Category: History

Stirring Memory for the Soul’s Good Today

The Reek of Christ’s Triumph

Four hundred and ninety years ago in 1528 it was a leap year. So in February there were 29 days, not 28. On the 29th day a simple thing happened that was not uncommon in that day: a heretic was burned at the stake. The name of the twenty four year old who was executed in St Andrews, Scotland was Patrick Hamilton.

What was significant about this event was that Hamilton was executed for being what was later described as a Protestant.

Now that still may not seem like a big deal to us. But Hamilton was the very first Protestant martyr in his native country of Scotland.

He was young and just out of college. He was from a noble family and related to the King. He was educated at the best universities in Europe. By all accounts he was an up and comer among Scottish elites.

But none of these were the reasons he was martyred.

He was martyred because he smelled.

His life and testimony to the truth of the gospel gave off a certain aroma.

Consider what a supporter of the Roman Catholic Cardinal who ordered Hamilton to be burned said:

“My Lord, if you burn any more, except ye follow my counsel, ye will destroy yourselves, if ye will burn them, let them be burnt in low cellars, for the reik of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon”

To the Roman Catholic Cardinal and his associates, Patrick Hamilton’s testimony was an infecting stench that reeked. Hamilton’s teaching and humble, godly testimony was an infecting stench to the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Scotland.

But to the Scots who heard Hamilton’s preaching, and saw his humble testimony and blameless martyrdom he had the aroma of Christ. As Paul put it in 2 Cor 2. 14-17:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

We can learn from Patrick Hamilton’s example, as well as the apostle Paul, that the godly Christian is perfumed with the victory of Christ.

That victory was so decisive, so lasting and so complete in victory that the aromatic smell of that victory will spread further and farther.

But many will not appreciate that victory. They will feel threatened by it.

To them the smell of the victor’s parade is the sense of doom and death. They will not cheer it. They will reject it.
The aroma of Christ is a stench to them. It reeks.

But to others, those that cherish the sweetness of that victory, the aroma of Christ is the smell of life, fragrant and flourishing. It is life that keeps on living, past the veil of death to eternity.

Are you reeking?

 

 

Appendix:

Below are the charges against Patrick Hamilton, as recorded in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments:

1. Man hath no free will. 2. A man is onely iustified
by fayth in Christ. 3. A man, so long as he lyueth, is not
without sinne. 4. He is not worthy to be called a Chri-
stian, whiche beleueth not that he is in grace. 5. A good
man doth good woorkes: good woorkes do not make a
good man. 6. An euill man bringeth forth euill workes:
euill workes do not make an euill man. 7. Fayth, hope,
and charitie be so lynked together, that one of them can
not be without an other, in one man, in this lyfe.

 

Further Reading:

Too Much or Not Enough?


Too much or not enough? That is always the challenge when we look to church history, historical theology and the history of biblical interpretation. How much credence do we give to the reflections and conclusions of those who have gone before us. The Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck is really helpful :

The history of dogma and dogmatics is therefore to be regarded as a mighty attempt to appropriate the truth of God revealed in Christ and to fully understand the essence of Christianity. In evaluating that agelong dogmatic labor, people have erred both to the left and to the right and in turn been guilty both of overestimation and underestimation.[1]

So the trick is to find the right balance: not too much but not too little.  Part of this includes the humility to recognize that we aren’t the first people to look at theological questions. As Bavinck says:

Processing the content of Scripture dogmatically, however, is not just the work of one individual theologian, or of a particular church or school, but of the entire church throughout the ages, of the whole new humanity regenerated by Christ. [2]

How is your view of the biblical and theological conclusions of those believers who have gone before you? How much weight do you give to their opinions?

Too Much or Not Enough?

[1] Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 116.

[2] Ibid. 116–117.

St. Patrick knew all about human trafficking

This is an article I wrote for National Post  a while ago on the issue of human trafficking as it relates to the life of St. Patrick.

With the rise of the slave trade by ISIS, the porn industry, and ‘coyotes’ smuggling people by land and sea, human trafficking grows in today’s barbarity. Praying for the gospel of Jesus to come into the lives of both slavers and slaves.

St. Patrick knew all about human trafficking

Special to National Post | March 17, 2011 3:07 PM ET

By Clint Humfrey
Green beer sales mark the globalized celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and for many who are only Irish once a year little more is thought of.   But it may be time for St. Patrick’s Day to become an occasion of global awareness for something more than the taste of Guinness, namely the problem of human trafficking.

Patrick was only 16 when he was seized by human traffickers.  Removed from his family and home in Roman Britain, he was transported across the Irish Sea to the foreign surroundings of Dalriada  in what is now Northern Ireland.  The traffickers sold Patrick to a local warlord who exploited the young Briton for six years of forced labor.

Patrick escaped and fled Ireland, yet his conversion to Christianity while a slave gave him a mission to return to minister to his former captors.  From that point Patrick’s ministry in Ireland became so significant that his identity and the country’s are difficult to separate.   Yet it is easily forgotten that Patrick’s early experience of his adopted country was as a victim of human trafficking. 

Today when people think of slavery they rarely think of a modern problem, but rather something belonging to earlier centuries. But in the transnational world that is ‘flattened’ modern slavery can take many different forms than those associated with plantations or estates in the Caribbean or American South.

In one scenario, traffickers will promise jobs in foreign countries only to put the victim in a permanent indebtedness so that they must work  without rights and without hope of freedom.  With no advocates in a foreign land of foreign language the victims are forced to rely on the traffickers for their survival.  Long hours of demanding work in unsafe conditions become the desperate reality for these victims that had been promised a job in a land of opportunity.

