 previous article in this issue | next article in this issue  |
Preview first page |
Document Details : Title: The Trinitarian Dynamic of Worship in John Calvin's Institutes (1559) Author(s): NGIEN, Dennis Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses Volume: 83 Issue: 1 Date: 2007 Pages: 23-51 DOI: 10.2143/ETL.83.1.2021740 Abstract : This article fleshes out the trinitarian dynamic of worship in Calvin’s Institutes (1559). Calvin’s theology of worship largely appears in his commentaries, sermons, and letters. However it is arguable that Calvin’s scholarship on this topic also occurs in his more polemical Institutes. Christ’s mediation is the theological basis of the believer’s active response to God: in his person, in his Name, our worship has access to God. Christ’s priesthood is for us so that we might recover our own. God the Son has conquered for us the inaccessibility of true worship, and abolished the distance between God and us. With Basil, Calvin stresses the double-movement in worship: the God-humanwardness, in which God first descends to us in his Son, reveals himself by the Holy Spirit as the object of our worship; and the human-Godwardness, in which the Spirit elevates us to Christ’s Ascension, to participate in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father that is understood as worship. |
|
