Kindle Notes & Highlights
Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609) recoiled from the emerging Reformed consensus and tried to moderate it by suggesting that the fall of man was less all-pervasive than the leading Reformers supposed and that it was possible to resist the grace of God.
Remonstrance
Synod of Dort,
The theologians of Dort stated unequivocally that God’s election is unconditional—it cannot be predicted or assumed on the basis of any human qualification or entitlement.
Chalcedon decreed that in the incarnate Christ, the divine and human natures remain distinct and mutually incompatible but are united in the person of the Son.
In the Eastern view, the Holy Spirit created the church on the day of Pentecost, but if the Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father, it could be argued that his creature the church was subject to the pope, who claimed to be the vicar of Christ on earth.
There can be no authentic experience of the Holy Spirit without the conviction that he brings of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.3 The atoning work of Christ is not just one aspect of God’s love but its very essence, and unless that is understood, the distinct work of the Holy Spirit will be impossible to appreciate.
Platonism, like much Greek philosophy, taught that matter was evil, and so neither an incarnation of God nor the redemption of the human body was conceivable.
As Anselm understood it, by his death Christ paid the price for every sin ever committed, and when he ascended he took that sacrifice back up to heaven with him.
Jesus died, not so much to take our sins away as to pay the price for them, to remove the guilt that they incurred in the sight of God the Father, and to allow us to stand in the presence of Almighty God, still sinners but clothed in a righteousness that is not our own.
it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire.
Whereas Augustine had conceived of the Spirit’s work in terms of an infusion of divine love (caritas) that elicits a corresponding human affection, which the Spirit then leads upward until the believer achieves a perfect union with God, Luther saw the Holy Spirit as the life-giver who enters the believer in order to put the old man to death and give him the indwelling presence of the risen Christ in his heart.
For them, baptism was understood as a kind of inoculation against sin that worked even though the recipient was unaware of it.
What the sacraments promised the faithful penitent was access to the saving power of God.
To grow in grace is to grow in the awareness of just how sinful and needy we really are; it is not to say goodbye to sinfulness and rise to a higher level of sanctification.
The grace of God is seen in a transformed heart and mind, brought about by the working of the Holy Spirit and not by the application of a consecrated substance.
It is in and by the Spirit that believers partake of Christ in the Supper, with the result that those who do not have that Spirit dwelling in them do not consume the body or blood of Christ in any form whatsoever.
According to Calvin and his followers, baptism was not a sacrament of regeneration (as the Catholics taught) but a proclamation of the gospel that every human being, of whatever age, needed to receive in order to be saved.
The sacrament is an extension of the preaching of the Word of God, which is given to many but received only by those whom the Spirit enlightens by the gift of faith.
although the New Testament authorizes both baptism and the Lord’s Supper, it has no overarching concept of sacrament to tie them together, nor does it contain a doctrine of grace in the sense that this was understood in the later Middle Ages.
If we are saved by God’s grace through faith, and if faith is a gift from him, how is it given? It is a work of the Holy Spirit, who bestows God’s gifts as he chooses.
Faith is not the human notion and dream that some people call faith . . . Faith is a divine work in us which changes us and makes us to be born anew of God.
The idea that divine grace can be manufactured and distributed to people, even without their knowledge or consent, is a travesty of the gospel, according to which the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
An adopted child does not share the nature of his parents and has no physical claim on them. Such a child has been taken into the family by personal choice and identified with his new parents not by blood, but by love. So it is with believers.
Passive righteousness could be received only by faith in Christ, and so it was unique to believers. Active righteousness came from human works and was by its nature restricted to the affairs of this world, although it could also be obtained by unbelievers, who would inevitably want to use it to justify themselves.
But active righteousness is valid only insofar as we are united to Christ and his righteousness is at work in us, because even after we have been justified we are still sinners.
for Luther, the Christian is not a person who has ceased from sinning, which is impossible in this life, but someone who has been made to realize what his true spiritual state is and who trusts in Christ’s righteousness for his salvation.
the Formula of Concord (1577) reached a mediating position, insisting that the communicant partakes of both the divine and the human nature of Christ, and that each nature conveys his righteousness to believers.
For the Reformers, the Christian life was lived only and entirely in and by the grace of God, with no human merit of any kind attached.
The criterion for true sanctification is not “keep the rules” but “love your neighbors,” a deeper principle that may be expressed by but also transcends keeping the law.
Just as we live by the grace of God, so we are forgiven for our mistakes and failures by that same grace.
The founders of Massachusetts liked to think that they were proclaiming religious freedom, but they neglected to add that it was freedom for them, not for anyone else.
the Augsburg settlement of 1555 was imposed by the state on the warring factions of the church, not the other way around, and after that there was no doubt as to who was in control.
at the Council of Constance in 1415 they decreed that it was lawful for a communicant to receive only the bread.
To many English Protestants, the accession of Elizabeth I was an answer to their prayers. Exiles in Geneva, who had been preparing a new translation of the Bible, seized their opportunity and printed a pointed address to her in their preface to what became known as the Geneva Bible.
in England lay people had no representation in the church synods (or “convocations” as they were called) but could express their views only through Parliament, which Elizabeth kept firmly away from church affairs.
To this day, the monarch of the United Kingdom is an episcopalian in England but a presbyterian in Scotland, even though the churches to which she belongs are not in communion with each other.
In England, there was a custom for the church to sell beer after services, with the profits going to repair the building. These church ales, as they were called, were very popular with the men, and when they were sufficiently merry they would often take a ball and start playing with it—the origin of ball games as we know them today.
The Puritans in England even got rid of Christmas, which they regarded (not unreasonably) as a survival of paganism in Christian dress.
King James I was so alarmed by this that in 1618 he issued the Book of Sports, which he ordered every clergyman to read from the pulpit.
it is possible to say that the United States was founded by people who were trying to get away from football, which they regarded as an ungodly pursuit that detracted from Bible study.
Leaving aside their more extreme traits and representatives, the Anabaptists said that Christianity proclaims a new life that is not of this world. In that respect they were the heirs of the monastic tradition, but they applied it in a new way.
Between 1530 and 1700 at least a hundred formal confessions of faith saw the light of day, and virtually every Protestant group, large or small, produced one or more as statements of its particular beliefs.
Ten Articles of 1536, which became the first confessional document of the independent Church of England.
Consensus Tigurinus.
Philippists united with the Swiss and the French to create what we now call the Reformed branch of the Protestant movement.
The first section of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1-8) expounds “catholic” doctrines that all Christians had traditionally accepted.
The middle section of the articles (9-34) is by far the most extensive and deals with the controversies prompted by the Reformation.
The third section of the articles (35-37) concerns matters directly related to the English Church.
The last two of the present articles (38-39) deal respectively with the right to hold private property and the legitimacy of oath-taking, two matters that some of the more radical Anabaptist sects had called into question.
