The Calvinist International
For Augustine in City of God 21.16, your best life now consists in waging war against the flesh as long as you live. But the power to fight this war comes only from God, and is accessed only through faith: And indeed this victory cannot be sincerely and truly gained but by delighting in true […]
In the following passage, Niels Hemmingsen discusses what is requisite for works to be good. Truly good works come only from faith, which comes only from the the word of the Gospel and its application by the Holy Spirit, who “is given by the Father and the Son.” The shape of good works, then, is […]
John Calvin on 1 Corinthians 6:11 and the threefold passive that separates the heirs of the Kingdom from those who will not inherit it: But ye are washed He makes use of three terms to express one and the same thing, that he may the more effectually deter them from rolling back into the condition […]
Once more on purification and the theological task: In Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster, with the assistance of Kierkegaard and Calvin, helpfully integrates the proper reading of Scripture with sanctification, that is, with mortification and vivification. In the passage below, he explicates the latter. Vivification is a process of overcoming not only inept reading, […]
Dr. Hutchinson’s recent reflections on Augustine caused me to notice something similar in Augustine’s On Marriage and Concupiscence, which I had stumbled across quite independently. The same notion of simul iustus et peccator applied to sanctification appears there, but it also seems to press further, making the Protestant distinction between justification and sanctification perfectly intelligible. Indeed […]
Martin Luther is famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) for his insistence that redeemed man is simul iustus et peccator, at once righteous and sinner. The doctrine is especially useful for coming to terms with how one can be fully justified before God and yet struggle with remaining sin. Henry Chadwick, in his delightful Augustine: A […]