The Calvinist InternationalSimon is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland. He resides in Geelong, Victoria with his wife and four children.
Basilicon Doron (1598) was King James I of England’s (also James VI of Scotland) heartfelt appeal to his son, Henry. It contained instructions for him should he succeed James to the throne. At the beginning James placed a sonnet summarising the argument of the work. It is rather charming and contains a simple statement of the divine right […]
In his De Regno Christi (1550), Martin Bucer advises King Edward VI of England to reestablish the Kingdom of Christ not just through edicts and decrees, but through persuasion. This is a good demonstration of magisterial reformers’ understanding of belief and faith, and the way that one comes to these. Outward conformity is not enough. One must […]
Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) was an eminent English jurist. The excerpt below comes from a famous report of Calvin’s Case (1608). Robert Calvin was a Scottish born freeholder who inherited land in England. His right to inherit was challenged on the grounds that he was not a natural born Englishman, but a Scot. The historical context […]
William Perkins (1558-1602) wrote this pithy summary of the Jesus Christ the Son as the second person of the Trinity in his A Golden Chain. I am not, strictly speaking, a theologian, so this strikes me as a very helpful and simple explanation of the Son’s trinitarian relationship to the Father in amongst all of the […]
Further to my previous post on Hobbes and Vermigli, the latter wrote in 1555 following on from his denunciation of those who understand Naaman the Syrian’s example to allow for attendance at Mass and so on: Neither did Eliseus [Elisha], as our men do think, grant Naaman licence or liberty to do so as he had […]
In his massive chapter on ecclesiastical power in Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes argues that people can rightly bow before idols, or deny belief in Christ as Messiah. He writes that if a civil magistrate forbids one to believe in Christ, it does not matter: To this I answer, that such a forbidding is of no effect, […]
In De Civitate Dei, book XIX chapter 27, Augustine of Hippo makes the following statement about the attainment of peace for individuals, and the justice that comes with this. The key is the obedience of man to God’s commands. In this life, therefore, justice in each individual exists when God rules and man obeys, and when […]
Over at the New York Times Ross Douthat has penned a tongue-in-cheek column about what could be if Donald Trump was a domestic policy wonk. The point he makes about family policy, one he has been making for some time now, is a good one. There is a family policy vacuum at the top end of town. The questions […]
In Leviathan Thomas Hobbes writes that faith in Jesus Christ is not attainable, except by the sovereign gift of God. He says the following, in the context of a discussion about the role of the Christian person in a Christian commonwealth: It is the doctrine of St. Paul concerning Christian faith in general, “Faith cometh by hearing,” […]
In his recent book, The Watershed of Modern Politics (Yale, 2015), the eminent historian of ideas Francis Oakley makes the case that the theory of the divine right of kings is a constant and central one for a large part of the history of western political thought. In short, the prominence of ‘sacral kingship’ in western […]