Experiencing Our Only Comfort: A Post-Reformation Refocus In The Heidelberg Catechism -- By: Jan Van Vliet
Journal: Puritan Reformed Journal
Volume: PRJ 06:2 (Jul 2014)
Article: Experiencing Our Only Comfort: A Post-Reformation Refocus In The Heidelberg Catechism
Author: Jan Van Vliet
PRJ 6:2 (July 2014) p. 149
Experiencing Our Only Comfort: A Post-Reformation Refocus In The Heidelberg Catechism1
Last year marked the 450th anniversary of the publication of the Heidelberg Catechism. In celebration of this momentous occasion and as a reminder of the contemporary applicability of this highly-regarded confessional document, this essay examines the earliest and most complete Puritan commentary extant: that of second-generation Puritan thinker William Ames (
PRJ 6:2 (July 2014) p. 150
William Ames’s Commentary On The Heidelberg Catechism: Methodological Considerations
In
According to the author introducing the work, Ames “takes up an especially appropriate text from the word of God, breaks it apart and explains it succinctly, draws out lessons containing the catechetical doctrine, and finally applies them to their use.”4 With Ursinus, Ames judged the teaching of the substance of Christianity to be presented most effectively in Sunday preaching over the course of the year. Ames’s topical choice is also borrowed from his Reformed predecessors: there is one-to-one topical correspondence between each of Ames’s fifty-two Lord’s Days and those of the Heidelberg Catechism. It is in the method that the differences are most notable. First is the absence of the unifying topical structure which gives the Heidelberg...
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