Calvin and the Priesthood of all Believers

1968 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-156
Author(s):  
John R. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Priesthood Of All Believers ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
God's People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Way

A Mong those elements of Christian doctrine which surged anew to the forefront of Christian thinking during the early sixteenth century was that biblical idea which, in more modern times, we have come to call the ‘priesthood of all believers’. Luther used the doctrine almost as a battle-axe, to hew away at the pretensions of the Roman hierarchy and sacramental system. Almost invariably, it is Luther's name which we find linked to this doctrine in studies of the Reformation period. However, any serious study of the idea of the priesthood of God's people would do well to include an examination of the way in which John Calvin dealt with it, and indeed, the way in which the idea found certain expressions within his system of ecclesiastical organisation. It is our purpose here to see what Calvin taught in relationship to this biblical idea, and what elements of the life of the Genevan church may be considered to be, at least in part, an expression of the idea.

scholarly journals The Priesthood of All Believers in Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
CONRAD MBEWE
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Priesthood Of All Believers ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's People ◽  
The Reformation

Abstract: Protestant churches in Africa have come under scrutiny from political leaders due to the abuse that citizens in the churches suffer at the hands of their leaders. This is in part due to the loss of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers taught in the Bible and rediscovered during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. We trace the discovery of this doctrine in the Reformation, its application to Africa, and its current absence, and we call church leaders to teach this truth afresh to God’s people.

scholarly journals Huldrych Zwingli: Reformation in Conflict

Perichoresis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Brett Eccher
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Early Death ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Way

Abstract The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli was a pioneering and domineering voice during the early sixteenth century, especially at the genesis of the Protestant Reformation. Despite his stature, Reformation historiography has sadly relegated Zwingli to a lesser status behind reformers such as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin. However, his contribution to the changing religious ethos of Reformation Europe was pivotal, yet always accompanied by controversy. In fact, this essay will argue that almost all of the Reformation gains made by Zwingli over the course of roughly twenty-five years of ministry took place through conflict. All the Protestant reformers experienced an element of conflict as a part of their work. Such was the nature of religious renewal and reform in the sixteenth century. Still, conflict not only facilitated and drove Zwingli’s Reformation, but was also a theme woven throughout his life. And in Zwingli’s case war was both figurative and literal. His battles moved well beyond those of his contemporary reformers. Beginning with his haunting experiences as a young chaplain in the Swiss army and culminating with his early death on the battlefield at Kappel, conflict shaped Zwingli’s life, ministry and theology. His was a life characterized by volatility; his Reformation was contested every step of the way. As a portrait of Zwingli emerges against the historic backdrop of war, division and strife, his lasting contributions to the convictions and practices of Protestantism, especially in Baptist and Presbyterian life, should become apparent.

scholarly journals Worlds of Difference

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-149
Author(s):  
Charles E. Butterworth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Detailed Explanation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Times

This is an appealing and clearly written account of how European thinkersfrom late medieval to early modern times reflected upon and explored thequestion of what to do about people of different religions and cultures. Inother words, how should their divergent opinions be understood and, eventually,what practical dispositions should be taken toward them? CaryNederman devotes the introduction and first chapter to an excellent,detailed explanation of the book’s focus and goals. Simply put, he is intentupon challenging two currently dominant views: that toleration emerged inEurope only at the time of the Reformation, and that it is ineluctably linkedwith the kind of political liberalism usually associated with John Locke. Tothis end, he calls the reader’s attention to expressions of religious, and evensomewhat political, toleration that appear early in the twelfth century andcontinue well into the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, he does not succeedin this ambitious, even appealing, stratagem as fully as he would havewished, for he admits in passing that he is content to “offer illustrations,”instead of a “comprehensive account,” of this phenomenon ...

