Covenanting in Sixteenth-century Scotland

In 1638 the National Covenant deliberately looked backwards, as well as forwards, by incorporating the text of the Negative Confession (1581). Its authors utilised the patchwork of sixteenth-century covenant ideas by drawing upon religious bonding, confessions of faith and the coronation oath. Deeply familiar actions and gestures were used alongside the words, and especially the emotional ritual of taking a vow with hands upraised. This resonated with the broader identity and culture of protestants as a godly people, who, like the Old Testament Israelites, upheld their covenantal relationship with God by the ‘purity'of their reformed worship and discipline.

The Doctrine of God

The Reformed doctrine of God has bequeathed to the church catholic a God who is truly Lord, a majestic sovereign who rides in the ancient heavens. He exercises his own good pleasure eternally, affirming and attesting and delighting in his own perfect goodness; and he turns toward his creatures in that perfect goodness to enact his justice and his mercy. Utterly self-sufficient, gloriously free, this God seals the covenant with creatures through the blood of his Son, and is content to dwell with them. He does not leave himself without witnesses, for the whole cosmos speaks his name. For this reason, the God whom the Reformed worship and adore, is in fullness and in truth, humanity’s chief end, its glory and its delight forever.

Martin Luther: music and mission

This article seeks to demonstrate Martin Luther's often-overlooked credentials as a musician. Luther was convinced that music was the viva voce evangelii (living voice of the gospel), and unlike other more radical Reformation movements, he encouraged the use of choral and congregational singing in worship. Some of his familiar hymns – Nun freut euch, Ein’ feste Burg and Aus tiefer Not – offer insights into his ambitions to embed congregational singing into his vision of reformed worship, which went hand in hand with liturgical reform. Luther's Formula Missae and the vernacular Deutsche Messe lay the groundwork for Lutheran worship, which restructured the service around the centrality of the gospel proclamation. Luther's musical tradition reached its zenith in the work of J. S. Bach, which continues to echo in the Western musical canon, leaving Luther with a lasting musical legacy.

Sixteenth-Century Origins

This chapter examines the sixteenth-century origins of Presbyterianism. It looks first at the broader reforming impulse in medieval European Christianity, and in particular, the sixteenth-century Reformations. Turning to the Reformed movement of which Presbyterianism is a part, it argues that the Renaissance humanism was its driving impulse and shaped its ethos. It examines three specific features of the sixteenth-century Reformed movement with significant influence on Presbyterianism: the Reformed theological synthesis, often called Calvinism; the style and priorities of Reformed worship; and the distinctive Reformed polity that made pastors the teachers of the faith and placed lay elders or presbyters in charge of congregational discipline. The chapter concludes by describing the evolution of the Church of Scotland into recognizable Presbyterianism.

Menyentuh Surga, Memeluk Dunia

In and since its historical beginnings, Christian worship has retained its eschatological dimension, as this even is intricately related to aspects of its missionality. As such, the worship given and performed in the contemporary Reformed church must also retain its eschatological-missionality. While Martha L. Moore-Keish locates this eschatological dimension within the event of Holy Communion, Reformed churches do not celebrate Holy Communion every Sunday. Might Reformed worship, whenever it goes without Holy Communion, be losing its very own eschatological quality? This article serves as a constructive proposal for (re)locating the eschatological-missionality of weekly Reformed worship, by way of emphasizing the eucharistic aspect of the Reformed liturgy. To pursue this inquiry, the present article undertakes an investigation of Reformed eucharistic theology, followed by a consideration of the Orthodox Alexander Schmemann's figuring of the world as sacrament and its relation to mission. I then reconstruct the positionality of the eschatological dimension within Reformed worship, in the end thereby synthesizing the Reformed eucharistic theology of Calvin with the Eastern Orthodox eucharistic theology articulated in Schmemann's thought in order to locate the eschatological-missionality of the Reformed liturgy. In the end, it is hoped that this constructive proposal might underscore the importance of the eucharistic aspect of the Reformed liturgy, even in such a way that emphasizes the very character of its eschatological-missionality.