Why Study Theology?
What is doctrine for? Seminarian Jonathan Sundermeier turns to Calvin’s Institutes to argue that theology’s highest end is piety: reverent love of God that is formed by knowing him and issues in joyful obedience.
Tag
John Calvin
27 articles from 25 issues, 1995 to 2026
Law and Liturgy The Place of the Ten Commandments in Reformed Worship
The Ten Commandments aren't just a moral code; in Reformed worship they sit at the foundation of the service itself. Dorn traces how Bucer and Calvin built liturgies around them, and asks whether contemporary congregations have lost something by quietly setting them aside.
Why Tradition?
American culture treats the past as a burden to leave behind. Small argues the Reformed tradition does the opposite: it carries Calvin and the confessions forward not because they're old, but because they witness to a gospel the present urgently needs to hear.
The Holy Spirit and Presbyterians
B. B. Warfield called Calvin pre-eminently the theologian of the Holy Spirit. Burnett walks through what Calvin actually taught, why Presbyterians have argued about pneumatology ever since, and where the tradition's habits of thought still serve and where they leave gaps.
Calvin Meets Voltaire – An Interview with Jennifer Powell McNutt
Working interviews Jennifer McNutt about her book Calvin Meets Voltaire, which traces the Geneva clergy who held the Reformed line through the Enlightenment. The Geneva pastors offer a longer view for any congregational leader feeling outnumbered by the cultural moment.
“All The Ministers Shall Meet Together”
When Luther posted his theses, Calvin was eight. Small traces the road from a French schoolboy's eventual 'sudden conversion' through Geneva's vote to live by gospel and Word, to the day Calvin meant to spend one night in town and ended up shaping a movement instead.
John Calvin on Theatrical Trifles in Worship
Late medieval worship was overrun with what Calvin called theatrical trifles. Ray follows Calvin's polemic into its sources and stakes, and asks what 'theatrical' looks like in modern Reformed worship that has long since stopped policing itself by the standard Calvin set.
Calvin’s Theology of Pastoral Care
How did Calvin actually understand pastoral care? Willis works from Calvin's commentary on John 10, where Christ alone is the shepherd and human pastors serve only in a derivative sense, and shows what that subordination meant for the daily work of caring for souls.
Luther, Calvin, and the Recovery of Congregational Singing. Is the Reformers’ Legacy at Risk?
Before the Reformation, Catholic worship had no congregational singing and no music in the language people actually spoke. Mills traces how Luther and Calvin recovered the song of the gathered people, and asks whether contemporary churches are quietly drifting back toward the silence the Reformers fought.
John Calvin on Death and Grief
It's hard to picture John Calvin grieving, or writing tender letters to bereaved friends. Nixon shows that we should picture exactly that. The Reformed tradition's reputation for being rigorous-but-cold is a caricature, and Calvin himself is the first witness against it.
Calvin and Barth on the Unity of the Church
Calvin once wrote that he would gladly cross ten seas if it would help mend the church's torn body. Burnett puts that ferocity in conversation with Karl Barth, and asks what the two together have to say to a denomination tempted to treat division as routine.
Worship Matters
Luther asked how a sinner is made right with God. Calvin asked an even prior question: how is God rightly worshiped? Taylor argues that the Reformation's deepest legacy is the Reformed insistence that justification exists for the sake of worship, and worship is the goal toward which salvation tends.