bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
God and the Covenant in the South African Wilderness
Authors: Templin J. Alton
Published: April 2006

When South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated on September 6, 1966, a writer in the Cape Town Afrikaans newspaper,Die Burger, included an instructive comment. He said, “May the God in whom we believe make clear to us in His own good time what this terrible event is to signify to our country and her people.” This statement reminds us of a dimension in South African nationalism which goes beyond the normal interests of a nation. A theological motif is introduced which remains dominant in the South African mind. In the eyes of Afrikaners this theological concern lifts their problems out of the area of purely political and economic discussion for their whole cultural effort involves fulfilling a divine mission.2Therefore, the death of Hendrik Verwoerd was more than a tragedy for the nation—it was a tragedy with divine implications.
Justification in Calvin's 1540 Romans Commentary
Authors: Santmire H. Paul
Published: April 2006

In the 1539 edition of theInstitutesand in each succeeding edition Calvin calls justification by faith “the main hinge on which religion turns” and the “sum of all piety.”2Yet, invariably, in 1539 as well as in subsequent editions, justification is not treated until well into theInstitutes,3as if to belie the centrality which is expressly attached to it: justification appears to be at most one doctrine among others.4Interpreters who have wanted to explain both Calvin's very high regard for justification by faith and the relatively minor place it is accorded in the various revisions of hismagnum opushave generally maintained that it is the fact, theErlebnis, of justification which is central for Calvin rather than the doctrine.5The force of such argumentation is not to be denied, but there is reason to suspect that it may not encompass the whole truth. For in his 1540 Romans commentary Calvin has a comprehensive doctrine of justification which has largely been overlooked. This doctrine is a product of the same period during which Calvin published his first and, in a sense, his most significant revision of his Institutes.6The relation between the 1539 nstitutes and the 1540 Romans commentary is very close. This is indicated, in part, by the fact that Calvin apparently prepared both works for publication at the same time.7Whether the doctrine of justification delineated in the commentary is of formative significance for the 1539Institutes, however, and therefore in some sense formative for all subsequent editions, is a question which cannot concern us here. We must be content to describe the doctrine in the commentary. This procedure should at least keep open the question of the doctrinal-systematic centrality of justification in the formation and final shape of Calvin's thought (the religious centrality of justification is not in doubt).8
Relationships of the Brethren with the Mennonites and Quakers, 1708–1865
Authors: Durnbaugh Donald F.
Published: April 2006

More than seventy-five years ago, Ludwig Keller (1849–1915), German archivist and historian, wrote to the young Mennonite immigrant to the United States, John Horsch (1867–1941), to propose that

just as in the “Evangelical Alliance” Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, etc., meet from time to time, the Mennonites of the various branches could join with the Quakers, Schwenkfelders, … Dunkers, several branches of the General Baptists, the Hutterian Brethren, several wings of the Presbyterians, etc., in brief all the parties that grew out of old Anabaptism, in an “Old-Evangelical Alliance” [Alt-evangelischen Bunde].
Initial Byzantine Reactions to the Arab Conquest
Authors: Kaegi Walter Emil
Published: April 2006

Numerous competent studies have appeared on Christian apologetics—both Byzantine and Western Medieval—against Islam. A significant gap, however, remains. The Byzantines, of course, first encountered Islam because of the Arab conquest in the second and third quarters of the seventh century. Yet the earliest known Byzantine apologist against Islam is Saint John Damascene in the eighth century. But what initial impression did the Arab conquest and Islam make upon seventh-century Byzantine contemporaries? The seventh-century Byzantine sources on Byzantine reactions to the Arab conquest are scarce, inconveniently located, and insufficiently studied. There is no known individual Byzantine tract of the seventh century devoted specifically to the problem of Islam and/or the Arab conquest. But even though seventh-century sources are relatively rare—on any subject—by a close reading of those which are available one can glean some interesting and, in my opinion, important indications concerning Byzantine reactions to the Arab conquest. Obviously such a major historical event as the loss of Egypt, Palestine and Syria would greatly have impressed the Byzantines and would have caused them to ponder its significance.
The English Presbyterians in the Westminster Assembly
Authors: Kirby Ethyn Williams
Published: April 2006

In 1643 the Long Parliament, confronted by war with the king and by religious anarchy, called an assembly of divines to advise it on the steps which must be taken to reform the church. The situation clearly called for decisive action. The bishops, shorn of their political power, had retired to live in their sees or to join the king. Many clergymen, suspected of royalist sympathies or unpopular because of their ritualistic tendencies, had been ejected from their parishes; others, like Thomas Fuller, non-ritualistic but royalist, had left to join the king; while other loyal Anglicans remained in their parishes with the support of their patrons or their church wardens and thus presented a threat to parliament. Furthermore, with the old discipline gone, sectaries had sprung up. To fill the vacant pulpits, to provide a form of ordination for those who objected to prelatical ordination, to substitute for the Prayer Book a simpler form of worship, and, most of all, to clip the wings of the bishops or to replace episcopal government with a system nearer to that of the reformed churches,— these were the tasks which confronted parliament. To accomplish them it went back to an action of 1642, when it had appointed a number of ministers of anti-Laudian, Presbyterian, or Independent views to act as advisors in the settlement which it hoped to reach with the king.
Toward a Social Interpretation of Early Christian Apologetics
Authors: Wilken Robert L.
Published: April 2006

