Category: Reformed
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Predestination, Policy and Polemic
I have just finished reading Peter White’s book, Predestination, Policy and Polemic, Conflict and consensus in the English Church from the Reformation to the Civil War. It is a masterful summary of the topic throughout a varied landscape of Church politics, belief systems, and changing theologies. …the model of a theological dichotomy between ‘Calvinism’ and…
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The Regulative Principle Redefined
I finished up Leithart’s From Silence to Song yesterday and found his writing illuminating as always. He discusses the Reformed “Regulative Principle” and recasts it in a very different light (a much better one). The Regulative Principle is usually held to mean that anything God hasn’t expressly commanded in worship is forbidden, you’ll often see it trumpeted…
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The Reformers on Islam
At the time of the Reformation the Ottoman Empire was the leading Islamic power in the world. The Caliph or leader of Islam was the Turkish Emperor and to refer to the “Turks” was to refer to Muslims in general. It is interesting to read the opinions of Luther and Calvin on the Turks and…
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What would Calvin have thought of ‘Calvinists’?
Probably not much. He attacks the idea of factions in the church being called by a leader’s name when he writes about monasticism: And that there might be no doubt as to their separation, they have given themselves the various names of factions. They have not been ashamed to glory in that which Paul so…
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The Need for Enemies and the Federal Vision
In America, we had the Nazis and the Japanese to fight, before that I suppose it was the slaveholders vs. the abolitionists, and Whigs vs. Democrats, etc. After WW II ended, we moved on to Communism. The entire nation, and much of the church, defined itself by being anti-communist. There was an evil enemy our…