Polyamory is a particularly apt illustration of how the sexual revolution encourages us to try to have our cake and eat it too—to have not just pleasure, but also the joys of love, while keeping our options open and never really giving all of ourselves to anyone. This is also why it is so destructive.

For fearmongering hicks, conservative Christians are remarkably prescient. Our latest prophetic triumph is seen in another New York Times puff piece pushing legal recognition for polygamy. Correction—another New York Times puff piece pushing legal recognition for polyamory. The difference is that while polygamy traditionally consisted of a man having more than one wife, polyamory consists of a group of men and/or women all having each other in various permutations.
Once again, we have gone from “you’re a bigot for suggesting that this will ever happen” to “you’re a bigot for not supporting this.” The subject of the Times piece is Somerville, a city in Massachusetts that has spent the past few years creating new legal rights for polyamorous partner groups.
As the Times notes, “Interest in nonmonogamy seems to be on the rise across the country.” Once again, the conservative Christian alarmists were right. And they were right for precisely the reasons they gave at the time. The poly movement’s champions see their cause as a natural extension of the LGBT movement, which has been all-conquering in Massachusetts.
Thus, the NYT describes how “Somerville is alive with events like Indecent, a fetish- and kink-positive party, and Boudoir, a queer underground dance party. There are polyamorous speed-dating evenings, drag shows at the venue Crystal Ballroom and a gender-neutral CrossFit gym.” If that is not clear enough, the Times reports, “There is a significant crossover between those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and pansexual and those who practice nonmonogamy, according to multiple studies.”
Oh.
Apparently, the math is more complicated than those equal-sign bumper stickers made it seem. On the one hand, there is marriage as one man and one woman, which unites the two halves of the human race and provides a stable basis for begetting and raising the next generations. On the other hand, there are relational webs such that of one “Mr. Malone, who … currently has a nesting partner, a long-term partner, two long-distance partners and a kink-based relationship with another person.” I guess that love is love is love is a kink-based relationship.
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, September 27, 2022
The very same Son who was to submit to the humiliation of incarnation, of gestation, of birth, of obedient suffering and death, who was to be raised for us and and who intercedes for us now at the right hand was with his church even before the incarnation because there is one covenant of grace in multiple administrations. 

When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of Yahweh. Now I have come.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my Lord say to his servant?” And the commander of Yahweh’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so (Joshua 5:13–15).
One of the more profound points of disagreement between some Particular Baptists and the historic Christian and Reformed understanding of the history of redemption (historia salutis) centers on the question of the nature of the covenant of grace before the New Testament. There are more moderate Baptists who see the covenant of grace as actually present in the Old Testament (i.e., Gen-Malachi). The school of thought that concerns us here, however, is the more radical strain of Particular Baptist theology who reject the idea that the covenant of grace was actually, substantially present in the types and shadows of the Old Testament. In this view, the covenant of grace is only actually present in the New Covenant. In this view, there is a witness to the covenant of grace in the types and shadows and believers under the OT might be said to have apprehended Christ and the covenant of grace by faith but the covenant of grace itself remains wholly future relative to the types and shadows. Indeed, some proponents of this view have argued that all the covenants (including the Abrahamic) before the New Covenant were, in essence, covenants of works and that only the New Covenant is the covenant of grace.
One counter argument that I have been offering to the more radical Particular Baptist view is to say that such a view cannot account for significant events in the history of redemption nor does it account for the way the New Testament itself interprets the Old Testament. In other essays I have noted how much Paul’s appeal to the history of Israel (in 1 Cor 10:1–4) relies on a substantial continuity between Israel and the New Covenant church. I have also observed that in (the most likely textual variant of) Jude 5, it is Jesus who “saved the people out of the land.”1 For these discussions see the resources below.
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For Calvin, the call to be a Christian pastor was a high and holy calling — but it was also a most challenging vocation, not to be lived in isolation. Ministers of the gospel flourished as they experienced communion with Christ through his word, were empowered by the Holy Spirit, and enjoyed the precious gift of godly colleagues in ministry.

ABSTRACT: Many who know John Calvin as a brilliant Reformed theologian do not yet know him as a model of pastoral collegiality and accountability. Under his leadership, ministry in sixteenth-century Geneva often happened in plurality and community. In particular, four regular meetings fostered Calvin’s vision of collegial ministry: the weekly Company of Pastors, Congrégation, and Consistory, and the quarterly Ordinary Censure. Through these institutions, the city’s pastors prayed together, studied together, encouraged and exhorted one another, and labored for the advance of the gospel together. Their model of ministry offers an enduring case study for pastoral practice, especially in a day when many pastors feel discouraged, isolated, and perhaps on the verge of burnout.
In a New York Times article from August 2010, Paul Vitello describes the serious difficulties faced by many Christian ministers in the United States today.
Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Americans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could. Public health experts . . . caution that there is no simple explanation of why so many members of a profession once associated with rosy-cheeked longevity have become so unhealthy and unhappy.1
During the past decade, researchers have probed various factors contributing to the poor mental and physical health of America’s professional clergy.2 Some factors commonly identified include poor pastor-church alignment, lack of resilience, lack of self-awareness, unresolved conflicts, heavy workloads, unreasonable expectations, financial pressure, and loneliness or isolation. Though no single aspect is usually decisive, the cumulative effect of these tensions and troubles frequently produces high levels of stress that force pastors to question their vocation, or cause them to leave the ministry altogether. Pastoral work often becomes “death by a thousand paper cuts.”3
Thankfully, a variety of helpful resources are now available to support and encourage pastors who are burned out, bummed out, or burdened with congregational ministry.4 One important resource for pastoral health and flourishing that is frequently overlooked in contemporary discussions, however, is the history of the pastoral office — the practices, convictions, and institutions that Christians in the past have adopted to nourish and strengthen gospel ministers. As we shall see, a historical awareness of the pastoral office can provide a broader perspective and a refreshing draught of wisdom as modern-day Christian ministers live out their vocations in ways that are pleasing to God and sustainable for a lifetime of faithful and fruitful ministry. This present essay offers a case study of the model of ministry created by John Calvin in Geneva from 1536–1564. As we’ll see, Calvin recognized the unique challenges faced by faithful gospel ministers and created practices and institutions to promote pastoral collegiality, accountability, and spiritual vitality.5
Proclamation of the Word