How did Christianity appear to men and women of the GrecoRoman world when it first began to emerge into public view? What ideas and conceptions were present within Roman “social thought” to identify and define a new phenomenon such as Christianity? What did men “see” when they looked at the Christians? In antiquity no one subjected the Christian movement to a social analysis or took a Gallup poll of popular opinions, but there is some evidence from which to gain an impression of how Christianity appeared to outsiders. As a methodological guideline I take the suggestion made by James Gustafson in hisTreasure in Earthern Vessels.
Power and Principle: The Anglican Prayer Book Controversy, 1927-1930
Authors: Currie Robert
Published: April 2006

By December, 1927, Church of England Prayer Book Revision was twenty-one years old. It had developed a mystique of its own. The hand of God was at once seen in its overthrow, and appeal to divine Providence does not seem far from some modern interpretations of the events of 1927-30. Anthony Howard thinks the episode reveals the Church of England “as the suffering servant of a secular state,” a curious view when the suffering Church's policy was so emphatically “‘not quite straight.’” The Liturgical Commission finds “the hand of Providence” in the failure of the bishops to carry their Book, or indeed to terminate the emergency created by this failure. Stephen Neill has another theory: that the compromises accepted in 1929-30 were, though illogical and irresolute, typical of the spirit of the nation—which had been engaged with consistency and tenacity in fierce controversy over the issue for several years before. The final proof of these appeals to national or divine wisdom is the assertion that the Book was a very poor Book anyway, though used very widely in the Church of England today.
Tertullian's Polemic Against Social Co-optation
Authors: Groh Dennis E.
Published: April 2006

One of the major strengths of a political and technological system is its ability to absorb into itself and to direct toward social purposes the aspirations and abilities of diverse groups and peoples. Empire, as opposed to despotism, traffics in the relentless proclivity of societal man to find contentment in the culture's values and personal advancement within the society's political, social, and economic structures. To paraphrase an old political maxim, a man who can be rewarded by the social system can be ruled by it. In this proclivity of societal man to make a place for himself in the social structures lay one of the major dangers to the church of Tertullian's day. Tertullian's attempt to lay the foundations for a divine community which could withstand the “pull” of society's “success” or “status” ethic on Christians is the focus of this article. It goes without saying that Tertullian's understanding of the essentially unique and separate character of the Christian community was also formulated against the heretics' theological “push,” but I would like to concentrate on the social problem in keeping with the theme of the meeting.
John Humphrey Noyes as the New Adam
Authors: Sandeen Ernest R.
Published: April 2006

What passes in the world for life and health, is nevertheless a palpable counterfeit. It is at best but a long disease, having sooner or later the same inevitable ghastly termination, death.

Forget all past history as forming a standard of hope and expectations.… We must doggedly reject the inferences of past experience.… There is no fanaticism in this position; because in respect to the circumstances which make and govern experience, the world has nothing in common with us.
To Transform History: Early Mormon Culture and the Concept of Time and Space
Authors: Flanders Robert
Published: April 2006

The literature of the current generation treating the Jacksonian period of American history suggests persuasively that although the citizenry of that time enjoyed widespread consensus about many important matters, many remained about which there was profound disagreement. American life abounded in antithetical and unresolved issues: tensions between pastoral and urbane, the unrequited yearning for a simpler way of life in a time when Americans were beginning to embrace more complex modes of economic, political, and social life; the conflict between an exuberant, secular American optimism about the promise of life and the often hysterical anxiety of the religious over a ripeness of sin and the approaching destruction of the wicked and the end of the world. And the slavery dilemma began to shake American society in the 1830–1850 generation. The idea of counter culture in early nineteenth century America should be considered against the background of such cultural tensions.
The Rise of Political Protestantism in Nineteenth Century Germany
Authors: Bigler Robert M.
Published: April 2006

Prior to the outbreak of the German Revolution of 1848, the liberal publicists Wilhelm Jordan and Robert Prutz complained bitterly about “the foolish absorption of the Germans in theological problems.… when political and economic issues should occupy their full attention.”
Horace Bushnell: Orthodox or Sabellian?
Authors: Kirschenmann Fred
Published: April 2006

