Bible Stories

Martin Luther (1483-1546) and his most distinguished admirer, John Calvin (1509-1564), the two chief architects of Reformation theology, were Bible men. Their theology, like the New Testament’s, revolved round the themes of sin and saving grace, Christ and the church. They avoided commitment to any particular system of philosophy; that was not their interest. And they rejected scholasticism, which they knew well, as unbiblical. Their great aim was to let the Bible, the living word of the living God, speak for itself.

From the Bible they proclaimed the God of the church’s faith — transcendent, three-in-one. They set him forth as the holy judge of sin, who graciously gives sinners peace with himself, through faith, on the basis of the death and mediation of Jesus Christ. Read more

As the Christian world divided early in the Middle Ages, both East and West inherited the doctrine of Chalcedon about Christ. In the East it was coloured by a strongly Alexandrian viewpoint. Jesus Christ’s human life was seen more as the arena in which God worked our salvation than as an active agent in bringing it about. Salvation itself was often spoken of as ‘divinization’ — the believer coming to share Christ’s divine nature. The glorified Christ was the focus of worship; monasticism and mysticism flourished. All these factors contributed to a neglect of Christ’s real humanity, which in turn probably contributed to the growth of devotion to other human figures, such as Mary _ and the martyrs. Read more