The Career of John Abernethy (1680–1740) Father of Nonsubscription in Ireland and Defender of Religious Liberty

1985 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Barlow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Presbyterian Church ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The British theological world was stirred at the beginning of the eighteenth century by what the learned and staunchly orthodox Presbyterian historian James Seaton Reid has called “latitudinarian notions on the inferiority of dogmatic belief and the nature of religious liberty.” In the 1690s John Locke had published his Reasonableness of Christianity and Letters on Toleration, followed by John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious. In 1710 “Honest Will” Whitson, Sir Isaac Newton's successor as Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, was expelled from the University for embracing Arian views. His departure was accompanied by rumors—long since substantiated—about his great predecessor's heterodox theology. Traditional theologians were shocked next by the appearance of Dr. Samuel Clark's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity which resulted in the author's arraignment before Convocation of the Church of England in 1714. The very same year John Simson, Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow, was first tried before the General Assembly of the Scottish Presbyterian Church for teaching Arian and Pelagian errors. In 1729, after three more trials, Simson was suspended from his professorship for denying the numerical oneness of the Trinity. Fierce doctrinal contentions also began to occupy English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists, erupting during the famous Salters’ Hall meeting early in 1719.

scholarly journals William Talbot and Church Parties 1688–1730

2007 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM GIBSON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

It has been assumed by historians that the High and Low Church parties in the early eighteenth-century Church of England were exclusive and homogenous groups. However the life and career of Bishop William Talbot, as with a number of other clergy, raises questions about these assumptions. Though Talbot was ostensibly a Latitudinarian Whig, he embraced some clear High Church principles, including those on the Trinity and on the sacerdotal nature of the priesthood. Talbot also repeatedly opposed the idea of a split between High and Low Churchmen, which had its origin in political abuse rather than theological principle. This study of Talbot's thought suggests that churchmen were able to embrace both High and Low Church principles and thus demands a reconceptualisation of the presumption of exclusivity in the two parties. Historians therefore need to revise their views of the Church parties of the early eighteenth century and to recognise that they existed as overlapping and complementary tendencies around Anglican core values rather than as exclusive and opposing bi-polar structures.

scholarly journals The Scottish Press, the Union and Civil Society after 1707: The Glasgow Advertiser and the General Assembly Test Act Debate of 1790

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Benchimol
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
First Century ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Extensive Coverage ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church

Constitutional debate in the twenty-first century Scottish media is often presented by reporters and commentators as a uniquely contemporary feature of the nation's civil society. The present article will explore how the Scottish press and eighteenth-century Scotland's highest profile civil society institution – the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland – interacted to facilitate constitutional debate around the legal, social and ecclesiastical meaning of the Union for Scots, some eighty years after the settlement of 1707. The article examines the Glasgow Advertiser's coverage of the 1790 General Assembly debate over a motion to repeal the Test Act (which stipulated a confessional qualification in the Church of England for Kirk members seeking to hold British office) to illustrate how the eighteenth-century Scottish newspaper press sought to uphold the constitutional interests of the nation through extensive coverage of a central institution of Scottish civil society.

Theology in the Church of England

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Young
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
International Reputation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Butler ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church

The dismissive characterization of Anglican divinity between 1688 and 1800 as defensive and rationalistic, made by Mark Pattison and Leslie Stephen, has proved more enduring than most other aspects of a Victorian critique of the eighteenth-century Church of England. By directly addressing the analytical narratives offered by Pattison and Stephen, this chapter offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of this neglected period in the history of English theology. The chapter explores the many contributions to patristic study, ecclesiastical history, and doctrinal controversy made by theologians with a once deservedly international reputation: William Cave, Richard Bentley, William Law, William Warburton, Joseph Butler, George Berkeley, and William Paley were vitalizing influences on Anglican theology, all of whom were systematically depreciated by their agnostic Victorian successors. This chapter offers a revisionist account of the many achievements in eighteenth-century Anglican divinity.

Edmund Burke, Dissent and Church and State

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Church State Relations ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

This chapter examines Edmund Burke’s attitude towards Protestant dissenters, particularly the more radical or rational ones who were prominent in the late eighteenth century, as a way of understanding his changing attitude towards the Church of England and state. The Dissenters who attracted Burke’s attention were those who were interested in extending the terms of toleration both for ministers and for their laity. Initially Burke supported their aspirations, but from about 1780 things began to change. The catalyst for Burke’s emergence as leader of those who feared that revolution abroad might become a distemper at home was Richard Price’s Discourse on Love of Our Country. The chapter analyses how Burke moved from advocating toleration for Dissenters to become a staunch defender of establishment as to have ‘un-Whigged’ himself. It also considers the debate on the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts as well as Burke’s attitude towards Church–state relations.

