Tracts & Letters (Vol 3) - Calvin - XIII - Tract 4 (Psychopannychia) commenced

Required reading
Tracts and Letters (Volume 3) by John Calvin (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence Tract IV (Psychopannychia) by reading up to the paragraph beginning: 'Let us now examine the cradle in which they rock souls asleep, and let us dispose of the soporiferous draught which they give them to drink.'.

My summary
This week we begin a new tract on psychopannychia (soul sleep).  A doctrine that was held by Anabaptists.

Firstly, after his prefaces, Calvin looks at what is the human soul.  He concludes that the spirit or soul of man is a substance distinct from the body.

Then Calvin argues from Scripture that the soul, after the death of the body, still survives endued with sense and intellect.  Thus the soul is immortal.

Next Calvin teaches us that the Christian soul is at rest/peace when it is freed from the body at death.  But this does not mean asleep.

Then Calvin discusses the first resurrection whereby Christians go to be with God.  He cites many texts such as:
(i) For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: (Phi 1:23);
(ii) I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Mat 22:32);
(iii) And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? (Rev 6:10);
(iv) Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. (Rev 20:6);
(v)  And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luk 23:42-43).

What grabbed me
In my opinion this is one of the best Biblical arguments against soul sleep: 'What ! are they not overawed by the words of the Lord when, calling himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he says, he is " God not of the dead but of the living ?" (Matt. xxii. 32.) Is He, then, neither to be to them a God, nor are they to be to him a people? (Mark xii. 27.) But they say that these things will be realized when the dead shall be raised to life. Although the question expressly asked is, Have you not read what was said concerning the Resurrection of the dead ? this evasion will not serve their purpose. Christ having to do with the Sadducees, who denied not only the Resurrection of the dead but the immortality of the soul, convicts them of two errors by this single expression. For if God is God not of the dead but of the living, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had departed this life when God spoke to Moses calling himself their God, the inference is, that they were living another life.'

It doesn't get much clearer than that!

Next week's reading
Conclude Tract IV (Psychopannychia).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.