October 2010 Ordained Servant

From the Editor. Poor John Knox. He just doesn't get the respect his mentor John Calvin gets. Perhaps it is because his birth date is not certain, but believed to be 1510. So for this Reformation month I would like to recognize the 500th anniversary of the birth of the "Trumpeter of God," as W. Stanford Reid aptly called him in the title of his 1974 biography of that name.

In 1988, when I was an OPC pastor in New Rochelle, New York, I delivered four lectures on the Huguenots, who were the original settlers. This was a unique opportunity to present the Reformed faith to the community and especially the Huguenot and Historical Association of New Rochelle. I was privileged to give a lecture to the society on the nature of my research in preparation for the lectures, many of whom were direct descendents of the Huguenots. But best of all, Dr. Roger Nicole, a Swiss Frenchman who was present as our Reformation Day lecturer, addressed the society in French, explaining Calvin's gospel.

I offer the first part of my first lecture to commemorate a not-so-well-known part of Reformation history—one in which the differences between Rome and the Reformers was accented in blood. Danny Olinger will demonstrate in his article "A Primer on Vatican II" that, while our differences with Rome may be quite unlike those of the Reformation era, they are no less serious, however subtly they may be communicated.

Then Dr. Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary in California presents a tribute to one of my favorite professors of systematic theology, and an expert in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, Robert Strimple. Dr. Strimple's grasp of the subtleties of Vatican II has distinguished him as an interpreter of the new theological environment.

Finally, classics professor David Noe reviews a book that brings the tenets of the Reformation into question, as so many in our day do—James Payton's Getting the Reformation Wrong.

On this Reformation Day we need to be reminded of the great certainties of the faith that compelled our forefathers to risk their lives and fortunes. I hope that Christina Rossetti's poem "The One Certainty" will help.

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high quality editorials, articles, and book reviews we endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic Presbyterianism.