Church History

The reformer John Calvin has often been portrayed as a legalistic tyrant who endeavored to rule the city of Geneva with an “iron fist”. This characterization has, unfortunately, come to have the status of an unquestioned historical fact. People who rely on the opinions and assessments made by...

My first pastorate was a small rural congregational church. Her only doctrinal statement was the Apostle’s Creed. The ol’ timers said it was because doctrine didn’t matter out in the country. I served that congregation while in my last year of college and almost all three years of my seminary...

Typically when someone hears the name John Calvin, one of the first things that comes to mind is those doctrines which are commonly called “Calvinism,” or his well-known “Institutes of the Christian Religion.” However, one must wonder, if after hearing the name John Calvin, do people ever think “an...

Katherine Parr’s life is punctuated by danger, action, and scandal. We usually remember her close brush with death, when a powerful group of courtesans plotted to destroy her. Some may remember her contested marriage to Thomas Seymour, who kept the gossiping tongues of London happily wagging...

John Calvin was born in Noyon, France on July 10, 1509. His father, Gerard, was a lawyer and registrar and notary to the bishop of Noyon. He married Jeanne LeFranc, the daughter of an innkeeper, who gave birth to three or four sons of which only two survived - Charles and John. Sadly John lost his...

A great blind spot which afflicts anyone who limits their reading of Calvin to The Institutes is how thoroughly engrossed the Reformer was in missions work across Europe. Calvin was no austere academic always at his desk with his nose in a book. Rather, we could say, he spent much time at the...

John Calvin arrived in Geneva in June 1536. [1] He intended to stay one night. Fleeing from persecution in his homeland of France, he planned to take up a scholar’s life in Strasbourg, but war forced him to take an unusual route that included the French-speaking city of Geneva. Calvin had no...

This week on Theology on the Go, our host, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. Bruce Gordon. Dr. Gordon taught at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was professor of modern history and deputy director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute, before joining the faculty of...

A simple Google search of “Olympia Morata” and “feminist” yields 6,530 results. Some call her “a forgotten, feminist voice” or “a feminist in Renaissance Italy.” These definitions would have puzzled her. She was highly esteemed in her day, but for different reasons. A Child Prodigy We don’t know...

Since the 1980s, a movement called the New Perspective on Paul has been a rising star in Biblical studies and Pauline scholarship. The movement primarily started through the writings of E.P. Sanders’ 1977 Paul and Palestinian Judaism as he explored the Second Temple Jewish texts and reexamined what...