In 1848 Horace Bushnell delivered a lecture at Yale College entitled “The Divinity of Christ,” in which he set forth, for the first time, his views on the doctrine of the Trinity. A year later, this lecture and two others (“The Atonement” and “Dogma and Spirit”) appeared in a book entitled God in Christ. The book was prefaced with a preliminary dissertation on language. Almost immediately the critics assailed Bushnell for his Sabellian views on the Trinity. The Christian Observatory charged him with rejecting the “… commonly received doctrine of a proper Trinity in the Godhead, substituting for it a Pantheistic form of Sabellianism.” The Bible Repertory and Princeton Review, concurring in this judgment, indicated that “This, true enough, is the Sabellianism of Schleiermacher—a threefold revelation of God in the world, in Christ, and in the church.”
Medieval Heresies in the Reformation
Authors: Clasen Claus-Peter
Published: April 2006

The problem of a possible continuity of late medieval heresies and sixteenth century sects in Switzerland and Germany has not been thoroughly investigated yet. Of course some historians have touched upon the problem. Thus in 1886 Ludwig Keller advanced the thesis that Anabaptism was closely connected with the Waldensian tradition. Recently a Marxist historian, Gerhard Zschäbitz, pointed out that certain ideas of the Hussite tradition had infiltrated Anabaptism in Thuringia. On the whole, however, it is assumed that medieval heresies did not survive the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century German sects are considered a product of the Reformation. This is implying that the Reformation constituted a complete break with the past and opened an altogether new age. It hardly needs pointing out that this is a hazardous assumption. It is rather hard to believe that heresies, which had secretly lived on in certain towns and villages for one or two hundred years should suddenly have died out by 1500.
Thomas Hooker—Puritanism and Democratic Citizenship
Authors: Ahlstrom Sydney E.
Published: April 2006

In a special advertising supplement to theNew York Times(May 6, 1962) the State of Connecticut sponsored an old claim: “The world's first written constitution, creating government by consent of the governed, appeared in Connecticut in 1639.” The diverse implications of this venerable assertion and their relation to the Rev. Thomas Hooker are the subject of the present essay. Intimations that Hooker deserved remembrance as a champion of liberty date at least to William Hubbard'sGeneral History of New England, written in the 1670's. But full-blown theories came after 1776, and especially after Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's discovery in 1860 of a remarkable notebook of sermon notes taken down in cipher between April, 1638, and April, 1641, by Henry Wolcott, Jr. of Windsor. Herein was found an outline of Hooker's now famous sermon to the Connecticut Court on May 31, 1638, as that body began its historic deliberations on a “Frame of Government.” George Bancroft would reflect the impact of this find in the revised edition of his widely readHistory of the United States. He saw in Hooker's pronouncements the “seed” whence flowered the “first of the series of written American constitutions.” Paraphrasing Ezekiel Roger's epitaph, Bancroft refers to Hooker as “the one rich pearl with which Europe more than repaid America for the treasures from her coast.” John Fiske in his work onThe Beginnings of New England(1889) would claim even more stridently that Thomas Hooker “deserves more than any other man to be called the father [of American democracy].” George Leon Walker accepted Fiske's judgment and subtitled his biography “Preacher, Founder, Democrat.”
Moody, “Gapmen,” and the Gospel: The Early Days of Moody Bible Institute
Authors: Findlay James
Published: April 2006

The story of the founding of Moody Bible Institute serves several purposes. Such a resume fills a gap in our knowledge of an institution that has made important contributions to the life of the city of Chicago and to the shaping of the twentieth century American Protestantism. Any account of the early days of the Institute must also become a case study of the thought and personality of Dwight L. Moody, one of America's most famous revivalists. The record of Moody's struggle to found the school provides us with some underStanding of his social and economic views, offers glimpses of his conception of his role as a leader of evangelical Protestantism, and illuminates several important facets of his personality. All of these subjects merit the attention of the historian.
American Catholic Historical Societies
Authors: Weber Francis J.
Published: April 2006

Soon after Pope Leo XIII's pastoral letter on historical studies, Saepenumero considerantes, was published on August 18th, 1883, a renewed interest in the field of Catholic historical research became apparent. Once again, great scholars came forward “to undertake the writing of history for the purpose of showing what is true and genuine” in the drama of international ecclesiastical development.
The Forming of a Modern American Denomination
Authors: Smith Elwyn A.
Published: April 2006

Among the reasons for the emergence of American denominationalism, the impact of the separation of church and state has never been under-rated by scholars. The same is true of the religious pluralism of the nation. Other environmental conditions of comparable importance have been listed but those who recognize the toughness and adaptability of the modern American denominational structure have reason to ask whether historians have done full justice to its internal dynamic. The reaction against denominational history in the grand style is, of course, well warranted. Over against “denominational historians who can recount the achievements of the several denominations as separate bodies, the reasons for their separateness, and the grounds of their greatness and glory,” W. E. Garrison wrote, “we must concern ourselves chiefly with the movements of the common Christian mind, the issues which drive planes of cleavage through all denominations transverse to those which divide them from each other.…” Some of these unitive issues are American-made; others are rooted in Europe. But the denomination, as Garrison recognized, is the mode in which American church history manifests itself, a vehicle whose continuities must be grasped if modern American church-manship is to be understood.
Bartolome de Las Casas and the Tradition of Medieval Law
Authors: Pennington Kenneth J.
Published: April 2006

