Religion Commons^™

Restored In Christ, Calvin Institute Of Christian Worship, Grace And Peach Church

Symposium on Worship Archive

No abstract provided.

Moving Worship: Encouragement To Engage Our Bodies In Worship, Julia Start Fletcher

Symposium on Worship Archive

This session is designed for anyone curious about dance as well as those with dance experience. Participants will engage in conversation around the questions “What IS liturgical dance?” and “How can I equip my congregation with the tools to feel comfortable moving?” Learn how to encourage movement with choreography to the Lord’s Prayer that’s accessible to those of all abilities, and understand how to cultivate an atmosphere of trust.

Developing A Canon Of Song For Your Church, Constance Cherry

Symposium on Worship Archive

How much intentionality comes to bear on the collection of congregational songs your church sings over time? As worship leaders, we are responsible not only for choosing excellent songs, but also for providing for the overall balance and appropriateness of the church’s body of song.

Strengthening The Soul Of Your Leadership, Ruth Haley Barton

Symposium on Worship Archive

Do you ever feel as if your leadership is something you “put on” for particular occasions rather than a dynamic that emerges from deep within you? Is the pressure to perform compromising your own experience of worship? Do you find yourself manufacturing emotion as you lead others because your own intimacy with God has grown cold? In this workshop we will share honestly about the challenges of spiritual leadership in a high-performance culture. Ruth Haley Barton will help you assess the state of your soul and then explore crucial disciplines for strengthening the soul of your leadership.

Worship And Faith Formation Through The Life Cycle, Lynn Barger Elliott, Laura Kelly Fanucci, Syd Hielema, Barbara J. Newman, Kathy Smith

Symposium on Worship Archive

How do children worship best? How can worship help young people through the teen and young adult years? What practices of worship resonate most with adults and elderly people? And how can we include people of all abilities in worship? This seminar will look at the human life cycle and the developmental stages that all people grow through in their faith formation, and we’ll consider what this means for how people of all ages and abilities can participate fully in worship.

Augustine’S Privation Theory Of Evil, Emily Jiang

Beets Paper Contest

No abstract provided.

Mathematics Of The Infinite God In The Works Of Nicholas Of Cusa, Lauren Henderson

Beets Paper Contest

The geometrical analyses of infinity exemplified in the work of Nicholas of Cusa can aid in understanding the complex nature of God’s attributes, specifically the perceived tension between his simplicity and his quality of encompassing and upholding all things.

The Oppressed And The Oppressors In The Fourth Gospel: A Postcolonial Reading, Joshua Polanski

Beets Paper Contest

No abstract provided.

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum: Winter 2019, Amanda W. Benckhuysen, Matthew Cooke, Mariano Avila, Margaret Mwenda

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum (2002- )

3 - God's Plan by Jul Medenblik

4 - Making Immigration Our Problem by Amanda W. Benckhuysen

8 - Trauma, Forced Migration, and the Role of the Church by Matthew Cooke

12 - Latino/ A Evangelical Immigrants in West Michigan by Mariano Avila

16 - Informing, Equipping, and Connecting African Immigrants in Grand Rapids, Michigan

19 - Loving Your Neighbor

22 - Faculty News

22 - New Faces

23 - Other News

24 - Year in Review

The Stromata Vol. 61, No. 1, Calvin Theological Seminary

Stromata (1956-2020)

Inside This Issue

5- Finding Hope while Struggling by Isaias D’Oleo-Ochoa

7- Liturgical Theology in the Psalter by Andrew J. Belcher

22- Plantinga’s Ontological Argument of God by Jung-Yao Wang

43- Worshipping with Our Children by Sewon Jang

Neither Libertarian Nor Compatibilist, Richard A. Muller

CTS Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

The present essay addresses Paul Helm's most recent attempt to assimilate the thought of such Reformed scholastics as Francis Turretin to the 'compatibilism' of Jonathan Edwards. Helm has misunderstood a series of important scholastic distinctions concerning the relationship of intellect and will in the older faculty psychology, and the relationship of foundational or, as I identified it, 'root' indifference in the will to its multiple potencies. He has, accordingly, failed to register how Reformed orthodox understandings of free choice outlined in recent scholarship affirm both a simultaneity or synchronicity of potencies or capacities of the will and a diachronicity of …

