The Calvinist InternationalConcerning the temporal kingdom
After the death of Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, many people have been reflecting upon his cultural significance. Several of us recalled an especially powerful piece on Hefner from 2003 by Read Mercer Schuchardt. Christianity Today later published the piece here. Having read the original article, which can still be read here (I […]
Some of our friends are arguing about Capitalism and Marxism, so I thought we would do what we usually do– turn to the archives! What did the stuffy dead guys say about this? That’s a big task, though (and one that we have been doing piece by piece over time), and so, true to form, […]
In the final edition of his Loci communes, Philip Melanchthon offers nine proofs for the existence of God in the locus De creatione, as B.B. Warfield long ago noted in “Calvin’s Doctrine of God” (see n. 41). Some of these will seem standard fare; the sixth proof will perhaps surprise. The nine proofs are: “the […]
In a 1973 article on the social contract tradition, Patrick Riley notes an important distinction in how we understand “the state”. He notes that “the mere excellence of an institution would no longer be enough; it would now require authorization by individual men understood as “authors”‘. Riley then notes the key distinction in the conception […]
Richard Hooker famously (?) said: “A gross error it is, to think that regal power ought to serve for the good of the body, and not of the soul; for men’s temporal peace, and not for their eternal safety: as if God had ordained kings for no other end and purpose but only to fat […]
True confession: I haven’t really been following all the dust-up and discussion surrounding the latest proposals for how Christians should relate to “the culture”–and this for a variety of reasons, many of which have little to do with the discussion itself and much more to do with the exigencies of circumstances. As a case in […]
As we have noted in the past, Calvin allowed for the suppression of heretics for political reasons, but he did not believe that the faith could be coerced. One reason that it can not be coerced is that, for Calvin, worship must be offered willing. A worship give out of fear or force is of […]
In volume 1 of Pro Rege, Kuyper expounds upon the theme of the origins and nature of authority. In his exposition, he shows himself to be quite the political theologian. As a side note, this is one of the virtues of taking the effort to read these new Lexham Press translations of Kuyper’s public theology; they […]
A little over a week ago, we began the argument that the disruption currently occurring within the Roman Catholic Church is an inevitable reverberation of the 20th century. A fundamental transformation then occurred, and the classic position on religious liberty and the rights of the human conscience was been replaced by a new teaching. We […]
In Common Grace, Kuyper combines the questions of God’s institution of capital punishment and the institution of civil government into one moment. He understands God’s command to Noah in Genesis 9:6 as the moment when God instituted civil government. He also rejects outright the modern liberal conception of the origins of civil government as founded upon […]