Calvin, Covenanting, Close Communion & the Coming Reformation: Book Review of Alexander & Rufus/Dialogues on Church Communion

"Anderson is not shy about proclaiming the fact that Scripture teaches that anti-Calvinists (i.e. Romanists, Pelagians, Arminians, Amyraldians, etc.), anti-paedobaptists, anti-regulativists, and a host of others that deny the apostolic faith (at points related to the doctrine, worship, government and discipline of the church), should be barred from the table of the Lord (arguing a fortiori from Math. 5:23-24); but, he is also careful to distinguish between the Popish and Prelatical views of excommunication (which equate excommunication with a sentence to hell) and the Calvinistic view which recognizes that those who are among the elect can at times come under the sentence of excommunication.

For example, Greg Price has noted that 'Calvin distinguishes between anathema and excommunication. The former sentences one to hell, the latter puts one outside the fellowship of the church (cf. Calvin's Institutes 4.12.10).'

Samuel Rutherford makes the same distinction in his Survey… of Church Discipline (1658) commenting on 1 Cor. 16:22 and 1 Cor. 5, as does James Fraser of Brae, on page 210, in The Lawfulness and Duty or Separation from Corrupt Ministers and Churches (1744).

It is also a well documented fact that the Genevan Presbytery of Calvin's day, in 1536, sought to excommunicate anyone who would not swear an oath to uphold the Reformed doctrine as it was set forth in their Confession of Faith."

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