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I have the privilege of introducing our 2011 Robert F . lecturer. This lectureship was established in 1949 by the Women of the Church of First Presbyterian Church fort worth Texas. The lecturers are funded annually and memory

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of their pastor of 35 years. The Reverend Robert F. Now in one sense, this year's lecturer requires little introduction. He is well known to us and he is well known to us because he was

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an integral part of this community for 17 years as a teacher, scholar, colleague, friend, mentor , an administrator, serving finally as academic dean, an appointment he held for seven years. We simply

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do not have enough time for me even to mention a mere portion of his contributions to theological education and the church, much less to detail them. He has an extraordinary record that has made a lasting mark

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on Austin Seminary and on the Academy, the Church in the world. We serve on behalf of God in jesus christ in another sense, however, because he has already begun making lasting contributions to his new

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school, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Where he was called this past summer to serve as its 9th president , he deserves a proper introduction. The Reverend Dr . Jenkins has been ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA

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for 29 years And also served 14 years in pastoral leadership in several congregations throughout Texas and in Aberdeen Scotland . He holds a bachelor's degree from Howard Payne University , the master of divinity degree from Southwestern baptist Theological

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Seminary, the Doctor of Ministry degree from Austin Seminary and the Doctor of Philosophy degree in systematic theology from the University of Aberdeen. Throughout nearly two decades of seminary teaching and leadership, Dr Jenkins has contributed to

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theological education and the church with a vigorous and dynamic integration of professional and academic appointments, research consultations, grant writing, publishing and editorial responsibilities. He is the author of 12 books including Christianity tolerance and pluralism

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, a theological engagement with the social theory of Isaiah Berlin and called to be Human Letters to my Children on living a christian life. He is also a regular contributor to faith and leadership call and response,

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the online publication of Duke University Divinity school and Presbyterian outlook online. And he has written for the christian century Presbyterians today, election erI Home politics and the all been institutes congregations among others. Dr Jenkins is

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passionate about theological education and about preparing women and men for practical public and pastoral leadership in a world of cultural and religious difference. We are delighted to welcome you Michael back to this place and also to welcome

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your lovely wife Deborah, who is herself an enduring presence because she is sewn so deeply into the fabric of this community. We are grateful that both of you are here with us in this time and we

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look forward to learning today. Thank you Alan um hearing that it's a little like being at your own funeral I think Mhm. Um Which louis is shaking his head. Yes, because louis told me that

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the best thing about being made of president is it will look really good in your obituary. Yeah, he's right. I think that's true. There's a text for today's lecture, The Book of Hebrews chapter

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11 the first through second verse. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen indeed by faith, our ancestors received approval. Mhm. I'm particularly pleased to be.

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As to do the jones lectures in christian education. Especially mindful of the founding of this lecture ship by the women, the Presbyterian women of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth. Uh something that you may not

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know about me and you failed to mention Allen. And I'm surprised in your research, you didn't find this as I am an honorary lifetime member of Presbyterian Women. Mhm is one of the highest honors I

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ever received as a pastor at the uh, the women of the Church of Itasca texas uh, made me a lifetime member, which I think there are other eagle scouts among press presidents. But I think

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I'm the only presbyterian women's member, even among those who are presbyterian women. I'm going to be speaking on the subject of the Reformed project. We could chalk up the words he spoke to the mutterings of

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a church historian who finds that his academic discipline has fallen out of favor. Or maybe it was just sour grapes. A church leader watching his church go in a direction he would not have chosen. But

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perhaps there was more to it than that. Whatever the reason, his words found enough traction, enough sticking power that a journalist remembered them two decades later in his obituary, a journalist remembered the moment When

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in the midst of a debate in the Anglican Churches General Synod of 1988, the historian Henry, Chadwick scholar and teacher stood to his feet and said, nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory

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. And the church which has lost its memory, is in the same state of senility. Ironically, last summer, while on a writing holiday in Scotland , I had just been reflecting on Chadwick's words when

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I opened the morning edition of the Daily Telegraph and read an interview by Elizabeth Grice with Simon Schama historian Colombia Shama was responding to the lack of historical instruction in Britain secondary schools. He says, a generation

