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The Nature of the Church in the Thought of John Knox

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

R. Kyle
Affiliation:
Tabor College, Hillsboro Kansas 67063

Extract

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation not only intended a revival of personal piety; they aimed as well to reshape the corporate forms of religion. They did not convert individuals to the Protestant faith only to abandon them to a state of religious detachment. Rather, the Protestant Reformers labored to rebuild the church and felt themselves called to be agents of its restoration. They steadfastly believed that the Holy Catholic Church had been instituted by God for the nurture and fellowship of souls and that outside of this body there exists ‘no ordinary possibility of salvation’. Accordingly, the founders of Protestantism laid great emphasis upon the nature and function of the church. Ecclesiology was a notable and principal part of their theology.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

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References

page 485 note 1 McNeill, John T., ‘The Church in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology’. The Journal of Religion, 22 (July, 1942): 251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 485 note 2 Janton, Pierre, Concept el Sentiment de L'Eglise chez John Knox: le reformateur ecossais (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972), 111.Google Scholar

page 486 note 3 Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 44, 47, 157.Google Scholar

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page 488 note 11 Works, 2:442, 443.

page 489 note 12 Works, 4:479–80.

page 489 note 13 Worts, 6:491, 492.

page 489 note 14 Works, 3:231, 239; 4:481, 487, 513; 6:309, 311, 315. Janton says that Knox's form of apostolic succession and confounding of church and state perpetuated Roman Catholic views to some degree. See Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 47, 123, 139, 160.Google Scholar

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page 490 note 17 Works, 2:110; 4:172, 173. In An Answer to James Tyrie, Knox mentioned only the Word and the sacraments. Works, 6:492, 494. See also Works, 4:285; Cheyne, ‘The Scots Confession', 334. Richard Greaves suggests that William Whittingham may have been responsible for discipline being a mark in the Geneva Confession but that Knox was probably responsible for its inclusion in the Scots Confession. See Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 56.Google Scholar

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page 491 note 22 Works, 3:5.

page 491 note 23 Works, 3:266.

page 491 note 24 Works, 4:263.

page 491 note 25 Works, 6:272.

page 492 note 26 Works, 6:569–70.

page 492 note 27 Works, 3:351.

page 492 note 28 Some examples are: Works, 3:293, 349, 351, 377; 4:123–5.

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page 494 note 38 Works, 4:485–7.

page 495 note 39 Works, 4:518–20.

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page 497 note 51 Works, 6:511.

page 497 note 52 Works, 6:492, 494, 496, 499, 503, 510, 511.

page 497 note 53 Scholars have hotly contested Knox's views on the external organization of the church. Such a subject, however, is a topic for an article itself, and is thus beyond the scope of this paper. One group of scholars, currently represented by Stanford Reid, insist that Knox did not want the episcopacy established; but while he taught no full-blown presbyterianism, Knox actually laid the foundation for such a system. See Reid, W. Stanford, ‘Knox's attitude to the English Reformation’. The Westminster Theological Journal, 26 (November 1963): 22Google Scholar; Kirk, James, The Second Book of Discipline (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1980), 151, 152Google Scholar. Another school led by Gordon Donaldson contend that Knox only desired to correct the abuses of the episcopacy, not abolish it; in fact, he favored a reformed episcopacy and presbyterianism was the work of Andrew Melville. See Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation, Chapters 5, 7. See also Greaves, , ‘The Knoxian Paradox’, 94Google Scholar; Greaves Theology and Revolution, 71–85.

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