As a defender of the Indians and an opponent of the methods used by the Spanish conquistadors, Bartolomé de Las Casas was as controversial a figure in the sixteenth century as he has been in the last four hundred years of historiography. Las Casas' fight to preserve the freedom of the Indians has gained for him not only devoted admirers, but also angry detractors.1Las Casas was not the only Spaniard who defended the Indians, but his efforts are the best known. He labored for fifty years before death finally halted the steady flow of polemics from his pen. However, he was not just a sheltered academician like Vitoria, but he actively championed the rights of the Indians by working and living among them in the New World.
Archbishop John Spottiswoode: Chancellor of Scotland, 1635–1638
Authors: Birchler Allen B.
Published: April 2006

Charles I, King of England and Scotland, appointed John Spottiswoode Chancellor of Scotland on December 23, 1634. This position was the last and highest bestowed upon a man who had served the crown faithfully for over three decades. Spottiswoode was ordained a minister in the Scottish Reformed (Presbyterian?) Church in 1583. In 1604 James named him Archbishop of Glasgow; in 1605, appointed him to the Privy Council; and in 1615, translated him to the Archbishopric of St. Andrews. In this position it fell to Spottiswoode to implement the Scottish ecclesiastical policy of James I, which consisted of an attempt to make the Scottish Kirk more episcopal in form. In the early stages of the transfromation which dealt with structure Spottiswoode was successful. However, in the final analysis, he failed because, even though the Five Articles of Perth which contained the liturgical changes were ratified by the Perth General Asembly of 1616 and by Parliament in 1621, they did not receive general acceptance. Nothing that Spottiswoode did quieted the vocal opposition among the clergy and laity.1 These groups became the nucleus of the opposition to Charles in the 1630s.
Gregory VII and the Primacy of Archbishop Gebuin of Lyons
Authors: McKeon Peter R.
Published: April 2006

In the history of the pontificate of Gregory VII, the figure of archbishop Gebiun of Lyons is mysterious, and his very presence shadow-like, while his position as primate seems at first glance anomalous. The policy of the pope, from the start of his rule, had been dominated by motives of ecclesiastical centralization and by the notion of a hierarchy ruled directly on all levels by the pope himself or by administrators in constant contact with the papacy. Thus, he had regularized and extended the scope of the Roman Council, and had asserted the privileged position of the papal legate throughout the western church.
Ecclesiastical Politics and the Founding of the Federal Council of Churches
Authors: Smith John Abernathy
Published: April 2006

In an influential book of thirty years ago,The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865–1915, Charles Howard Hopkins interpreted the founding in 1908 of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the forerunner of the present National Council, as a stage in the flowering of the social gospel in American Christianity. His interpretation was soon confirmed by John Alexander Hutchison. InWe Are Not Divided, a study of the pronouncements of the Federal Council, Hutchison wrote that the Federal Council was born of the marriage between “the idea of social service and the idea of interdenominational cooperation”. By “the idea of interdenominational cooperation”, however, Hutchison meant little more than what Hopkins had already defined as the impulse for social Christianity, and there the matter has rested for subsequent historians, including two former secretaries of the Federal Council.
The Influence of Erasmus upon Melanchthon, Luther and the Formula of Concord in the Doctrine of Justification
Authors: Green Lowell C.
Published: April 2006

One of the unsolved problems of the history of sixteenth-century thought is that of the relation between humanism and religion. A key figure here was Desiderius Erasmus. Unfortunately, although exhaustive studies have been devoted to Erasmus as a Renaissance figure, not enough is known of his place in the Reformation. Compared to research into other aspects of his work, his place as a theologian has been neglected. And while several scholars have attempted to trace his influence upon some of the Protestant reformers, scant attention has been paid to his impact upon the Wittenberg leaders, especially in regard to justification. It is generally known that Luther and Melanchthon made diligent use of the Greek New Testment published by Erasmus in 1516. But the accompanying Annotations, as well as the subsequent Paraphrases, have largely been overlooked in the Erasmus research, and their impression upon the theology of the Wittenberg reformation has scarcely been investigated. With the quadricentennial observance of the Formula of Concord close at hand, this kind of study seems especially appropriate.
The Doctrine of Predestination in the Early English Reformation
Authors: Wallace Dewey D.
Published: April 2006