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without history is a generation that not only loses a nation's memory, but loses a sense of what it's like to be inside a human skin. Every once in a while you come across a statement that galvanizes

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your own convictions. These two statements from Chadwick and chama do that. For me, nothing is sadder than someone who has lost his memory. And the church, which has lost its memory is in the

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same state of senility. A generation without history is a generation that not only loses a nation's memory and we could add a church's memory or a people's memory , but loses a sense of what it's like to

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be inside a human skin. These two statements are profoundly connected as anyone knows, who has witnessed the debilitating malignancy of the mind that we call Alzheimer's when memory is gone, so goes our identity, our

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grasp on those particular and idiosyncratic features that make us who we are, that make us human. When memory fails us, we are reduced to confusion. We cannot move forward because we have lost continuity with

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our past. The question, of course, is why anyone and more to the point why any church would choose to jettison that memory, that makes us who we are having known and loved and lost persons

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who suffered from Alzheimer's. How could any of us wish for such a fate to befall our church? Well, I'm sure that none of us would wish such a thing today and tomorrow. Very briefly,

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I will sketch what it means for us to remember to remember a few specific things about that stream of Christianity to which we belong the reformed. And I will do this because I believe that by remembering,

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we will have a better idea of where to go next. We could remember many things about our history , but I will remind us today of that moment when john Calvin began his reformation of the christian church

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. I'm doing this to lay a groundwork because tomorrow , as we say, I've got something to say about today. So let's begin by looking back to a church in need of reformation. The religious world

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into which john Calvin was born has so receded from our view that it is difficult now to imagine what it was like. The Western europe was divided into kingdoms, the precursors of our modern nations. It

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was dominated by a single religious institution, the roman catholic church. And while the roman catholic church of the Middle Ages had produced some extraordinary and dynamic theologians like done scotus and thomas Aquinas and was blessed by

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some of the most profound mystics of all time, like Lady Julian of Norwich and Francis of Assisi, europe was also a land where superstition and ignorant abounded , especially at the popular level. And ecclesiastical corruption

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fed on both this superstition and this ignorance john Calvin , like many others before and after him, understood only too well that the church needed reformation to deliver it from the shackles of ignorance and superstition, no

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less than it needed reformation to liberate it from impiety and corruption. In fact, many of Calvin's critics were in agreement with him about the need to reform the church, though they were unwilling to endorse his

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reform project again, it's hard to get ourselves back into that place, but allow me for a moment to give just a glimpse of the superstition that masqueraded as religious faith, often attached to the big business

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of venerating and marketing the mortal remains of the church's saints, what were called relics in holly Germany during the early 16th century. Around the time the protestant reformer martin Luther first came on the scene. Pious

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christians could expect that venerating the bones of the Saints in that city's cathedral would provide no less than a reduction of 4000 years in purgatory, an afterlife destination unmentioned in the bible but taken for granted among the

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faithful in the Middle Ages. This quantitative valuation, incidentally, was officially established by none other than the pope. Pope leo the 10th alleged pieces of the cross, bits of the skull of john the baptist

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, various bones of apostles, Saints and martyrs were scattered all over europe. Clearly, the saints didn't get a lot of rest after death. In the Middle ages, they worked and they worked very hard

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drawing pilgrims to sacred sites where prayers were supposed to be answered and wonders were said to be performed when for example, uh ST Cuthbert's body was dug up during the dismantling of the monasteries under Henry, the

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eighth of England. They discovered in addition to cut birds, bones, the head of an anglo Saxon king skeletons of a number of infants and an entire human skeleton. Adult skeleton all subletting cupboards tomb.

