Well, I gave up on reading the Institutes. Something about Book I that kills me every time. I just don't find all his debates with strange heretics all that interesting.
Instead, I found a biography of John Chrysostom, biship of Antioch, then bishop of Constantinople, by J.N.D. Kelly, called Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom - Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). What a fascinating life! I'm hooked. I can't read enough about this guy. And Kelly's bio reads like a novel: engaging, suspenseful, dramatic. I may have to re-read it simply because it was so good. Now I'm sampling some of his sermons which appear in translation in the Nicene/Post-Nicene Fathers collection. He was the first major exegete to write a full-length commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.
Well, more on him later, I hope.
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4 comments:
Institutes are nothing. You should try this: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3817/is_200203/ai_n9044434
:)
But sounds interesting, I shall have to poke around more on this John as well.
My dentist named his practice after Chrysostom.
I've read a few sermons of his on marriage that were absolutely beautiful. I shall look into this book sometime.
And I read a few selection of Calvin for Church History that Baarendse copied, and to my surprise, actually liked it (which has not been my response with most armchair calvinists that I've run into). But I don't think I'll tackle the entire work soon.
Yea, most people who espouse "Calvinism" almost never understand or credit Calvin properly, certainly not completely. The man was a devotional and missional giant on top of the theologian/magistrate side we're used to seeing.
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