It has typically been said of the English Reformation that the doctrine of unconditional predestination (that is, predestination without foreknowledge of merit or repentance but soley as an act of God's will to redeem some of mankind as a manifestation of grace) was neither emphasized nor of central importance until the “Genevan” influence of the returning Marian exiles and the wide dissemination of Calvin's writings in England after the accession of Elizabeth. It is the purpose of this article to show that, (1) a soteriologically rooted doctrine of unconditional predestination of the type characteristic of the so-called “Rhineland Reformers” was central to key figures of the early English Reformation, was accepted and expressed by many other leaders and theological writers of the English Reformation prior to the accession of Mary and was upheld by important and influential continental divines resident in England; (2) the doctrine of predestination in the English Reformation had been developed to the point of reprobation and double predestination and frequently expressed as such before 1553; (3) while this predestinarian emphasis in English Protestant theology was to a large extent the result of the influence of the continental Reformation, it had been received prior to the return of the Genevan exiles and the pervasive influence of Calvin in Elizabethan England. Thus the Genevan influence reinforced and further refined English predestinarian theology. It might be added that Calvin's influence ought not to be considered an unusually harsh one with respect to predestination; not only does Calvin follow the general pattern of earlier Reformed theology, but also does Reformed theology in the later part of the sixteenth century tend toward a more rigid and scholastic version of the doctrine quite apart from Calvin, whose real influence could well operate in the opposite direction, as the recent study by Brian Armstrong shows.
The Kingdom of God in the History of Christianity: A Bibliographical Survey
Authors: Groh John E.
Published: April 2006

In A Handbook of Christian Theology Jerald C. Brauer notes that “the kingdom of God is one of the most fruitful yet controversial concepts in Christian theology. It has been employed to uphold the status quo, and it has been a revolutionary ideal used to break social forms and customs.”1 This bibliographical survey will list articles and books that deal with the kingdom of God and closely related subjects in the history of Christianity, concentrating on the West.2
Archbishop Laud's Campaign Against Puritanism at The Hague
Authors: Sprunger Keith L.
Published: April 2006

The seventeenth-century Netherlands was the Puritan refuge. Its easy accessibility for radical English Puritans caused many a mishap in the plans of the bishops as they enforced conformity in England. When the going became too rough at home, nonconforming ministers could jump across to Holland, rather than obediently submit to discipline, and there carry on their defiant ways. Especially in the 1620s and 1630s, William Laud and others of the English hierarchy exerted themselves mightily to stamp out the Puritan outposts abroad; for Puritanism in exile provided a splendid habitation for all kinds of schemes.Initially going back into the sixteenth century, the Brownists were the main English religious settlers abroad, raising up their own churches and print shops in Amsterdam, Leiden and Middelburg; but in the several decades leading up to the English Civil Wars—in the great days of Archbishop Laud and Bishop Wren—mainstream, non-separating Puritans also were going over, providing strong leadership for most of the English churches in the Netherlands and serving as chaplains for the English regiments, even organizing themselves into an English Classis (1621–1635).
Toward a History of Christianity
Authors: Clebsch William A.
Published: April 2006

You readers of Church History and of other series devoted to the historiography of Christianity will have smelled audacity in my title. I am not blind to the plenitude of reports concerning persons who, in their many places and times, took themselves, and thus may be taken, as Christians. Discrete information about past Christianity abounds. But few and far between are overall histories of this religion, even in its western manifestation. And the separate episodes can hardly be made to fit into a whole story until we fashion the pieces according to some consistent historical interpretation.
The Congregational Independents and the Cromwellian Constitutions
Authors: Cook Sarah Gibbard
Published: April 2006

The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell was a practical experiment in government, but it was an experiment guided by more than practicality alone. For its first three years, it rested heavily on a single ecclesiastical party, the Congregational Independents. This was the party of the preachers John Owen, Philip Nye, Thomas Goodwin, and their fellows and followers. They did not rule alone, but for three years they managed to dominate the governing coalition. They supplied the implicit ideological basis and the explicit personal support for the establishment of the Protectorate, the reign of the major generals, and the refusal of the Protector to accept a crown. Briefly but with lasting effects, England experienced the political consequences of a Congregational Independent regime.
The Jesuits and Joe McCarthy
Authors: Crosby Donald F.
Published: April 2006

The Jesuits frequently attract public attention, and one such occasion for notoriety occurred in the days of the Communist hunt commonly associated with the name of the junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908–1957). During the years from 1950 to 1957 there were repeated attempts to link McCarthy with the Jesuits, (or, paradoxically, to link him with the Senator's opponents). The national Jesuit weeklyAmericabecame embroiled in one of the most bitter arguments which broke out in the controversy. The events illustrate not only the intensely divisive nature of the dispute over McCarthy, but the peculiar position of the order both in the Church and in the intellectual life of the nation as well.
A New Perspective on the Burned-Over District: The Millerites in Upstate New York
Authors: Rowe David L.
Published: April 2006

