Biblical · Reformed · Evangelical · Thought-Provoking
Sixteenth-century Reformers worked in a vacuum where ancient heresies clamored for reconsideration. Finch shows how Calvin held to Nicene and Chalcedonian Christology even while insisting on sola scriptura, and what his way of speaking carefully about Jesus has to teach a church facing similar pressures today.
Hughes Oliphant Old died in May 2016 at age eighty-three, leaving behind decades of scholarship that shaped Reformed worship across denominational lines. Taylor's tribute traces what Old taught us about how worship has actually been done, and what we lose if his books gather dust.
Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda gets translated as 'the church reformed, always reforming,' but the original Latin has more bite than that. Bush traces the saying's actual provenance and argues the Reformed tradition's understanding of reform is more disciplined, and more demanding, than the slogan suggests.
Karl Barth once described Calvin as 'a cataract, a primeval forest, a demonic power.' Goodloe doesn't disagree but finds, like Barth, that one could profitably spend a lifetime there. The piece reads Calvin on church unity for what he still has to teach a fragmenting PCUSA.
Should we baptize infants or only believers? Sprinkle, pour, or immerse? Mills argues with James Torrance that the first question to ask isn't who or how, but what baptism actually does. The Reformed answer reorients the practical debates almost completely.
Aguzzi defines the terms of the euthanasia debate carefully, distinguishes the various forms it takes, and offers a Reformed argument that suffering is not the worst thing that can happen to a person and that physician-assisted death cannot be reconciled with what the Christian tradition teaches about life and death.
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