Why We Listen To Sermons (Calvin Shorts), Scott E. Hoezee

Calvin Press

Why do we listen to sermons? Where did sermons come from? How has preaching managed to survive and thrive across so many years and in so many cultures? Most Christians listen to a sermon every week. But what is a sermon? How does it relate to the Bible, and how does the Holy Spirit work through the 354 million new sermons that are preached every year? This book makes the claim that the Spirit of God likes to work through the Word preached. As it explores that claim, it looks at the history of preaching and current-day practices. It provides …

Good Places For All (Calvin Shorts), Mark D. Bjelland

Calvin Press

This short book invites readers into a deeper understanding of cities and suburbs and the challenges they face. Because places play such an important role in human well-being, loving our neighbors includes caring for and cultivating good places for all. Despite their great prosperity, North American communities are beset with challenges: fiscal crises, concentrated poverty, fragmentation and division, failing schools, unaffordable housing, and lack of community feeling. Good Places combines a biblical framework with an exploration of how cities, neighborhoods, housing markets, and transportation systems work. Readers will find themselves challenged to extend Christian hospitality beyond the walls of their …

John Calvin’S Two-Fold Notion Of Faith And The Possibility Of Faith Formation: The Emerging Genevan Church’S Understanding Of Faith And Its Relation To Pastoral Care, Isaias D'Oleo Ochoa

CTS Student Publications and Creative Works

The purpose of this study is to explore John Calvin’s two-fold notion of faith in the 1559 edition of the 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 article will focus on the ways the emerging mid- sixteenth century Reformed church in Geneva applied the Calvinian notion of faith to pastoral theology. Some applications of such an understanding for the church today are also explored, especially for the modern American-Dutch Reformed church.

Should We Read Bavinck's The Philosophy Of Revelation As An Apologetic-Of-Despair Work?, Isaias D'Oleo Ochoa

CTS Student Publications and Creative Works

In dealing with arguments against the Christian faith in his book The Philosophy of Religion, Herman Bavinck uses a series of argumentative strategies. One of these strategies is the apologetic of despair. This study tries to figure out whether this strategy tends to be observed in most essays of the book or its use is only circumstantial.

Week 1: Introduction, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Week 6: What’S Next?, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

We have spent six weeks practicing, learning about, considering, and praying about keeping Sabbath as individual disciples and as a community. Thank you for participating and joining us in this! Our hope is that Calvin College as a community and us as individuals can continue to walk deeper into a sabbath-way of life—where because we rest weekly and regularly, sabbath rest marks and shapes all of our days.

Week 5: Feasting, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Week 3: Resting, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Week 2: Ceasing, Calvin University

Campus Ministries Resources

No abstract provided.

Moral Ecology, Disabilities, And Human Agency, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This paper argues that human agency is not simply a function of intrinsic properties about the agent, but that agency instead depends on the ecology that the agent is in. In particular, the paper examines ways that disabilities affect agency and shows how, by paying deliberate attention to structuring the social environment around people with disabilities, we can mitigate some of the agential impact of those disabilities. The paper then argues that the impact of one’s social environment on agency isn’t restricted only to those agents that have disabilities, but also characterizes all human agency. All of our agency is …

C. S. Lewis And Satan: A Preface To Paradise Lost And Its Respondents, 1942-1952, David V. Urban

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

This essay discusses C. S. Lewis’s influential and controversial chapter, within A Preface to “Paradise Lost” (1942), on Milton’s Satan. Lewis’s chapter presents itself as a response to what Lewis sees as the dominant Romantic understanding of Milton’s Satan, but Lewis oversimplifies the critical landscape both by misrepresenting Shelley’s discussion of Satan and by failing to acknowledge various post-Shelley challenges to Milton’s Satan that had appeared before Lewis’s book. Lewis’s chapter elicited various sustained critical responses in the ensuing decade. This essay analyzes those responses—most of which seek to refute Lewis’s presentation of Satan by reasserting a Romantic understanding of …

Human Freedom And The Invisible Church From The Viewpoint Of Bavinck's Pneumatology, Dong-Yaul Tae

CTS PhD Doctoral Dissertations

Although Reformed pneumatology is generally recognized by scholars of Calvin and Reformed confessions to be relatively well developed compared to the various pneumatologies of the Western theological tradition, it faces two important challenges. First, Reformed pneumatology is directly linked to the critique that Reformed soteriology’s accentuation of predestination and effectual grace leads to inevitable fatalism that ignores human freedom. This is because the ministry of the Holy Spirit is crucial in the Reformed understanding of the order of salvation beginning with regeneration and ending with glorification. Second, because the ministry of the Holy Spirit is a key to understanding Reformed …

Calvin Theological Seminary Academic Catalog 2019-2020, Calvin Theological Seminary

Seminary Academic Catalogs

No abstract provided.