Whitney R. Cross'sThe Burned-over District:. The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850, first published in 1950 by Cornell University Press, has had a puzzling reception from the scholarly world. On the one hand, its quantity of research and quality of insight earned the book a reputation as one of the principal studies of innovative religion in America. On the other hand, despite the frequency with which historians have cited it, until recently no one has attempted a systematic consideration of its hypotheses and conclusions.
Christian ‘Atheism’ and the Peace of the Roman Empire
Authors: Schoedel William R.
Published: April 2006

Sometime betweena.d.176 anda.d.180 Athenagoras, a Christian, an amateur philosopher and possibly an Athenian, wrote aPleaaddressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. This document is marked by a carefully controlledapologeticaim unmarred by crude efforts to convert and is remarkable for the positive attitude it shows toward the Roman emperors and the administration of justice throughout their realm. Athenagoras' apology was lost sight of in antiquity, in all likelihood, because it contributed so little to theology; precisely for the same reason it is valuable to us in our assessment of the political and social awareness of a segment of Christians shortly before the empire plunged into the troubles of the third century. Athenagoras was obviously well trained in rhetoric; he had dabbled in philosophy; and he clearly felt himself culturally superior to the “common men, artisans, and old women” whom he praises for their simple, if unreasoned, display of Christian virtue (11.4). He is representative of a growing elite in Christian circles which was seeking to explain the new religion to the Graeco-Roman world.
Innocent III, Hungary and the Bulgarian Coronation: A Study in Medieval Papal Diplomacy
Authors: Sweeney James Ross
Published: April 2006

During the twelfth century the papacy in the interest of peace within the Christian community gradually took a more active part in the mediation and settlement of secular disputes. Innocent III regarded such mediation as an obligation of his office, and throughout his pontificate he sought to promote more harmonious relations among Christian princes. In his correspondence he referred on several occasions to the words of the Psalmist, “…seek peace, and pursue it.” He often cited Christ's counsels of peace as in the Gospel of John, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” At the beginning of the thirteenth century peace was not only a worthy end in itself; it could have the additional advantage of freeing the European princes to fight as crusaders in a cause which Innocent zealously fostered.
The Role of Martyrdom and Persecution in Developing the Priestly Authority of Women in Early Christianity: A Case Study of Montanism
Authors: Klawiter Frederick C.
Published: April 2006

Recently, attention has been given to understanding the status of woman in early Christianity. As expected, the light has been focused on Saint Paul, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, but so far, no one has examined one of the most fascinating movements of the second century—Montanism. Perhaps this is because Tertullian is remembered as both a Montanist and a notorious misogynist. Given the boldness and originality of Tertullian's thought, however, it would be perilous to assume that Tertullian's view of women was identical to that originally held by the Montanists of Asia Minor. Indeed, as this study of Montanism in Asia Minor will show, it is highly probable that from the beginnings of Montanism, women were permitted to rise to ministerial status through their role as confessor-martyrs in the early Christian church.
Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical Protestantism, 1929–1942
Authors: Carpenter Joel A.
Published: April 2006

In April of 1952 an article inChristian Lifemagazine proclaimed Chicago “the evangelical capital of the U.S.A.” To back this claim, editor Russell T. Hitt cited a host of evangelical agencies in greater Chicago: mission boards, denominational offices, colleges, Bible institutes, seminaries, publishing concerns (includingChristian Lifeitself) and youth organizations. In total, the author mentioned over one hundred different agencies such as Youth For Christ International, the Slavic Gospel Association, Scripture Press and the Swedish Covenant Hospital. At first glance, the article appears to present a confusing list of unrelated organizations, but closer inspection reveals a coherent pattern.
The Emergence of Gasparo Contarini: A Bibliographical Essay
Authors: Ross James Bruce
Published: April 2006

The recent resurgence of scholarly interest in the Venetian Gasparo Contarini (1483–1542), stimulated in general by the growing interest in Italian religious history and in particular by the discovery of new material, has resulted in the partial emergence of the young patrician from the obscurity which has heretofore enveloped his early years. A succession of studies in the last decade or so have now enabled us to visualize the young Contarini more clearly and have given firmer substance to a once shadowy figure. Viewing his early life from the vantage point of different interests, a number of scholars in various countries have placed Contarini more intelligibly within his milieu, illuminating not merely the individual himself but also the group with which he was associated and the institutions within which he grew to manhood.
Zwingli, Calvin and the Origin of Religion
Authors: Preus J. Samuel
Published: April 2006

In the contemporary intellectual and institutional world, a distinction betweentheologyand thestudy of religionis taken for granted. Those labels designate two quite separate disciplines or perspectives, even though their data overlap. Obviously, this distinction did not always exist within Christendom. Until about the middle of the seventeenth century, discussion of religion was almost always in the context of theology. But then, a new field of inquiry began to appear, and one may trace the first outlines of the study of religion or, to use a slightly too-specialized label, thescientficstudy of religion.
Nicholas of Cusa and the End of the Conciliar Movement: A Humanist Crisis of Identity
Authors: Biechler James E.
Published: April 2006