Parliament and Church Reform: Off and On the Agenda

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Innes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Religious Sects ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

This chapter examines the interactions between politics inside and outside of the British Parliament as well as the issue of Church reform. Attempts by Parliament to improve the Church of England's performance of its pastoral functions ceased following the Hanoverian accession, but resumed in the later eighteenth century. During the intervening period, Parliament passed increasing numbers of acts relating to individual parishes or churches along with various acts adjusting or revising rules relating to merely tolerated religious sects, but by contrast left the established church in charge of its own pastoral operations. In the opening years of the eighteenth century, Convocation provided a forum for clerics to promote their own ideas about how to improve pastoral efficacy. The chapter establishes the complex route by which challenges to and changes within the Church of England translated into a concern to act among parliamentary elites.

Charles Francis Digby Moule 1908–2007

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Horbury
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Church ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
Regius Professor ◽  
And Training

Charles Francis Digby Moule (1908–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was probably the most influential British New Testament scholar of his time. The youngest of their three children, he was born in the same house as his father, and spent a happy if often solitary childhood in China. Moule spent three years studying theology and training for Holy Orders in the Church of England at Ridley Hall. He soon had to take on leadership of New Testament teaching at the University of Cambridge for the Regius Professor, A. M. Ramsey. Moule was also fascinated, without losing his head as a critic, by the associated question of interaction between liturgy and literature in the early church, posed by such cultic interpreters of the gospels as G. Bertram. He joined the Evangelical Fellowship for Theological Literature, founded in 1942, an impressive body of younger authors that came to include Henry Chadwick, G. W. H. Lampe, S. L. Greenslade, and F. W. Dillistone; the moving spirit was Max Warren.

The Vocabulary of the Septuagint and the Church Fathers

2021 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Gilles Dorival
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Hapax Legomenon ◽  
Creation Of Matter ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

The role of the Septuagint in the building of the Christian identity during the first Christian centuries is more important than it is generally said. The word ‘testament’ or ‘covenant’, for example, comes from the Septuagint, via the New Testament. The Greek and Latin liturgies are filled with references to the Septuagint. The same is true in the case of the Christian spirituality: for instance, the concept of the Christian life as a migration comes from the Septuagint. The Christian hermeneutics is indebted to the Greek Bible: even if knowledge of the allegorical method comes from the Greek philosophers (and Philo), support could be found for it in the verses of the Greek Bible. Finally, the theological vocabulary of the Christians was founded upon the Greek Bible. For instance, in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, the word ‘person’ comes from the Septuagint. Furthermore, some passages of the Greek translation gave rise to theological interpretations which are not possible on the grounds of the Hebrew text. In Gen 1:2, the Septuagint reads ‘the earth was invisible and unorganized’ and this came to be quoted both in support of the creation of matter ex nihilo. In Exod 17:16, where the Hebrew has a difficult hapax legomenon, the Greek speaks about the ‘hidden hand’ with which the Lord makes war against Amalek; this ‘hidden hand’ played a role in the Christian doctrine of the Logos, which is hidden in the Old Testament.

The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith in its Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 265-278
Author(s):  
Whitney G. Gamble
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
The Church

In 1643, England’s Long Parliament called theologians from every county of England and Wales to Westminster Abbey to revise the Thirty-Nine Articles, the foundational documents of the Church of England. As the divines commenced their revisions, they encountered a theological movement which they believed represented the greatest threat to the cause of Reformation. Somewhat surprisingly, it was not Roman Catholicism or even Arminianism; it was antinomianism, a new and powerfully growing sect. Concern to combat antinomian tenets drove the assembly into complex theological debates for the first six weeks of its meetings. Parliament’s signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, however, brought an end to the assembly’s revisions. The Covenant instigated the writing of a statement of faith that would function as the confession for a theologically united Church of England, Scotland, and Wales. To supervise the execution of this plan, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland sent commissioners to the assembly to serve as consultative members. Although written in London primarily by English theologians, the Westminster Confession of Faith would be repudiated by Restoration officials. Its true impact came through its acceptance and implementation by the Church of Scotland.

Medieval Theology IV

2018 ◽  
pp. 320-331
Author(s):  
Thomas Nail
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Internal Motion ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
The West ◽  
Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽  
Nicene Creed ◽  
The Trinity

In this chapter, we turn to an analysis of the coexistence of relational, external, and internal motion in the doctrine of the Trinity. The theological doctrine of the Trinity was by far one of the most important, dominant, and novel descriptions of being during the medieval and early modern periods, beginning around the middle of the fourth century. From the beginning of the Nicene Creed (381 CE), which established an official doctrine of the Trinity, until the emergence of the European Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century, Trinitarianism remained the single most pervasive and powerful ontotheological framework in the West—influencing all the natural theologies of force of the previous chapters. To this day it remains the official doctrine of the Catholic Church. This chapter lays out the patterns of tensional motion at work in this important theory.

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