Few topics are more likely to cause a stir among Christians than universal salvation, or apokatastasis—the view that no person will ultimately experience eternal estrangement from God. Although the universalist view is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the authoritative teaching of most Christian churches, it is not consistently considered heresy on the level of, say, denying the Trinity or the hypostatic union in Christ. But the concept of hell as “eternal conscious torment” has undoubtedly been a part of the Christian theological fabric for centuries, and from the perspective of the broader Church catholic, the burden of proof is probably on any challenger wishing to disrupt that consensus.
Best Reads of 2019
We asked a handful of our staff and Davenant Fellows what books they particularly enjoyed reading over this past year.
How the Reformation Vanquished Death
For the Christian, the threat of death, in whatever form it comes, does not have the final word. Jesus said it this way: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
Why Protestants Convert, Pt. 4: The Sociology of Conversion
Why do Protestants convert? The answer, as we’ve seen in our posts this fall, is complicated. It cannot be reduced to simple slogans or polemical talking points, and it calls for serious self-examination among Protestants
Calvin on the Public Rites of Confession and Absolution
In the third book of his Institutes, John Calvin argues that the church’s worship should begin with a corporate prayer of confession:
“Besides the fact that ordinary confession has been commended by the Lord’s mouth, no one of sound mind, who weighs its usefulness, can dare disapprove it….
The Real Presence and the Presence of Reality
On October 16th, Davenant Institute President Brad Littlejohn was invited to give a lecture at Hillsdale College on the doctrine of the Eucharistic real presence in the Protestant Reformation. In the lecture, he argued that contrary to many popular narratives and misrepresentations, the Reformed did hold to a kind of real presence of the body and blood of Christ—only not in the elements outwardly considered, rather in the act of faithful reception. Moreover, he argued, they did this precisely to preserve the integrity of the bread and wine as creaturely means of God’s gracious action. It was, they held, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, not the Reformed doctrine of the sacraments, that denied that created natures could become sites of God’s presence. Listen to the lecture below! Visit Mere Orthodoxy for the full text of this lecture.
