A collection of essays and aphorisms about Scottish Calvinism. This is Scottish literary humour at its finest. 'A work of contemporary shamanism, with all the bluff, poetry, deranged humour, sleight-of-hand and real magic that implies.' Don Paterson. This is the first (and maybe the last) self-help guide that promises to make you feel a lot worse after you read it. A hilarious satire on freeze-dried mysticism and off-the-shelf enlightenment, it is also a haunting and lyrical reflection on places, voices and memories -- a literary journey into the heart of North-East darkness. 'A perfect evocation of Scotland's mysterious love affair with loss and sorrow. A powerful dram of Zen Calvinism.' Richard Holloway
NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY Read the ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted children for over 60 years! "A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg Cabot Late one night, three otherworldly creatures appear and sweep Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe away on a mission to save Mr. Murray, who has gone missing while doing top-secret work for the government. They travel via tesseract--a wrinkle that transports one across space and time--to the planet Camazotz, where Mr. Murray is being held captive. There they discover a dark force that threatens not only Mr. Murray but the safety of the whole universe. A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet.
The Book of Scotlands outlines 156 possible Scotlands which currently do not exist anywhere but maybe, someday, could. At a moment when, after centuries of desire and unrest, independence seems to be a real possibility for Scotland, Scottish-born, Berlin-based musician/author/journalist Momus, real name Nick Currie, offers a delirium of visions, practical and absurd. Momus, who describes himself as a polymath-dabbler, suggests that the real Scotland is free to embrace or reject this parallel world.
The first comprehensive account of what it actually meant to live a Protestant life in England and Scotland between c. 1530-1640. The focus is on material reality and the real experience of actual believers, drawn from diaries and other direct testimonies.
Popular high school senior, Daniel Townsend, is dead – victim of a suspicious car crash. As classmates Marc and Angela investigate, a chance discovery pinpoints Daniel at a crumbling antebellum mansion – the old Jonas Barloff estate.The house looks uninhabitable. Haunted. Evil.While inspecting the Barloff family cemetery, Marc notices a towering grave marker with a perplexing inscription. What does the epitaph mean, and who is the old man claiming to be Jonas Barloff?To solve the mystery, Marc and Angela must comb through a phantom infested antebellum mansion. Witness a sordid grave exhumation. Attend a wicked, hair-raising séance. And learn the true identity of Jonas Barloff.Will any of these pieces of the puzzle help them lay the mystery of Daniel's death to rest once and for all? Oh, no! Not hardly! Not until they come face-to-face with an evil no one could possibly imagine. Even if they live to tell the story, no one will believe them. Not in a million years.
A collection of sixteen sermons by John Calvin that shed light on his understanding and application of the Ten Commandments. Widely known as one of the church’s most significant theologians, John Calvin was also a skilled preacher with the ability to proclaim biblical truth with power and relevance. These sermons develop the essence of his teaching on the moral law in a popular and engaging manner. Pastors preaching through the Ten Commandments, Bible students, and anyone interested in Calvin’s views on the Ten Commandments will take great delight in reading his exposition of the Decalogue, which is called “the true and eternal rule of righteousness [for all] who wish to conform their lives to God’s will.”
Exploring processes of religious change in early-modern Scotland, this collection of essays takes a long-term perspective to consider developments in belief, identity, church structures and the social context of religion from the late-fifteenth century through to the mid-seventeenth century. The volume examines the ways in which tensions and conflicts with origins in the mid-sixteenth century continued to impact upon Scotland in the often violent seventeenth century, while also tracing deep continuities in Scotland's religious, cultural and intellectual life. The essays, the fruits of new research in the field, are united by a concern to appreciate fully the ambiguity of religious identity in post-Reformation Scotland, and to move beyond simplistic notions of a straightforward and unidirectional transition from Catholicism to Protestantism.
The reluctant manager of his family's restaurant, Frankie attempts to live up to the legacy of his father and grandfather. Running a business that isn't his passion and trying to do it without asking for help leaves him turning to less-than-legal means when he wants to surrender control. Newly divorced, Calvin no longer lives in the closet, leaving him searching for what he most desires- control. So when he finds Frankie on his knees in the back room of a local bar, Calvin sees the sub he's only ever fantasized about having. Can Calvin find the confidence to explore his dominant side while showing his younger roommate that submission isn't only about whips and pain?
Looking to escape the black cloak of your Calvinist heritage? Feeling dismally depressed by tomes of gloomy Scottish sayings? Need an umbrella against life's constant drizzle of pessimism? The look no further than Positive Thinking for Calvinists - The School of Soft Knox. We all know that the Scottish psyche is a complex creature, a victim of centuries of sackcloth and ashes. And when we look into the deep well of our Scottish souls we see the dark waters of Calvinism lying in wait. Definitely time for some positive thinking . . . So, if you've ever wondered if wool grows just as fast on lazy sheep, why hard work sometimes pays off in the future but indolence works this very minute and what exactly is the worst sort of Calvinist, then the answers are all here. And you might be surprised. You might even, God help us all, crack a smile or two dozen.
Contemporary treatments of Calvin's political views often imply that he embraced a theocratic civil polity and that he was committed to holy war doctrine. On the basis of the primary sources, the first half of this volume argues that neither position is correct. Calvin, in his political thought, maintained the superiority of a republic as a civil polity. In addition, he placed himself firmly within the medieval just war tradition that was established by Augustine of Hippo and later reaffirmed by Thomas Aquinas. In terms of his commitment to classical just war teaching, Calvin stood in continuity with Martin Luther, even while he distanced himself from the holy war perspective of the Zurich Reformers Henry Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli. In the thinking of Calvin, a war could only be authorized by the state, not the church. War had to be prosecuted with humanity and restraint, and not in the tradition of the medieval crusade. The second half of the book sets forth what Calvin actually believed on the matter of government and war. Here we examine his teaching on parliamentary resistance to monarchical tyranny and the full dimensions of his commitment to justice of war categories. Unlike Luther and Bullinger, Calvin provided a parliamentary remedy for the perennial evil of tyranny. With Vermigli and Theodore Beza siding with Calvin on this right, a body of Reformed doctrine was established to which succeeding generations could appeal for teaching, direction, and justification for taking up arms. It is clear that Calvin's political legacy is profoundly evident in the American Revolutionary War and in the constitutional determination for a republic in the United States of America. Calvin's ecclesiastical republicanism, as it came to fruition in Presbyterian church government, was a powerful impetus toward the creation of republican institutions in civil government.
