Book Review:
The Church Effeminate
Full description of book:
John W. Robbins (Editor), 2001 , The Church Effeminate and Other Essays, published by
The Trinity Foundation, ISBN: 0-940931-54-0
Rating:
Scholarship: 10/10
Information content: 10/10
Spiritual content: 10/10
Overall rating: 10/10
Short review:
This book is a collation of 39 seperate articles written by different men and even in different periods of history by the editor John W. Robbins. The chapters are divided into 6 parts as follows:
Introduction
Part 1: The Church beloging to Jesus Christ
1. The Church (John W. Robbins)
2. The Apostolic Church (Thomas Witherow)
3. The True Church (J.C. Ryle)Part 2: The Purpose of the Church
4. The Primacy of Preaching (Martin Lloyd-Jones)
5. Preaching to the Heart (Jay E. Adams)
6. The Fallibility of Ministers (J.C. Ryle)
7. Exclusive Psalmody (W. Gary Crampton)
8. Scripture and the Ordering of Worship (The Geneva Service Book of 1556)
9. The Christian Education of the Children and Youth in the Presbyterian Church (Samuel Miller)Part 3: The Officers of the Church
10. The Teachers of the Church (John Calvin)
11. The Presbyterian Doctrine of Ordination (Gordon H. Clark)
12. Paul on Women Speaking in Church (Benjamin B. Warfield)
13. The Ordination of Women (Gordon H. Clark)
14. The Church Effeminate (John W. Robbins)
15. On the Councils and the Church (Martin Luther)
16. The Relation of Church and State (Charles Hodge)Part 4: Autocrats in the Church
17. The Roman Church-State (John Calvin)
18. The Grand Inquisitor (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
19. Episcopacy (Jeremiah Burroughs)
20. Secrets of Church Polity (John Witherspoon)
21. Calvinism and the Church (N.S. McFetridge)
22. The New Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Godwell A. Chan)
23. The Reconstructionist Road to Rome (John W. Robbins)
24. The Abolition of Vestments (John à Lasco)Part 5: The Growth of the Church
25. Ought the Church to Pray for Revival? (Herman Hanko)
26. The Great Revival of Religion, 1740-1745 (Charles Hodge)
27. The Power of the Word (Martin Luther)
28. What is Evangelism? (Gordon H. Clark)
29. Art and the Gospel (Gordon H. Clark)Part 6: The Purity and Peace of the Church
30. The Necessity of Reforming the Church (John Calvin)
31. Idolatry (J.C. Ryle)
32. Pharisees and Sadducees (J.C. Ryle)
33. The Good Fight of Faith (J. Gresham Machen)
34. Apostolic Fears (J.C. Ryle)
35. The Seperateness of the Church (J. Gresham Machen)
36. The Sin of Signing Ecumenical Declarations (John W. Robbins)
37. Fundamentalism and Ecumenism (Thomas M'Crie)
38. The Unity of the Church (John Calvin)
39. The Church Irrational (John W. Robbins)
Every article in the book is good, though a few articles I do not agree fully at the moment and need to read up more (Chapters 14 and 25). There have been a few excellent articles which I have posted excerpts about in my blog, with excertps from these excellent articles linked from the chapter names above. Since this is the case, I have given this book a rating of 10 for each of the categories above.