Science and Religion assesses the impact of social, political and intellectual change upon Anglican circles, with reference to Oxford University in the decades that followed the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. More particularly, the career of Baden Powell, father of the more famous founder of the Boy Scout movement, offers material for an important case-study in intellectual and political reorientation: his early militancy in right-wing Anglican movements slowly turned to a more tolerant attitude towards radical theological, philosophical and scientific trends. During the 1840s and 1850s, Baden Powell became a fearless proponent of new dialogues in transcendentalism in theology, positivism in philosophy, and pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories in biology. He was for instance the first prominent Anglican to express full support for Darwin's Origin of Species. Analysis of his many publications, and of his interaction with such contemporaries as Richard Whately, John Henry and
The Pastoral Letters have often been marginalised in modern New Testament studies. Regarded as not authentically Pauline, not very theological, and mostly evidence of the church settling down in the world, their patriarchal orientation has more recently futher alienated readers. Yet it was these little letters which mediated Paul to the Patristic church, and then provided scriptural material for debate about church order and ministry from the Reformation to the present. This study attempts to re-read the Pastorals in their original setting, revising many of the standard scholarly assessments in the light of recent work (especially developments in sociological study of the New Testament), and exploring the development of a tradition which proves to be theological in its fundamental structure and in its mode of addressing practical and organisational issues. The letters are then related to the very different context of the modern world.
Science and Religion assesses the impact of social, political and intellectual change upon Anglican circles, with reference to Oxford University in the decades that followed the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. More particularly, the career of Baden Powell, father of the more famous founder of the Boy Scout movement, offers material for an important case-study in intellectual and political reorientation: his early militancy in right-wing Anglican movements slowly turned to a more tolerant attitude towards radical theological, philosophical and scientific trends. During the 1840s and 1850s, Baden Powell became a fearless proponent of new dialogues in transcendentalism in theology, positivism in philosophy, and pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories in biology. He was for instance the first prominent Anglican to express full support for Darwin's Origin of Species. Analysis of his many publications, and of his interaction with such contemporaries as Richard Whately, John Henry and
Paul Cefalu's study explores the relationship between moral character and religious conversion in the poetry and prose of Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and Milton, as well as in early modern English Conformist and Puritan sermons, theological tracts, and philosophical treatises. Cefalu argues that early modern Protestant theologians were often unable to incorporate a coherent theory of practical morality into the order of salvation. Cefalu draws on fresh historicist theories of ideology and subversion, but takes issue with historicist tendency to conflate generic and categorical distinctions among texts. He argues that imaginative literature, by virtue of its tendency to place characters in approximately real ethical quandaries, uniquely points out the inability of early modern English Protestant theology to merge religious theory and ethical practice. This study should appeal not only to literary critics and historians, but also to scholars interested in the history of moral theory
This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of discourse. The author combines the techniques of literary criticism and intellectual history in order to examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and political ramifications of this anxiety about, and ambition to transcend, the limits of the text. Dr Martin begins by tracing a network of interlocking motifs and images - beginning and end, nescience and omniscience, genesis and renascence, savagery and civilization - across a broad spectrum of texts from the Book of Genesis through the Renaissance (in particular the works of Nicholas of Cusa and Erasmus) to Rousseau. The central section of the book translates these temporal oppositions into the spatial antithesis of East and West in the Orientalism of Hugo, Napoleon and Chateau
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the fastest growing religious movements in the world. It is highly visible, with a massive missionary program, yet it remains a mystery in terms of its core beliefs and theological structure. This 2003 book provides an introduction to the basic history, doctrines and practices of The LDS - the 'Mormon' Church. Written by a non-Mormon it neither seeks to prove or disprove the truthfulness of the religious claims of that faith but rather to describe them in ways that non-Mormons can understand. Particular emphasis is given to sacred texts and prophecies as well as to the crucial Temple rituals of endowments, marriage and baptism for the dead, through which human beings may achieve their divine potential. This rich comparative study offers an understanding of Mormon theology and ideas of humanity.
