John Calvin and John Owen on Mortification: A Comparative Study in Reformed Spirituality. By Randall C. Gleason. Studies in Church History 3. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. x + 183 pp. $45.95.
Braaten, C E & Jenson, R W, 2000. Sin, death and the devil. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Prys: Onbekend. Michael Green, The Message of Matthew. Intervarsity Press, Leicester, 343 pp. Price £9.99. Francisco Lozada (Jr.), A literary reading of John 5. Text as construction. Peter Lang: New York, 138 pp. Price unknown. McGrath A & Packer JI (series eds), Thomas Manton, Jude 1999 [1675] 223 pp. John Calvin, 1 & 2 Timothy & Titus 1998 [1556] 208pp. John Owen, Hebrews 1998 [1680?] 269pp. The Crossway Classic Commentaries.
Chapter 6 looks at the perseverance debate started by the avowed Arminian John Goodwin, who appealed to Augustine and the early church for a denial of the perseverance of the saints. The chapter focuses on the Reformed responses among Goodwin’s Puritan counterparts, like John Owen and George Kendall, and how they challenged Goodwin’s reading of Augustine and defended the importance of perseverance for confessing the Reformed faith. It also focuses on Richard Baxter’s alternate perspective, which affirmed the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints but questioned whether it should be a confessional issue based on his reading of Augustine and the witness of church history. This chapter reveals how competing readings of Augustine on perseverance persisted among Reformed Englishmen and also how these readings influenced the way Puritans developed and used confessions so as to handle concerns of catholicity.
Abstract
In 2012, large amounts of white marble Buddhist statues of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi Dynasties were unearthed from the Buddhist sculpture hoard at Bei Wuzhuang in Ye City Site. This paper makes a comparative study on a bodhisattva statue in meditation seated in half-lotus posture (resting right ankle on the knee of pendent left leg and holding right hand upward) among them and another sculpture of the same type and made in the same period unearthed at the Xiude Monastery site in Dingzhou; from the double-tree, stupa and coiling dragon designs shown by them, this paper explores the commonalities and differences of the Buddhist arts in these two areas. Moreover, this paper reveals that this motif emerged earlier in the Ye City area than in the Dingzhou area, and diffused to the latter after it became popular in the Ye City area. By these conclusions, this paper infers that the white marble meditating statue seated in half-lotus position with the date of the second year of Wuding Era (544 CE) in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA was produced in Ye City area.
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