The Lombardian Formula in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Critical Events ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Reformed Churches

This chapter, continuing the historical survey of the previous chapter, slows down and focuses on the reception of the so-called Lombardian formula in the Reformation and early Post-Reformation period, especially among the Reformed churches. After looking at how well-known Reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Zachary Ursinus understood the Lombardian formula, concentration shifts to a few critical events that provide important background to the Synod of Dordt and intra-Reformed debates on the extent of the atonement. More specifically, the chapter covers a late sixteenth-century debate between the Lutheran Jacob Andreae and the Reformed theologian Theodore Beza on the extent of Christ’s work. Next, it looks at the back-and-forth between Jacob Arminius and William Perkins. Finally, it gives a thorough examination of the Hague Conference of 1611, which featured a discussion of the various doctrines of grace among the Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants.

Johann Heinrich Alsted and English Millennialism

1969 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Clouse
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Political Responsibility ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Christian Thought

At the twelfth International Congress of the Historical Sciences there were a number of papers read on the subject of religious tolerance and heresies in modern times. Among these there were two which are of particular relevance to anyone interested in the religious thought of the Reformation Era. Professors Martin Schmidt and Gerhard Schilfert, the authors, were especially concerned with English Puritanism and its relations with continental radical ferment. Schmidt analyzed the work of Hermann Weingarten, who believed that England's century of Reformation was the seventeenth rather than the sixteenth and that it was during the struggle against the Stuarts that the history of the English church became a record of new intellectual and religious movements. Hence, the chiliastic Independents of the English Interregnum were analagous to the Anabaptists of continental fame in the early sixteenth century. In fact, during the unrest of the English Puritan Revolution, German influences presumably transmitted from the Netherlands were willingly accepted. Among the writers involved in this process were Jakob Böhme and Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil. From these sources came the belief in the second coming of Christ which formed the unifying bond for all shades of English revolutionary Christian thought. Cromwell, himself, was deeply affected by chiliastic thought, but when he assumed political responsibility, he had to act in a more rational way. Finally the enthusiasm of the Fifth Monarchists and the Levellers subsided into the quiet mysticism of the Quakers and the natural rights position of the Age of Reason.

scholarly journals Patronage, Performativity, and Ideas of Corpus Christi

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Pamela M. King
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
University Colleges ◽  
Royal Supremacy ◽  
The Way

This chapter details relations between Church and state in Richard Fox’s age. The break with Rome, the royal supremacy, and the dissolution of the monasteries irreversibly altered the way in which the early Tudor polity would be conceived. Already in the sixteenth century, accounts of this period were informed by the Reformation. Incidents such as Bishop Fox’s change of plan at Oxford—transforming a primarily monastic ‘Winchester College‘ into the secular Corpus Christi College—became overlaid with foreshadowed significance. Ultimately, Fox’s was the last great age of bishops founding university colleges, since the requisite mix of authority and wealth seldom coalesced so favourably thereafter and certainly could not during the assault on episcopal incomes later in the sixteenth century. Clerical dominance in Church and state made Corpus.

The Doctrine of Justification in the Neo-Latin Biblical Poetry of Silesian Reformation Poets and their Interpretation of the Biblical Theme of the Fall of the First Parents

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192
Author(s):  
Angelika Modlińska-Piekarz
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Biblical Poetry ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract The aim of this article is to analyze a selection of works by Silesian Protestants who, in poetic form, explained the biblical theme of the fall of the first parents in the context of the Reformation teaching on justification. The article consists of three parts. The first gives a short presentation of the literary phenomenon of neo-Latin poetic alterations of various books, fragments, and biblical themes by Silesian poets who were active in this literary field from the mid-sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century. The scale, area and time frame of the mass distribution of this literature are presented here, and it is noted that it was created as a result of the cultural and educational influence of the leading teacher of the Lutheran Reformation, viz. Philip Melanchthon. The second part of the article provides a theological explanation of the biblical story of the fall of the first parents, or original sin, in the context of the doctrine of justification as interpreted by Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Calvin. The third part discusses how some Silesian poets like Thomas Mawer (1536–1575), Laurentius Fabricius (1539–1577), Melchior Ostius (1569–1637) and Fridericus Wolbertus (active at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) presented the doctrine of justification in poems describing the fall of Adam and Eve. The conclusions emphasize the importance of this type of work for the spread of the Reformation doctrine of justification, which opened the peaceful path to ideological and religious discussions in Central and Eastern Europe at that time.

