Morning Prayer (1662 Book of Common Prayer)

LECTIONS. John Calvin on the Psalms. ISBE: Genesis. Keil: Genesis. Keil & Delitzsch: Joshua. Matthew Henry: Isaiah. ISBE: Matthew. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown: Gospels. Romans: Prof. Hodge. Matthew Henry: Revelation. Prof. Hodge: Systematic Theology. Dr. Robert Reymond: Systematic Theology. Prof. Berkhof, Systematic Theology: Soteriology. Dr. Philip Schaff, Apostolic Christianity, Medieval Christianity, Swiss Reformation and Creeds of Christendom. EDT. CCC. Westminster Larger Catechism, 69-71.

For Psalm 17, Prof. Calvin on Psalm 17.9 comments that the justified saint can be assured beyond all doubt that God as regarded their necessities.

ISBE on Genesis: Prof. R. K. Harrison comments on ANE scribal practices. Units achieved literary fixity in annalistic and historiographic sources. Some would modernize a place name or archaic grammatical form in the interests of intelligibility and contemporaneity yet with no alteration of the texts. The Hittites, Hebrews and Sumerians permitted little-to-no editorial freedoms. The Hittites and Hebrews were the most careful recorders of history in the ANE. Philo would later comment that Rabbis would rather die than alter the Hebrew Bible. They were loathe to infringe on the literary integrity of the original composition or usurp the attributive authorship. Take that, Graffies created hypothesis-upon-hypothesis only to go to the graveyard.

For Genesis 1: Prof. Keil continues his defense of the historicity of the Pentateuch with no signs of legendary material or unhistorical transferences retrojected from later periods and glommed onto the Patriarchal period. There are no mythical embellishments for an “unprejudiced mind.”

For Joshua 15, Joshua gives another real-estate lesson on the Ephraimites.

For Isaiah 5.8-17, Prof. Henry Prof. Henry comments on the God-denying and God-forgetting covetousness and greed of landowners and the rich. Ahab’s covetousness of Naboth’s vineyard is invoked as an example.

ISBE on Matthew: Dr. Dagner briefly alludes to “salvation-history” and eschatology again.

For Mathew 4.1-11, Prof. Jamiesson, for some reason, is lingering long on the Temptation.  

For Romans, Prof. Hodge comments on 1.9-10 and Paul’s perpetual prayer life and service, noting his desire to come to Rome.

For Revelation 12.1-11, Henry comments on the church as invested with honorable privileges, cloaked in Christ’s righteousness and oversight, shining in its rays, the mother of the saints, the place where God’s effulgent and glorious Word and Gospel is heard. The Dragon ain’t happy about it.

For Systematic Theology, Prof. Hodge shows how the Apostles appealed to natural revelation while talking to the unconverted heathens. Verses given.

For Theology Proper, Prof. Reymond shines brightly and waxes strongly on the two natures of Christ in Chalcedonian fashion. It a wonderful footnote, he takes the Lutherans to the woodshed over Eutychian commingling and commixture of the two nature, divinizing the human.

For Soteriology, Prof. Berkhof does a lexical reconnaissance tour of the terms for holy, holiness, and sanctification.

For Apostolic Christianity, Vol. 1 (0-100) Prof. Schaff classically slam-dunks the 19^th century theologians as a “history of error as the history of self-destruction.” One hypothesis barely matured, but died, was substituted by another one, only to meet the same fate while Christ on His exalted throne and His Kingdom marched onwards.

For Medieval Christianity, Vol. 4 (590-1049), Prof. Schaff closes his coverage of Sweden’s Christianization as he switches to Norway and Iceland.

For the Swiss Reformation Vol. 8 (1519-1605), Prof. Schaff retails Bullinger’s election to the Great Minster of Zurich in Dec 1531, a month after the Second Peace of Cappel. Note the long life that covered the Henrician, Edwardian, Marian and Elizabeth periods in which Bullinger preached, taught, wrote and corresponded with English Reformers. He was known as industrious and more moderate than Zwingli, but was cut from the same cloth.

EDT on John Henry Newmann: the article claims John found Christ in his teens in a Calvinistic Anglican Church and went to Oxford, known for his intellect and powers of expression.

For the Creeds of Christendom, Prof. Schaff invokes Duns Scotus (d.1308) as the subtle, abstruse, and show-boating scholastic abhorring Augustine’s doctrine of original sin while establishing Mary’s Immaculate Conception amidst much, wide doctrinal contestation.

CCC: the infatuation lounge regales the Council of Trent as a “noteworthy example” of catechesis—yes, and damning Lutherans, the Reformed and Church of England. Noteworthy, JP2 and B16.

Westminster Larger Catechism 69-71,

Q. 69. What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?
A. The communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him.

Q. 70. What is justification?
A. Justification is an act of God's free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Q. 71. How is justification an act of God's free grace?
A. Although Christ, by his obedience and death, did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God's justice in the behalf of them that are justified; yet inasmuch as God accepteth the satisfaction from a surety, which he might have demanded of them, and did provide this surety, his own only Son, imputing his righteousness to them, and requiring nothing of them for their justification but faith, which also is his gift, their justification is to them of free grace.