Sublime

As Matthew Boulton notes, this metaphor is at least as old as John Calvin: “For Calvin, the church is a gymnasium, a training ground, a school, and community of preparation and practice enrolled (we hope and pray) in God’s sanctifying, transformative paideia.”

For one thing, he saw in Calvinism’s evolving support for the idea of religious freedom—the advocacy of the rights of diverse churches to pursue their various patterns of life and worship—an implicit endorsement of the idea of ecclesiastical pluriformity.

A prevailing belief in the West, articulated by John Calvin, another seventeenth-century theologian, held that God chose certain people for salvation, and consigned the rest to eternal damnation. Free will? According to Calvinism and its doctrine of predestination, it didn’t exist.

As he observed his own conduct, the later Puritan also observed that of God and saw His finger in all the details of life. And, contrary to the strict doctrine of Calvin, he always knew why God took this or that measure. The process of sanctifying life could thus almost take on the character of a business enterprise.

Sixth,

we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified. Galatians 2:16