The Calvinist International
One of the most important arguments that Richard Hooker makes in the preface to his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, now available in a modernized version from the Davenant Institute, is that church order (or polity) and discipline are adiaphora: neither Episcopacy nor Presbyterianism (roughly, the Genevan model) are required de iure divino such that the true […]
The question of whether Protestants should regard Roman Catholic churches as “true churches” is very important to all ecumenical endeavors. Usually in reaction to those hardened Protestants who simply say that Rome is apostate and thus “no church at all,” the ecumenically-minded Protestants, who usually call themselves “catholic” in one degree or another, want to […]
Here are some important passages from Calvin to add to the two kingdoms files. In his commentary on 1 Cor. 14, especially having to do with order, he raises the question of uniformity when it comes to ecclesiastical polity, tradition, and external forms. He writes: The design of the admonition is this — that they […]
Introduction In the previous post we saw that “one,” “holy,” “catholic,” and “apostolic” are attributes of the church. The church as the Creed speaks of it has these characteristics already, and it has them because it is elected in Christ to be this kind of thing rather than another kind. This church is put before […]
I recently reviewed George Demacopoulos’ The Invention of Peter: Apostolic Discourse and Papal Authority in Late Antiquity (2013), part of the “Divinations” series published by University of Pennsylvania Press, for Classical Journal Online, and thought it may be of interest to some of our readers. You can find it here.
A ubiquitous criticism of Protestants, typically coming from supposed “high-church” thinkers, is that it cannot secure proper church unity. Of course, disputable and objectionable definitions are always smuggled in under cover of the always equivocated-upon terms “church” and “unity.” If such unity is measured by the standard of clerical and institutional hierarchy, then the verdict is […]
The investigation and application of classical evangelical political doctrine is one of our main commitments, and it is therefore important to us to ensure that Calvin is correctly read in his proper context of common Reformation principles. Anyone familiar with the American Reformed world knows that a peculiar school of political theology, associated with California’s […]