The Vigilant God by Horton Davies, a non-conformist minister who taught in the Religion Department of Princeton University and attended church regularly, is a reconsideration of the belief that God is still active in history. It is a reassessment of the theology of Providence in the thought of four major Christian theologians (Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth) and of their views on predestination, theodicy, and free will, leading the author to consider the role it might have for the future of humanity. The book starts with a sketch of the biblical sources relating to Providence, predestination, election, and reprobation. Davies sees Augustine's doctrine of Providence and his view of evil as privatio boni, as greatly influenced by Plato and his followers. He dwells on Aquinas the man, his life and his character, open to Aristotle and his Jewish and Arab commentators, before plunging into the structure of his encyclopedic thought and works. Davies appreciates Calvin's regard for Scripture as a means of illumination of the Spirit, but rejects the pastor's views on predestination as tyrannical and unjust, and believes that Barth's positive insistence on God's universal mercy is necessary against the horrors perpetrated in the twentieth century.

These chapters explore how a religious minority not only gained a toehold in countries of exile, but also wove itself into their political, social, and religious fabric. The way for the refugees' departure from France was prepared through correspondence and the cultivation of commercial, military, scholarly and familial ties. On arrival at their destinations immigrants exploited contacts made by compatriots and co-religionists who had preceded them to find employment. London, a hub for the "Protestant international" from the reign of Elizabeth I, provided openings for tutors and journalists. Huguenot financial skills were at the heart of the early Bank of England; Huguenot reporting disseminated unprecedented information on the workings of the Westminster Parliament; Huguenot networks became entwined with English political factions. Webs of connection were transplanted and reconfigured in Ireland. With their education and international contacts, refugees were indispensable as diplomats to Protestant rulers in northern Europe. They operated monetary transfers across borders and as fund-raisers, helped alleviate the plight of persecuted co-religionists. Meanwhile, French ministers in London attempted to hold together an exceptionally large community of incomers against heresy and the temptations of assimilation. This is a story of refugee networks perpetuated, but also interpenetrated and remade.

For ordinary people, the impact of the Reformation would have centred around local parish churches, rather than the theological debates of the Reformers. Focusing on the Calvinists, this volume explores how the architecture, appearance and arrangement of places of worship were transformed by new theology and religious practice. Based on original research and site visits, this book charts the impact of the Reformed faith across Europe, concentrating in particular on France, the Netherlands and Scotland. While in some areas a Calvinist Reformation led to the adaptation of existing buildings, elsewhere it resulted in the construction of new places of worship to innovative new designs. Reformed places of worship also reflected local considerations, vested interests and civic aspirations, often employing the latest styles and forms of decoration, and here provide a lens through which to examine not only the impact of the Reformation at a local level but also the character of the different religious settlements across Europe during the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. -- .

Explore the Bible alongside daily insights from pastor-teacher Dr. John MacArthur For more than 50 years, Dr. John MacArthur has helped Christians gain greater clarity and insight into Scripture. Now you can read through the Bible in a year while learning from wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of study with The MacArthur Daily Bible. This Bible offers an achievable approach to reading the entire Bible with readings from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms, and Proverbs for each day of the year. Combined with insights drawn from The MacArthur Study Bible, you will gain greater clarity and understanding as you read. Features include: The complete NASB (1995) translation presented with daily readings from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms, and Proverbs Daily notes from Dr. John MacArthur drawn from the MacArthur Study Bible to help you better understand key truths in Scripture 52 key passages of the Bible for study and memorization Daily use Bible with devotional questions to improve your reading God's Word Clear and readable 10-point text size

This book unearths the practical social theology of the 19th Century Church in Scotland. It has been widely believed that the church was largely mute on the widespread poverty and deprivation which accompanied the rapid expanse of urban life. This study asserts that the church was not lacking in commitment to improving such conditions, through the example of theologians Robert Flint and the parish minister Frederick Lockhart Robertson. Flint's publication of Christ's Kingdom upon Earth led the Church of Scotland in Glasgow to investigate slum housing conditions and led to the idea that religion could not be complacent about the need for social action. It shines new light on the history of the Church of Scotland. It shows how religion was a reforming movement in an age of deprivation. It highlights the importance of social reformist writers within the Church.

The original is in Dutch (left hand page). The right hand page is an English translation of these lectures that give a tightly formulated introduction to Calvinist philosophy. Introduction by Anthony Tol. Preface by Calvin Seerveld.