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The idea was that being close to a dead saint conferred spiritual, quasi magical benefits. Rome, of course, was the grand treasure trove and top trafficker of relics. One historian, Roland Banton provides the

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following portrait of Rome. Here in a single crypt , 40 Popes were buried and 76,000 martyrs. Rome had a piece of moses is burning bush. 300 particles of the Holy Innocence Rome had a portrait of

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Christ on the Napkin of ST Veronica Rome had the chains of ST paul and the scissors with which the emperor clip the hair of saint john. The walls of the Appian gate showed the white spots left by

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the stones which turned into snowballs, which were hurled by a mob against ST Peter. A church in Rome had the crucifix which linked over and talk to Saint Bridget. Another had a coin paid to judas

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for betraying our Lord. Still another church in Rome possessed the 12 ft beam on which judas hanged himself . Above all, Rome had the entire bodies of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. They had been divided

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to distribute the benefits among the churches. The heads were in the lateran and one half of the body of each had been deposited in their respective churches. Superstition, dressed up as religious devotion, was rife

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in the middle the medieval church. Some catholic scholars criticized the superstition of this popular religion. Some catholic scholars confronted the ignorance that supported the superstition and some opposed the ecclesiastical corruption, that took advantage of the

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popular ignorance and superstition. Many people were convinced that the church desperately needed reforming, warnings about the ignorance that fed superstition were not limited to scholars. There were also leading clergy in the Roman Catholic Church who

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were concerned about widespread ignorance among priests and laity and had been for centuries almost 300 years before the Protestant Reformation. For example, the documents agreed upon by the provincial synod of Lambeth In 1281, critique quote

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, the ignorance of priest, which precipitates the people into the pit of error. While the portrait can be overdone and has been by some protestant propagandist, there is more than a shade of truth in the

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caricature of an ignorant medieval priest reading a sermon. He did not write from a biblical text, he could barely decipher parroting the words of the mass in a language he could not comprehend in the presence of

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a people preoccupied by quasi magical deliverance from the furies of hell and the drudgery of purgatory. There were many among the faithful for whom religion was more a matter of pious superstition than of spirituality, and others

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for whom faith represented only the thinnest of veneers of outward devotion covering their base er interest, see crusades , abuses and atrocities related to. There were some leading medieval christians who raised the alarm and others who

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did their very best to change the church's direction. Despite these warnings and efforts, however, it was not until the renaissance and the work of humanist like Erasmus that an effective counter movement was mounted against the

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superstition, ignorance and corruption that plagued the church and undermined authentic biblical faith in opposition to those who believe that the strength of Christianity lay in the ignorance of its adherence and thus their pliability and yes, really

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, that was the published perspective of some leaders of the church at the time. Others, like Erasmus , wanted to translate the bible from greek and Hebrew into the vernacular languages of the people, so it

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could be read and understood by them their knowledge, he believed would blow away the fog of superstition. And so in his introduction to the new testament, Erasmus rights, I utterly disagree with those who do

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not want the holy scriptures to be read by the uneducated in their own language, as though christ teaching was so obscure that it could hardly be understood even by a handful of theologians or as though the strength

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of the christian religion consisted in people's ignorance of it . I wish that every woman could read the gospels and the epistles of paul for herself. It's the 16th century, and I wish these were translated into

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each and every language, so that they might be read and understood not only by Scots and Irishman, but also by Turks and Saracens. I hope the farmer may sing snatches of scripture at his plow,

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that the weaver may hum bits of scripture to the tune of his shuttle, and that the traveler may lighten the weariness of the journey with stories from the bible we can hear in Erasmus an evangelical fervor a

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profound trust in the power of encountering the bible as Word of God. We can also here, in his words, his confidence in the ministry of teaching , in education, in research and the acquisition of

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knowledge that would eventually become so important for the reform movement. One generation after Erasmus, for example, an unsympathetic visitor to a reformed church and Hussein Switzerland immediately noticed that, quote, the interior arrangement of

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the edifice for worship was exactly like the interior of a school benches are everywhere, and a pulpit for the preacher in the middle. The reform project was from its beginning and educating project, but I'm getting

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ahead of myself renaissance. Humanists like Erasmus believe that education should not only be biblical and theological in nature . They also believed that knowledge of the great philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome could help clear away the

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superstitious undergrowth that choked out authentic piety in the church . And perhaps it was this broad humanist education that inspired the satire, the parody, the edgy wit , which Erasmus and others employed to expose the corruption

