Calvin Jean - Lifting hearts to the lord : worship with John Calvin in sixtenth-century Geneva

T HE C HURCH AT W ORSHIP: C ASE S TUDIES FROM C HRISTIAN H ISTORY

Series Editors: L ESTER R UTH, C ARRIE S TEENWYK, J OHN D . W ITVLIET

Published

Walking Where Jesus Walked: Worship in Fourth-Century Jerusalem

Lester Ruth, Carrie Steenwyk, John D. Witvliet

Tasting Heaven on Earth: Worship in Sixth-Century Constantinople

Walter D. Ray

Longing for Jesus: Worship at a Black Holiness Church in Mississippi, 18951913

Lester Ruth

Lifting Hearts to the Lord: Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-Century Geneva

Karin Maag

Forthcoming

Loving God Intimately: Worship with the Anaheim Vineyard Fellowship, 19771983

Andy Park, Lester Ruth, and Cindy Rethmeier

Joining Hearts and Voices: Worship with Isaac Watts in Eighteenth-Century London

Christopher J. Ellis

Leaning On the Word: Worship with Argentine Baptists in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Lester Ruth and Eric Mathis

K ARIN M AAG

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

2016 Karin Maag

All rights reserved

Published 2016 by

W M. B . E ERDMANS P UBLISHING C O.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maag, Karin.

Lifting hearts to the Lord : worship with John Calvin in sixteenth-century Geneva / Karin Maag.

pages cm. (The church at worship : case studies from Christian history)

Includes .

ISBN 978-0-8028-7147-3 (pbk. : alk. paper); 978-1-4674-4400-2 (ePub); 978-1-4674-4360-9 (Kindle)

1. Public worship Geneva (Republic) 2. Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564.

3. Geneva (Republic) Church history. I. Title.

BV15.M225 2016

264.042009494516 dc23

2015025992

www.eerdmans.com

The Church at Worship offers user-friendly documentary case studies in the history of Christian worship. The series features a wide variety of examples, both prominent and obscure, from a range of continents, centuries, and Christian traditions. Whereas many historical studies of worship survey developments over time, offering readers a changing panoramic view like that offered out of an airplane window, each volume in The Church at Worship zooms in close to the surface, lingering over worship practices in a single time and place and allowing readers to sense the texture of specific worship practices in unique Christian communities. To complement books that study the forest of liturgical history, these volumes study trees in the forest.

Each volume opens by orienting readers to the larger contexts of each example through a map, a timeline of events, and a summary of significant aspects of worship in the relevant time period and region. This section also includes any necessary cautions for the study of the particular case, as well as significant themes or practices to watch for while reading.

Each volume continues by focusing on the practices of worship in the specific case. This section begins with an introduction that explains the nature of participation in worship for ordinary worshipers. Many studies of worship have focused almost exclusively on what clergy do, say, and think. In contrast, insofar as historical sources allow it, this series focuses on the nature of participation of the entire community.

Each volume next presents an anthology of primary sources, presenting material according to the following categories: people and artifacts, worship setting and space, descriptions of worship, orders of worship and texts, sermons, polity documents, and theology of worship documents. Each source is introduced briefly and is accompanied by a series of explanatory notes. Inclusion of these primary sources allows readers to have direct access to the primary material that historians draw upon for their summary descriptions and comparisons of practices. These sources are presented in ways that honor both academic rigor and accessibility. Our aim is to provide the best English editions of the resources possible, along with a complete set of citations that allow researchers to find quickly the best scholarly editions. At the same time, the introductory comments, explanatory sidebars, detailed glossaries, and devotional and small-group study questions make these volumes helpful not only for scholars and students but also for congregational study groups and a variety of other interested readers.

The presentation of sources attempts, insofar as it is possible, to take into account multiple disciplines of study related to worship. Worship is inevitably a multi-sensory experience, shaped by the sounds of words and music, the sight of symbols and spaces, the taste of bread and wine, and the fragrance of particular places and objects. Worship is also shaped by a variety of sources that never appear in the event itself: scriptural commands, theological treatises, and church polity rules or guidelines. In order to help readers sense this complex interplay, the volumes in this series provide a wide variety of texts and images. We particularly hope that this approach helps students of the history of preaching, architecture, and music, among others, to more deeply understand how their interests intersect with other disciplines.

Each volume concludes with suggestions for devotional use, study questions for congregational study groups, notes for students working in a variety of complementary disciplines, a glossary, suggestions for further study, works cited, and an index.

Students of Christian worship, church history, religious studies, and social or cultural history might use these case studies to complement the birds-eye view offered by traditional textbook surveys.

Students in more specialized disciplines including both liberal arts humanities (e.g., architectural or music history) and the subdisciplines of practical theology (e.g., evangelism, preaching, education, and pastoral care) may use these volumes to discern how their own topic of interest interacts with worship practices. Liturgical music, church architecture, and preaching, for example, cannot be fully understood apart from a larger context of related practices.

This series is also written for congregational study groups, adult education classes, and personal study. It may be unconventional in some contexts to plan a congregational study group around original historical documents. But there is much to commend this approach. A reflective encounter with the texture of local practices in other times and places can be a profound act of discipleship. In the words of Andrew Walls, Never before has the Church looked so much like the great multitude whom no one can number out of every nation and tribe and people and tongue. Never before, therefore, has there been so much potentiality for mutual enrichment and self-criticism, as God causes yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.

This enrichment and self-criticism happens, in part, by comparing and contrasting the practices of another community with our own. As Rowan Williams explains, Good history makes us think again about the definition of things we thought we understood pretty well, because it engages not just with what is familiar but with what is strange. It recognizes that the past is a foreign country as well as being our past. That oft-repeated truism implies that the goal of studying history is merely to avoid its mistakes. A more robust Christian sensibility is built around the conviction that the past is not just a comedy of errors but the arena in which God has acted graciously.