Dr Paul Allen

Reformers like John Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other author outside Scripture. They celebrated, among other qualities, how he championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works but by his grace.   When it came to the doctrine of justification by faith, however, the Reformers did not find the clarity they wanted in the great church father.  Augustine never offers a systematic treatment of the meaning of justification, and a careful reading of his works reveals ambiguities in his treatment of the doctrine.   Nevertheless, he speaks of justification mainly in terms of God making sinners righteous rather than declaring sinners righteou s. To the Reformers, then, his way of expressing the doctrine obscured, even if it did not deny, Christ’s righteousness as the sole ground of a sinner’s justification before God. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) championed the truth that God saves sinners not on the basis of their works, but by his grace alone. E...

In the early chapters of The Institutes of the Christian Religion written by John Calvin, Calvin makes a statement that goes something like this:  "Hence that dread and terror by which holy men of old trembled before God, as Scripture uniformly relates." What Calvin was saying is this: that there is a pattern to human responses to the presence of God in the Scripture and it seems that the more righteous the person is described, the more he trembles when he enters the immediate presence of God. There is nothing cavalier or casual about the response of Habakkuk when he meets the holy God. Do you remember Habakkuk's complaint? Where he saw all of the degradation and injustices that were sweeping across the landscape in his homeland and he was so offended by this that he went up into his watchtower and he complained against God and he said "God, you are so holy that you can't even behold iniquity.  How can you stand by and let all of these things come ...

The Bible teaches that as a believer in Jesus, I don’t have to worry about my own stick-to-it-ness. I can rest in the faith that Jesus will get me into glory, if he has to drag me himself! Philippians 1:6  For I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Yes, I am confident that I will get to Heaven , but it is not a confidence that rests on my experience, or my proven track record of always finishing what I start. It is an assurance based entirely on my knowledge of Jesus and his power to save. 2 Timothy 1:12 For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. This is the doctrine of Perseverance of the Saints. Westminster Confession: They whom God hath accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein...

This year, many people are celebrating the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation . But not everyone is. Some have raised severe criticisms against the Reformers and their work. The Reformers, they allege, replaced the authority of the church with the authority of the autonomous individual. Moreover, the doctrine of justification by faith alone , these critics claim, cut the nerve of morality and, effectively, baptized licentious living. Martin Luther and John Calvin , they continue, opened Pandora’s box, releasing two forces that not only rent the church but also went on to define the modern age: radical individualism and antinomianism. Understood on these terms, the Reformation is cause for lamentation, not celebration. These criticisms rest on a profound misunderstanding of the Reformation and, specifically, a misunderstanding of two of the leading doctrines of the Reformation: sola scriptura ( Scripture alone ) and sola fide (faith alone). What were the ...

St James the Greater Roman Catholic Church, Coatbridge, Scotland. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) By spring of 1558 the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland was fighting a losing battle. Protestantism had begun making inroads into the country in the 1520s, and had been progressively picking up steam since then, powered principally by the importation of English bibles (which were accessible at least to Scots speakers of the Lowlands) and reforming literature from the continent. Efforts to counter the spread of Protestantism by killing its chief advocates, beginning in 1528 (with the execution of Patrick Hamilton) and peaking in 1539 (with the execution of at least eight various Protestant agitators), had backfired, creating martyrs whose message merely intrigued, rather than repulsed, the people. Internal efforts to address, in a series of provincial church councils, the most obvious shortcomings of the Scottish Kirk 's clergy—namely, sexual immorality and theological ignorance—and...

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) When considering the temptations of Jesus one can hardly resist asking the hypothetical question, Could Jesus have sinned? The fact that Jesus is fully God would seem to preclude this, for God cannot sin. But the fact that Jesus is fully human, and that He undeniably was tempted, might seem to demand the possibility that He could have sinned; for if He could not have sinned, how could He have been tempted. How could He have been fully human? Charles Hodge , the great Reformed theologian of the nineteenth century, seems to be among those who affirm that Jesus could possibly have sinned. He says, “The sinlessness of our Lord , however, does not amount to absolute impeccability.… If He was a true man He must have been capable of sinning … Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of His person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then His temptation was unreal and without effect, and He cannot sympa...

The Reformed Church of France, Paris, France (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John Calvin (1509–1564) is easily the most important Protestant theologian of all time and remains one of the truly great men who have lived. A world-class theologian, a renowned teacher, an ecclesiastical statesman, and a valiant Reformer, Calvin is seen by many as the greatest influence on the church since the first century.  Apart from the biblical authors themselves, Calvin stands as the most influential minister of the Word the world has ever seen. Philip Melanchthon revered him as the most able interpreter of Scripture in the church, and therefore labeled him simply "the theologian" ( J. H. Merle d'Aubigné , History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin, Vol. 7[1880; repr., Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle, 2000], 82). And Charles Spurgeon said that Calvin "propounded truth more clearly than any other man that ever breathed, knew more of Scripture, and explained it more c...