Evening Prayer (1662 Book of Common Prayer)

REFORMED THEOLOGY. REFORMED AND CRANMERIAN PRAYER BOOK CHURCHMANSHIP. AN ANGLICANISM THAT ONCE WAS, IS NOT TODAY, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT MAY BECOME. John Calvin on the Psalms. Keil & Delitzsch on Joshua. Matthew Henry on Jude. Dr. Robert Reymond on Systematic Theology. Dr. Philip Schaff on the Swiss Reformation, namely, Ulrich Zwingli. Westminster Shorter Catechism, 51-60. Psalm 4. Calvin discusses possible context: (1) Instances of persecution by Saul in his anti-God malice as a store-box of resentments. Pride rides the mule of envy. Or, (2) David in the coup d'etat of Absalom? Calvin opts for the first while leaving both on the table. He notes this is a musical piece for singers with instrumentalists. As for Joshua, Prof. Keil opens up 1.1-9 with a few exegetical comments (as usual, dealing with Hebrew details). To wit, in English, Joshua is in command after Moses' death and will, according to the calling and supporting Jehovah, conquer and allocate the land. Penal punishments and divine judgments to the Canaanites. They've earned destruction. On the other hand, sheer grace, mercy and peace to Joshua and the Israelites. God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy--and the converse, without mercy from whom he elects to withhold mercy. True then, true now. As for Jude, he drops--not a grenade--but a bomb down the chimney. Boom! There goes the hypocrite and that house! Jude consigns the false teachers and hypocritical professors--"reserved" for the "black darkness forever." Penal judgments are daily and eternal. Penal judgments are inescapable. The elect are warned hereby. The false professors won't receive the warning nor hear the bomb coming down their chimneys. On neoorthodoxy, Prof. Reymond continues to let Prof. James Barr prosecute the scandalous mind of Karl Barth. Barr is Reymond's useful hammer against Barth. A warrantable section against the scandal and sophisticated deviancy of Barthianism. Prof. Schaff indicates that Luther, a man of the people born and reared of pious peasant stock--a rougher and ruder sort. In contrast, Zwingli was the son of a magistrate and nephew of an Abbot and Dean--a more urbane, Erasmian and of a humanistic sort. Luther would loudly thump his tub, act as a tub-thumper and pound his gnarly fist on a table against Zwingli in 1529 at Marburg over Ubiquitarianism. Luther retained the Papist exclusivism and his movement was forever barred from the Reformed world, including historic Anglicanism. Both men loved music and poetry by training, but Luther excelled with results of a solid, Lutheran hymnic and chorale anthem traditions. We'll take educated urbanity over the rough rudeness of Luther, although God uses different tools as needed. For this scribe, a heavenly service has Lutheran anthems and Bach for preludes and postludes, Dr. Cranmer's BCP for the divine service, and, most necessarily, a solid Reformed man running things and preaching. The WSC 51-60 does what it does well, reminding us of the moral law in this section. Children used to memorize it by age 12, but here we are in 2021 with a national blackout.