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that preyed on medieval christians. We've all heard the old stories of the sellers of indulgences, especially the stories of john texel, arguably the most notorious peddler of indulgences in Germany. It was pretzels salesmanship that

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put the match to the fuse of Luther's reformation. Tetsuo, and this should serve as a warning to all. Seminary presidents. Tetsuo worked in the field of institutional advancement. He was raising funds for the

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expensive building projects of the roman church by selling the pope's plenary indulgences. I have to salute his sense of enterprise. This is very clever fundraising for a price The roman church maintained in Texel preached, christians

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could receive a full and perfect remission of all their sins and be restored to the state of innocence which they enjoyed in baptism. Thus being relieved of all the pains of purgatory. They could even secure these

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benefits for people already dead. Thus arose the infamous marketing jingle linked to textiles capital campaign. As soon as the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs, you can't make this stuff up,

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You know what I'm saying? It was in direct response to the practice of selling indulgences, specifically textiles entrepreneurship that Luther posted his 95 theses, Luther's challenge to the church's corruption was more narrowly focused than Erasmus

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is earlier indictment. But it was Erasmus who by the way was a loyal catholic to the end of his life, who helped european intellectuals the opinion shapers of the age to see just how deep the church's

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corruption went and how dangerous it superstitions were. Imagine if you will, a devoted christian scholar equipped with the wit of mel brooks or john Stewart. Now mix this whip generously with the sharp, argumentative genius

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of the first rape trial lawyer. And you have something like desert areas. Erasmus renaissance scholar affiliated with universities of paris and Cambridge, and friend to the greatest and most devoted minds of his time like that

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man for all seasons, sir thomas more. His goal was quote, to use laughter to expose absurdity and corruption and thus provoke reformation of the church from within. The most deliciously comic figure Erasmus ever drew

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was of a pope who was trying to secure admittance to heaven. He did this in a play titled Julius Exclusives Julius excluded, Written anonymously, but everyone knew it was written by Erasmus, published in 1517

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. Do you notice the date? 1517? Just months before Luther posted his 95 theses? The pope who gets ridiculed in the book was real. It was Pope Julius the second, often characterized as the

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warrior pope, a disturbingly worldly figure. The mounting clamor of anti papal criticism. One scholar rights, which was soon to swell into the protestant reformation had long since taken this warlike pope as the very image

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of the diabolical Antichrist. The play opens with a furious Pope banging on the locked gates of heaven, demanding to know why the locks had been changed because the keys he had been given and Peter c didn't

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work when ST Peter comes to the gate. one of the most bizarre conversations and all of drama ensues , in which Peter makes it clear that the life of this Pope bears no marks of godliness, but

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many of godlessness. Peter in fact, remarks upon Julius is smell of brothels, booze and gunpowder and his clothing, a priest garment's over a soldier's armor and the funniest part of this, I think I

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have time to read it. The funniest part of the play, I think happens in this exchange between Pope Julius and Simon Peter, because Julius is explaining to Peter why he has insulted to have to explain

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his importance and spiritual life to a common fisherman. Yeah, he really didn't understand that. His arguments for the defense were really in you know, promoting the argument for the prosecution um, though is degrading

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for the famous Julius to submit now to Peter, who is to say at the very least a fisherman and practically a beggar. Nevertheless, so you'll know what sort of prince you're insulting. Listen to me

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a bit. I have fought my way to this position without anyone expecting it partly through the aid of the french, partly by the vast power of money raised by usury, but also not without real ability

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on my part in my pontificate. I carried on in such a way that there is no one to whom the church whom christ himself. Oh, so much as to me so great is the power of

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my authority or maybe my cunning that today there are no christian kings whom I have not provoked to arms rending, tearing and shattering all treaties by which they had been closely bound together. And now do you

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begrudge opening the doors of heaven? For a pope who has done so much for christ Julia says deeds lampooned and ridiculed by. Erasmus were deadly serious because they symbolized a religious establishment dedicated to its own enrichment

