The Calvinist International
In Sermon 162C (Dolbeau 10), on Paul’s rebuke of Peter in Galatians 2 (on the history of the exegesis of this passage, cf. my essay here), Augustine gives a helpful sketch of the various “levels” on which one can speak of the genesis and authorship or “voice” of Scripture, or, to put it another way, […]
I’ve been pastoring in Vancouver for roughly twelve years now, preaching close to 1000 sermons, to over 50 nationalities, with people of various backgrounds and theological understanding in the pews. And 100s of children (ages 0-13) have been present. We are a Presbyterian church and, as such, believe children belong to the kingdom of God […]
Everyone knows that John Calvin believed in the use of force to suppress heretics. What this post presupposes is…. maybe he didn’t? Perhaps the question is more complicated. We have written about the relationship between Calvin’s doctrine of the two kingdoms and the civil-political suppression of heresy here and here. He certainly did not promote […]
In his book In Pursuit of Purity, Unity, and Liberty: Richard Baxter’s Puritan Ecclesiology in Its Seventeenth-Century Context (Leiden: Brill, 2004), Paul Chang-Ha Lim notes something of an ecumenical consensus in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the centrality of the preaching of the Word, linking Hermmingsen (!), John Donne, and others. As J.S. Coolidge has […]
I know it seems like an unlikely source, but while reading Travels With Charley: In Search of America, I came across this entertaining and theologically instructive narrative of a church in Vermont. Steinbeck firmly presents himself as a sinner, and the sermon does not seem to “stick,” at least not as of the writing of […]
In the early 16th century the two administrators of the cappelle pontificie (papal chapel) in Rome had their hands full with the task of ensuring an orderly and timely mass for the pope. Paris de Grassis was the Master of Ceremonies who was in charge of the liturgy for each papal mass. Giovanni Rafanelli the […]
From Andrew Pettegree’s wonderful Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, we have these reflections on Martin Luther’s view of preaching: Central both to Luther’s concept of the preacher’s art and his extraordinary skill was careful preparation, above all through the reading the Scripture. ‘Some preachers’, he wrote in 1542, ‘are lazy and no good. They do […]
My friend and colleague, Todd Rester, who serves as director of the newly-launched Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research, is also the translator for the multi-volume, multi-million word project to translate Petrus van Mastricht’s Theoretico-practica Theologia into English. The first fruits of this translation project, commissioned by the Dutch Reformed Translation Society, have appeared in a […]