Songs of the Nativity, Selected sermons on Luke 1 and 2, by John Calvin, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 280 pages, £15.00.
These 14 sermons form a series based on the visit Mary, the mother of our Lord, paid to Elizabeth. Not only were the times auspicious and heavy with promise, but these good women were moved by the Spirit, as the Spirit of understanding and utterance. It requires someone of the calibre of John Calvin to do justice to such elevated spiritual exchanges. Here he is commenting on Elizabeth’s blessing on Mary: “Blessed is she that believed” (Lk 1:45):
“Here Elizabeth indicates the real reason why Mary is to be praised: it is because she was obedient to the word which the angel brought her. That, then, is the essential quality we ought to note about Mary. We should not judge according to our own estimate of understanding, but according to the truth which Elizabeth utters in the power of the Holy Spirit. As proof, we recall that Elizabeth did not speak on a mere whim, but that the Holy Spirit controlled her tongue and lips. It would be wrong to think that what is said here are the words of a mortal woman. Rather, God was using her so to speak as the mouthpiece and instrument of His Holy Spirit. Remember, then, that the particular quality which Mary possessed was faith, through which she received the promises made to her. She did not doubt that God was completely dependable, that whatever came from Him was utterly sure and true, and that no one who put their trust in Him and relied on Him could ever be disappointed.”
The translator Robert White has the following comment to make on the Bible text used: “Most often the text of the 1545 edition of the [French] Geneva Bible is used, although the revision of 1561 is sometimes preferred. Translations from Scripture have been made direct from the French, and do not necessarily correspond to the standard English versions.”
The book is well up to the high standard of presentation we have come to expect from the Banner of Truth Trust. The translator points out that written
1Both books reviewed here may be obtained from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
sermons lack, as they must, the personal accidents of voice, gesture and presence; they therefore stand to lose something in the cold light of the printed page, and there may consequently be some such loss. However, the matters of insight, biblical balance and clarity on a momentous subject more than outweigh such considerations. Buy the book and be convinced for yourself.
(Rev) J R Tallach
A Day’s March Nearer Home, Autobiography of J Graham Miller, edited by Iain H Murray, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, hardback, 344 pages, £16.00. J Graham Miller (1913-2008) was the son of a Presbyterian minister and his wife who had emigrated with their parents from Scotland to New Zealand when they were children. After graduating in law from Otago University and studying theology at his denomination’s Knox College (where he discovered that the professors were undermining confidence in Biblical inerrancy and more-or-less-subtly promoting liberal doctrinal views) Graham Miller served as a missionary in the New Hebrides (1941-1952), minister in Papakura, Auckland (1953-1965), principal of Melbourne Bible Institute (1965-1970), missionary in the New Hebrides (1971-1973) and minister of St Giles’ Presbyterian Church, Hurstville, Sydney (1974-1980). In retirement he produced several books which were published by the Banner of Truth Trust.
This book is taken from the subject’s manuscript account of his life, from childhood in a New Zealand Presbyterian manse through to his closing years in retirement in north-east Victoria, written in the hope that “later on children’s children will browse through these family archives with interest and surprise”. The selection has been made by his personal friend and successor in St Giles, Rev Iain H Murray, who has added some additional and explanatory material.
This is a modest and unselfconscious story of personal, domestic and ministerial godliness lived out in a variety of environments by a perhaps rather-private Christian whose convictions and circumstances often forced him to take a lonely stand in the public arena. He faced opposition in Church courts and mission committees because of his adherence to, and contention for, the avowed confessional position of his Presbyterian denomination on matters such as the bodily resurrection of Christ and the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible in its entirety as the written Word of God. He came into conflict with his former fellow student, Principal L G Geering, whose “brash and bold unbelief” he claimed “so flattened the Church that it has not recovered”. He maintained that the failure of the leaders of the more conservative Westminster Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand (which he himself had led for some time) “to make any publicly convincing protest over the laudatory endorsement of Principal L G Geering at the 1966 General
Assembly” was a lost opportunity which permanently reduced the testimony and influence of the Fellowship.