The Synoptic Problem in Sixteenth-Century Protestantism

2015 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL STRICKLAND
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Synoptic Problem ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject

This article examines early Protestant discussion of the historic puzzle in New Testament study known as the Synoptic Problem, which deals with the potential literary relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The subject was addressed by John Calvin, pioneer Reformer, and by the early Lutheran Martin Chemnitz. Calvin made a puissant contribution by constructing the first three-column Gospel harmony. Chemnitz contributed nascent redaction-critical assessments of Matthew's use of Mark. Thus, far from simply being a concern to post-Enlightenment critics (as is often assumed), interest in the Gospel sources was present from the earliest days of the Reformation.

London Parishioners in Times of Change: St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, c. 1450–1570

2002 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-63
Author(s):  
CLIVE BURGESS
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Reasonable Number ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Rapid Shift ◽  
The Way

If St Andrew Hubbard, Eastcheap, was a fairly typical London parish in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its archive is unusually good. A reasonable number of its parishioners have surviving wills, which is true for the City's parishes generally; but St Andrew Hubbard is extraordinary in preserving churchwardens' accounts in a virtually unbroken run from c. 1450. It thus proves possible to gain a more than usually clear impression of parishioners' beliefs and conduct both for the period preceding the Reformation and then during subsequent upheavals. Scrutiny of testamentary practice either side of c. 1540 indicates a profound and rapid shift in the way in which individuals conceived of and exploited their parish. While, by comparison, churchwardens' accounts suggest institutional continuities, analysis of two mid sixteenth-century initiatives to keep property which had been devised to the parish sheds further welcome light on the reflexes that a community developed to safeguard its interests in this critical period.

Unity and Diversity in the Church of the Fourth Century

1996 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Look Back ◽  
The Church

To look back to the early Church as a theologian and historian, and ask questions about her unity, is to enter on a long tradition, which goes back at least to the Reformation, if not to the Great Schism of 1054 itself. Once the Church had split, the various separated Christians looked back to justify their position in that tragedy. They scoured the early sources for evidence for and against episcopacy, papacy, authority confided to tradition or to Scripture alone: they questioned the form in which these early sources have come down to us - the sixteenth century saw reserves of scholarly genius poured into the problem, for instance, of the genuineness of the Ignatian correspondence, and what fired all that, apart from scholarly curiosity, was the burning question of the authenticity of episcopal authority on which Ignatius speaks so decisively. Out of that the critical discipline of patristics emerged. It was, in fact, rather later that the fourth century became the focus of the debate about the unity, authority, and identity of the Church - Newman obviously springs to mind and his Arians of the Fourth Century (London, 1833) and his Essay on the Development of Doctrine (London, 1845). Later on, the fourth century attracted the attention of scholars such as Professor H. M. Gwatkin and his Studies in Arianism (Cambridge, 1882), and Professor S. L. Greenslade and his Schism in the Early Church (London, 1953), and in quite modern times Arianism, in particular, has remained a mirror in which scholars have seen reflected the problems of the modern Church (a good example is the third part of Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and Tradition [London, 1987], though there are plenty of others). Continental scholars such as Adolf von Harnack also studied the past, informed by theological perspectives derived from the present; in a different and striking way Erik Peterson turned to the fourth century to find the roots of an ideology of unity that was fuelling the murderous policies of Nazism. In all these cases the fourth century seemed to be a test case ‒ for questions of modern ecclesiology: Rome defended by development in the case of Newman, the justification for the ecumenical movement in the case of Greenslade.

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