'This is a feast for theologians, historians and Christian counselors. Pietsch examines 21 of Luther's "letters of comfort" to explore Luther's pastoral care for souls suffering with depression. Pietsch uses interdisciplinary tools of inquiry artfully to examine the letters, Luther's pastoral care approaches and the history of the "melancholy tradition". The practice of seelsorge emerges as an amalgam of art, spiritual gift, and understanding of affliction, all resting comfortably within the authority of scripture and the Lutheran Confessions. Pietsch's volume is a significant contribution to spiritual care literature, underscoring the conviction of the early church that individual soul care is an essential response to serve those who despair. Offering pivotal pastoral care insights that are often lost, discredited or entirely absent in the work of caring for those who suffer with depression, Pietsch concludes that Luther has given us excellent tools to examine, learn and to teach as we assist souls to find hope, strength and healing in the gospel of Jesus Christ.' - Professor Beverly Yahnke Concordia University Wisconsin Executive Director of Christian Counsel, Doxology Lutheran Centre for Spiritual Care and Counsel.

Calvinist theology has been debated and promoted for centuries. But is it a theology that should last? Roger Olson suggests that Calvinism, also commonly known as Reformed theology, holds an unwarranted place in our list of accepted theologies. In Against Calvinism, readers will find scholarly arguments explaining why Calvinist theology is incorrect and how it affects God s reputation. Olson draws on a variety of sources, including Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, to support his critique of Calvinism and the more historically rich, biblically faithful alternative theologies he proposes. Addressing what many evangelical Christians are concerned about today---so-called new Calvinism, a movement embraced by a generation labeled as young, restless, Reformed ---Against Calvinism is the only book of its kind to offer objections from a non-Calvinist perspective to the current wave of Calvinism among Christian youth. As a companion to Michael Horton s For Calvinism, readers will be able to compare contrasting perspectives and form their own opinions on the merits and weaknesses of Calvinism."

Charles Hodge (1797-1878) was one of nineteenth-century America's leading theologians, owing in part to a lengthy teaching career, voluminous writings, and a faculty post at one of the nation's most influential schools, Princeton Theological Seminary. Surprisingly, the only biography of this towering figure was written by his son, just two years after his death. Paul Gutjahr's book, therefore, is the first modern critical biography of a man some have called the "Pope of Presbyterianism. " Hodge's legacy is especially important to American Presbyterians. His brand of theological conservatism became vital in the 1920s, as Princeton Seminary saw itself, and its denomination, split. The conservative wing held unswervingly to the Old School tradition championed by Hodge, and ultimately founded the breakaway Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The views that Hodge developed, refined, and propagated helped shape many of the central traditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American evangelicalism. Hodge helped establish a profound reliance on the Bible among evangelicals, and he became one of the nation's most vocal proponents of biblical inerrancy. Gutjahr's study reveals the exceptional depth, breadth, and longevity of Hodge's theological influence and illuminates the varied and complex nature of conservative American Protestantism.

The year 2009 marked Calvin's 500th birthday. This volume collects papers initially written as the plenary addresses for the largest international scholarly conference held in connection with this anniversary, organized in Geneva by the Institute of Reformation History. The organizers chose as theme for the conference ''Calvin and His Influence 1509-2009, '' hoping to stimulate reflection about what Calvin's ideas and example have meant across the five centuries since his lifetime, as well as about how much validity the classic interpretations that have linked his legacy to fundamental features of modernity such as democracy, capitalism, or science still retain. In brief, the story that emerges from the book is as follows: In the generations immediately after Calvin's death, he became an authority whose writings were widely cited by leading ''Calvinist'' theologians, but he was in fact just one of several Reformed theologians of his generation who were much appreciated by these theologians. In the eighteenth century, his writings began to be far less frequently cited. Even in Reformed circles what was now most frequently recalled was his action during the Servetus affair, so that he now started to be widely criticized in those quarters of the Reformed tradition that were now attached to the idea of toleration or the ideal of a free church. In the nineteenth century, his theology was recovered again in a variety of different contexts, while scholars established the monument to his life and work that was the Opera Calvini and undertook major studies of his life and times. Church movements now claimed the label ''Calvinist'' for themselves with increasing insistence and pride. (The term had largely been a derogatory label in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.) The movements that identified themselves as Calvinist or were identified as such by contemporaries nonetheless varied considerably in the manner in which they drew upon and understood Calvin's thought. Calvin and His Influence should become the starting point for further scholarly reflection about the history of Calvinism, from its origin to the present.

