Monday, August 30, 2004
Having arrived back from a very refreshing and enjoyable holiday I now have a lot of work to get done in the next few days. I may have to wait until later on in the week before I think about posting anything more on Wright. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to get some reading done whilst I was away. I have been a long way behind on my reading schedule over the last month or two. I managed to read a lot of The Federal Vision. I especially appreciated James Jordan's chapter, 'Merit Versus Maturity: What Did Jesus Do for Us?' — very insightful and thought-provoking.
I have also been reading Douglas Farrow's Ascension and Ecclesia, which is a fantastic book on the subject. After having read Farrow's excellent article on the Eucharist, I tried to find out if he had written any books and was quite excited to find Ascension and Ecclesia. Farrow has many helpful things to say on the subject. I found Farrow's treatment of the Eucharist particularly interesting. He raises some important criticisms of Calvin's doctrine, whilst being quite sympathetic towards it. For example, he observes that, by speaking only in terms of a spatial distance between Christ and ourselves and failing to give due attention to the temporal distance, Calvin tended to marginalize the body in his understanding of our union with Christ and invited the reduction of his eucharistic doctrine to the sursum corda. More attention to eschatology in his eucharistic doctrine might have saved Calvin from these problems.
I have also been reading Douglas Farrow's Ascension and Ecclesia, which is a fantastic book on the subject. After having read Farrow's excellent article on the Eucharist, I tried to find out if he had written any books and was quite excited to find Ascension and Ecclesia. Farrow has many helpful things to say on the subject. I found Farrow's treatment of the Eucharist particularly interesting. He raises some important criticisms of Calvin's doctrine, whilst being quite sympathetic towards it. For example, he observes that, by speaking only in terms of a spatial distance between Christ and ourselves and failing to give due attention to the temporal distance, Calvin tended to marginalize the body in his understanding of our union with Christ and invited the reduction of his eucharistic doctrine to the sursum corda. More attention to eschatology in his eucharistic doctrine might have saved Calvin from these problems.