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Archive for the ‘John Knox’ Category

The educational program of the Scottish Kirk

Posted in Church of Scotland, Education, John Knox on May 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The following is drawn from the First Book of Discipline (1560), adopted by the Church of Scotland during the Reformation period. Education is key!

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The Necessity of Schools

Seeing that God has determined that his church here in earth shall be taught not by angels but by men; and seeing that men are born ignorant of all godliness; and seeing, also, God now ceases to illuminate men miraculously, suddenly changing them, as that he did his apostles and others in the primitive church: of necessity it is that your honours be most careful for the virtuous education and godly upbringing of the youth of this realm, if either ye now thirst unfeignedly [for] the advancement of Christ’s glory, or yet desire the continuance of his benefits to the generation following. For as the youth must succeed to us, so we ought to be careful that they have the knowledge and erudition to profit and comfort that which ought to be most dear to us-to wit, the church and spouse of the Lord Jesus.

Of necessity therefore we judge it, that every several church have a schoolmaster appointed, such a one as is able, at least, to teach grammar and the Latin tongue, if the town is of any reputation. If it is upland, where the people convene to doctrine but once in the week, then must either the reader or the minister there appointed, take care over the children and youth of the parish, to instruct them in their first rudiments, and especially in the catechism,[10] as we have it now translated in the book of our common order, called the Order of Geneva. And further, we think it expedient that in every notable town, and especially in the town of the superintendent, [there] be erected a college, in which the arts, at least logic and rhetoric, together with the tongues, be read by sufficient masters, for whom honest stipends must be appointed; as also provision for those that are poor, and are not able by themselves, nor by their friends, to be sustained at letters, especially such as come from landward.

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“The Scottish Reformation and Modern Missions”

Posted in Church of Scotland, Gospel Proclamation, John Knox, Missiology on September 6, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It is said that John Knox prayed, “Give me Scotland, or I die.” In 1560, God gave him Scotland. The purpose of this submission is to examine what he and his colleagues did with her and initiate a discussion on what lessons we might learn for today.

To achieve our purpose, we shall first examine the mission strategy which Knox and his colleagues set out in The First Book of Discipline.

Second, we shall examine what the Reformers sought to do in the light of Presbyterian principles. Now, the object of our scrutiny is the Reformation in Scotland, and that, in fairness, requires a Scottish approach. We are not looking at Knox and company’s mission strategy for precedents which we might apply analogously to the pattern of English Common Law, but for principles which we might reapply in each situation while being informed by examples of previous applications.

Third, we shall describe how the principles and practices of the Scottish Reformation might be reapplied in mission situations today. As we have said, this is a discussion. This third section will not be a list of modern mission solutions but of resource maximizing suggestions. This will not require thinking outside of the box: our commitment to Scripture forbids that. This will involve rethinking our perception of the box’s dimensions and utilizing the extra space.

This article was written by the Rev. D. Douglas Gebbie and published by the Haddington House Journal in 2008. To read the rest, click here.

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Scottish Reformation Discipline . . . treadmill ready

Posted in Audio Resources, Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, John Knox, Sacraments, The Lord's Supper, The Social Status of the Church, The Visible Church, Visiting the Sick & Dying on December 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »

“Our Reformers were men of great wisdom, undaunted courage, irrepressible zeal and strong faith. They relied not on human expediency, vain traditions, or worldly wisdom, but on God’s promised blessing on His own means. They went direct to the Bible for all their plans, and the result was that every rag of rotten Popery, and every relic of the Amorite was purged away, and cast forth as things accursed into the region of eternal detestation, and the pure evangel set up instead. In the language of George Gillespie:

‘The Church of Scotland was blessed with a more glorious and perfect reformation than any of our neighbor Churches. The doctrine, discipline, regiment, and policy established here by ecclesiastical and civil laws, and sworn and subscribed unto by the king’s majesty and [the] several presbyteries and parish churches of the land, as it had the applause of foreign divines; so was it in all points agreeable unto the word; neither could the most rigid Aristarchus of these times challenge any irregularity of the same.'”

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These words are drawn from the opening of David Hay Fleming’s four-part series of articles in the Original Secession Magazine in 1878 entitled, “The Discipline of the Reformation.” I’ve just finished recording the fourth today. Listen to them here. The PDF is below. And check out more titles in my expanding amateur audio library.

I do not suggest that everything our fathers in the Reformation and Second Reformation did or said regarding discipline should be carried over in toto today. Nor do I think Fleming himself thought this. But before we too quickly dismiss what we may judge austere or harsh, let us consider that we are just as much creatures of our time as they were. And if we shouldn’t be slaves to their judgments, yet we still ought to honor father and mother. And listen to them in the first case!

