Evening Prayer

McNiell, John Thomas. The History and Character of Calvinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Dr. McNeil tells of the founding of Geneva Academy with its ground-breaking, funding, and slow building, but also notes the hiring of Beza as Rector in 1559 (193). This includes kindergarten through high school years, including French, Latin and Greek (194). The school was rigorous, classical, Biblical and Psalm-singing, attracting students from other nations (194). VALUE: show the importance of classical learning, discipline and theological health—as salt, light, and serving the poor in spirit (and mind and soul). Greg Allison’s “Historical Theology:” Prof. Allison further quotes Anselm on the substitutionary, satisfaction view of the atonement, but brings in the subjectivist, Peter Abelard, on the moral inspiration theory of the atonement (398). Too bad he failed to see the comprehensiveness of the atonement, thinking in terms of “either-or.” As an aside, we’re delighted with Alexander Evan’s brief but capable notes on the atonement in Global Anglican (Spring 2022). Further development is given on Aquinas’s view of the “superabundant” atonement—accessed through the sacraments cooperatively—which develops into the law-works program of merits-on-the-installment plan. Luther and Calvin go back to the Scriptures. VALUE: apply this to Shirley’s tirade—it is that—in the Princeton Journal (2007), a reconfiguration more akin to Schleiermacher’s experientialism, Abelard’s example/moral government view, and Shirley’s own fancies and reconfiguration of the attributes of God (398). Edward Cairns’s “Christianity Through the Centuries:” Prof. Cairns discusses the stand-off between Thomism with the wounded will accessing the sacramental gas-stations for salvation-by-the-installment-plan via the hierarchy and Augustine’s grace model. The Reformers followed Augustine but discovered justification by Christ alone by grace alone and double-imputation (306). History was changed. Indulgence trafficking, funded by the Fugger bank, advanced by the Pope, and hyped by high-pressure sales techniques of Tetzel, indulgences indexed to social-economic positions, was upended by the Reformation (308). VALUE: reinforcing the necessity of Biblical exegesis including the Pauline corpus. Illiteracy, authoritarianism, fiscal games, and the exaltation of the Ego over the Bible is on view, again. Millard Erickson’s “Christian Theology:” Prof. Erickson will discuss the Biblical teaching on the Trinity. He begins with a good discussion of the unity of God pointing to various OT passages, notably in the Pentateuch. VALUE: this points to the necessity of putting the Graff-Wellhausian skunks out of the discussion (323). Justo Gonzalez’s “History of Christianity: Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation:” 26. The End of an Era. The Western Empire has crumbled and fall by 476 AD. The barbarians are all over the west—Franks, Gauls, Germans, Vandals, Lombards Visigoths and more. Alaric, king of the Goths, sacks Rome in 410, a historic landmark. Prof. Gonzalez discusses the fall of the Roman Empire, the continuity of the Byzantine Empire for the next 1000 years, the turbulences in the West, and something of a recovery that arises later in the West—including the role of Christianity and its western developments. (260). VALUE: divine judgments and divine recoveries in diversities, conflicts and more.