A friend of mine and I were talking today and I happened to mention a “game” they used to play in public schools. It was called lifeboat where a ship had sunk and there were five people in the lifeboat. But the lifeboat had only room for two. So the children got to choose which one were saved. My friend was almost expelled because of his response.
I then remembered a Steve Taylor song of the same name and here it is:
Ah the halcyon days of youth, look you can almost see the smoke from the stacks at Buchenwald.
So with such careful instruction given to us by our teachers is this announcement a surprise to anyone?
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 1 Timothy 1:15
And that is totally a misnomer. But I have a confession to make. As you know I have, after putting it off for a long time, started reading John Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion. I am using a one year plan that I had found online. And I must confess that I am finding the Institutes easier to read than Luther’s Bondage of Will
And as a former member of the ELCA I find that a little embarrassing. Supposedly for a major portion of my young life I went to Sunday School at the local ECLA church. I was an altar boy, I went to the catechism class I even “renounced Satan and all his ways” at my confirmation. Yet I can’t honestly say that I ever read anything by Luther. Although I think I saw the original black and white film about him at church once.
So now much later in my life having traveled from the ECLA to a person who holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession and was baptized as a believing adult (Despite what I said at my confirmation my heart was still stone not flesh) I still hadn’t read anything by Luther.
So a couple of Christmases ago I asked that a copy of Luther’s Bondage of Will and Calvin’s Institutes be considered as gifts. And my family graciously gave them to me. And they sat for two years because I didn’t think I could even begin to understand either of them.
Last year I started in on the Bondage of Will and I struggled through it. Luther’s style of writing isn’t the easiest to read or understand. part of the reason I suspect is that Bondage of Will is a response to Erasmus’ Diatribe. Having never read it (Diatribe) at times I’m not sure what Luther is writing against. I’d almost like to see the Diatribe and BOW combined as a point/counterpoint book.
So having sampled Luther I was in trepidation of Calvin. So you can imagine my amazement when starting the Institutes I found Calvin’s writing to be a concise and clear. Perhaps it is the fact that I am only reading between 4 and 7 chapters a day. But I think it is the logical way Calvin builds his case for what is true about God. I don’t find the same type of logic employed by Luther. Yet having said that I am still going to try to finish Bondage of Will.
