The Nature of the Church in the Thought of John Knox

R. Kyle

doi:10.1017/S0036930600055721

The Nature of the Church in the Thought of John Knox

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009

R. Kyle

Show author details

R. Kyle: Affiliation:
Tabor College, Hillsboro Kansas 67063

Article contents

Extract
References

Get access

Rights & Permissions

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
Information: Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , November 1984 , pp. 485 - 501

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930600055721 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

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

^{page 486 note 4} Knox, John, The Works of John Knox, (ed. Laing, David), 6 vols. (Edinburgh: Printed for the Bannatyne Club, 1846–1864), 6: 473Google Scholar. Hereafter this collection will be cited as Works with the appropriate volume and page number.

^{page 487 note 5} Works, 2:108, 109; Cheyne, Alex C., ‘The Scots Confession of 1560’ in Theology Today, 17, no. 3 (1960): 334.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 6} Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 164.Google Scholar

^{page 488 note 7} Works, 6:243.

^{page 488 note 8} Works, 6:486, 487, 502, 508; Greaves, Richard, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Revolution (Grand Rapids: Christian University Press), 50.Google Scholar

^{page 488 note 9} Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 158, 196.Google Scholar

^{page 488 note 10} Works, 6:494.

^{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

^{page 490 note 15} On this question sources differ. The following contend that Knox included discipline in the criteria: Reid, W. Stanford, Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox (New York: Scribner's, 1974), 134Google Scholar; Macmillan, D., John Knox (London: Andrew Melrose, 1905), 191, 192Google Scholar; Mackie, J. D., John Knox (London: Cox and Wyman Ltd., 1951), 16Google Scholar; Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 118Google Scholar, 123, 124, 144, 158, 171. Donaldson questions if discipline was a mark of the church for the Scottish Reformation. See Donaldson, Gordon, The Scottish Reformation (London: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 79–81.Google Scholar

^{page 490 note 16} Works, 5:489; Monter, William E., Calvin's Geneva (Huntington: Krieger Publishing Co., 1975), 138, 139Google Scholar; Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 123, 158Google Scholar; Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 51, 52, 57, 58.Google Scholar

^{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

^{page 491 note 18} Knox, John, ‘Epistles to the Congregation of Berwick, 1552’, in John Knox and the Church of England. Collector, Peter Lorimer (London, Henry S. King and Co., 1875), 253Google Scholar; Works, 6:194, 322, 323, 433, 489; 2:108, 109; 3:358, 359, 377.

^{page 491 note 19} Lorimer, , Knox and the Church of England, 60.Google Scholar

^{page 491 note 20} Works, 3:5; 6:507.

^{page 491 note 21} Works, 3:5, 178, 241, 245, 264, 266, 273–80, 351, 388–90; 4:263, 459; 6:272, 507, 569, 591, are but a few citations.

^{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.

^{page 493 note 29} Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 69Google Scholar, 70, 94, 95, 137, 157, 197; Blake, William E., ‘Knox and Lethington: A Lesson in Religious and Political Alienation’. Scotia: American-Canadian Journal of Scottish Studies, 5 (1981): 16–18.Google Scholar

^{page 493 note 30} Works, 2:385.

^{page 493 note 31} Reid, , Trumpeter of God, 191, 192, 195, 220, 222.Google Scholar

^{page 493 note 32} Works, 2:385.

^{page 494 note 33} Knox, , ‘Epistle to the Congregation of Berwick’, 255.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 34} Works, 4:262–7; Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 49, 50.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 35} Works, 4:505; 5:517; 2:442, 443.

^{page 494 note 36} Greaves, Richard, ‘The Knoxian Paradox: Ecumenism and Nationalism in the Scottish Reformation’. Records of the Scottish Church History Society, (Summer 1973): 96, 97.Google Scholar

^{page 494 note 37} Works, 4:481, 485, 486. For scriptural proof that the civil authority could punish the clergy, Knox used Romans 13 and such Old Testament examples as Aaron, Isaiah, Jehoshaphat, Josiah and Hezekiah.

^{page 494 note 38} Works, 4:485–7.

^{page 495 note 39} Works, 4:518–20.

^{page 495 note 40} Works, 2:286, 442, 443; Donaldson, , The Scottish Reformation, 131.Google Scholar

^{page 495 note 41} Works, 6:492, 496–9.

^{page 495 note 42} Works, 2:118, 119.

^{page 495 note 43} Dickinson, William Croft, The Scottish Reformation and its Influence upon Scottish Life and Character (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1960), 8.Google Scholar

^{page 496 note 44} Works, 2:183ff.

^{page 496 note 45} Cameron, James K. (ed.), The First Book of Discipline (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1972). 67.Google Scholar

^{page 496 note 46} Works, 2:281–3.

^{page 496 note 47} Works, 2:110, 111.

^{page 496 note 48} Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 52.Google Scholar

^{page 497 note 49} Works, 6:497. See also 494.

^{page 497 note 50} Works, 6:492, 494, 496, 499, 503, 510, 511.

^{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.

^{page 497 note 54} Works, 6:137.

^{page 498 note 55} Works, 4:263.

^{page 498 note 56} Works, 5:301.

^{page 498 note 57} Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 52, 53Google Scholar; M. Knappen, M., Tudor Puritanism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1939), 212–215Google Scholar; Lorimer, , Knox and the Church of England, 298–300.Google Scholar

^{page 498 note 58} Greaves, , ‘The Knoxian Paradox’, 85–98Google Scholar. Calvin, Cranmer, Bullinger and others also advocated unity among the churches breaking from Rome.

^{page 498 note 59} Works, 2:266ff.; 3:273–80. This repetitious pattern also pertains to Knox's concept of history. See Lee, Maurice, ‘John Knox and His History’. The Scottish Historical Review, 14 (April 1966): 86, 87.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 60} Macmillan, D., John Knox, 191, 192.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 61} Works, 1:166. For a general description of Zwingli's influence on Scotland see Locher, Gottfried W., Zwingli's Thought: New Perspectives (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 370–378.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 62} McNeill, , ‘The Church in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology’, 255Google Scholar; Yule, George, ‘Continental Patterns and the Reformation in England and Scotland’. Scottish Journal of Theology, 22 (September, 1969): 308, 309.Google Scholar

^{page 499 note 63} Greaves, Richard L., ‘John Knox and the Covenant Tradition’. Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 24 (1973): 23–32CrossRef Google Scholar; Greaves, Richard L., ‘John Knox, The Reformed Tradition, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper’. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 66 (1975): 238–254Google Scholar; McEwen, James, The Faith of John Knox (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1961), 45–60.Google Scholar

^{page 500 note 64} D'Assonville, V. E., John Knox and the Institutes of Calvin: A Few Points of Contact in Their Theology (Durham: Drakenberg Press Limited, 1968), 76–89.Google Scholar

^{page 500 note 65} Janton, , Concept et Sentiment, 190–193Google Scholar. For a study of Calvin's doctrine of the church see Milner, Benjamin Charles Jr., Calvin's Doctrine of the Church (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970).Google Scholar

^{page 501 note 66} Firth, Katharine R., The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), 111–130Google Scholar; Greaves, , Theology and Revolution, 45–47.Google Scholar

Article contents

The Nature of the Church in the Thought of John Knox

Extract

Access options

References

Save article to Kindle

Save article to Dropbox

Save article to Google Drive

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

You have entered the maximum number of contributors

Conflicting interests