Christ's Call to Reform the Church
Christ's Call to Reform the Church

Author: John MacArthur

Publisher: Moody Publishers

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0802495605

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What does the church need to hear today? As many have said, the church must always be reforming. It must continually move closer to a truer, more faithful expression of the gospel. The risen Christ’s powerful letters to the seven churches in Revelation are a guide to just that. Based on John MacArthur’s exposition of these letters, Christ’s Call to Reform the Church is a plea to the modern church to heed these divine warnings, to reform before it succumbs to the kinds of compromise and error that invite God’s judgment. Christ’s Call to Reform the Church admonishes the church today to learn from the mistakes God’s people have made in the past, rather than commit them again. The Word of God has many benefits, one of which is that it reveals our blind spots. That's what this book does—it shines a light on problems we didn't know we had. May it be embraced by Christians everywhere, spurring them toward the God-honoring, grace-driven work of continued reformation.

China's Reforming Churches
China's Reforming Churches

Author: Bruce P. Baugus

Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books

Published: 2014-05-26

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1601783183

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This is a critical moment in the life of China’s reforming churches and the Presbyterian and Reformed mission to China. This book provides both a historical look at Presbyterianism in China and an assessment of the current state of affairs, orienting readers to church development needs and the basic outlines of Reformed Christianity in China today. While laying out the challenges and opportunities facing the church, the authors argue that assisting this reformation in China should be a central objective of the Presbyterian and Reformed mission to China in this generation. Table of Contents: Introduction: China, Church Development, and Presbyterianism - Bruce P. Baugus Part I—The History of Presbyterianism in China 1. A Brief History of the Western Presbyterian and Reformed Mission to China - Michael M. 2. Watson Hayes and the North China Theological Seminary - A. Donald MacLeod 3. A Brief History of the Korean Presbyterian Mission to China - Bruce P. Baugus & Sung-Il Steve Park Part II—Presbyterianism in China Today 4. In Their Own Words: Perceived Challenges of Christians in China - Brent Fulton 5. Why Chinese Churches Need Biblical Presbyterianism - Luke P. Y. Lu 6. “A Few Significant Ones:” A Conversation with Two of China’s Leading Reformers - Bruce P. Baugus Part III—Challenges & Opportunities for Presbyterianism in China 7. The Social Conditions of Ministry in China Today - G. Wright Doyle 8. China: a Tale of Two Churches? - Brent Fulton 9. Two Kingdoms in China: Reformed Ecclesiology and Social Ethics - David VanDrunen 10. From Dissension to Joy: Resources from Acts 15:1–35 for Global Presbyterianism - Guy Waters Part IV—Appropriating a Tradition 11. The Emergence of Legal Christian Publishing in China: An Opportunity for Reformed Christians - Phil Remmers 12. A Report on the State of Reformed Theological Education in China - Bruce P. Baugus 13. The Indigenization & Contextualization of the Reformed Faith in China - Paul Wang Conclusion: The Future of Presbyterianism in China - Bruce P. Baugus Appendices A. Robert Morrison’s Catechism - Introduced and Translated by Michael M. B. Shandong Student Protest and Appeal - Introduced by Bruce P. Baugus and Translated by Born

True and False Reform in the Church
True and False Reform in the Church

Author: Yves Congar

Publisher: Liturgical Press

Published: 2010-12-01

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 0814680097

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Archbishop Angelo Roncali (later Pope John XXIII) read True and False Reform during his years as papal nuncio in France and asked, A reform of the church 'is such a thing really possible?" A decade later as pope, he opened the Second Vatican Council by describing its goals in terms that reflected Congar's description of authentic reform: reform that penetrates to the heart of doctrine as a message of salvation for the whole of humanity, that retrieves the meaning of prophecy in a living church, and that is deeply rooted in history rather than superficially related to the apostolic tradition. Pope John called the council not to reform heresy or to denounce errors but to update the church's capacity to explain itself to the world and to revitalize ecclesial life in all its unique local manifestations. Congar's masterpiece fills in the blanks of what we have been missing in our reception of the council and its call to "true reform." Yves Congar, OP, a French Dominican who died in 1995, was the most important ecclesiologist in modern times. His writings and his active participation in Vatican II had an immense influence upon the council documents. With a few other contemporaries, Congar pioneered a new style of theological research and writing that linked the great tradition of Scripture and the Fathers to contemporary pastoral questions with lucidity and passion. His key concerns were the unity of the church, lay apostolic life, and a revival of the church's theology of the Holy Spirit. He was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in recognition of his profound contributions to the Second Vatican Council. Paul Philibert, OP, has taught pastoral theology in the United States and abroad. He is a Dominican friar of the Southern Province. His translation of a collection of Congar's essays on the liturgy has recently been published by Liturgical Press under the title At the Heart of Christian Worship. His book The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a living Church (Liturgical Press, 2005) reflects the ecclesiology of Yves Congar and his Vision of the apostolic life of the faithful."