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and survival while turning it's backed on its founders. Mission thoughtful scholars, Statesmen, Church leaders throughout europe agreed that the medieval church needed reform, though, they disagreed about how that reform should be carried out

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. Erasmus for example, feared that reform might turn into violent revolution or anarchy because of the forces unleashed by martin Luther. Erasmus called Luther the genius of Discord, Luther himself feared the forces at work within

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and beyond protestant ranks. But both Erasmus and Luther understood that matters could not stand as they were in the church. The superstition that masqueraded as faith, the ignorance that made the superstition viable, and the

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ecclesiastical corruption that fed off of both needed to be swept away. Now this was something of the world , the religious world into which john Calvin was born and in which he came to adulthood as a student

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of law and classical literature. 20 years after Luther's efforts gained steam and almost 30 years after Erasmus wrote his satires, Calvin stepped onto the world stage representing the second generation of protestant reformation. He also represented

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like Erasmus, the best of renaissance humanism. Calvin's first book, for example, was a commentary on an essay by the stoic philosopher Seneca like Luther Calvin was evangelical to the core. His greatest aspiration was

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to restore the church to its primitive faith and practice . As taught by the bible as he said in his letter to cardinal saddle eto. All we have attempted has been to renew the ancient form of the

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church. Calvin, as we all know, didn't plan to be a leader of a reformation at all , only a private scholar. But he knew that the church needed reforming and William, when William Farrell

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detained him in Geneva with threats of fiery wrath, Calvin allowed himself to abandon his goal of private scholarship to take up the task of leading the church in Geneva. From there, he inaugurated what we have

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variously described as the reform movement or reformed tradition, but what I prefer to call very simply the reformed project, what Calvin salt to do you see, would perform a task not establish what we call a

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denomination. Calvin's project was to reform a church that had descended into superstition because ignorance had triumphed over sound knowledge and wisdom. He understood that an ignorant church in which superstition rains is subject to corruption and vice

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. His project was simply to reform the church. And because of the nature of the church's problems, ignorance and superstition, Calvin's tools were essentially educational Calvin was and Calvin remained a teacher first and last.

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And he began to chop down the superstition that church that choked the church like kudzu and a slice away at the ignorance that nourished that superstition. And to call to account the corruption of the church leaders who

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benefited from the church's ignorance and superstition. The project which Calvin began, I would argue, is our project to this day. This is why while there is some real value in describing ourselves as members of

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a Reformed communion, especially when we think of the global connections we enjoy or of describing our deep aspirations and convictions as reflective of a reformed or reform tradition or traditions, I would like to make a claim

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that may appear initially mystifying, but I hope it's ultimately clarifying. The reform faith is more an ongoing project than it is a tradition or denominational identity or even a community. When we say we are reformed

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, we are simply saying that we are christians committed to a particular task. Perhaps this sounds odd at first blush, but the reform project is concerned not so much with defining and defending such things as quote

00:32:44.320 - 00:33:02.200

, the uniqueness of reform tradition or quote, a distinctive reformed theology over against other christian brands as it is with recovering christian faith as God's calling of humanity to new life in christ. I would suggest in

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fact, that such a mission reflects precisely the commitment of john Calvin to renew the ancient form of the church. The reform project is less true to itself , the more we think about our reformed identity and

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conversely, the Reform project is more truly reformed, the more it focuses on living and proclaiming the Gospel of jesus of Nazareth. Whenever the Reform project has become preoccupied with itself, it has missed the point

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of its existence. The Reform project exists to draw our attention to jesus of Nazareth, in whom God is revealed and through whom God redeems creation, our responsibility as reform christians is to articulate christian faith.

