A reading of any or all of these forty-four extant sermons on Acts by John Calvin will help the reader determine whether his conscience is at peace or simply asleep! Calvins vigorous presentation of the gospel in its full extent shows the sixteenth-century expositor understood the ramifications of New Testament theology. Calvin mixes biblical teaching and its demands on the believers life together so closely that the theology and its effects cannot be easily separated. Divine judgment and mercy underlie this effects theology, and it is the sense of judgment versus the promises of and the conditions for forgiveness and acceptance that informs the readers conscience whether he is indeed forgiven and at peace, a member of the body of Christ. On the other hand, the reader of the sleeping conscience, by comparison and self-examination, will be incited to awaken to a new or renewed relationship with the pressing demands of Christian effects theology. Calvin pulls no punches. If belief does not end in an increasingly Christlike character, it is as good as no belief, no theology. The reader is either at peace or asleep.
John Calvin (1509 - 1584)
Was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Reformed, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of his seminal work Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Calvin's writing and preaching provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Presbyterian and other Reformed churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin's thought exerted considerable influence over major religious figures and entire religious movements, such as Puritanism, and some have argued that his ideas have contributed to the rise of capitalism, individualism, and representative democracy in the West.
Founder of Calvinism. John Calvin, a French scholar who became a leading preacher and dominant force in the Reformation of the 16th Century, studied at the University of Paris and at the University of Orleans. He became dissatisfied with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and allied himself with the cause of the Protestant Reformation in 1532.
When the king of France decided to settle the religious question in his country in favor of the Catholics, Calvin fled to Geneva, Switzerland, where his writings and lectures made Geneva the Rome of Protestantism. His institutes of the Christian religion became the basis for the Presbyterian way of thought and church life. Calvinism is the main doctrine of the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.
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