An Appendix containing extracts from public addresses lays down “as an axiom that our theology will determine our preaching, our conduct of worship and all the varied elements of the entire service,” and expresses his thought-provoking views on the relation between theology and preaching, the priorities and patterns for a long preaching ministry, prayer in public worship and the public reading of the Scriptures. He affirmed: “It is fatal merely to be activated by enthusiasm – even by evangelistic zeal – unless these are ballasted by doctrinal realities powerfully attested by the Holy Ghost”.
In his Introduction, Mr Murray comments that “once or twice some readers may surmise that my own judgement would not be identical with his”. So it is with us. Dr Miller was personally committed to the theology of Calvin and the Westminster Confession and was at home among the works of the Puritans and old Scottish divines, which makes one wonder at his enthusiasm for the Keswick-type conventions of that time and the Billy Graham evangelistic crusades. One suspects that the attraction of such was their commitment to the Biblical view of the Bible which he himself embraced.
He chose to conduct his ministry within denominations where the abandonment of fundamental truths was tolerated, though he resisted movements for union which would have further diluted their testimony to truth. The archives of the New Zealand Presbyterian Church describe him as a “firm opponent of organic Church Union in NZ”, and he was prominent in the section of the Presbyterian Church of Australia which remained out of the 1977 Union. Although he insisted on the use of the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible in public worship, he was open to the use of other versions in private devotions. There were matters of ecclesiastical practice which we would not endorse.
Others besides ministers can find Mr Miller’s view of retirement helpful: “Retirement should be the crown of our life’s work, not its nadir. It is the time for us to take up the vocation of intercessory prayer. All that has gone before, first in the preparation for ministry, and then in the exercise of that ministry, is but the preparation to the third and final earthly ministry of prayer. Many of God’s saints have made this discovery, and, as a by-product, it has exorcised the demons of despondency and loneliness.” He draws attention to Anna (Lk 2:36-38). In his diary he notes approvingly John Calvin’s comment: “God does not prolong the lives of His people that they may pamper themselves, but magnify Him for His benefits which He is daily heaping upon us”.
It is surely testimony to the influence of the gospel in the New Hebrides that the President of the Republic of Vanuatu concluded a letter of condolence
to the family of Dr Miller after his death in 2008: “I thank the Lord for all the many known and unknown blessings which the Lord has given to the New Hebrides/Vanuatu through the dedicated life of His good servant”.
(Rev) H M Cartwright
Protestant View
Mixed Marriages
A recent programme on BBC Radio Ulster, “Mixing Marriages”, looked at the effect of the papal decree, Ne Temere (1908), on a family in 1910. The decree required the non-Roman-Catholic partners in mixed marriages to undergo religious education and convert to Roman Catholicism, and the children of the marriage to be baptized and brought up as Roman Catholics. It also declared that the marriage of a Roman Catholic was invalid if not performed in the Roman Catholic Church.
The affected family, Alexander McCann, a Roman Catholic, and his wife Agnes, a Presbyterian, were faced with a huge problem. They had been married in a Presbyterian church in 1908 and by 1910 had two infant children, but the Roman Catholic Church demanded that they remarry in a Roman Catholic church and bring the children up in that religion. Agnes McCann could not in all good conscience comply.
A Roman Catholic priest “convinced Agnes’s husband Alexander he had been living in sin and his children would be damned. Alexander felt he had no choice but to take them from her if she wouldn’t capitulate” – which he did in her absence. Despite frantic searching, Agnes McCann never saw her children again. She was reported to be “broken in health, suffering untold agony of the heart”.
Some defenders of Rome argue that in 1970 Paul VI replaced the papal decree with the less demanding Apostolic Letter, Matrimonia Mixta. But Ne Temere still stands. Matrimonia Mixta is rather a supplement to it and is intentionally vague and allowing for flexibility of interpretation. Nevertheless it states that “a marriage between two persons of whom one has been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, while the other is unbaptized, entered into without previous dispensation by the local Ordinary [bishop], is invalid”. It also demands that “the Catholic party must also promise to do all in his or her power so that all offspring are baptised and brought up in the Catholic Church”.
The message is clear: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Cor 6:14). Lorraine Boettner’s warning in his book, Roman Catholicism, is still
pertinent: “Let anyone who is contemplating a mixed marriage stop and count the cost before he mortgages his own future and sells the birthright of his children.”
NMR