“The Reformed church is always in need of reformation.” The common mythology behind this quote, which supposedly originated with Calvin, is the idea that the church always has to be improving, revising, and changing its doctrine to accord with Scripture. Yet the quotation emerged in the seventeenth century when elements of the Dutch Reformed church embraced Roman Catholic theology. The call, therefore, was not to revise Reformed theology but to purge Roman Catholic doctrine from a backsliding Reformed church.

J. V. Fesko | The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 188.

RESOURCES

• Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
• The Heidelblog Resource Page
• Heidelmedia Resources
• The Ecumenical Creeds
• The Reformed Confessions
• The Heidelberg Catechism
• Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
• Why I Am A Christian
• What Must A Christian Believe?
• Heidelblog Contributors
• What it Means to be Confessional
• Why the Focus on the Confessions?
• Why Are Confessionalists Just A Niche?
• Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to:

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Post authored by:

• Inwoo Lee

  

  Inwoo Lee (BA, UCSD) earned his MA (Historical Theology) in 2020 from Westminster Seminary California and is author of “Righteous Before God: William Perkins’ Doctrine of Justification in Elizabethan England” (MA Thesis, Westminster Seminary California, 2020). He lives in the Great Seoul area, in South Korea with his wife Holly.

  More by Inwoo Lee ›