The Calvinist International
Cleaning out some paperwork in my office reminded me that, after three years, I should get back to this series and finish it at some point. Lo these many months ago I started a new translation of Cardinal Gasparo Contarini’s treatise De iustificatione, “On Justification.” I was not quite halfway through it when last I paused, […]
Charles Hodge’s next reference to Schleiermacher comes, once again, less than a week after the last, and, once again, involves August Tholuck. In the conversation summarized here, Tholuck defends Schleiermacher as “strenuous” on behalf of “some” of the “peculiar doctrines” of the Reformed church, and relays his view that this gives Reformed churches their greater […]
Many people are familiar with Charles Hodge’s famous footnote about Friedrich Schleiermacher in heaven. Hodge was quite far from Schleiermacher’s theological principles (to put it mildly), yet he had this to say in note 372 of his Systematic Theology (2.3.4.9): When in Berlin the writer often attended Schleiermacher’s church. The hymns to be sung were printed on […]
The scene: Twitter, Reformation Day 2017. The charge: “The more I prayed, studied history &theology, read the Bible & ChurchFathers, the more I felt God calling me to be Protestant” said no one — Ryan T. Anderson (@RyanTAnd) November 1, 2017 To date, this has been retweeted 95 times (the number seems oddly fitting) and […]
Protestants in the sixteenth century were fond of quoting a number of passages from patristic sources in which the “exclusive particle” (i.e., “alone”) was used in connection with justification. Philip Melanchthon, for example, does this in his Responsiones ad impios articulos Bavaricae inquisitionis (“Answers to the Impious Articles of the Bavarian Inquisition”) in Article 23, “Whether […]
Mark Jones wrote a fun essay last week explaining why he doesn’t like the name “Calvinism.” I agree with all of the substantive points and have made many of them myself. I also liked the playful jab at the name of this site. Good ol’ Mark. Still, I want to give a word or two […]
We’re big on “Reformed Irenicism” around here. Do we have it now? Maybe, I dunno. Did we have it before? Yes, at least sometimes. We can catch a glimpse of what it looked like in the 16th century in the case of one of its most significant sons, the Italian Protestant Peter Martyr Vermigli. Herewith […]
In 1554 Girolamo Zanchi, while he was teaching at Strasburg, lectured on Aristotle’s Physica and published an edition of the Greek text with substantial introduction. In the prolegomena, Zanchi recognizes that there are critics of the teaching of philosophy in general and of Aristotelian philosophy in particular (the critics are not wrong about Plato, but that is […]
The fascinating Andreas Hyperius provides, at the end of his Elementa Christianae Religionis (Elements of the Christian Religion), a handful of daily prayers. One of these is a prayer Ad studia (“For studies”), translated below. Thou, most wise heavenly Father, art the fount and origin of all knowledge and wisdom: thou pourest into the minds of all men knowledge […]
An addendum to yesterday: It has already been noted that CS Lewis was not an Anglo-Catholic, for the reasons given here. Further confirmation comes from his comments on John Henry Newman, once the nineteenth century’s premier Anglo-Catholic before he ceased being either, in Letters to Malcolm 6. First, some praise for Maurice, Bonhoeffer, and Establishment: I […]