The Calvinist International
About a decade ago, Adam Gopnik wrote a long essay in The New Yorker on G.K. Chesterton and his works called “The Back of the World: The Troubling Genius of G.K. Chesterton.” Gopnik is both an admirer of Chesterton, but one with critical distance–meaning that he does not write hagiography and therefore deserves to be listened […]
My friend and fellow pastor in the CREC, Toby Sumpter, has been posting some clear-thinking reflections on what is practically involved when Reformed Christians convert to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. I thought this post was especially accurate, particularly this paragraph: A convert must leave the unity of the church that he/she is currently enjoying. […]
In a prior post, I said that I would post Frederick Douglass’ account of his conversion, from Chapter 12 of My Bondage and My Freedom, so I do that here. I am not qualified to comment on his religious development; apparently he is sometimes seen as a liberation theologian avant la lettre, and the identification of D.F. […]
A few years ago, Dr. Kenneth Stewart published a paper which sought to rebut the charge that the doctrine of “regeneration,” due to the effects of Revivalism, had been dramatically transformed into something different from its meaning at the time of the Reformation. His paper is well worth your reading, but in it he makes […]
In chapter 12 of the first classis of doctrines in the Enchiridion Theologicum (pp. 102ff.), Niels Hemmingsen identifies three parts (partes) of repentance (poenitentia): contrition, faith, and new obedience (contritio, fides, nova obediantia). This third might raise some eyebrows (especially given his title for the chapter, where there are only two parts: poenitentia cum suis partibus, contritione et […]
We have heard quite a bit about various “turns” in the history of philosophy. One of the most significant of these “conversions” (i.e., “turnings”) is Plato’s great philosophical “inward turn.” The turn inward, for Plato and his ancient interpreters, marks the beginning of the soul’s journey away from the multitude of phenomena to the absolute […]