Description
For the Healing of the Nations
Proceedings from the 2nd Annual Convivium Irenicum. The authors use the doctrine of Creation to explore the relation of philosophy to theology, of the church to the saeculum, and of the kingdom of Christ to the visible church. This volume brings together careful investigations of established and emerging historians and theologians, exploring how these questions have been addressed at different points in Christian history, and what they mean for us today.
For Law and For Liberty
Proceedings from the 3rd Annual Convivium Irenicum. Together, the essays in this volume challenge us to recognize the breadth and depth of our heritage of Protestant political wisdom, and the complexity and contingency of civic life to which its principles must be artfully applied, which rules out any attempt to inscribe any particular instance of Christian politics as a model for all time.
Beyond Calvin
Proceedings from the 4th Annual Convivium Irenicum. The Reformed tradition today often carries a reputation for narrowness and dogmatism, rather than breadth and diversity. But it was not always so. The essays in this volume offer an introduction to the theological rigor and surprising breadth of the early Reformed tradition.
God of Our Fathers
Protestantism today has an idolatry problem. Not merely in the sense of worshipping false gods—of pleasure, wealth, or politics—but in the sense of worshipping the Triune God of Scripture according to images and ideas of our own devising. Whether it’s a God who suffers and changes alongside his creatures, or a “Trinitarian circle dance” of divine personalities, or a hierarchically-arranged Trinity that serves as a blueprint for gender relations, modern evangelical theology has strayed far from historic Christian orthodoxy. Needing a God that can be put on a greeting card or in a praise song, our idolatrous hearts shrink the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob down to size, and make him more like us.
Reforming the Catholic Tradition
Cardinal Newman once stated that to be deep in church history is to cease to be Protestant. These essays argue that, on the contrary, to be Protestant is simply to be a principled catholic. In one sense, the Protestant tradition just is the catholic tradition shorn of excess and reduced to truly “universal” doctrine and principle. We embrace God’s calling to maturity by learning to be active participants in the universal church as it grows into fuller understanding of God’s revelation. Openness to reform is not silly submission to the ethos of each age, but is rather the insistence that all of our understanding must submit (in the classic formula of Luther) to the bar of the Scripture and plain reason, which stands above and judges the church in each era. The whole Word stands in judgment over our fractured communities and fragmented understanding.