, I’ll discuss the salient points of Calvin’s theology.

Hoo boy . . . some people have way too much time on their hands - including NY Post reporters who are having way too much fun writing these stories.

Superman and Batman took on New York’s Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Caped Crusader in cuffs.

Stunned Times Square tourists and office workers watched agog as cops struggled to subdue Clark Kent’s alter ego without kryptonite.

“The Man of Steel didn’t go down with just two officers, it took seven officers!” witness Ryan McCormick said. “He was putting up a good fight. Little kids were like, ‘Mommy, it’s Superman!’”

If that wasn’t weird enough, McCormick turned and saw the Dark Knight handcuffed to a chair like a common villain.

[Full Story]

Meanwhile, New York’s finest are stepping up their patrols of the city, in case Lex Luthor, the Joker, or Mr. Mxyzptlk try to take advantage of the situation.

Today is the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin - along with Martin Luther, one of the chief architects of the Protestant Reformation, and one of the most important shapers of Western civilization.

Calvin was born Jean Cauvin in Noyon, France to Gerard Cauvin, a successful attorney, and Jeanne le Franc, a devout Catholic. The name Calvin is derived from the Latin version of his surname, Calvinus. Nothing is known about his childhood, and very little about his early years. As a student in Paris, he studied the liberal arts before continuing his studies in theology at his father’s request. Later, when Gerard had a falling-out with the local bishop, he instructed John to pursue an education in civil law, which he did in the French city of Orléans. After graduating in 1531, he returned to Paris.

Calvin had wanted to be a man of letters, not a professional lawyer. In 1532 he self-published a commentary on the Roman philosopher Seneca’s Treatise on Clemency. While Calvin’s book evidenced considerable rhetorical skill, it otherwise went unnoticed.

Something else happened during his time in Paris: Calvin became an evangelical Protestant, and then an informal leader to other Paris evangelicals. He said or wrote little about his conversion. All that is known about the occasion is what he himself says in the preface to his commentary on the Psalms:

To this pursuit I endeavored faithfully to apply myself in obedience to the will of my father; but God, by the secret guidance of his providence, at length gave a different direction to my course. And first, since I was too obstinately devoted to the superstitions of Popery to be easily extricated from so profound an abyss of mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame, which was more hardened in such matters than might have been expected from one at my early period of life.

Two crucial incidents took place during Calvin’s time in Paris. On November 1, 1533, his friend Nicholas Cop preached a strongly pro-Lutheran sermon in defense of Queen Margaret of Navarre, his patroness and a supporter of reformation. This address enraged both civil and church authorities, compelling Cop to flee Paris. Second, on October 18, 1534, a number of handbills attacking the Mass were affixed to public buildings. As a result of the so-called Placard Incident, Paris became a dangerous place to be an evangelical. Calvin decided to flee to Basel, which was a safe haven for Protestants.

While in Basel, Calvin received news from Geneva that a reformation was underway there. He also got news from France that his evangelical friends were being persecuted and martyred. In response to the persecution, in 1536 he published the first edition of his systematic theology, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, and addressed it to Francis I, king of France. The Institutes were both a defense of the orthodoxy of Protestants and a handy aid for evangelical ministers to use to defend the faith, originally published in a compact octavo format, rather than the 4-volume opus we’re familiar with today.

That same year, France offered amnesty to evangelical fugitives if they renounced their views within six months. Calvin took advantage of the amnesty to return to Paris and settle his personal affairs. He intended to move to the free city of Strasbourg, and live quietly as a professional scholar. However, a war between King Francis and Charles V of Germany obstructed the most direct route to Strasbourg. He was compelled to take a longer route through Switzerland, where he stopped overnight in Geneva.

The reformer Guillaume Farel was in Geneva at the time, and somehow word got to him that Calvin was lodging in Geneva. When he located him, he entreated Calvin to stay and participate in the Swiss reformation. Calvin wanted only to pursue his own course of study in Strasbourg, but the zealous Farel, unsatisfied, threatened Calvin with a divine curse his studies if he refused to stay. Calvin acquiesced and remained in Geneva, assisting Farel as a Bible lecturer.

Farel and Calvin were continually at odds with the civil government and inhabitants of Geneva, who thought their moral reforms too strict. Geneva had three classes of residents: there were the citoyens, natural, baptized citizens of Geneva who had the right to participate in all levels of city government; bourgeois, who purchased their franchise and were allowed to take limited part in government; and habitants, resident aliens that were not allowed to participate in politics. Calvin was only a habitant. He and Farel, both French, were barely tolerated within Geneva because there were no citoyens qualified to be ministers of the church. The Genevans continually resisted their attempts to reform the organization of the local church. In 1538, a government was elected that was openly antagonistic to the reformers, and they were ordered not to preach on Easter Sunday. They defied the order, and consequently were banished from the city.

Guillaume Farel left Geneva for Neuchâtel, where he remained until his death. Another reformer, Martin Bucer, persuaded Calvin to settle with him in Strasbourg - ironically, the very place Calvin had originally been trying to get to when Farel had persuaded him to change his plans. Calvin became the pastor of the French expatriates in Strasbourg. He published numerous biblical commentaries, as well as a revision of the Institutes in 1539. And he also found time to marry: to Idelette de Bure, a widow whose first husband had been one of Calvin’s converts.

In Geneva, the absence of Calvin and Farel led to disorder within the church, and the Genevans began to have second thoughts about banishing them. The Roman Catholic bishop of the district of Geneva, Jacopo Sadoleto, had also written an eloquent open letter to the Genevan Protestants, inviting them to return to the Roman fold. The Genevans had no desire to return to Rome, but they did not know how to respond to Sadoleto’s persuasive rhetoric. But Calvin had obtained a copy of the letter, and on his own initiative, he wrote a forceful reply to Sadoleto. This letter raised Calvin’s esteem again in the eyes of many Genevans. Copies also reached Wittenberg, where Martin Luther read it and praised it highly: “Here is a writing which has hands and feet,” he said. “I rejoice that God has raised up such men.” Luther and Calvin never met, but Calvin’s letter to Sadoleto was the occasion of some correspondence between them.

By 1540, the council of Geneva was ready to invite Calvin back to the city, and they sent a delegation to Strasbourg to persuade him to return. Initially, Calvin refused. Once again, however, thanks to the entreaties of Guillaume Farel, he reluctantly changed his mind. He eventually returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541.

Calvin’s second tenure in Geneva was longer and more productive, but despite the invitation from the Genevans, they were still antagonistic to his presence in their city. And this period was also the time of his greatest controversy, which will be the primary subject of tomorrow’s installment.