British Calvinists: Joseph Hussey (1660-1726)

Joseph Hussey (1660-1726) was born in Fordingbridge, Hampshire. He attended the Newington Green Dissenting Academy founded by Cornishman Charles Morton (1627-1698). God met Hussey when he was reading Charock's Existence and Attributes of God. 

In 1688 he was ordained as a presbyterian and became pastor of a congregation at Hitchin. In 1661 he moved to pastor a congregation in Cambridge which became congregationalist. In 1719 he moved to a pastorate in Petticoat Lane, London.

He wrote two books in particular that were influential in the formation of hyper-Calvinism: The Glory of Christ Unveil'd or the Excellency of Christ Vindicated (1706) and God's Operations of Grace but No Offers of His Grace (1707). In the Glory of Christ he advocated that Jesus' human nature existed in heaven. In God's Operations he rejected the notion that the gospel was an 'offer'. Conversion is a gift of grace and involves the inner working of the Holy Spirit, this is not something that can be offered. There is a need to preach the gospel, but it is God who converts.

He was a supralapsarianism. He was influenced by the congregationalist Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680) and influenced John Skepp (1675-1721), Samuel Stockwell (1704-1753) and Lewis Wayman. 

Peter Toon devotes a chapter to Hussey and Skepp's theology in his The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism (Quinta Press, Weston Rhyn, 2003). In it he provides the following outline for Hussey's life and ministry:

1. 1660–1694: Years of Preparation.
2. 1694–1705: Years of Reading.
3. 1706–1707: The Birth of Hyper- Calvinism:
   (a) Supralapsarianism;
   (b) God-Man Christology;
   (c) Irresistible Grace;
   (d) Criticism;
   (e) Influence of Hussey’s theology.

British Calvinists: Daniel Williams (1643-1716)

Daniel Williams (1643-1716) was born in Wrexham. He was a presbyterian. From 1664-1687 he ministered in Ireland. In 1687 he went to London where he became friends with Richard Baxter and John Howe. He was an opponent of the hyper-Calvinism of Tobias Crisp and Chauncy, and he was accused of having arminian tendencies.

He died from asthma in Hoxton. He left almost 8000 books and money to establish what is now known as Dr Williams's Library. He also gave money for the establishment of several charity schools in Wales and for scholarships for non-Conformists to go to Glasgow University and Camarthen Academy.

Some of his works are available here:

http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=2777

British Calvinists: Robert Trail (1642-1716)

Robert Trail (1642-1716) was born in Elie in Fifeshire and attended Edinburgh University. His father Robert (1603–1678) was a zealous Covenanter and at one time minster of Grey Friar's Church, Edinburgh.

In 1670 Robert Jr. was ordained as a presbyterian in London and went to serve a congregation in Cranbrook, Kent. He published a 'letter' in 1692 entitled 'A Vindication of the protestant Doctrine Concerning Justification and of its Preachers and Professors form the Unjust Charge of Antinominianism'. This was occasioned by the publication of the works of Tobias Crisp. 

On a preaching visit back in Scotland he was arrested for refusing to deny the field coventicles and was put into prison on Bass Rock. he returned to Cranbrook. He then moved to London where he served in an Independent congregation. 

His Works was republished by the Banner of Truth in 1975. 

Some of his writings are available here: 

http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=41

Jacob Klapwijk's Between Historicism & Relativism on AoLR

Last year (2013) the late Donald Morton completed  new translation of Jaap Klapwijk's 1970 doctoral dissertation. It is now available on allofliferedeemed. 

2013. Between Historicism &; Relativism: Dynamics of Historicism and the Philosophical Development of Ernst Troeltsch. Amsterdam: VU University, online. [Translation of Tussen historisme en relativisme, 1970] 

 

Kuyperania: Common Grace 1:2 is announced

The second part of Abraham Kuyper's Common Grace covering Temptation–Babel has just been announced by Christian's Library Press. 

It will be available shortly.

ISBN: 978-1-938948-20-6

Full details are available here: http://www.clpress.com/publications/common-grace-volume-1-part-2

British Calvinists: Benjamin Keach (1640-1704)

Benjamin Keach (1640-1704) was born in Stoke Hammond, Buckinghamshire. As a teenager he read the scriptures and came to an understanding that they were 'silent concerning the baptism of infant', he joined a Baptist congregation at Wimslow and was baptised. 

While at the Baptist church he married Jane Grove in 1660 and had a calling to church ministry. In 1664 he was almost killed by troopers and was imprisoned for his advocacy of believers's baptism. He was placed in a wooden pillory and ridiculed, but he took the opportunity to preach the gospel. 