Randall C. Zachman places Calvin in conversation with theologians such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Ezra the Scribe, Julian of Norwich and Karl Barth, and attends to themes in Calvin's theology which are often overlooked. Zachman draws out Calvin's use of astronomy and great concern to see ourselves in comparison to the immensity of the universe, acknowledging in wonder and awe our nothingness before God. Throughout, Zachman presents a Calvin who seeks a route out of self-deception to self-knowledge, though Kierkegaard shows that it is love, and not judgment, that most deeply reveals us to ourselves. The book discusses Calvin's understanding of the election of the Jews and their relationship to God, and further reconsiders Calvin's understanding of judgment and how the call to love our neighbour is undermined by the formation of alliances.

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. The English Puritans, written by John Brown and first published in 1910, presents an historical overview of the rise, growth and decline of the Puritan movement in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The book illuminates Calvin's thought by placing it in the context of the theological and exegetical traditions - ancient, medieval, and contemporary - that formed it and contributed to its particular texture. Steinmetz addresses a range of issues almost as wide as the Reformation itself, including the knowledge of God, the problem of iconoclasm, the doctrines of justification and predestination, and the role of the state and the civil magistrate. Along the way, Steinmetz also clarifies the substance of Calvin's quarrels with Lutherans, Catholics, Anabaptists, and assorted radicals from Ochino to Sozzini. For the new edition he has added a new Preface and four new chapters based on recent published and unpublished essays. An accessible yet authoritative general introduction to Calvin's thought, Calvin in Context engages a much wider range of primary sources than the standard introductions. It provides a context for understanding Calvin not from secondary literature about the later middle ages and Renaissance, but from the writings of Calvin's own contemporaries and the rich sources from which they drew.

John Calvin's American Legacy explores the ways Calvin and the Calvinist tradition have influenced American life. Though there are books that trace the role Calvin and Calvinism have played in the national narrative, they tend to focus, as books, on particular topics and time periods. This work, divided into three sections, is the first to present studies that, taken together, represent the breadth of Calvinism's impact in the United States. In addition, each section moves chronologically, ranging from colonial times to the twenty-first century. After a brief introduction focused on the life of Calvin and some of the problems involved in how he is viewed and studied, the volume moves into the first section - "Calvin, Calvinism, and American Society- which looks at the economics of the Colonial period, Calvin and the American identity, and the evidence for Calvin's influence on American democracy. The book's second section examines theology, addressing the relationship between Jonathan Edwards's church practice and Calvin's, the Calvinist theological tradition in the nineteenth century, how Calvin came to be understood in the historiography of Williston Walker and Perry Miller, and Calvin's influence on some of the theologies of the twentieth century. The third section, "John Calvin, Calvinism, and American Letters,looks at Calvinism's influence on such writers as Samson Occom, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Max Weber, Mark Twain, and John Updike. Altogether, this volume demonstrates the wide-ranging impact of Calvin's thinking throughout American history and society.

George Smith (1833 1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806 1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. Volume 2 describes Duff's life from 1843 until his death in 1878, covering his contribution to the 1854 educational reforms in India and the founding of the University of Calcutta.

George Smith (1833 1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806 1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. Volume 1 describes Duff's life until 1843, covering his education in Scotland, his arrival in Calcutta and the founding of his school, the General Assembly Institution.

On 1 July 1523, Johann van den Esschen and Hendrik Voes, two Augustinian friars from Antwerp, were burned on the Grand Plaza in Brussels, thereby becoming the first victims of the Reformation. Despite being well-known, the event barely registers in most Reformation histories. By tracing its origins and examining the impact of the executions on Martin Luther, on the Reformed Augustinian world, and on the early Reformation in the Low Countries and the German speaking lands, this study definitively demonstrates that the burnings were in fact the denouement of broader trends within Late Medieval Reformed Augustinianism, as well as a watershed in the early Reformation. In doing so, it also reveals the central role played by the Augustinian friars of Lower Germany in shaping both the content and spread of the early Reformation, as well as Wittenberg's influence on the events leading up to these first executions.

