Evening Prayer/Church History: 8/30/2022

McNiell, John Thomas. The History and Character of Calvinism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. 13. Calvin as a Writer and Theologian, 201-225. Dr. McNeil gives the astonishing chronology of Calvin’s prolific publications. As voluminous as they are illuminating. He had secretary help, but still, most significant (204). Greg Allison’s “Historical Theology:” 18. Atonement. Post-Reformation period. Schleiermacher gives his dogmatic claims against dogma, turning the atonement into Ich Theologie and a subjectivistic sense of the world spirit. Allison gives a fair summary of Gustav Aulen’s Christus Victor model in his three views of the atonement. We’ll stick with our WCF and BCP (407). Edward Cairns’s “Christianity Through the Centuries:” Chapter 27: Luther and the German Reformation. Cairns retails Luther’s time in Wartburg Castle (May 1521 to March 1522), the Zwickau prophets and millennial fevers, and the rejection of Luther by Erasmus by 1524, Erasmus realizing a rupture with Rome was coming (318). Millard Erickson’s “Christian Theology:” 15. God’s Three-in-Oneness: the Trinity—biblical teaching, historical constructions, essential elements of a doctrine of the Trinity, search for analogies. Pp. 321-344. We get a quick review from Tertullian and Hippolytus with their analogies for the Trinity. Justo Gonzalez’s “History of Christianity: Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation:” 27. The New Order in Medieval Christianity. Gonzalez spend time briefly describing the Benediction order, “The Rule,” its generosity but strictness, and its influence for over a millennium. It proved to be a stable institution in periods of chaos (278).