1. IDISC 770x(Online)February 16-22, 2011 From the Reformation to 1857 (Part 2)

2. Realistically: The CRC Began with the Protestant (Calvinist) Reformation

3. What was the Reformation all about? Step 2:

4. What was the Reformation all about?

5. Justification by faith Assurance of salvation Sacraments Scripture 1. Doctrine?

6. 2. Worship? The Bible comes into its own: Preaching!!! Psalm Singing Both elements in eucharist

7. Elders replace bishops Democratic impulse 3. Church Polity?

8. “Laity” are “religious” Magistrate = “the most sacred and by far the most honorable of all callings in the life of mortal man.” Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xx.4. 4. Christian Vocation

9. Spiritual founder of capitalism (Max Weber) Father of the modern revolutionary spiri (Tridentine Roman Catholics, Lord Acton) Responsible for the Puritan (and Victorian!) hostility to sex (Characteristically American attitude; Nathaniel Hawthorne) Afew other claims:

10. Who said it? “Those who know Calvin only as a theologian much underestimate the extent of his genius. The codification of our wise edicts, in which he played a large part, does him no less honour than his Institutes. Whatever revolution time may bring in our religion, so long as the spirit of patriotism and liberty still lives among us, the memory of this great man will be forever blessed.

11. Jean Jacques Rousseau The Social Contract, book II, chap. 7, note

12. The Protestant Reformation was at its core a religious-ethical change in the very conception of Christian existence and practice (i.e. a new Christian “man”; a new Christian way of living) A Proposal:

13. A“Paradigm” Shift -sacramental -hierarchical -expansive church role (Vocation = church) -Word & Proclamation Presbyterian; associational; representational (Universal Office) Priesthood of all believers Roman Catholic medieval pattern: The Reformed pattern:

14. At the heart of this: The Sovereignty Of God The Freedom of the Christian

15. liberty of conscience freedomof Scripture interpretation vocation as God’s vice-regent and co-laborer The Freedom of the Christianincludes:

16. Individual Person as an image bearer of God has the highest dignity, worth and responsibility; the new Calvinist person was fiercely independent, highly responsible (and politically aggressive). TheNew Anthropology:

17. This gave Reformed people the courage: to disobey popes and bishops to rebel against tyrants to create new worlds of commerce to build new societies

18. The story of the CRC, beginning (realistically) in Switzerland, moving to the low countries, and finally to the new world, is a story of those “new people.”