2010 Westminster Conference

Next year's Westminster Conference will meet on December 7 and 8, 2010. Details of exactly who'll be speaking to be confirmed, but the subjects have been announced:

1. Rewriting the Reformation (response to Duffy, Starkey, Sansom, etc)
2. Puritan attitudes to Rome
3. AV 1611
4. Preaching for repentance
5. The 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference
6. Andrew Bonar (born 1810)

I'll be speaking on 'Puritan attitudes to Rome'. By way of prep, I'm working my way through Anthony Milton's fascinating study, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640, Cambridge University Press, and the Works of John Owen Volume 14, which contains Owen's anti-Roman writings. Much to my surprise his unpromisingly entitled, Animadversions on the Fiat Lux is a great read. The prince of Puritan theologians adopts the stance of a longsuffering cat toying with an overconfident mouse. He engages his Roman opponent, John Vincent Cane with ironic good humour. Yet when Owen bares his claws, he cuts the Franciscan Friar's arguments to shreds with some devastatingly incisive theological analysis. With the new attitude of Evangelicals to Rome signalled by Evangelicals and Catholics Together and the controversy over the Manhattan Declaration, it looks like this may be a good time to consider what we have to learn from Puritan attitudes towards Rome.