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What C. S. Lewis referred to as mere Christianity. This does not mean that there are no distinctive features of what we might call reformed faith. There are particular emphasis that have distinguished the reformed approach

00:34:10.520 - 00:34:32.550

to christian faith from other christians. But these reformed emphasis are just that emphasis. The most distinctive aspect of the Reform faith is also its most catholic, it's most universal, its unflagging commitment to articulate the

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good news of the gospel, that in jesus of Nazareth, god's character is fully revealed. And in christ God reconciles God's self to the world, that in jesus of Nazareth sinners find forgiveness and are restored

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to that communion with God, that is the essence of God's own life and love as holy trinity. That in jesus of Nazareth, we are called to the Ministry of reconciliation and Justice and the vocation of

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forgiveness, which is God's mission in and two. And for the whole world Reform, christian is more concerned with carrying on the project of recovering christian faith from superstition and ignorance, fanatical excesses, popular reductionism

00:35:29.540 - 00:35:45.050

, Thoughtless distortions and sick religion, then he or she is with trying to conform the church's theology to certain doctrines that Calvin might or might not have held . 500 years ago. This point was made eloquently

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by Scottish theologian James Mckinnon, who in his study of Calvin wrote It is perhaps not superfluous to remind the Calvin revivalist that are common christian faith as it was taught by its founder. Jesus christ is not

00:36:01.880 - 00:36:23.540

necessarily identical with any ism and that it is incumbent upon christ's disciples to have recourse for themselves in a free, if reverend spirit to his teaching as its supreme and ultimate fountain and norm. This is the

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ongoing project that constitutes our lives as reformed christians and it is this which we need to recover from our past. The reform project is exemplified in the portrayal of john the baptist in mutthiah Greenwald's famous painting of

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the crucifixion in the ice Anaheim altarpiece, that's why this is up here. This is about as good as I get with power point, we are called to point away from ourselves toward jesus christ in whom

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as Calvin wrote, all parts of our Salvation are complete. This is why theologian Karl Barth kept a print of the crucifixion panel of the icing Heim altarpiece hanging above his desk in the first volume of Bart's

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church, Dogmatic Bart comments on that prodigious index finger of john the baptist with which john points away from himself toward the crucified christ. And we can see john the baptist and the prodigious index finger and question

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pointing directly to jesus of Nazareth, john the baptist would have been one heck of a proctologist. It's an awesome finger. The entire Reform project, Thank you. The entire Reform project embodies the essence.

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I'm sorry, my wife just fainted. Well, she and I have a talk later about her latent gnosticism and hesitance deal with bodily function. Okay, yeah, the President is now asking me to move

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along. The entire Reform Project embodies the essence of john's gesture. In this point, this painting, the whole Reform project functions like that prodigious index finger always pointing away from ourselves toward jesus of Nazareth,

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reminding the world that christian faith is not about us . I want to say that again, that christian faith is not about us, but about the love that God is and the grace that God reveals in

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christ as difficult as it is to remember. This is what the Reform Project demands that we remember christian faith, it's not about our beliefs, it is not about our values, it is not about our

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interest, it's not even about our aspirations, hopes and our most pious dreams, christian faith is about the God revealed in jesus of Nazareth. When we engage well in the reform project, we fulfill our

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vocation as witness bearers to the good news of jesus christ. But when we become fixated on ourselves, though, our motivations for doing so may be positive . We will perform our project poorly. Karl Barth

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is often remembered today is the greatest modern reformed theologian because Bart understood that quote and theological study continuation always means beginning once again at the beginning. And for Bart, the beginning point is not a concept or

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a theological principle, but a name, jesus christ to this end. Bart even protested against any attempt to found a theological school of thought or a movement that might advance his way of thinking theologically. The

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fact they could bear remembering among some contemporary bar dein's , he writes, I would not like my life to result in the founding of a new school. I would like to tell anyone who is prepared to

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listen that I myself am not a Bardi in because after I have learned something, I want to remain free to go on learning, emphasize my name as little as possible. There is only one interesting name

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and bringing up all the rest only leads to false loyalties and can only arouse tedious jealousy and stubbornness among other people. You will understand me correctly if you allow what I say to lead you to what christ

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says. A good theologian does not live in a house of ideas, principles and methods. He walks right through all such buildings and always comes out again into the fresh air. What Bart says here about

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his theological mission could be said with equal force for the entire reformed project. The Reform project exists only to bring us face to face with the gospel of jesus christ. It performs its task well to the

