Martin Luther and Tax: A Protestant Perspective on Redistributive Taxation
The redistributive grammar of Luther;s theology of the Lord’s Supper underlie his vision for poor relief.
The redistributive grammar of Luther;s theology of the Lord’s Supper underlie his vision for poor relief.
Cooper's defense of the scholastic method argues for seeing continuity, rather than disjuncture, between Luther and his successors.
Bavinck nudges the novice towards seeing prayer as built upon and expressing the order of being. When Christians pray, they do so by the Spirit; the very act that manifests our creatureliness is achieved only in relation to the Spirit's enabling presence.
By teaching two kinds of righteousness, one imputed and one actual, Hooker makes room for us both to truly become holy and for our works to contribute to that holiness.
Aristotle described politics as involving art or craft (techne). It, too, required skill. It, too, could produce excellent, even wondrous edifices: regimes. Once upon a time, the Reformed tradition saw politics in the same manner. Althusius, for example, spoke of “the art of governing.”[1] Joseph Caryl, a Westminster Divine, described rulers as engaging in an “art” or a “craft.” These thinkers, moreover, developed this artistry, doing so consciously within a Reformed framework.
Not many passages in the New Testament speak directly to political order. The first part of the thirteenth chapter of Romans is perhaps the most famous. I would like to focus in this essay on vv. 3-4, which may appear prima facie to be something of an interpretive crux. Are these verses descriptive or prescriptive? That is, are they simply declarative, or are they imperatival, telling us what magistrates ought to do?
Christian morality is not ultimately instruction in how to make oneself a member of the Christian club. It is not a self-help program whose rules are adopted by a small set of people who wish to better themselves. Christian morals, rather, are simply moral teachings that agree with the natural design of the universe.
The interpreter that undertakes to compare the works of Plato with the gospel must begin somewhere. Here I attempt to set out Plato’s view on gifts and divine dispensation, and would ask that you consider the two following texts:
In the third book of his Institutes, John Calvin argues that the church’s worship should begin with a corporate prayer of confession: "Besides the fact that ordinary confession has been commended by the Lord’s mouth, no one of sound mind, who weighs its usefulness, can dare disapprove it....
In the last few years, few issues have been more controversial among Reformed evangelicals than the debate over the eternal subordination of the Son to the Father. To the extent that God’s intra-triune life has been thought to be the foundation and model of inter-human relationships, many have perceived their various social programs (particularly in relation to the sexes) to be at stake, at times driving the debate’s resolution in a particular direction. One meta-issue continually at the forefront in the debate over eternal subordination concerns the traditional doctrine of God’s simplicity.