The ignominious end of the conciliar movement in the mid-fifteenth century strikes many contemporary historians and theologians as one of the tragedies in the history of western civilization. Having shown great promise as an instrument of ecclesiastical reform and credited with ending the scandalous Great Western Schism in 1417, the movement for all practical purposes reached an inglorious end with the signing of the Concordat of Vienna in 1448. Though the tragic dimensions of the movement's demise are somewhat diminished by the truth of Tierney's conjecture that “the merely constitutional reforms emphasized in the conciliar programme could not have produced the much-needed regeneration in the whole life of the Church”, one is nevertheless inclined to view with sadness the neutralization of the nascent democratic aspirations which conciliarism represented.
Belated Crusaders: Religious Fears in Anglo-French Diplomacy 1654–1655
Authors: Kleinman Ruth
Published: April 2006

Historians have commonly taken the secularization of politics and diplomacy as one of the great themes of the seventeenth century, and rightly so. But secular attitudes in matters of state did not move in an unbroken, irresistible progression; until well into the century they coexisted with more traditional modes of thought and developed against resistance from many people who still believed it immoral to divorce religion from politics. Moreover it was by no means always clear which trend was the stronger. Thus long after the Peace of Westphalia, for example, the possibility of international religious war continued to seem real, even to the point where fears of it entered into considerations of diplomacy. One interesting case of this kind arose in the course of Anglo-French negotiations during the mid-1650s, when apprehension of a Catholic crusade on the one side and rumors of a Protestant one on the other added a special dimension to an already complicated situation.
Truth and Equivocation: Liguori's Moral Theology and Newman's Apologia
Authors: Altholz Josef L.
Published: April 2006

Newman's Apologia pro vita sua is remembered as a work of literature, a lasting monument of religious autobiography. Yet it was also a work of religious controversy, perhaps the most ephemeral of literary genres. Indeed, it was primarily a work of controversy; Newman, who almost never wrote except for an occasion, had called upon autobiography as the ultimate debating technique in a dispute which had come to center upon the personal honesty of one of the disputants. Truthfulness was pressed into service in an argument which, after all, was about “truth, for its own sake”, as “a virtue with the Roman clergy.” The artfulness of Newman's candour was successful in its purpose; and in the triumphant vindication of his personal integrity, the original controversy was virtually obliterated, leaving behind a work of autobiographical art.
The Impact of the Reformation on Hessian Education
Authors: Wright William J.
Published: April 2006

“Are we to permit none but louts and boors to rule when we can do better than that.” With these words, Martin Luther challenged the politicians of his day to educate the young, for, he wrote, it is pleasing to God that princes, lords and councilmen and others in authority be educated and qualified to perform the functions of their offices. It was necessary for those in authority to educate the young, because many parents would not do it, others were incompetent to do so, others did not have the time, and that was not to mention orphans.One of those politicians who responded to Luther's challenge was Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse. In the years 1526 to 1537, Philip organized a territorial system of public education consisting of state Latin grammar schools and a university.
Career Patterns among the Clergy of Lincoln Cathedral, 1660–1750
Authors: Pruett John H.
Published: April 2006

In every diocese in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was a clerical elite whose most visible members were the clergy attached to the local cathedral. They included the bishop, the bishop's major judicial and administrative assistants and the cathedral's dean and chapter. What were the general career patterns of these men in the late Stuart and early Georgian periods? From what geographical, social and educational backgrounds were they recruited? What economic rewards did their appointments carry? One might answer these questions by citing contemporary writers and by relating case histories of the clerics involved, but contemporary writers are not always accurate reporters, and individuals are not always representative members of the group as a whole. What is needed is a more systematic investigation of the late Stuart and early Georgian cathedral clergy than has so far been made—one that can establish general patterns for the group as a whole by actually looking at the group as a whole. Collective biography makes it possible to delineate general patterns for an entire group and to relegate the individual example to its proper function—that of illustrating hypotheses that have already been demonstrated by more systematic means. This article attempts such an analysis: it is a prosopographical study of the cathedral clergy of Lincoln Diocese under the late Stuarts and early Hanoverians.
Elizabeth, Edification, and the Latin Prayer Book of 1560
Authors: Jones Norman L.
Published: April 2006

Over the past few years a spate of books and articles have forced scholars to reject the idea that the Anglican church was created as a compromise between Queen Elizabeth, who would have preferred to return to Henrician Catholicism, and radical Protestants, who wished to create in England a godly society modeled on the Swiss Reformation. This historiographic revolution has been led by historians who have challenged J. E. Neale's tale of a Puritan opposition party which was born in 1559 and bedeviled the queen for her entire reign. Demonstrating that the queen achieved the religious settlement she desired in 1559, they have forced us to question anew Elizabeth's attitude toward her church and to challenge some of the assumptions upon which ecclesiastical historians, following Neale, have built their histories of the Elizabethan church.
ThePhysiologus:APoiēsisof Nature
Authors: Cox Patricia
Published: April 2006