Justice and Christian Ethics is a study in the meaning and foundations of justice in modern society. Written from a theological perspective, its focus is upon the interaction of religion and law in their common pursuit of justice. Consideration is given, first, to the historical roots of justice in the classical tradition of virtue (Aristotle and Aquinas) and in the biblical ideas of covenant and the righteousness of God. Subsequent chapters trace the relationships between justice, law and virtue in Puritanism, in Locke, and in the founding documents of the American Republic in the late eighteenth century. In his concluding section, the author develops a covenantal interpretation of justice which includes both law and virtue, both human rights and the common good. Special attention is given to the pluralistic character of modern political societies; to criteria of distributive justice; and to religious resources for the renewal and transformation of justice.
This book is a study of the making of collective memory within early Judaism in a seminal text of the Western canon. The book of Ecclesiastes and its speaker Qohelet are famous for saying that there i
Reid Barbour's 2002 study takes a fresh look at English Protestant culture in the reign of Charles I (1625–1649). In the decades leading into the civil war and the execution of their monarch, English writers explored the experience of a Protestant life of holiness, looking at it in terms of heroic endeavours, worship, the social order, and the cosmos. Barbour examines sermons and theological treatises to argue that Caroline religious culture comprises a rich and extensive stocktaking of the conditions in which Protestantism was celebrated, undercut, and experienced. Barbour argues that this stocktaking was also carried out in unusual and sometimes quite secular contexts; in the masques, plays and poetry of the era as well as in scientific works and diaries. This broad-ranging study offers an extensive appraisal of crucial seventeenth-century themes, and will be of interest to historians as well as literary scholars of the period.
With this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological.Making use of examp
A distinguished academic, influential Christian apologist, and best-selling author of children's literature, C. S. Lewis is a controversial and enigmatic figure who continues to fascinate, fifty years after his death. This Companion is a comprehensive single-volume study written by an international team of scholars to survey Lewis's career as a literary historian, popular theologian, and creative writer. Twenty-one expert voices from the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Princeton University, and Wheaton College, among many other places of learning, analyze Lewis's work from theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives. Some chapters consider his professional contribution to fields such as critical theory and intellectual history, while others assess his views on issues including moral knowledge, gender, prayer, war, love, suffering, and Scripture. The final chapters investigate his work as a writer of fiction and poetry. Original in its approach and unique in
Providing a detailed analysis of Bach's Passions, this 2010 book represents an important contribution to the debate about the culture of 'classical music', its origins, priorities and survival. The angles from which each chapter proceeds differ from those of a traditional music guide, by examining the Passions in the light of the mindsets of modernity, and their interplay with earlier models of thought and belief. While the historical details of Bach's composition, performance and theological context remain crucial, the foremost concern of this study is to relate these works to a historical context that may, in some threads at least, still be relevant today. The central claim of the book is that the interplay of traditional imperatives and those of early modernity renders Bach's Passions particularly fascinating as artefacts that both reflect and constitute some of the priorities and conditions of the western world.
Peter Harrison provides an account of the religious foundations of scientific knowledge. He shows how the approaches to the study of nature that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directly informed by theological discussions about the Fall of Man and the extent to which the mind and the senses had been damaged by that primeval event. Scientific methods, he suggests, were originally devised as techniques for ameliorating the cognitive damage wrought by human sin. At its inception, modern science was conceptualized as a means of recapturing the knowledge of nature that Adam had once possessed. Contrary to a widespread view that sees science emerging in conflict with religion, Harrison argues that theological considerations were of vital importance in the framing of the scientific method.
Faith, hope, and love are central tropes in Christian teaching, and indeed are increasingly common in general vernacular, yet Swiss theologian Emil Brunner found the triad lacked the thorough theological study they demanded. These three words, Brunner argues, represent the totality of what it means to be Christian: faith as a receptable of God's timeless love, hope as our faith in what God has done in Christ, and the giving of love which makes humans truly human. To Brunner, faith, hope, and love are essential and total, reflecting the relation to Jesus in the three dimensions of time - the past, present, and future. Faith, Hope, and Love, originally delivered as the Earl Lectures in Berkeley, California, in 1955, therefore represents Brunner's accomplished expression on the significance and importance of these three values to Christians.
