Lifting hearts to the Lord. Worship with John Calvin in sixteenth-century Geneva. By Karin Maag . (The Church at Worship: Case Studies from Christian History.) Pp. xiv + 209 incl. 22 ills. and 1 map. Grand Rapids, Mi–Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2016. £18.99 (paper). 978 0 8028 7147 3

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 418-418
Author(s):  
Jon Balserak
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Grand Rapids ◽  
The Church ◽  
Christian History

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

scholarly journals John Calvin's Christological Assertion of Word Authority in the Context of Sixteenth Century Ecclesiological Polemics

1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-486
Author(s):  
John D. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Face ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
The Church

The late medieval synthesis reflected in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) generally and in the doctrine of transubstantiation in particular established an understanding of the nature of the church and authority that was to be varied and wide in its effects. Transubstantiation as doctrine and as coalescor of Church worship laid the groundwork for a particularly formative understanding of the ekklesia of Christ. It issued in a view of immanental, divine authority and grace that would come to manifest itself in the indulgences, the treasury of merits, invocation of saints, relics, etc. To be critical of the Mass was to bring into question the entire hierarchy of the Church and its authority on earth. In this context of strong ecclesiological authority, God was reckoned primarily as immanent and immediate through the papal head. In the face of this development, John Calvin asserted that Christ, as center of all true Christian reality, is the necessary focus and the preeminent authority in and to the Church through the Word of God, the Scriptures.

Christus unicus ille episcopus universalis

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Erik A. de Boer
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Primary Function ◽  
The One ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

Abstract In their critique of the hierarchy in the Roman Catholic Church most reformers in the sixteenth century did not argue for retaining the office of bishop. In the English Reformation, led by the king, the bishopric was reformed, and in Hungary, too, the office of bishop survived. Did reformers like John Calvin fundamentally reject this office, or did they primarily attack its abuse? Investigation of the early work of Calvin shows a focus on the meaning of the biblical term ‘overseer’ and on preaching as the primary function of the episcopacy. While the title of bishop is reserved for the one head of the church, the office of the preacher is brought to a higher level. As moderator of the Company of Pastors in Geneva, Calvin would have a standing in the city comparable to the ousted bishop.

Exile in the Mirror of History in Calvin’s Commentary on Isaiah

2020 ◽  
pp. 122-140
Author(s):  
Barbara Pitkin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Refugee Community ◽  
The People ◽  
Biblical History ◽  
Future Return ◽  
The Church

In his 1559 commentary on Isaiah, John Calvin as refugee pastor ventures a largely ecclesiastical rather than christological reading of this book, written at a time when Geneva experienced a large influx of religious exiles. For Calvin, the majority of Isaiah’s prophecies reference in the first instance the experience of the people of Israel and their future return from Babylon. Biblical history at the time of Isaiah then becomes a mirror for the contemporary experience of exile. Calvin explores the true church throughout the ages as a refugee community, literally and metaphorically. The image of the past as mirror—common in Calvin’s other exegetical works—is here particularly well-developed to maintain the integrity of Israel’s history and allow sixteenth-century Christians to make sense of their own experience and to foster trust in divine providence for the restoration of the church.

Historic Plagues and Christian Responses: Lessons for the Church Today?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Bryan Just
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unprecedented upheaval throughout the world, especially for Christians who have had to drastically alter their practices in light of the disease. This review will examine how Christians throughout history have dealt with times of plague through several case studies, including the Cyprian Plague and the response of Geneva’s pastors to several plagues in the mid-sixteenth century. It will consider some of the lessons we can draw from these examples and conclude with practical considerations for how the church can respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Spiritus, ecclesiae anima: Colet, Linacre, and a Galenic Mystical Body

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 197- (3-4) ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Daniel Lochman
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Medical Discourse ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Health Related ◽  
John Colet ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

John Colet knew Thomas Linacre for approximately three decades, from their mutual residence in Italy during the early 1490s through varied pedagogical, professional, and social contacts in and around London prior to Colet’s death in 1519. It is not certain that Colet knew Linacre’s original Latin translations of Galen’s therapeutic works, the first printed in 1517. Yet several of Colet’s works associate a spiritual physician—a phrase linked to Colet himself at least since Thomas More’s 1504 letter inviting him to London—with Paul’s trope of the mystical body. Using Galenic discourse to describe the “physiology” of the ideal mystical body, Colet emphasizes by contrast a diseased ecclesia in need of healing by the Spirit, who alone can invigorate the mediating “vital spirits” that are spiritual physicians—ministers within the church. Colet’s application of sophisticated Galenic discourse to the mystical body coincided with the humanist interest in Galen’s works evident in Linacre’s translations, and it accompanied growing concern for health related to waves of epidemics in London during the first two decades of the sixteenth century as well as Colet’s involvement in licensure of London physicians. This paper explores the implications of Colet’s adaptation of Galenic principles to the mystical body and suggests that Colet fostered a strain of medical discourse that persisted well into the sixteenth century.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Hefling
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Book Of Common Prayer ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Common Prayer ◽  
The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

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