The arrangement and deployment of these symbols [of the Turks] – weapons and costume – began to alter subtly in the first decades of the eighteenth century, in part, remarkably, as a result of a shared interest in flowers. Flowers had been highly visible in the Ottoman capital from the mid-sixteenth century. By the 1630s the famous Turkish traveler Evliya Chelebi was estimating that there were some 300 florists in Constantinople. The open meadows along the Golden Horn were filled with tulips and lilacs in the spring and the lilacs’ scent was intoxicating. The introduction of the tulip to Europe from Turkey in the mid-sixteenth century, first to Augsburg in 1559, then to Antwerp and the Habsburg domains in the Netherlands between 1562 and 1583, revived a passion for flowers and gardens in the West. Mass production of blooms exported opened into an industry in the Netherlands, and tulip bulbs were exported across Europe. The Margrave of the small estate of Baden Durlach had more than 4,000 tulips in his garden by 1636, all carefully listed in his garden registers. . . .
It is impossible to be precise about the date but certainly beginning in the Tulip Era the symbolic connotations of “the Turk” began to gather new and extended meanings. The similarity of the tulip’s appearance to a turban was first noted by the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople Ghislain de Busbecq in the 1550s. He was passionate about flowers and, based upon this visual connection, mistakenly gave the tulips their name, a corruption of the Turkish for turban, tulban. But turbans, once the symbol of Eastern violence, now acquired an additional, softer connection. . . . For the West, flowers, silks, and flowing robes suggested an indolent life rather than the rigors of the field of battle . . . (Wheatcroft, Infidels, 265, 266)
Tag: TULIP
Forensic Friday: Why It Goes with Two-Kingdom Tuesday
Our mid-western correspondent alerted me to a piece over at American Vision which is critical of the recent resurgence of Calvinism — as in Young, Restless, and Reformed — for regarding personal salvation as the essence of Calvinism. For the author, TULIP is well and good. It affirms God’s sovereignty. But it hardly covers what it means to be Reformed.
. . . TULIP is not the essence of the Reformed theology. Of course, the doctrines of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints are an important starting step to the immense body of theological truths called “Reformed theology.†It follows directly from the greater concept of the Sovereignty of God. It correctly describes the fallen state of man and the work of God in saving the individual. When we look up to God to give thanks for what He has done for us personally, we think “TULIP,†even if we never knew the term or never understood it.
To summarize, TULIP is the acronym for the “mechanism†of our personal salvation. And that’s it. Nothing more than our personal salvation. But Reformed theology encompasses immeasurably more than just personal salvation. And when a church makes TULIP the summa of its theology, that church is not Reformed. Yes, it has taken the first step to becoming Reformed, but it is still far from the goal.
So if the doctrines of grace are just a start then where does the Reformed faith lead?
It was not churches full of believers who earnestly study theology only to revel in their personal salvation. In fact, with two exceptions – Scotland and Hungary – the early Reformers didn’t leave us any lasting churches at all. It was not intellectualized sermons of elaborate psychological verbiage that pick on every feeling and every emotion a believer may have. It was not courageous sermons on irrelevant topics of peripheral importance to our age and culture. And it certainly wasn’t a belief in a God who is only sovereign to save individuals, but nothing else.
Their most lasting legacy was on the cultivation of societies, whole cultures based on the practical applications of Reformed theology, from top to bottom. Geneva, Strasbourg, Holland, England, Scotland, Hungary, the Huguenot communities in France and later in North and South Carolina, the Oranje-Vrystaat and Transvaal. Societies that became light to the world, an embodiment of Christ’s liberty and justice for all. The Reformed believers of earlier centuries built a civilization that influenced the world permanently. They changed the world not by the selfishness of the focus on salvation but by the obedience of teaching the nations and building the Kingdom of God.
To counter this Whiggish and transformational view of Reformed Protestantism, one could seemingly emphasize a number of truths. But the one that seems to make the biggest dent is justification by faith alone, where personal salvation is the point of Christ’s saving work, and where the kingdom comes not through civil kingdoms or magistrates but where believers confess and worship Christ as Lord and savior.
On the other hand, a view of salvation that looks for the proximity of faith and good works, and sees personal transformation as a barometer of Christ’s work will often be hamfisted in opposing transformationalism. It’s as if the Reformed faith is chopped liver for serving up an alien righteousness when what we really need for the kingdom to exist and thrive is a personal and active righteousness.
Anyway, arguments like American Vision’s are part of the reason for countering with justification-priority.
Old Life 