Resources on Christian Life

The closing Doctrinal Theology lecture turns to the Christian hope of resurrection and eternal life, the last chapter of Reformed dogmatics and the ground of confidence for both pastoral care and faithful witness in the present.

A focused reading list on the Christian life: Calvin's classic chapters in the Institutes (Book III, chapters 6-10), Leith's Yale dissertation John Calvin's Doctrine of the Christian Life, and Richard B. Hays' The Moral Vision of the New Testament. The bibliography draws together Reformed theology and New Testament ethics as a single picture of life shaped by the gospel.

A thorough investigation of Calvinist doctrine, defining the Reformer's teaching on Christian life in the context of his theology, with discussion of justification by faith, providence and predestination, history and the transhistorical, and church and society.

Hughes Oliphant Old returns to the question of what Reformed spirituality is, arguing that the Reformation reformed devotion as much as doctrine by moving piety out of the cloister and into the daily callings of family, field, workshop, and kitchen.

Hughes Oliphant Old turns to Matthew Henry's writings, especially A Church in the House and A Method of Prayer, to recover the Puritan discipline of daily family prayer, comparing the rhythm of Puritan household devotion with the medieval liturgy of the hours.

Iain S. Maclean introduces and translates a Communion sermon by the seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed Pietist Jodocus van Lodenstein, situating Reformed Pietism in relation to Calvin, Ames, Voetius, and Cocceius and to medieval traditions of mysticism and spiritual life.

Merwyn Johnson argues that Calvin's insistence on reforming all of life by Scripture, expressed in the Word preached and sacraments rightly administered, gives the Reformed tradition its distinctive pattern of Christian identity, walking with God through every moment under the Lordship of Christ.

D. G. Hart examines the doctrine of the spirituality of the church as articulated in the Westminster Standards and in nineteenth-century American Presbyterianism, contrasting H. Richard Niebuhr's typology of Lutheran and Calvinist views on the relation of church and civil order.

Carlos M. N. Eire argues that Reformation scholarship has under-attended the Reformed attack on idolatry, contending that Calvin's polemic against Catholic worship was no transitional concern but a central animating issue shaping the formation of Protestant theology and piety.

A leading expert on John Calvin brings together the reformer's most profound reflections on what it means to live a fully Christian life, with excerpts from theological writings, sermons, and prayers.

A focused reading of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress in the Oxford World's Classics edition, with Roger Sharrock's biography, John T. McNeill's essay in Books of Faith and Power, and Gordon Rupp's chapter in Six Makers of English Religion as companion readings. The bibliography invites ministers to read Bunyan's allegory as a Reformed theology of the Christian life in narrative form.

A focused introduction to Jonathan Edwards built around his Religious Affections, edited by John E. Smith for the Yale edition, as the primary text. The biography by George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, is the definitive secondary work, supplemented by Perry Miller's classic intellectual biography and John Smith's Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher.

Seminar readings center on Augustine's City of God (Books 20-22), Jonathan Edwards' sermon "Heaven Is a World of Love," William Temple on the conditions of eternal life, and Karl Barth's sections on the Holy Spirit and Christian hope from the Church Dogmatics. Supplementary readings include works by Jüngel, Rahner, Baillie, and Leith's chapter in Basic Christian Doctrine.

Seminar readings open with Calvin on the Christian life (Institutes III.6-10) and the Westminster Larger Catechism (QQ. 91-196) as primary statements of Reformed piety. Barth's Church Dogmatics IV/4 on baptism as the foundation of the Christian life provides a major twentieth-century counterpoint.

A historical and theological account of the Presbyterian tradition in America: its origins, its development, and its distinctive contributions to the church and the culture.

Dr. Leith preaches on the birth of Christ, proclaiming the mystery of the Incarnation as the center of Christian hope and the ground of human joy.

Dr. Leith asks what it means to proclaim the ancient gospel in a contemporary world, and how the church speaks a word that is both faithful to its source and addressed to the present moment.

A reflection on the Reformed doctrine of perseverance, understood not as a license for complacency but as the assurance of God's faithfulness to those he has called.

A sermon on the call of the church to be a transforming presence in the world, preserving, illuminating, and bearing witness to the truth of the gospel.

A sermon on gratitude as a constitutive posture of the Christian life, grounded in the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Dr. Leith reflects on what it means for the church to read its moment in history through the lens of Christian faith, discerning what God is doing and what faithfulness requires.

The fourth Doctrinal Theology lecture draws together the patterns and visions of the Christian life as formed by the Word, the Spirit, and the community of the church.

The last chapter of Basic Christian Doctrine, on hope for eternal life, reprinted as a booklet by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. Available in packets of twenty for $45 from Wipf & Stock Publishers.

The opening lecture of this series articulates the distinctive perspective of the Reformed theological tradition: its commitments, its sources, and its enduring relevance to the life of the church.