First, postmodernity has placed us all "on the boundary"—on the border between the fading certainties of modernism and new ways of understanding the world and its promises and perils. Calvin, a displaced refugee, speaks directly to the homeless mind of many contemporaries looking for a place to stand. "We are always on the road," Calvin wrote. Like Augustine, Calvin reminds us that our true homeland, our ultimate patria, is that city with foundations that God is preparing for all who know and love him. In the meantime, believers are "just sojourners on this earth so that with hope and patience they strive toward a better life."
Second, while Calvin is often depicted as an intellectualist and theological rationalist, in fact his theology is pervaded by mystery. No less than Luther, Calvin recognized the supreme paradox of the Word made flesh. He is a theologian of both/and, not either/or: divine sovereignty and human responsibility, written Word and living Spirit, the church invisible and the church congregational, already and not yet. Calvinists are willing to live with tension and even antinomy in this world, seeing through a glass darkly in the hope of the glory that shall be revealed. This is what it means to live faithfully in a broken world, one still yearning for full redemption.
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This month's CT also includes admiring essays by non-Calvinists Ben Witherington and Roger Olson.
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