Welcoming Justice
I’m reading, Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community (IVP, just published) By Charles Marsh and John Perkins (foreword by Philip Yancey). I have met John Perkins many times (interestingly more…
Derek Thomas
And why they didn’t sign…
As Ligon Duncan writes above, some Alliance Council members have not signed the Manhattan Declaration and have posted statements explaining their position. These statements can be found at the following…
Books, books…
I have been mulling over the books I most enjoyed reading this past year (limiting myself to those published in 2009): There was Perspectives on Christian Worship: 5 Views ,…
Blog 235: 4.19.7- 4.19.13
Confirmation, a sacrament in Roman Catholic theology, was an offence to Calvin because it sapped the meaning of baptism. In scholastic terms, baptism only washed away original sin and those…
Blog 234: 4.19.1 – 4.19.6
More on sacraments – additional ones invented by men. Using the formula that sacraments are “visible signs of an invisible grace” Calvin notes that there is no limit to the…
Blog 233: 4.18.14 – 4.18.20
Calvin had studied Plato – no friend to Christianity – and is amused how accurately he depicted (in the Republic) the antics of medieval priests in celebrating the Mass –…
Blog 232: 4.18.8 – 4.18.13
Private Communion (or Masses): Calvin is against them. True, he is against the Mass “period”; but mutatis mutandis he is against private celebrations of the Lord’s Supper for the same…
Blog 231: 4.18.2 – 4.18.7
The Mass. At the heart of Calvin’s theological method in assessing the value of the Mass is the cross. The Mass signifies an on-going ritual of sacrifice, undermining the “once-for-all”…
Blog 230: 4.17.46 – 4.18.1
Scottish Highland Presbyterians need to hold their breath for a second while Calvin refers to an annual Lord’s Supper ritual as “a veritable invention of the devil” [4.17.46]. Calvin then…
Blog 226: 4.17.29 – 4.17.32
Calvin continues his distaste for transubstantiation attacking the notion that Christ’s ascended body is ubiquitous (can be present everywhere in space and particularly in the consecrated sacrament) and invisible (“by…