I would like to invite readers to listen to Anna Madsen’s rendition of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” an 8th-century hymn traditionally associated with the Advent season.  The first verse of this solemn hymn says: O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. Christian Advent, or Adventus, is the four-week period before Christmas in the Christian liturgical year. Each week encompasses one of the following themes: hope, peace, joy, and love. The Advent season serves as a remembrance …

Reformation Day is celebrated each October 31st, reminding us of the year 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses at All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. Theologians believe that Luther chose this day, bearing in mind that many people would attend the church on All-Hallows’ Day (November 1st). In the Western church, the celebration of All-Saints’ Day dates back to the 4th century and commemorates all the saints and martyrs of the church. In North America and most of Europe, October 31st is also the day that Halloween is observed. The term ‘Halloween’ is an English contraction of All-Hallows’ Eve. …

This article offers some statistics from Heinrich Bullinger’s The Decades with a brief analysis as evidence that Bullinger must be understood as the forerunner, not the father, of federal theology, due to his discussion of the covenant doctrine is limited, inconsistent, exploratory, and slightly integrated with the rest of his theological thought. Having tested Baker and McCoy’s thesis that Bullinger’s doctrine of the covenant is an organizing and central principle in most of his published works (especially in The Decades), one arrives at the conclusion that their thesis is not totally accurate. One might observe that Bullinger cannot be considered …

In his discussion of evolution, Bavinck offers a modified theory of development, rooted not under a mechanistic and naturalistic worldview, as Darwin does, but under a ‘theistic-friendly’ framework. This paper argues that Bavinck’s discussion of evolution as whole endorses a modified Aristotelian/Thomistic framework in order to understand the theory of development, and thus overcoming the challenges raised by Darwin’s naturalistic worldview to biblical revelation. Bavinck’s engagement with the theory of evolution is noteworthy. Unlike his general criticism to Darwinism in his discussion of human origins in RD §279-83, the essays studied here analyze the theory of evolution in a further …

Based on his view of religion as a linguistic community, George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine calls Christians to pay heed to the integration of the Christian faith and secular scientific resources for the benefit of Christian ecumenical relations. In order to accomplish this task, Lindbeck wants to defend and propose a middle way to understand doctrine, its function, and nature. For him, the current state of affairs is very negative in terms of how people perceive Christian doctrines and dogmas. Lindbeck argues that doctrine should be understood as a linguistic system with its symbols and rules. With this suggestion, …

The purpose of this study is exploring John Calvin’s two-fold notion of faith in the 1559 Institutes and its central implications for pastoral theology in the emerging Reformed tradition in order to reclaim a broader and contextualized understanding of pastoral care and its relation with faith formation. To that end, this paper will focus on the ways the emerging Reformed church of second mid-sixteenth century in Geneva applied the Calvinian notion of faith to pastoral theology. It also explores some applications of such an understanding, especially for the modern American-Dutch reformed church. In the Reformed faith Calvin’s two-fold notion of …