When John Calvin (1509–1564) first arrived in Geneva in the summer of 1536, the city republic had been Protestant for barely two months and faced an uncertain future. As Calvin later recalled, “When I first arrived in this church there was almost nothing. They were preaching and that is all. They were good at seeking out idols and burning them, but there was no Reformation. Everything was in turmoil.”6 Over the next 28 years (with a three-year hiatus from 1538–1541), Calvin emerged as the chief human architect responsible for building a new religious order in Geneva that prioritized the preaching of God’s word, the fourfold ministry (pastor, elder, deacon, professor), church discipline, and intensive pastoral care and visitation. Calvin’s vision for a church reformed in doctrine and practice was articulated in Geneva’s Ecclesiastical Ordinances (1541), in the city’s catechism and liturgy (1542), and in Calvin’s expansive biblical commentaries and sermons. For the Genevan Reformer, the faithful exposition and proclamation of God’s word was one of the marks of a true church, standing at the center of gospel ministry. As he once noted, the word is the “means of our salvation, it is all our life, it is all our riches, it is the seed whereby we are begotten as God’s children; it is the nourishment of our souls.”7
One of the first steps Calvin took upon arriving in Geneva was to restructure parish boundaries in order to give priority to the preaching of the word of God. He and his colleague Guillaume Farel consolidated nearly a dozen Catholic churches and chapels into three parish churches within the city’s walls — St. Pierre, la Madeleine, and St. Gervais — and recruited six or seven Reformed ministers to serve these three urban congregations. Calvin also consolidated Geneva’s countryside parishes and appointed around a dozen pastors to serve these rural churches.
The proclamation of God’s word stood at the center of religious life in Calvin’s Geneva. In the city, preaching services included weekday sermons at 8:00 a.m., early morning sermons at 4:00 a.m. for domestic servants, Sunday sermons at 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and a catechetical sermon on Sundays at noon for children. By 1561, there were 33 sermons preached within Geneva’s city walls each week. Calvin and his pastoral colleagues shared the preaching load and rotated between the city’s pulpits. “The preacher was not the proprietor of a pulpit or the captain of his congregation: it was Christ who presided over his Church through the Word.”8 Even so, a disproportionate responsibility for preaching fell on Calvin and his more gifted colleagues such as Theodore Beza and Michel Cop, who regularly preached more than 150 sermons per year.
Calvin and Geneva’s ministers prioritized God’s word in other ways as well. The Genevan liturgy, written by Calvin in 1542, was filled with scriptural allusions and rich biblical language. The singing of the Huguenot Psalter was a standard feature of both public and private worship in Geneva. Children were required to attend catechism classes where they learned the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer — a basic primer for Christian faith, conduct, and worship. In 1555, the ministers, along with the church’s elders, also began conducting annual household visitations to ensure that all of Geneva’s residents had a knowledge of basic biblical doctrine as articulated in the catechism and were living in accordance with God’s word. Finally, during the sixteenth century, Geneva became a center for Protestant publishing, with the city’s presses printing no fewer than eighty editions of the French Bible as well as translations of the Scripture into English, Italian, Spanish, and Latin. For Calvin and Geneva’s ministers, reading, hearing, and obeying God’s word was essential for the life of the church and the spiritual health of God’s people.
Pastoral Collegiality and Accountability

In addition to prioritizing the proclamation of God’s word, Calvin also created pastoral institutions in Geneva to encourage the collegiality, accountability, and spiritual health of the Protestant ministers who served the city’s churches. These institutions included the Company of Pastors, the Congrégation, the Ordinary Censure, and the Consistory — four pastoral bodies that profoundly shaped religious culture in Geneva and preserved Calvin’s theological legacy for generations to come.
Company of Pastors

In the mid-1540s, Calvin began to convene the ministers of the city and countryside every Friday morning to discuss the business of the church. This institution, known as the Company of Pastors, became a fixture of religious life in Geneva thereafter. The Company, whose membership consisted of around fifteen to eighteen pastors and several professors, was responsible to monitor public worship in the city, recruit and examine new pastors, supervise theological education at the Academy, oversee the work of the deacons and public benevolence, and offer godly advice to the city magistrates. Owing to the theological stature of Calvin and several of his colleagues, the Company of Pastors soon developed a vast correspondence with Reformed churches throughout Europe, becoming a kind of hub of international Calvinism. As such, the Company served as an advisory board to foreign churches on doctrinal and practical issues, solicited financial and political support for embattled Protestants, and supplied student-pastors to foreign churches. Moreover, the Company of Pastors began in 1555 a top-secret program where it recruited and trained Reformed ministers and sent them as missionary pastors to Catholic France.
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