Martin Bucer
Martin Bucer

Author: D. F. Wright

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994-05-19

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 052139144X

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A critical assessment of one of the most important Reformers by an international team of specialists.

Evangelical Catholicism
Evangelical Catholicism

Author: George Weigel

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2014-04-22

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0465038913

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The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand year history. As the curtain comes down on the Church defined by the 16th-century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The Gospel-centered Evangelical Catholicism of the future will send all the people of the Church into mission territory every day -- a territory increasingly defined in the West by spiritual boredom and aggressive secularism. Confronting both these cultural challenges and the shadows cast by recent Catholic history, Evangelical Catholicism unapologetically proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the truth of the world. It also molds disciples who witness to faith, hope, and love by the quality of their lives and the nobility of their aspirations. Thus the Catholicism of the 21st century and beyond will be a culture-forming counterculture, offering all men and women of good will a deeply humane alternative to the soul-stifling self-absorption of postmodernity. Drawing on thirty years of experience throughout the Catholic world, from its humblest parishes to its highest levels of authority, George Weigel proposes a deepening of faith-based and mission-driven Catholic reform that touches every facet of Catholic life -- from the episcopate and the papacy to the priesthood and the consecrated life; from the renewal of the lay vocation in the world to the redefinition of the Church's engagement with public life; from the liturgy to the Church's intellectual life. Lay Catholics and clergy alike should welcome the challenge of this unique moment in the Church's history, Weigel urges. Mediocrity is not an option, and all Catholics, no matter what their station in life, are called to live the evangelical vocation into which they were baptized: without compromise, but with the joy, courage, and confidence that comes from living this side of the Resurrection.

Ever Reforming
Ever Reforming

Author: Andy Woods

Publisher:

Published: 2018-02-14

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 9781945774195

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People tend to place the Reformers on a pedestal and act like they completed the revolution, but they did not. Why was the Protestant Reformation only a partial restoration? It was because they used the literal method of interpreting the Bible selectively. Ever Reforming will guide the reader to understand all that needed to be reformed, how the Reformers started the process, and the way in which that led to Dispensational Theology and the full recovery of the literal method of interpreting God's Word.

Reassessing Reform
Reassessing Reform

Author: Christopher M. Bellitto

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2012-11-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 081321999X

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Intro -- Contents -- Preface - John Howe -- 1. Introduction - Christopher M. Bellitto and David Zachariah Flanagin -- I. Gerhart Ladner's The Idea of Reform After 50 Years -- 2. My Debt to Gerd: His Legacy as Teacher of History and Historian of Ideas, Fifty Years after The Idea of Reform and in Light of Present Research - Lester L. Field Jr. -- 3. Gerhart Ladner's The Idea of Reform: Reflections on Terminology and Ideology - Louis B. Pascoe, S.J. -- 4. The Continuing Relevance of The Idea of Reform - Phillip H. Stump -- II. Models and Case Studies of Medieval and Reformation Reform -- 5. "He does not say, 'I am custom'": Pope Gregory VII's Idea of Reform - Ken A. Grant -- 6. Administrative Change in the Fourteenth-Century Dominican Order: A Case Study in Partial Reforms and Incomplete Theories - Michael Vargas -- 7. The Six Errors: Hus on Simony - C. Colt Anderson -- 8. Church, Bible, and Reform in the Hussite Debates at the Council of Basel, 1433 - Gerald Christianson -- 9. In Search of Unity: Reform and Mathematical Form in the Conciliarist Arguments of Heymeric de Campo's Disputatio de potestate ecclesiastica (1433) - David Albertson -- 10. Premonstratensian Voices of Reform at the Fifteenth-Century Councils - William P. Hyland -- 11. "Memoriam Fecit": The Eucharist, Memory, Reform, and Regeneration in Hildegard of Bingen's Scivias and Nicholas of Cusa's Sermons - Ann W. Astell -- 12. Visions of Reform: Lay Piety as a Form of Thinking in Nicholas of Cusa - Inigo Bocken -- 13. Carthusians as Public Intellectuals: Cloistered Religious as Advisors to Lay Elites on the Eve of the Protestant Reformation - Dennis D. Martin -- 14. Black and White and Re-Read all Over: Conceptualizing Reform across the Long Sixteenth Century, 1414-1633 - William V. Hudon -- Contributors -- Index