04 Feb 2020 
Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
In today’s post, Zanchi deals with the second type of licit festivals: those instituted by men with the consent of the church. As examples, he points to Purim (Esther), as well as to Hanukkah, the origin of which is recounted in 1 Maccabees. Zanchi notes that these festivals, although not instituted...
Read more → 03 Feb 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
Today we move onto the second quaestio, now that Zanchi has established that festivals, as a matter of natural law, are appropriate not only for the church of the Old Testament, but also of the New Testament. That second question is: which ones? In answering the question, Zanchi makes a very important...
Read more → 31 Jan 2020 Posted by Steven Wedgeworth
Earlier this week, Pastor Tim Keller restarted a minor controversy when he tweeted, "If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of the Father out of His infinite love for you, it will infinitely melt your hardness." Traditional Christian orthodoxy has maintained that Jesus never lost the love of the Father,...
Read more → 31 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
Zanchi continues his comparison of gentile, Christian, and Jewish festivals, drawing on Festus for what he has to say about the gentiles. Christians festivals are like those of the gentiles in some respects, but not in others. For instance, Zanchi does not believe that “games” (ludi, a term that...
Read more → 30 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
In today's post, Zanchi continues his response to the objection that Christians should not have festivals through an analysis of the Fourth Commandment. Zanchi here makes the important distinction between substance and accident in the commandment; notes an important parallel with gentile festivals that...
Read more → 29 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
In clearing out some old papers, I came across something I had meant to do here, but didn’t get around to it; so I’m doing it now. That “something” is a series on an interesting bit of Girolamo Zanchi’s commentary on Colossians: an excursus De Festis (“On Festivals”) in his comments on Col....
Read more → 28 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
I'm a little late getting to this this week, but here is the Collect for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany from the Order of Worship for the Reformed Church in the United States. It is short, as collects are; but it is eloquent, and powerful. The Third Sunday after the Epiphany THE COLLECT ALMIGHTY...
Read more → 19 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
Here is the Collect for this week from the Order of Worship for the Reformed Church in the United States. The prayer draws together (in the following order) several texts from the New Testament Epistles: 1 Peter 2.9; 2 Corinthians 4.4; Ephesians 4.3; Ephesians 4.1-2; and Romans 6.22. The Second Sunday...
Read more → 14 Jan 2020 Posted by E.J. Hutchinson
In a previous post, we looked at Melanchthon’s response to the birth of Joachim Camerarius’s daughter and to the death of his own son, Georg, in August of 1529. Two days after that event, Martin Luther wrote to his friend Justus Jonas about Georg’s death and Melanchthon’s grief. (The letter...
Read more → 13 Jan 2020 Posted by Steven Wedgeworth
(This is the final essay in a series on the Federal Vision. The first installment, a general introduction to the state of the conversation, can be found here. The second installment identifies the various personalities and their history. The next three essays explained the FV theology in more detail:...
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