The Quest for Full Assurance: Legacy of Calvin & His Successors

by Joel R. Beeke

Against the background of the sixteenth-century Reformers (with special attention to Calvin), Beeke examines the theological development of personal assurance of faith in English Puritanism and its parallel movement in the Netherlands, the Dutch Second Reformation.

Genres: Theology, Church History

Paperback

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Dr. Joel R. Beeke serves as President and Professor of Systematic Theology, Church History, and Homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He has been in the ministry since 1978 and has served as a pastor of his current church, Heritage Reformed Congregation, since 1986. He is also editor of the Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books, president of Inheritance Publishers, and vice-president of the Dutch Reformed Translation Society. He has written, co-authored, or edited fifty books and contributed over fifteen hundred articles to Reformed books, journals, periodicals, and encyclopedias. His Ph.D. (1988) from Westminster Theological Seminary is in Reformation and Post-Reformation Theology. He is frequently called upon to lecture at Reformed seminaries and to speak at conferences around the world. He and his wife, Mary, have three children: Calvin, Esther, and Lydia.

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seeks to answer Kendal's theory of radical divergence between Calvin and his step-children. Beeke knows his books and writes competently. He ranges wide among a 'pure' stream of authors showing basic continuity.

Personally I find his writing slightly bland and his arguments a little too neat for being correct. Calvin did differ from the Puritans (at least the latter ones), though not in the way Kendal argues entirely. Assurance for Calvin and the early Reformers was all just a bit less subjective.

Okay.

[Pascal Denault · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is useful to explore the doctrine of the assurance of faith in the reformed tradition. There was no uniformity among the reformed concerning this doctrine, but there was consistency from Calvin up to the Westminster Assembly. I have read this book to prepare a series of sermons on the assurance of faith and I have found a lot of material in it. Though it is a bit technical at some points, it is also very rich.

[Daniel Gutierrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a little too long, and a little too dry, and felt a little too simple in its argument of continuity. For myself, as for many others, the arguments presented here left me subjectively feeling less assurance then when I started. This is not a slight on Beekes ability to document the historical position, nor does it prove what it true, however, their is a great irony that this systematic requires that someone with my personality type never gets a philosophically sufficient answer to how I could ever have true assurance.