For most of the sixteenth century, English poets were clearly anxious about the grief expressed in their funeral poems and often rebuked themselves for indulging in it, but towards the end of the century this defensiveness about mourning became less pressing and persistent. The shift is part of a wider cultural change which has escaped recognition: the emergence of a more compassionate attitude towards the process of mourning. In charting the development of elegy this book analyses poems by Surrey, Spenser, Jonson, Henry King and Milton, and also surveys a wide range of forgotten verse, both English and neo-Latin, as well as letter-writing handbooks and moral-theological tracts. The book culminates in a detailed study of the most famous elegy in the language, Milton's Lycidas.
This book is a case study in the ongoing struggle of Christianity to define its relationship to modernity, examining representative Roman Catholic Modernists and anti-Modernists, exploring their relationship to their own historical context. Its aim is to counteract the tendency to lift the proposals made by the Modernists out of their setting and define them as a coherent, timeless philosophical/theological outlook, which should be avoided. The book seeks to correct the proclivity of some contemporary proponents of Modernist ideas to de-contextualize those ideas and recommend their endorsement without a critical reconsideration of historical changes. It sketches the nineteenth-century background of the Modernist crisis, identifying the problems that the church was facing at the beginning of the twentieth century; and offers a fresh perspective on the Modernist crisis, a perspective arising from the pioneering work undertaken by the Roman Catholic Modernism Working Group of the American
How did Paul determine ethical and theological truth? Were all believers expected to be able to 'discern the spirits' (1 Corinthians 12.10)? This 2007 study shows that discernment must be understood against the backdrop of an extensive hermeneutic, by which Paul inherently relates ethical and theological knowledge. Understanding the will of God requires noetic and existential transformation, in short, the 'renewal of the mind' (Romans 12.2). Munzinger argues that Paul implies a process of inspiration in which the Spirit sharpens the discerning functions of the mind because the believer is liberated from a value system dominated by status and performance. The love of God enables all believers to learn to interpret reality in a transformed manner and to develop creative solutions to questions facing their communities. For Paul authentic discernment is linked to a comprehensive sense of meaning.
In this study John Bowlin argues that Aquinas's moral theology receives much of its character and content from an assumption about our common lot: the good we desire is difficult to know and to will, in particular because of contingencies of various kinds - within ourselves, in the ends and objects we pursue, and in the circumstances of choice. Since contingencies are fortune's effects, Aquinas insists that it is fortune that makes good choice difficult. Bowlin then explicates Aquinas's treatment of a number of topics in light of this difficulty: the moral and theological virtues, the first precepts of the natural law, the voluntariness of virtuous action, and the happiness available to us in this life. By noting that Aquinas proceeds with an eye on fortune's threats to virtue, agency, and happiness, Bowlin places him more precisely in the history of ethics, among Aristotle, Augustine, and the Stoics.
This Companion takes as its starting point the realization that Jesus of Nazareth cannot be studied purely as a subject of ancient history, 'a man like any other man'. History, literature, theology and the dynamic of a living, worldwide religious reality, all appropriately impinge on the study of Jesus. The two parts of the book roughly correspond to the interdependent tasks of historical description and critical and theological reflection. It incorporates the most up-to-date historical work on Jesus the Jew with the 'bigger issues' of critical method, the story of Christian faith and study, and Jesus in a global church and in the encounter with Judaism and Islam. Written by seventeen leading international scholars, the book encourages students of the historical Jesus to discover the vital contribution of theology, and students of doctrine to engage the Christ of faith as Jesus the first-century Jew.
Religious controversy was central to political conflict in the years before the English Civil War. Where earlier historians have focused more narrowly on the doctrine of predestination, Dr Milton analyses the broader attitudes which underlay notions of religious orthodoxy. Through the first comprehensive analysis of how contemporaries viewed the Roman and foreign Reformed churches in the early Stuart period, Milton demonstrates the way in which an author's choice of a particular style of religious discourse could be used either to mediate or to provoke religious conflict. This study challenges many current historical orthodoxies. It identifies the theological novelty of Laudianism, but also exposes areas of ideological tension within the Jacobean Church. Its wide-ranging conclusions will be of vital concern to students of early Stuart religion and the origins of the English Civil War.