‘Upright, Whole, And Free’ Eschatological Union With God, Kevin Timpe

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

In the closing canto of the Purgatorio in his Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri describes the souls preparing to enter heaven as “new, remade, reborn, … perfect, pure, and ready for the Stars [i.e., heaven].” But what exactly would it mean for a human soul to be morally perfect and in perfect union with the divine will? Furthermore, if the soul fit for heaven is perfectly united with God, what sense does it make to think that individual retains their free will? In this paper, I assume a number of Christian claims about the Beatific Vision and argue that not …

When Empathy Is Not Enough: A Reflection On The Self-Experience Of Black Boys In Public Spaces, Danjuma Gibson

CTS Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This project explores the self-experiences of Black boys in public spaces, primarily in Chicago. Given the plethora of negative media attention placed on violence in the city and on violent encounters with law enforcement, this project asks how Black boys can experience themselves in a life-giving way when so many negative images and stereotypes denigrate their humanity. The author introduces the concepts of group-level racial delusion and demonic transference. The former term suggests a psychological split occurring at the societal level that historically has allowed emotional and physical violence to be disproportionately and callously inflicted on Black boys in public …

Reformed Worship (Rw) 130 - Lent / Easter (December 2018), Reformed Worship Editors

Reformed Worship Magazine

Features

Worship Series: Everyday Jesus Spirituality by Peter Schuurman....3

Sing 10: Psalms of Ascent by Bruce Benedict and Anna Gabhart....14

Worship Series: Holy God, Holy Lives by Robert Toornstra....33

Mental Illnesses and Worship: Prayer, Lament, Language, and Discipleship

by Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, Cindy Holtrop, Warren Kinghorn, and John Swinton....37

Articles

Editorial: How to Make the Most of Your Subscription by Joyce Borger....2

For Pastors: It's Easter. Again. by Scott Hoezee....31

Worship with Reverence and Awe by Vincent Murphy....45

Q&A: What Church Websites Communicate about Worship by John Witvliet....47

Resources

Reliving the Passion …

Israel Redux: The Image Of Christ In The Gospel According To John, Geert Heetebrij

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Calvin Theological Journal (Vol 53 No 2 - November 2018), Calvin Theological Seminary

Calvin Theological Journal

From the Editor: Karin Maag - 253 / Articles: Reading Aquinas from a Reformed Perspective: A Review Essay by Richard A. Muller - 255 / Reconsidering the Development of the Covenant of Works: A Study in Doctrinal Trajectory by Harrison Perkins - 289 / What Are We Doing When We Pray? Rekindling a Reformation Theology of Petitionary Prayer by Christopher Woznicki - 319 / Sermon: “Tearing Our Hearts” - A Sermon on Mark 9:14–29 by Meg Jenista Kuykendall - 345 / Short Studies: A Little Exercise for Those New to Interfaith Dialogue: Lessons on Spiritual Formation from Jonathan Edwards and …

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum: October 2018, Julius T. Medenblik, Mary Vanden Berg, Amanda W. Benckhuysen, Geoff Vandermolen

Calvin Theological Seminary Forum (2002- )

4 - Why Go to Seminary? Hoop, Hurdle or Vital Necessity? by President Jul Medenblik
6 - Are You on the Journey towards Seminary?
8 - The Stranger at the River Jabbok by Amanda W. Benckhuysen
12 - Courageous Leadership in God's Kingdom by Geoff Vandermolen
16 - Honing Contextual Savvy by Cory B. Wilson
23 - Seminary: A Layman's Perspective by Sidney J. Jansma, Jr.
24 - Encouraging One Another to Grow Up into Christ
26 - Together, We'll Invest in Your Calling
28 - Discerning Your Call by Aaron Einfeld
30 - Calvin Seminary Q&A by Gary Burge