Martin Luther was perhaps anachronistically channeling his inner “Left Behind” as he saw every new cataclysm as evidence of the end of days. Calvin, though, showed signs of a consistent amillennialism – an eschatology for all seasons – and essentially said, “Get used to it.” (As this biased oversimplification implies, I’m a Reformed a-mill kind of guy. Calvin’s steady notes of sardonic, slightly bitter resignation sing sweetly to my soul.) Now to the more serious point lying behind these (likely lame) attempts at levity in an increasingly stressful time. Both historically consequential theologians were men of great courage; both approached their troubled times with a gravity commensurate to the calamities; and both saw the same realism reflected in the Scriptures.

Though Luther and Calvin differed on how to read the times via the Scriptures (theirs was not a day of finely developed eschatological systems), they agreed that the Scriptures gave real and realistic instruction for all times. The Scriptures understood the ages and every age because they understood and explained the basics regarding the people who populate history, humanity’s cataclysmic rebellion against God, and the cursed cosmos in which God’s stunning plan of redemption plays out. Scripture’s essential purpose and therefore primary principle of interpretation is to tell of Jesus the Christ, the God-man, through whom all things exist (John 1:1-5;14) and the Savior in whom all things are being summed up (Ephesians 1).  In fact, though Scripture certainly contains its difficult to understand portions – eschatology divides even very like-minded believers – and while confessing Christians throughout church history have had their multiplicity of opinions on all kinds of biblical issues, the Reformed in particular have historically emphasized the clarity of the Bible (Luther, too, in his own way and context represented a hermeneutical move toward the “plain” meaning of Scripture which was ever Calvin’s goal in interpretation), especially on the “necessary matters,” or as we might say it, on what matters most in any and all times and circumstances.  But we have to be careful how we understand and handle the Bible’s simplicity and clarity regarding the big-picture basics of knowing and living for God.

Sometimes conservative Reformed Christians view Scripture with a bit of the same kind of marginalization and truncation forced upon the text by those with a “higher critical” approach, who see nothing really supernatural about the text but might nonetheless find some lessons for good moral living here and there among a scattershot, sometimes contradictory compilation of texts the church decided were  sacred.  So much of the Rationalism and then Enlightenment era anti-supernaturalism which fueled this critical approach, though it lives on in various ways, has been discredited by a postmodern society that has judged it, ironically, an irrational and certainly ethically irresponsible way to think and live. But having bid good riddance to religion from on high, what’s left are shouts of hardline atheism but mostly a chorus of agnostic voices, either affable or antagonistic. Both approaches often belie a gnawing, growing sense of cosmic aloneness that’s already pandemic in popular culture, and that feels particularly chilling due to the mandated “social distancing” now dominating headlines. The Bible is no longer considered a help in such matters, deemed incapable for the most part of engaging pressing social matters in relevant ways. Or, Scripture is considered to be a major hindrance to the kind of progress society needs to make.  A theologically conservative view of Scripture objects to religious agnosticism and all of the above views of the Bible, strongly asserting Scripture’s supernatural nature and practical relevance. But do we who make such assertions actually put to practice the conviction that Scripture speaks with divine power and authority, clearly and powerfully to our day? To find out, there’s an easy, but uncomfortable, question we can ask of ourselves, especially as distressing news metastasizes: How much are we worrying?