1: Calvinism - What's in a name?
2: Conversion
3: Culture
4: Church
5: Knowledge
6: Covenant
7: Humanity and New Humanity
8: God and Hell
References
Further Reading
Index
Jon Balserak is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the
University of Bristol. He has published numerous scholarly articles
on John Calvin and the Calvinist and Reformed tradition. He has
written or edited four books
including Divinity Compromised; A Study of Divine Accommodation in
the Thought of John Calvin (Springer,
2006), Calvinus Evangelii Propugnator; Calvin, Champion of the
Gospel (ed., Calvin Studies Society, 2006),
Establishing the Remnant Church in France; John Calvin's Lectures
on the Minor Prophets, 1556-1559 (Brill,
2001), and John Calvin as Sixteenth Century Prophet (OUP, 2014).
[T]his book achieves its goal to introduce readers to the topics of
Calvinism in a stimulating and accessible way.
*Eundeuk Kim, Reading Religion*
The task of writing a "very short introduction" to such a disputed
phenomenon, then, is a tall order, if not next to impossible. Jon
Balserak, however, has forged a concise and admirable overview of a
phenomenon that resists simple description, and with an impressive
breadth and depth, given the limitations of the series format. ...
Balserak's concise, learned, and insightful treatment of other
themes in this diminutive introduction is impressive. ...
Especially given that writing a very short introduction to this
faith tradition is an impossible task, Balserak's success in doing
just that has resulted in one that is also very helpful.
*Raymond Blacketer, Church History and Religious Culture 98/1
(April, 2018)*
Jon Balserak's study appears in a series which has the aim of
providing readers with an accessible way into a new subject. He
certainly achieves this objective, through a thematic analysis of
Calvinist ideas that will also be of interest to those already
familiar with Calvinist thought.
*Graeme Murdock, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 68 (2018)*
Jon Balserak's volume on Calvinism in the Very Short Introduction
series offers a profoundly accessible and well-written introduction
to the 'living body of doctrines' (p. xvi) that is the Reformed
faith. This 'family resemblance' approach to Calvinism is extremely
salutary insofar as it gives Balserak the ability not to
overemphasize any particular architectonic feature of Reformed
culture as the sine qua non of the movement.
*Jonathan Warren, Bunyan studies 21 (Jan, 2017)*
This very small volume introduces and entices, familiarizes and
complicates all at once. Those pairings are hard to pull off, but
this little gem does so...this reviewer can imagine it being of
much use to young undergraduates, especially those seeking to get a
feel for how neo-Calvinism or Kuyperianism with all its
entanglements in varied fields and disciplines relates to the wider
world, deeper history, and ongoing debates about Calvinism or
Reformed theology. In that regard, Balserak proves to be a
particularly helpful guide.
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