[image source]

fleming-the-discipline-of-the-reformationDownload

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“The Scottish Reformation and Modern Missions”

Posted in Church of Scotland, Church Order & Discipline, John Knox, Missiology, Ordinary Means Ministry, Uncategorized on November 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Here is a great article highlighting the lessons we can glean from John Knox and company on missions.

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Root and branch

Posted in Church of Scotland, John Knox, Worship, True & False on October 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

john_knox_statue_haddingtonThis is an extract from the First Book of Discipline of Scotland (1560). John Knox was one of the principal authors.  In these opening words, these godly reformers advocate total support of a godly preaching ministry throughout the realm and the total suppression of any preaching and worship not arising from the clear commandment of God.  While harsh to the modern ear, we must recall that God is a jealous God, prizing His instituted worship and passionately opposing all false religion.  Reformation must labor to cultivate pure worship root and branch and remove all false worship root and branch.  Or to use the imagery from the Books of the Kings, we must also take down the “high places,” the last holdouts and remnants of idolatry.

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The first head of docrtine.

Seeing that Christ Iesus is he whom God the Father hath commanded onely to bee heard and followed of his sheepe, wee judge it necessary that his Gospell be truely and openly preached in every Church and Assembly of this realme, and that all doctrine repugnant to the same, be utterly repressed, as damnable to mans salvation.

The explication of the first head.

Lest that upon this generalitie ungodly men take occasion to cavill, this we adde for explication. By preaching of the Gospel we understand not onely the Scriptures of the new Testament, but also of the old, to wit, the Law, Prophets, & Histories, in which Christ Iesus is no lesse contained in figure, then we have him now expressed in veritie. And therefore with the Apostle we affirme, that all Scripture inspired of God is profitable to instruct, to reprove, and to exhort. In which bookes of old and new Testaments, we affirme that all thing necessary for the instruction of the Church, and to make the man of God perfect, is contained and sufficiently expressed.

By the contrary doctrine we understand whatsoever men by lawes, counsells, or constitutions, have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the expressed commandement of Gods word, such as be the vowes to chastitie, forswearing of marriage, binding of men and women to several and disguised apparrells, to the superstitious observation of fasting dayes, difference of meat for conscience sake, prayer for the dead, and keeping of holy dayes of certaine Saints commanded by man, such as be all those that the Papists have invented, as the feasts (as they terme them) of the Apostles, Martyrs, Virgines, of Christmasse, Circumcision, Epiphanie, Purification, and other fond [foolish] feastes of our Ladie: which things because in Gods Scriptures they neither have commandement nor assurance, we judge them utterly to be abolished from this Realme: affirming farther that the obstinate maintainers and teachers of such abhominations ought not to escape the punishment of the civill Magistrate.

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Vain religion & idolatry

Posted in Church of Scotland, John Knox on February 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

“And therefore I feared not to affirm, that of necessity it is, that such as hope for life everlasting avoid all superstition, vain religion, and idolatry. Vain religion and idolatry I call whatsoever is done in God’s service or honour, without the express commandment of his own Word.”

– John Knox (c. 1514-1572)

 

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The notae ecclesiae & the face of Christ

Posted in Christ & the Church, Church of Scotland, John Knox, The Visible Church on February 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In the following quote from the great Scottish Reformer, John Knox, we see how vitally important the maintenance of the three marks of the Church are to its role, and for that matter to the witness of Christ in the world. The three marks constitute the ‘face’ of the Visible Church. That face of the Church, which identifies and distinguishes it among others, is the very face of Christ among men. So to the degree that the marks are compromised, the face of the Church and so of Christ are compromised. And where the marks are absent, the Visible Church is absent – and Christ walks not among such snuffed-out candlesticks.

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“The notes of the true Kirk are three: Word, sacraments and discipline: first, the true preaching of the Word of God in which God has revealed himself unto us; second, the right administration of the sacraments of Christ Jesus, which are annexed to the Word and promise of God to seal and confirm them in our hearts; last ecclesiastical discipline uprightly administered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished. In the observation of these notes the true face of Jesus Christ appears. We cannot make the face of Jesus Christ appear. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ himself, made known through Word and sacraments, is the true ordinance governing the life, form, and activity of the Church. We believe in Christ in the midst of those who meet in his name and by faith hear the voice of his Spirit speaking in and through the Scriptures and obey him. We see him in the Sacraments, and walk in holiness according to the leading of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. There the true Church manifests itself in the power of the presence of Christ the sole Head and Lord of the Church – there it steps forth before us, and distinguishes itself from any Church that usurps his authority.”

