Philip Schaff on the History of Torture
In the 4th Volume of his History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff devotes a chapter to the discussion of torture. Professor Schaff is wholly opposed to the use of torture in…
In the 4th Volume of his History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff devotes a chapter to the discussion of torture. Professor Schaff is wholly opposed to the use of torture in…
Earlier this week, the Vice President of the United States of America made two controversial comments about Pope Leo XIV. On Tuesday, J D Vance said that the pope should…
“For the likeness of a man appears to be necessary at that time when he is far away; and it will become superfluous when he is at hand. But in…
Over the past five years or so, I have begun encountering a kind of person I call the “Liberal Trad.” The Liberal Trad fully accepts political liberalism, to include late…
Anglicanism currently has a substantial charismatic element to it, particularly in the ACNA. Over at the ACNA website, they even have this statement about the so-called “Three Streams” of the…
Whitsunday is the older English name for Pentecost. And there’s a sermon about it in the Second Book of Homilies. That sermon explains the significance of Pentecost, gives a short…
This title probably sounds boring to a lot of people. Don’t worry. I will get back to refuting the arguments for women’s ordination soon enough. But this post is necessary…
The recent meeting of the Global Anglicans in Abuja, Nigeria has left a little bit of confusion. What exactly happened there? I will come back to that in future essays…
What’s more classic than a Reformed vs. Lutheran debate on the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper? Well, I will try to keep it friendly, even as I want to skeptically…
In the debates over women’s ordination, a historically decisive passage in the New Testament is 1 Timothy 2:11-15. It is so direct that critics call it a “clobber passage.” And…
At the end of the Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy for Holy Communion there are a series of rubrics. Rubrics are usually stage instructions, but occasionally they provide further explanations.…
The classic 1662 Book of Common Prayer calls for the Athanasian Creed to be read in the Morning Prayer liturgy at least thirteen times throughout the year. Notably, it is…
I just want to make a quick observation and leave a link for public benefit. John Davenant, 17th cent. Bishop of Salisbury, has this to say about the original apostles…
Now that we are reading the Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church in North America, let’s check to see what they do and do not say about the question…
There’s a lot of confusion in the ACNA world. This is known. But what is not as well known is that a lot of the confusion could be resolved by…
Back in the early days of my blogging at The Calvinist International, I posted a snippet of a really excellent essay by Adam Gopnik on G. K. Chesterton. Written in…
There’s a guy named “Young Anglican” who has a Youtube channel that a lot of people watch. I don’t think I have ever watched him before. But he just released…
Father Mike Schmitz is a Roman Catholic influencer priest. He has done other things, and so I don’t mean to diminish him with that description. He has been ordained as…
My recent post on the women’s ordination in the ACNA has been passed around a decent amount. I’ve gotten a lot of direct feedback, and I thought I would quickly…
In Book 10 of City of God, St. Augustine contrasts the way that Christians worship God only and the way that the Platonists worship angels and other heavenly powers. The…
Many people are surprised to learn that it has been entirely common for Protestant theologians to claim the early church fathers as positive support for their doctrine of the eucharist,…
The Anglican Church in North America is a house divided on the question of women’s ordination. It has been this way since its inception. I think early on, the assumption…
A few years ago I wrote a historical study of the Ash Wednesday service in the Anglican tradition. The big surprise was that no ashes were used until very recently.…
My World Opinions piece on using the King James Version of the Bible for Christmas has gotten some attention. It’s been an “editor’s pick” for a couple of days, and…
[This post was originally published on June 8, 2017. It is reprinted here with only minimal formatting updates.] Around the year 1548, Peter Martyr Vermigli published the following quote from…
So the Evangelicals of the internet had a medium-sized explosion this past week as Matthew Barrett announced that he is becoming Anglican. The whole thing was interesting, and I’ve been…
[This essay was originally posted in May of 2012. It is reposted here in its original form with only slight formatting changes.] Recent years have enjoyed a great renewal in…
By now we have all learned the rule that if a C S Lewis quote (or St. Augustine quote or a Martin Luther quote) doesn’t come with an actual citation,…
James Ussher and Samuel Ward were British (Irish and English) theologians and clergymen in the 17th cent. They were good friends and wrote many letters to one another, several of…
Back in January, Ray Sutton, the Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, wrote a lengthy essay on Anglican identity. It began as commentary on a recent book release and…
(This essay was originally published on May 20, 2018.) For you, little child,Jesus Christ has come, he has fought, he has suffered.For you he entered the shadow of Gethsemane and…
Welcome to the Anglican International, a continuing exploration in Reformed Irenicism. I plan to write about church history, liturgy, select theology, relevant socio-political matters, pastoral-devotional interests, and to give occasional…
Well, sort of. The name John Davenant was not exactly unheard of twenty years ago. Banner of Truth had reprinted his commentary on Colossians. But even still, his name was…
Thomas Aquinas did not believe that Mary was conceived without sin.
