Review: Advancing Christian Unity by Anthony Burgess
Advancing Christian Unity by Anthony Burgess
Book info
P. #: 116
Author: Anthony Burgess (d. 1664)
Life: Burgess was one of the Westminster Assembly Divines, which is where he is best known for his theological astuteness and piety. He was an extremely skilled scholar and was very well acquainted with philosophers, Church Fathers, and other theologians. Burgess is less known than some of his peers such as John Owen because his works were not republished in the 19th century like so many puritans did. Despite this, his works are well were reading and his name well worth knowing.
General info about author: Burgess was (as one biographer said of him) a “pious, learned, and able scholar, a good disputant, tutor, an eminent preacher, a sound and orthodox divine.”
Overall Summary/review:
One of the first things to understand is that Burgess’s times were not much different than our own, despite him living four hundred years ago (preface, first, second p.). (context)
Throughout the whole book, Burgess turns our attention to God the Father and God the Son as the exemplar model of unity. We must imitate God’s trinitarian unity among our fellow believers.
The book begins with a stress on the importance of unity between ministers. The first two chapters are about this (read chapters 1 and 2) (p. 5, 6, 9, 23)
After this, he shifts his focus onto Christians stating that we all must be living in unity with one another (ch. 3-6). (p. 25, 38, 41, 48, 61)
He gives a helpful dichotomy to help our understanding of Christian unity: first, he tells us of invisible unity (p. 26) and then of visible unity (p. 26, 29).
After now discussing unity among ministers and the importance of unity among believers, Burgess now turns his attention to rules and attributes of unity (ch. 7-10). Throughout this whole section, Burgess gives extremely practical advice on maintaining and creating unity (p. 65, 69, 70, 77, 78, 80).