The Calvinist International
John 6.22ff. is a text that has long been used in various ways and to various ends in debates about the Eucharist. Christ himself gives a clue to its proper interpretation in v. 63: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you […]
I’ve touched on the extra patristicum, er, extra calvinisticum before, here. The important idea in this connection is that the divine nature of Christ is omnipresent but his human body cannot be. This is a corollary of Chalcedonian Christology, viz. that the integrity of Christ’s two natures must be maintained in their hypostatic union in the person […]
When I posted on “Calvin’s Augsburg,” I said I might return to the letter to Schallingius whence the statement in question came (see also here on this subject). I do so here with a passage on Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper that immediately precedes that statement on Augsburg (he is responding to Lutheran critics). […]
(Continuing a recent line of inquiry.) It is well known that Calvin assented to or subscribed the Augsburg Confession, whether as a formal act or in some other way. Lest there be any doubt, Calvin himself says so in a letter of March 1557 to Schallingius. There is much in the letter of interest, and […]
Next month marks the 480th anniversary of the Wittenberg Concord, a document that resulted from discussions about the sacraments between German Lutherans and the Reformed of southwestern Germany and western Switzerland. It is the result, in other words, of the search for consensus among various parts of the Protestant world, intended to be an affirmation […]
It is well known that John Calvin subscribed Melanchthon’s Variata version of the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana) (1530), especially because of the revised article on the Lord’s Supper (Art. 10). Indeed, Philip Schaff writes that the alteration of this article “is by far the most important departure from the original edition, and has caused much controversy.” What I’d […]
…and, if one has faith, all “common” things created by God are sanctified–made-holy–to us. Without faith, they are profane to us, because we profane God, the giver of every good gift. This is the thrust of Calvin’s comments on 1 Timothy 4.4-5 (“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected […]
Recently Eric Parker posted on a thesis concerning the sacraments from a 1581 disputation at Rostock. Rostock was the primary site of the labors of the mediating Lutheran theologian David Chytraeus, on whose Catechism I posted several times a couple of years ago (you can find these in the archives by searching for “David Chytraeus”). I […]
Book 10 of Augustine’s City of God is dedicated to rebutting the Platonists and their understanding of worship. Throughout the book, Augustine regularly returns to the topic of sacrifice. He explains to whom it is due, what it is, how the “true” sacrifice is found in Christ’s death on the cross, and in what way Christians continue […]
In 1529, Philipp Melanchthon wrote a letter to Johannes Oecolampadius on the debates then raging over the correct way in which to understand “Hoc est corpus meum” in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. According to the letter, a very brief piece, it is Melanchthon’s first foray into the debate. He had previously been silent […]