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extent that it prepares us to hear a new the word of God. What we know as distinctive of the reform faith are simply beliefs we have affirmed with particular vigor emphasis we have placed on one or another

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christian belief or commitment in the course of recovering christian faith from superstition, ignorance and abuse in every age since Calvin, when we say for example, oh good, I had upside down. When we say

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for example, that one distinctive feature of the reform faith is the premium it places on education, on scholarship and disciplined thought, on the conviction that our love of God is somehow not entirely complete. Until

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we love God with our minds as well as with our hearts and souls and strength. We are not saying that the reform faith is unique in valuing the intellect. Our often repeated quipped that presbyterians are the

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Jesuits of protestantism only makes sense because there are also Jesuits of Catholicism, We are simply affirming that we Reform christians have found the quality of a thinking faith to be crucial to our continuing reformation of christian faith

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. John Calvin's renaissance scholarship, for example, and the particular brand of skepticism that went along with his humanism was a tool in his hands to burn away the clutter of superstition from the worship of christians in

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his own time, Calvin understood how the actions of an ignorant and poorly educated clergy played a key role in the corruption of the medieval church. Calvin countered superstition, ignorance, magic and corruption with deep,

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careful critical theological thought. Thus, when we witness in our own time the ways in which an ignorant protestantism proves its piety by threatening to burn the sacred text of another faith, we are reminded that it

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is only a single generation of poor theological and biblical training that separates us all from fundamentalism and fanaticism. Calvin was the first in our reform project to tell us that you do not have to be stupid or

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mean to follow jesus of Nazareth. The fact that scholarship has remained a defining feature of the reform faith is related directly to the value of knowledge in dispelling the smoke and mirrors of bad religion and to creating

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a hearing for the gospel. One further example, we often think of resistance to idolatry as a reformed theological distinctive, and it is true that opposition to idolatry historically has been emphasized by the reform faith.

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But the fact that the reform faith has historically attacked idolatry in its various forms is directly related to the reform face. Commitment to recover the christian understanding that the worship of idols inevitably enslaves us to the powers

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and Principalities of the world, marketing themselves falsely as God. Calvin was iconoclastic in the narrow and technical sense because he rooted out idolatry, whether the worship of figurines made by human hands or the veneration of

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relics, but Calvin was also iconoclastic in the broader and more metaphorical sense, calling christians away from the worship of any thing in place of God. Centuries after Calvin, when Carl Bart and his Lutheran and

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evangelical colleagues in Germany published their theological declaration of Barman in defiance of Nazism, they were not simply affirming a set of reformed or even protestant principles, they were reclaiming basic universal and catholic christian beliefs regarding the

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character and authority of the Gospel, rebuild in jesus christ and they were doing so in direct contradiction to the Nazi party's totalitarian and therefore idolatrous attempts to assume authority over all aspects of human existence in the name

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of the liberating power of the gospel. The framers of the Barman Declaration were protesting the power of idolatry to enslave human beings. When Bart and his compatriots confessed jesus christ as he is attested for us and

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holy scriptures is the one word of God which we must here and which we must trust and obey in life and in death. They were not subscribing to a peculiar reformed tenant, but to the common belief

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of christian faith, a belief under considerable threat by the idolatrous power, supported by the false mythologies of nationalism and racism and bloodlust. If we were to visit every distinctive of the reform faith, we would

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find not something unique, but a conviction held in common with all christian faith. A belief, a perspective on the christian adventure that we as reform christians have emphasized sometimes with particular and peculiar force, but

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always for the sake of the whole Gospel of jesus christ and for the sake of the whole church. This is the essential theological feature of the Reform project . To be reformed is just to be a christian

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who has taken on a particular project, a task , a mission for the sake of Christianity and in continuity with certain historic streams. While these streams trace themselves from the mid 16th century, they are even

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more deeply rooted in the life and faith of the primitive church. Theologically, this reform project rest in God's completed work in christ pragmatically. It can never rest from its commitment to recover and to articulate again

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and again in each generation, the Gospel of jesus of Nazareth. I shall leave how that looks today to our next lecture when we will explore what's next