Chapter Twelve. Gospel Discipline And Church (Dis)unity In The Reformed Tradition

Abstract

From time of English Reformation onwards, there were those who felt that reform had not gone far enough. While some Puritans were content to remain within Church of England, more radical ones were not. They became Separatists precisely because they could not agree that established church was a true church of Jesus Christ. Questions of inclusion and exclusion have frequently arisen in connection with church discipline, and it is noted that historically dissenting traditions differed among themselves over disciplinary process. The church is under discipline of Word, revealed in Bible, and savingly active in Jesus Christ, to whom scriptures witness. In Congregational church books, moral cases greatly outnumber doctrinal ones. For all his abhorrence of legalism and sectarianism, Dale rightly insisted that the right to 'excommunicate' irreligious appears to be essential to very existence of Church.. Keywords: Christian tradition; church Discipline; Congregational church; English Reformation; Jesus Christ; R.W. Dale