In August 1940, the poet Wallace Stevens wrote a series of letters to Hi Simons, a Chicago literary critic who had sent Stevens a list of questions concerning various images in his poems. Wary of explanations of poetry that betray the poetic voice, Stevens composed notes which intensified his images, rendering them, if anything, stranger rather than more common. In the course of one letter, he was moved to comment on the nature of poetry itself.
Claims on the Bones of Saint Stephen: The Partisans of Melania and Eudocia
Authors: Clark Elizabeth A.
Published: April 2006

As Peter Brown has so eloquently described in The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, bones became an avenue to power in late antiquity. Wealthy Christians who could lay claim to the bodies of the holy dead gained status through their willingness to share the gratia thus acquired with those lacking relics of their own; Paulinus of Nola, proprietor of Saint Felix's remains, affords an illuminating example. Patronage was restyled, Brown argues, as the royal, priestly, or monastic controllers of bones became the intermediaries through whom the saints' generosities were bestowed on sinful humans. Yet cooperation was not always the dominant spirit in the dispensing of gratia: relics could provide new opportunities for competition, as is dramatically illustrated by a rivalry confused and perhaps forever obfuscated by contradictory texts. The rivals are the heiress-turned- ascetic Melania the Younger and the empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius II. The bones are Stephen's.
Trials and Travels of a Nonconformist Layman: The Spiritual Odyssey of Stephen Offwood, 1564–ca. 1635
Authors: Moody Michael E.
Published: April 2006

Few English Nonconformists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have proven more elusive than Stephen Offwood.He was a Separatist who renounced Separatism and later joined the English Reformed Church of Amsterdam, whose pastor, John Paget, was a powerful enemy of separation. Offwood was also a prominent printer, publisher, and distributor of Puritan tracts. In 1632 he wrote a book of his own entitled An Advertisement to Jhon [sic] Delecluse, and Henry May the Elder.
The Mind of Victorian Orthodoxy: Anglican Responses to ‘Essays and Reviews,’ 1860–1864
Authors: Altholz Josef L.
Published: April 2006

The composite volume entitled Essays and Reviews, published in 1860, became the center of one of the major religious controversies of Victorian England—a crisis of faith contemporary with that provoked by Darwin's Origin of Species but more central to the religious mind. Essays and Reviews was at once the culmination and the final act of the Broad Church movement. The volume itself was modest in its pretensions and varied in the character and quality of its seven essays. The first, by Frederick Temple, was a warmed-over sermon urging the free study of the Bible. Rowland Williams wrote a provocative essay on Bunsen, denying the predictive character of Old Testament prophecies. Baden Powell flatly denied the possibility of miracles. H. B. Wilson gave the widest possible latitude to subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and questioned the eternity of damnation. C. W. Goodwin (the only layman among the Essayists) wrote a critique of the attempted “harmonies” between Genesis and geology. Mark Pattison wrote a learned and cold historical study of the evidential theologians of the eighteenth century (perhaps the only essay of lasting value). The volume was capped by Benjamin Jowett's tremendous though wayward essay “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in which he urged that the Bible be read “like any other book” and made an impassioned plea for freedom of scholarship. Little of all this was original, though it was new to most Englishmen. It was not the cutting edge of biblical scholarship; rather, it was the last gasp of an outmoded Coleridgianism, contributing little except a demand that somebody—somebody else—engage in serious biblical criticism. But this work touched off a controversy which lasted four years and mobilized the resources of both church and state.
Popular and Monastic Pastoral Issues in the Later Middle Ages
Authors: Martin Dennis D.
Published: April 2006

A number of scholars have pointed recently to Ecclesiastes 9:1 as the epitome of medieval and late medieval spirituality: “No one knows whether he is worthy of God's love or hatred.”1The quest for assurance of salvation constituted a major pastoral problem in the Middle Ages. It is no surprise, therefore, that catechetical handbooks as well as handbooks of spiritual theology offer signs by which one can gain some indication whether one is in the grace of God or not.
Elizabeth Bowes and John Knox: A Women and Reformation Theology
Authors: Frankforter A. Daniel
Published: April 2006

Medieval civilization was centered on theology. Theology inspired its arts, and theology shaped its research in science, law, medicine, and philosophy. The dancers at the court of the queen of sciences were mostly male, and one wonders what their female contemporaries thought or knew of the theological issues that were fundamental to the culture of the period. By the end of the Middle Ages it is probable that there was a high literacy rate among women of the middle and upper classes. Although it is unlikely that these women remained ignorant of the major debates that enlivened the conversations of educated men, evidence of their participation in theological endeavors is scant. Since women were excluded from the universities and formal training in the techniques of scholastic argument, it was virtually impossible for them to develop careers as professional thinkers.