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Trans-generational ecclesiology

Posted in Articles, Care for the Youth, Church of Scotland, Covenant Theology, John Knox, The Visible Church on July 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The architects of the Reformed Churches in the 16th century were trans-generational thinkers. As those who rediscovered Covenant Theology, this should be expected. In reading the First Book of Discipline (1560), one will encounter explicit and repeated concern for future generations as justification for church policy decisions. For “the profite of the posterity to come.” Like good fathers, they wanted what was best for their bairns, and their bairns’ bairns as well!

Does this paternal, trans-generational concern shape the way we ‘do church’?  Is what we do in doctrine, worship, and government really in the best interests of the rising generations, or is it more candy to placate the over-indulged? Are we correcting and cultivating, or just coddling?

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Visibility & the Visible Church

Posted in Church of Scotland, John Knox, Ordinary Means Ministry, The Visible Church on May 31, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The following quote from the First Book of Discipline (1560) illustrates how perceptive the Reformers were in the machinations of Satan – and human vulnerability.  Time and again, he has sought to draw the Church aside to the extremes of hyper-visibility (idolatry) and hyper-invisibility (profanity):

As Satan hath never ceased from the beginning to draw mankind into one of two extremities, to wit, that men should either be so ravished with gazing upon the risible creatures, that forgetting the cause wherefore they are ordained, they attribute unto them a virtue and power which God hath not granted unto them; or else that men should so contemn and despise God’s blessed ordinances and holy institutions, as if that neither in the right use of them there were any profit, neither yet in their profanation there were any danger: as this way, we say, Satan hath blinded the most part of mankind from the beginning; so doubt we not, but that he will strive to continue in his malice even to the end.

The Reformers sought to hold to a biblical via media in these matters.  There is a Visible Church.  Knox wished to alter the Creed from “I believe an holy kirk” to “I see (video) an holy kirk.”  Thus, the Reformers weren’t hyper-invisibilists like so many Anabaptist radicals.  But on the other hand, they were not hyper-visibilists calling believers to walk by sight and not by faith. 

We absolutely must retain this vital balance in the present climate of evangelical low-churchism.  And let us also be aware of the law of extremes.  Like the pendulum, one overreaction begets its opposite.  I’m sure Rome could become appealing to mystified followers of an eccentric old man who has to revise his end-time decrees every few years.

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Real realpolitik

Posted in Articles, Church of Scotland, John Knox, Ministerial Fidelity on December 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, was definitely no adept in worldly-wisdom.  His positions were always unbending and uncompromising.  He despised subtlety, and spoke always with the greatest of candor.  He obviously had little interested in making friends and influencing people; that is, unless by influence one means shameless, hard-hitting argument!

When Queen Mary came to Scotland in 1561 to take the throne, she was of a mind to assert her royal prerogatives in everything – religion included.  An ardent Romanist from her youth, she decided to make a clear, bold statement at the outset.  She would have a mass celebrated in the chapel of the Holyrood house, something forbidden by the Protestant magistracy at the time.

Not surprisingly, Knox was outspoken against the celebration.  There could be no accommodation, no middle ground.  “One mass,” proclaimed Knox,  “was more fearful unto him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm, of purpose to suppress the whole religion.”

One mass, Master Knox?  One private mass, as a concession to the rightful heir of the throne?  And that one mass should be of more dire consequence than a foreign invasion?  Not only is this intolerant, but it’s unreasonable!  Don’t you realize that to get what you want, you’ve got to give?

Knox responds to the naysayers.  The mass issue is a non-negotiable, for “in our God there is strength to resist and confound multitudes, if we unfeignedly depend upon Him, of which we have had experience; but when we join hands with idolatry, it is no doubt but both God’s presence and defence will leave us; and what shall then become of us?”

What the calculators of this world can’t grasp is that he was more practical than them all!  His explanation here reveals the deepest sagacic insight.  Why?  Because, thought Knox, you must factor God into every equation.  Giving in to Queen Mary on one little point may have been expedient on the earthly plane in the short-run, but by doing so it would alienate the One whose favor is absolutely indispensable.  You don’t want to mess with the ‘wrong man’ (or woman, in Mary’s case), but it’s far worse to mess with the ‘wrong God!’

Knox had learned his other-worldly wisdom at the feet of Wisdom incarnate.  He, the Logos, the Light that lightens every man entering the world had said, “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it” (Lu. 17:33).  To make it in this world and in the next, you must think counter-culturally, counter-intuitively.  But be assured, this is the best way!

In deference to the One who “knows all things,” Knox shunned statescraft.  But in doing so, he became the true patron and friend of the nation.  If only we had eyes to see what Master Knox saw!  If we would close our eyes and heed true Wisdom, we would walk the safest and most expedient course.  And we would assign much less weight to earthly factors, which to the eye of the flesh loom so large.

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