Richard Hooker has long been viewed as one of England's great theological and political writers. When he died, however, at the end of the sixteenth century, his writings had proved to be something of a damp squib. This book examines, against the background of the political and religious crises of the seventeenth century, how he came to rise from comparative obscurity to be regarded as a universal authority. It will be seen how an unintended alliance of Reformed Protestants, suspicious of Hooker, and Catholics, anxious to exploit his perceived sympathies, led to his establishment as a distinctive, well-regarded English writer. Whilst the boundaries of Hooker's comprehensiveness have expanded and contracted in response to particular situations, the belief that he is an important writer has remained remarkably constant ever since.

A historical study of the most influential and important Protestant group in Northern Ireland - the Ulster Presbyterians. Andrew R. Holmes argues that to understand Ulster Presbyterianism is to begin to understand the character of Ulster Protestantism more generally and the relationship between religion and identity in present-day Northern Ireland. He examines the various components of public and private religiosity and how these were influenced by religious concerns, economic and social changes, and cultural developments. He takes the religious beliefs and practices of the laity seriously in their own right, and thus allows for a better understanding of the Presbyterian community more generally.

Enchanted Calvinism's surprising central proposition is that Ghanaian Presbyterian communities have become more enchanted -- i.e., attuned to spiritual explanations of and remedies for suffering -- as they have become moreintegrated into capitalist modes of production. Enchanted Calvinism's central proposition is that Ghanaian Presbyterian communities, both past and present, have become more enchanted -- more attuned to spiritual explanations of and remedies for suffering -- as they havebecome integrated into capitalist modes of production. The author draws on a Weberian concept of religious enchantment to analyze the phenomena of spiritual affliction and spiritual healing within the Presbyterian Church of Ghana,particularly under the conditions of labor migration: first, in the early twentieth century during the cocoa boom in Ghana and, second, at the turn of the twenty-first century in their migration from Ghana to North America. Relying on extensive archival research, oral interviews, and participant-observation conducted in North America, Europe, and West Africa, this study demonstrates that the more these Ghanaian Calvinists became dependent on capitalist modes of production, the more enchanted their lives and, subsequently, their church became, although in different ways within these two migrations. One striking pattern that has emerged among Ghanaian Presbyterian labor migrants in North America, for example, is a radical shift in gendered healing practices, where women have become prominent healers while a significant number of men have become spirit-possessed. Adam Mohr is Senior Writing Fellow in Anthropology in the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

This book returns to the true nature of the gospel, justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. Fundamental to the book's argument is a rejection of the biblical truth and the faithful heritage of the gospel. By tracing the development of Reformation theology in Luther and Calvin, the giants in the American Great Awakening and the Korean revivals are brought up for analysis: Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, Sun-Ju Kil, Ik-Doo Kim, Yong-Do Lee, and Sung-Bong Lee. Paul ChulHong Kang makes clear what can be at stake not merely for academic theologians but for all Christians -- the gospel itself.

Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the relationship between science and religion. The particulars of place-whether in Edinburgh, Belfast, Toronto, Princeton, or Columbia, South Carolina-shaped the response to Darwin's theories. Were they tolerated, repudiated, or welcomed? Livingstone shows how Darwin was read in different ways, with meaning distilled from Darwin's texts depending on readers' own histories-their literary genealogies and cultural preoccupations. That the theory of evolution fared differently in different places, Livingstone writes, is "exactly what Darwin might have predicted. As the theory diffused, it diverged." Dealing with Darwin shows the profound extent to which theological debates about evolution were rooted in such matters as anxieties over control of education, the politics of race relations, the nature of local scientific traditions, and challenges to traditional cultural identity. In some settings, conciliation with the new theory, even endorsement, was possible - demonstrating that attending to the specific nature of individual communities subverts an inclination to assume a single relationship between science and religion in general, evolution and Christianity in particular. Livingstone concludes with contemporary examples to remind us that what scientists can say and what others can hear in different venues differ today just as much as they did in the past.

Balmer examines the clash of Dutch and English cultures in colonial New York and New Jersey and charts the decline of a European culture in North America. He shows that the combination of political intrigue, English cultural imperialism and internal socioeconomic tensions eventually drove the Dutch away from their hereditary customs, language and culture. After Leisler's Rebellion in 1689, the Dutch Reformed Church divided, largely along socioeconomic lines, into an orthodox camp, anchored in New York City, and a pietist faction whose stronghold lay in rural areas, especially northern New Jersey. Balmer argues that the divisions in the Dutch Reformed Church persisted into the Revolutionary era and that the religious alignments of the Dutch in the middle of the eighteenth century provide the most accurate predictors of political sympathies during the American Revolution.