Pastor Douglas Wilson recently said some complimentary things about my essay on concupiscence in the new book Ruined Sinners to Reclaim. Thanks, Doug. And thanks to the Gibson brothers and…
So I’m not a Presbyterian anymore. That’s old news. But I’m still reading a lot of the same books, and I still pay attention to the same time period of…
10 years after uncovering the true history of Halloween, Steven Wedegeworth considers the holiday in 2023.
Are ashes on Ash Wednesday really an Anglican tradition?
Why the world needs Protestant Social Teaching.
A series hoping to find points of continuity between the “Anglican” position on ceremonies and tradition and that of the broader Reformed churches would surely want to skip the Scottish…
The French Confession of 1559 was put together by men associated with the National Synod at La Rochelle. Theodore Beza was one of the leading figures there. This confession is…
The next Reformed confession in our series on tradition is the Genevan Confession of 1536. This was written by John Calvin, but it shows an affinity with the Tetrapolitan Confession,…
The Lausanne Articles of 1536 were written by Guillaume Farel and Pierre Viret. They show a similar sort of theology of adiaphora as preceding Reformed confessional statements. They begin with…
The First Helvetic Confession of Faith was another attempted Reformed-Lutheran symbol of unity. Composed thirty years before its more famous successor, the First Helvetic was written by Heinrich Bullinger in…
The Tetrapolitan Confession of 1530 represented the theology of the cities of Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau. It was written chiefly by Martin Bucer. It can be thought of as…
We must climb the things of this world, this evermore insane world, as we ascend to things higher.
This post is going to be a bit short and imprecise. Still, friends encouraged me to plop this down in one easy-to-find spot, and so I hope it helps. My…
With some distance from the initial SCOTUS leak, what are the most significant takeaways?
We could say that Calvin is Puritan in personal tastes and eventual goals but that he is Anglican in basic principles and ecclesiastical polity.
This post is Part 2 of a three part series. You can read Part 1 here, and Part 3 here. Earlier, I introduced Calvin’s commentary on the 16th century Church…
This post is Part 1 of a three part series. You can read Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. John Durel was a Franco-Anglican minister who became a key…
The growing popularity of the International Edition of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer has brought many positive fruits with perhaps the greatest being a reuniting of Anglican worship to…
Throughout Martin Luther’s Lectures on Genesis, he returns again and again to a surprising theme. Shem, the son of Noah, was a public leader over the ancient church and he…
In his biography of the great reformer John Calvin, Bruce Gordon repeatedly points out that Calvin opposed iconoclasm (see pgs. 283, 323-327 of Gordon’s Calvin). On this point, Calvin differed…
After beating up on Nevin, it’s only right that I turn some attention to Charles Hodge. While the main edge of his criticism of Nevin had to do with Nevin’s…
My last post on Nevin won the hearts and minds of all reasonable men, and so I thought I would do well to add a sequel. Don’t worry, I also…
When I was in seminary, the Mercersburg theology of Philip Schaff and John Williamson Nevin was enjoying a significant revival. Lots of books, masters theses, and dissertations were written about…
On July 19th, Dr. Gregory Thompson and Pastor Duke Kwon published a response to a book review they had received from Dr. Kevin DeYoung. DeYoung’s review had been released over…
I am finishing up Diarmaid MacCulloch’s biography of Thomas Cranmer. Over all it’s a superb work of history, even if MacCulloch inserts his own voice into the controversies a bit…
At the end of his book, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should be Obeyed, Martin Luther takes up the topic of restitution, which he defines as “the return of…
Some recent Roman Catholic takes draw all the wrong lessons from this national crime.
Martin Luther’s political theology has fallen on hard times. While it was once common to give him credit for the emergence of modern political liberties, Luther’s legacy has, especially since the second world war, soured. Many have claimed that he set the stage for an unholy sort of sacred nationalism, while more recent commentators say that Luther had no political theology at all, but was instead content to take a “hands off” approach, ceding everything to an emerging secular state.
A DAVENANT TRUST PUBLICATION ISSUE 1.4 • DECEMBER 2016 ADFONTES A JOURNAL OF PROTESTANT RESOURCEMENT FINDING ZION: THE CHURCH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT STEVEN WEDGEWORTH Any contemporary student of Scripture…
If you've ever had questions about the origins of Halloween, this short article is for you.
Pagan festival? Christian mockery of evil? Or something else entirely? Steven Wedgeworth explores the true origins of Halloween.
Between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we must learn to wait.
The rejection of image veneration is a truly pan-Protestant position.
What insight did R.L. Dabney have on the origins of American religious liberty?