In 1668 he and his family moved to London. He was ordained as an elder in the General Baptist church in Tooley Street, Southwark. It was here he met Hansard Knolleys and William Kiffin and embraced the Calvinist theology of the Particular Baptists. He began a Calvinistic Baptist congregation in Horsleydown, Southwark. He also planted new congregations in the south of England.

One controversy that Keach became embroiled in was regarding hym singing. Keach had introduced hymns in addition to psalm singing in public worship and this was not appreciated by some, notably Isaac Marlowe (1649-1719). 

Some of Keach's writings are available here:

 http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=1413

British Calvinists: Joseph Alleine (1634-1668)

Joseph Alleine (1634-1668) was born in Devizes, he studied at Lincoln College, Oxford and became a scholar of of Corpus Christi. In 1665 he accepted the post of assistant at St Mary's, Taunton. Alleine was one of the 2000 Great Ejectors, 73 were ejected in Somerset alone. After ejection he travelled around taunton continuing his preaching but was imprisoned several times for this. He died when only 34. 

His Alarme to Unconverted Sinners (1672) was very influential and is still in print today, as is his A Sure Guide to Heaven ((1688).

Some of his writings can be found here:  http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=1383

References

Braund, Elizabeth, 1969, 'Joseph Alleine', in By Schism Rent Asunder (Papers read at the Puritan and Reformed Studies Conference).

Molly Worthen Apostles of Reason

Apostles of Reason

The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism

Molly Worthen

Oxford: Oxford University Press

ISBN 978-0-19-989646-2

viii + 352pp; hbk; £18.99

Worthen, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, paints an interesting picture of North American evangelicalism.

Surprising in a history of evangelicalism there is no mention of Bebbington’s quadrilateral as the defininition of evangelicalism, so then how does Worthen define evangelicalism? In a sense she doesn’t. She presents a wide-ranging consortium of views and these include anabaptists, methodists and pentecostals. She rightly notes that defining it has produced more debate than agreement (p 3) and she sees history as being the best too for ‘pinning down’ evangelicals (p 4). 

She attempts to answer three questions (p 6) which evangelicals seem obsessed with: how to reconcile faith and reason; how to know Jesus; and how act publicly on faith in an increasingly secular public square. An intellectual civil war!

She focuses both on institutions - for example Wheaton College, Fuller Seminary, Biiola, Bob Jones University, Christianity Today - and individuals - J. Gresham Machen, Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, Billy Graham, Howard Ockenga,  John Howard Yoder and George Eldon Ladd, James Dobson and Hal Lindsey, Harold Lindsell all get largish parts.

Surprisingly Gordon Clark has more than a bit part. Wheaton College’s (1936-43) Clark is mentioned along with Cornelius Van Til regarding presuppositionalism, which Worthen maintains they developed from Abraham Kuyper (p 30), but also as a mentor for Carl Henry and Edward Carnell, and in relation to the development of the notion of Weltanschauung (world- and life-view)among (neo)evangelicals. See shows how worldview has become a powerful rhetorical strategy; we have worldview academy, worldview initiative, worldview curriculum, worldview studies, for most of them their understanding of worldview is a far remove from the espoused by Kuyper. 

Worthen, as an evangelical outsider, draws a fascinating picture of evangelicalism, her book will help evangelicals see themselves from another’s perspective and help them better contemplate what of evangelicalism is God-given and what is cultural fluff. 

British Calvinists: Isaac Chauncy (1632-1712)

Isaac Chauncy (1632-1712) was born in Ware, Hertfordshire. He then moved as a child with his family to New England, USA. He started his undergraduate studies at Harvard and completed them at Oxford on his return to the UK. In 1660 he became the rector of Woodbridge, Wiltshire until the 1662 Act of Uniformity. He then took up the pastorate at a congregational church in Andover, Hampshire.  

While at Andover he became a physician and then moved to London to pursue this vocation and then became the pastor of an independent congregation. He was succeeded there by Isaac Watts, the hymn writer. 

He continued as a physician while pastoring. He then became a divinity tutor at a Dissenting Academy in London.

Some of his writings are available here: http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=1626

'Kuyperania in recent years' Koers 79(1) (2014), 6 pages. doi: 10.4102/koers.v79i1.2138

My 'Kuperania in recent years' has now been published in Koers.

