Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Monday, December 24, 2012

Rome's Rejection of Catholic Faith

http://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2012/12/23/roman-rejection-of-catholic-tradition-the-sufficiency-of-scripture/

"The related identification of Scripture as pure, holy, sufficient, and perfect – pure, holy, and sufficient in its teachings for the preaching of salvation and perfect or complete in its communication of those teachings – is a point of doctrine that marks out a major line of continuity between the medieval scholastics, the Reformers, and the Protestant orthodox. This particular element of the doctrine of Scripture had been developed in considerable detail in the later Middle Ages and was not altered at all in its basic statement. Whereas it is quite true that the concept of the purity, holiness, sufficiency and perfection of Scripture did not, in its original medieval context, point ineluctably toward the Reformation, the Reformers and their orthodox, scholastic successors were able to place the concept into the context of a different view of authority and interpretation and to use it as one of the foundations of their declaration of sola scriptura. Indeed, the radically altered shape of the questions of interpretation and authority in the post-Reformation era placed the Roman Catholic polemcists [sic] in the somewhat unenviable position of arguing against the express statements of great medieval doctors like Aquinas and Scotus concerning the prior authority, sufficiency, and perfection of the text."
Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, volume 2: Holy Scripture, pg. 310. (bold emphasis added)

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