• More B&B owners in court
• The Commentary
  21st-century us?
• Southern Comfort
  Dr. Bruce Ware interviewed about the transformation at Southern Baptist Seminary
• Common myths about church planting
• Making strangers welcome
  How do you make newcomers to church feel at home?
• Updating origins
  Some recent scientific developments
• Pulpit pop culture?
• Monthly media and arts column
  Generation Wii
• Unapologetic Christianity
  God is dead (again)
• The Music Exchange
  Strictly no dancing?
• Robin Wells, 1935-2011
  Obituary
• The Third Degree
  Who is God?
• Randle Manwaring, 1912-2010
  Obituary
• Keith Mawdsley, 1931-2010
  Obituary

other articles

• Never let me go
• Plastic people - How Queer Theory is changing us
• Tangled
• The Bible in Voice and Verse
• The theology of B.B. Warfield - A systematic survey
• Beware of living too long!
• Jonah - Pride & Prejudice
• Silences and nonsenses - Collected poetry, doggerel and whimsy
• Anne Bradstreet - Pilgrim and poet
• Stronger than the sword
• The spirit level - Why more equal societies almost always do better
• Faith unfeigned
• Shadow gospel - Rowan Williams and the Anglican Communion crisis
• Generous justice - How God's grace makes us just
• Rich - The reality of encountering Jesus
• Problems - Solving them God's way

Pencil in need of sharpening

FAITH UNFEIGNED
By John Calvin
Translated by Robert White
Banner of Truth. 208 pages. £14.50
ISBN 978-1-84871-086-3

The book majors on four of Calvin’s sermons on ‘how to confess Christ and maintain the integrity of one’s faith in a hostile environment’, reworked by him for publication and now translated into modern English. Also included are a short exposition of Psalm 87, and three letters, the very lengthy last of these a reprint of an older translation (Beveridge, 1850s).

Two burning issues of Calvin’s day dominate: may true believers living in ‘Popish lands’ attend Catholic masses (with ‘fingers crossed behind their backs’, so to speak), and/or should they seek to relocate to a Protestant country? The dust jacket (rightly) states that the principles involved in these questions are still ‘contemporary’, with ‘pressure to conform to non- or sub-Christian religions and cultures’.

An excellent service

I like the fact that most of these letters are translated into modern, down-to-earth English — in contrast to the last section, where numerous sentences run into six or more grammatically intense lines, and the vocabulary is far from simple.

It almost sounds incongruously earthy at times — it’s scarcely beautiful prose — but White is trying to translate and communicate Calvin’s arguments as clearly and simply as he can. He has done us excellent service here. Great!

I also like the inclusion of the selected footnotes, for those less familiar with the historical context. This suggests that the book is intended for a readership broader than pastors or historical theologians.

After a while, however, the topics do become a little repetitive, and the last section is much less digestible: serious effort! And I can’t get away from the feeling that, despite the dust jacket’s comments, this will not really attract the attention of many new readers.

I would really have liked, maybe, a short essay demonstrating clearly how contemporary these issues are. Think of Muslim Background Believers, for example: how far can they participate within the mosque or the Islamic community? Or, is going to Mass in Calvin’s day equivalent to participation in ecumenical co-operation nowadays? Not that such an essay should seek to answer such questions, but they could have been flagged up as points of modern-day application to think through.

So I think this will remain rather a specialist book, mainly for historical interest, a bit pricey, though nicely presented.

Peter Ham,
former research chemist, now pastor of Tuckingmill Reformed Baptist Church, Camborne, Cornwall