Another scenario has traffickers offering the allure of marriage or glamorous jobs in modeling or acting in order to force young women into prostitution.  Such exploitation occurs at local levels in every city of  the world but for victims of sex trafficking, the removal from one country to another isolates them further.  Without the language skills to communicate in the foreign country, the sex trade victim cannot seek help even if support services are available locally.

Another horrific product of the globalized sex trafficking economy is the enticement offered to parents to sell their children into prostitution.  The demand to stock child prostitutes for sex tourism destinations such as Thailand is great. In sex trade economics, an unthinkable act by a parent becomes all too commonplace.

Human trafficking is a global and local problem. In order to fight it we need to admit its existence.   Maybe on this St. Patrick’s Day we could take up the challenge by caring less about all things green, and a bit more about the life of Patrick himself.   If we could imagine what life was like for St. Patrick we may have greater empathy for the plight of victims of human trafficking in our communities.

The Gods Aren’t Evolving, They’re Not Even Alive

It is important to know that the birth of Jesus, the Shepherd-King in Bethlehem was not an evolution of a Sumerian Tammuz or a Greek Adonis.   Tammuz and Adonis are passed away remembered only in Departments of Antiquities. Devotion to, and anticipation of, Jesus of Nazareth, continues apace, because the evidences for his identity are factual not mythical. He was born in obscurity to reign in entitlement. He is God. He is Man. And he yet lives. 

The Duchess and the Dogmatist

Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain
Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain

In the time of the Renaissance few names were as notorious as the Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia Borgia. But another Duchess, Lucrezia’s daughter-in-law was entirely the opposite. In fact Renee of France, the later Duchess of Ferrara, had a court full of Protestant sympathizers. An amazing array of characters passed through the castle of Ferrara in Northern Italy at the request of Renee. None of them were more famous than John Calvin (Fr. Jean Cauvin), the French humanist who became the leader of the Protestant Reformation from Geneva Switzerland.

A Renaissance Court

Renee was the daughter of the French King Louis XII. She was married to the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole d’Este II. Her marriage was mostly political and was far from blissful. As a result she kept a large ‘French’ court in Ferrara, which she oversaw with a great deal of independence. Her husband, Ercole permitted Renee to dabble with Protestantism, so long as the courtiers she brought to Ferrara added prestige to their duchy by their exploits as painters, poets, sculptors, musicians or writers.

Reformation in Italy

The Italian Reformation was typified by those who were sympathetic to Lutheran doctrines like, ‘justification by faith alone’, but who would not publicly renounce the Church of Rome. So Protestant sympathizers circulated throughout Northern Italy, but there were few signs of open Protestantism in the form of local churches or princes advancing Protestant causes as in Germany.

Among the Nicodemites

Renee was one of these ‘Nicodemites’ who were like Nicodemus seeking Jesus, but not in a demonstrably public way. She would vacillate between attending the Mass and denouncing it. At times she was pressured by her husband or officials from the Inquisition. She would go back to a grim attendance at Mass, performing the bare minimum required to relieve the pressure. Without the benefit of a local church or a consistent break with the church of Rome, Renee, like many other Italian Protestants lacked discernment in who she affirmed or associated with. Many people in the Renaissance rejected the Church of Rome and circulated among Protestants but their views were anti-trinitarian and unorthodox. Some of these types of courtiers passed through Ferrara adding confusion to the struggles of Protestants in Italy.

Calvin’s Charge to the Nicodemites

Calvin was not happy with the ‘Nicodemite’ trend. He wrote against it in a polemical way. But the dogmatist was also a caring pastoralist. He wrote to Renee repeatedly in order to encourage her to take a stand for the Reformation. Likely Calvin understood that if Renee was public then others in the nobility would have courage to identify publically with the gospel that they embraced privately.

Pursuing Clarity

It is no wonder that Calvin continued to revise his Institutes when so much of the Protestant thinking in Europe was confused. Dogma provided clarity for Christians. And Calvin cared enough for the ongoing discipleship of the Duchess that he sent a pastor to her court on a few occasions in order to bring more doctrinal clarity there.  Sometimes Renee would chafe at the actions of the consistory, or elders board, that called for church discipline among people in her employ. It became difficult for Renee to adjust from being a noblewoman and independent Protestant sympathizer , to a member of a local church who had to submit to the leadership of pastors. Even though she was the host to them all, she still had to find her new role in being an equal member of the local church.

The Duchess and the Dogmatist

Calvin and Renee corresponded throughout their lives. Their spheres were different, but each had their own place of responsibility with its own opportunities and challenges. Calvin sought to encourage Renee pastorally, and Renee attempted to help the Protestant cause socially and financially.

What can we learn from the Duchess and the Dogmatist?

1. Believing in the right doctrine, but not fellowshipping in a healthy church leads to confused thinking and living. Can you think of people who have a ‘Nicodemite’ way of thinking, being Christians, but not going to church?

2. Pastors, while not respecters of persons, need to recognize the distinct sphere in which each Christian resides. Theological exhortation applied to a person in a distinct sphere can have a powerful, strategic impact for the good of gospel proclamation. Can you think of the strategic spheres which each person occupies in your church?

3. People who are ‘public figures’ like the Duchess, have great opportunities for promoting the gospel, but also great difficulties in fulfilling their public role while being faithful to public identification with Christ. Can you think of public figures (politicans, athletes, actors, etc) who struggle in these ways?

Further Reading:

Letters of John Calvin

Renee of France by Simonetta Carr