It is available as HTML  |  EPUB  |  XML  |  PDF (341KB)

In it I take a look at these six important books:

Rooted and grounded: The church as organism and institution (Abraham Kuyper)
Going Dutch in the modern age: Abraham Kuyper’s struggle for a free church in the Netherlands (John Halsey Wood Jr.)
Kuyper in America: This is where I was meant to be (Abraham Kuyper)
Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist Christian democrat (J.D. Bratt)
Abraham Kuyper: An annotated bibliography 1857–2010 (T. Kuipers)
Wisdom and wonder: Common grace in science and art (Abraham Kuyper)

Surge Network and Surge School

This is a very exciting project - with Mike Goheen involved.It is the outworking a reformational vision.

 The Surge School was developed to offer a year-long program of theological education for lay leaders in the churches in Phoenix.


Surge Promo from Surge Network on Vimeo.

More details on Surge and Surge network are available at missionaltraining.org 

Bob Goudzwaard at the ICS, Toronto - the keynote address

Bishop, S., 2014, ‘The missional impulse of the biblical narrative’, Koers – Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 79(1), Art. #2140, 1 page. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/koers.v79i1.2140

My review  of Mike Goheen's A Light to the Nations The Missional Church and the Biblical Story is available in Koers as html and pdf.

Bishop, S., 2014, ‘The missional impulse of the biblical narrative’, Koers – Bulletin for Christian Scholarship 79(1), Art. #2140, 1 page. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/koers.v79i1.2140

British Calvinists: John Howe (1630-1705)

John Howe (1630-1705) was born in Loughborough, he studied at Christ's College, Cambridge and Brasenose College, Oxford, he then became chaplain of Magdalen, when Thomas Goodwin was the president. He graduated with a BA in 1650 and MA 1652. In 1654 he became the perpetual curate of Great Torrington, Devon. He beam one of Oliver Cromwell's chaplains. He attended the Congregationalist's Savoy Conference as an observer. 

He returned to Great Torrington in when Richard Cromwell dies. In 1662 with the Act of Uniformity he was ejected from his church. he spent most of his time in this period preaching and writing. He eventually went to Ireland but returned to London in 1676 and to the Presbyterian Haberdashers' Hall. He eventually went to Utrecht. He returned to London in 1687. He was widely recognised as one of the leading dissenters and worked hard to unite the Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 

Some of his writings are available here:

http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=354

Two new excellent books from Bennie van der Walt

Two new books have been published by Bennie van der Walt:

2014. Constancy and Change: Historical Types and Trends in the Passion of the Western Mind.

This looks at Vollenhoven's consistent-problem historical method in a clear and accessible way. It will provide an excellent entry point into Vollenhoven's work. The aim of the book is to provide an elementary, comprehensible introduction to Vollenhoven’s complicated historiographic method. It does that admirably.

CONTENTS
Preface: Prof. Annette Combrink .............................................. ii
Introduction: ........................................................................ iv
Chapter 1: How to portray the history of philosophy: exploring historiographical problems and methodologies ... 1
Chapter 2: A Scripturally oriented perspective on the history of Western intellectual thinking: the origin, contours of and questions about the consistent problem-historical method .............................18
Chapter 3: Flying on the wings of Vollenhoven’s radical Christian worldview: a reconsideration of current typologies of Christian worldviews............................. 38
Chapter 4: The concept “woman”: a feminist historiography of the relation between male and female ..........73
Chapter 5: The implications of a consistent problem-historical method of philosophical historiography for gender differences and relationships........................... 96

Bibliographical references 

2014. At the Cradle of a Christian Philosophy: Calvin, Vollenhoven, Stoker, Dooyeweerd. 

This book examines the roots of reformational philosophy as found in Calvin, Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd. It is an excellent introduction.

CONTENTS

Preface – Prof. M.F. Heyns 

Introduction 

Chapter 1: The uniqueness of John Calvin’s (1509-1564) Philosophia Christiana ... 1

Chapter 2: The Christian philosophy of D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (1892-1978) ... 47

Chapter 3: The Christian philosopher, H.G. Stoker (1899-1993) ................. 80

Chapter 4: The Christian philosophy of H. Dooyeweerd (1894-1977)........... 116

Bibliographies

Acknowledgments 

As ever with Bennie's work these are clear, accessible and replete with wisdom and insight.

The books can be obtained from the author contact him on:
benniejvanderwalt at gmail.com

British Calvinists: John Flavel (1630-1691)

John Flavel (1630-1691) was born in Bromsgrove and graduated from University College, Oxford. He ministered for most of his life in Devon. First at Dipford near Totnes, then in 1656 moved to Dartmouth. With the passing of the Act of Uniformity he was ejected in 1662 though he continued to preach privately in the Dartmouth area near Salpton. With the granting of indulgence in 1671 he returned to Dartmouth and used a meeting  house but especially for him. He also conducted a small dissenting academy.  

He write a number of books. Many of then can be found here: 

http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=290