Transcendence and Community in Zwinglian Worship: the Liturgy of 1525 in Zurich

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 128-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Gordon

Iconoclasm, rather than liturgical formulation, usually springs to mind when one reflects upon the events in Zurich in the mid-1520s. Indeed, historians of the Swiss Reformation have hardly interested themselves in liturgy, and one searches in vain the most recent and comprehensive treatment of Zwingli’s theology for a discussion of the subject. Ignored by both historians and theologians, the study of liturgy in the Swiss Reformation cuts the figure of the unknown guest at a party who everyone assumes is being entertained by someone else. The consequence has been that liturgy has not been allowed to inform our understanding of Swiss religious change; historians have preferred to leave it in the safe keeping of liturgists who, for the most part, have attended to the history of worship as a separate and distinct act of the community controlled by the clergy. This, surely, can only form part of the picture, for liturgy was perhaps the most inclusive act of the Church: worship was experienced by all levels of society, even if the people brought and took away a panoply of varied levels of comprehension and acceptance. As the central, public act of the Church, the early liturgies of the Reformation articulated the tangled web of convictions, needs, and requirements of communities in transition. Liturgies cannot be separated from either the beliefs which created them or the physical space in which they were performed. The ordered rhythm of words and actions in a particular locality was intended to engage the intellect and senses, drawing out responses at once emotional and cognitive. If we can glimpse something of the experience of worship, whether positive or negative, we shall have an insight into the mental world of the early Reformation.

1970 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Baker

‘No portion of our annals’, Macaulay wrote in 1828, ‘has been more perplexed and misrepresented by writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation’. In the early years of the nineteenth century, when polemicists turned to history more often than to philosophy or theology, the Reformation was the subject most littered with the pamphlets of partisan debate. Macaulay could have cited numerous examples. Joseph Milner's popular History of the Church of Christ (1794–1809) set the Reformation in sharp contrast to the ‘Dark Ages’ when only occasional gleams of evangelical light could be detected, thus providing the Evangelical party with a historic lineage; Robert Sou they, in his Book of the Church (1824), presented a lightly-veiled argument for the retention of the existing order of Church and State as established in the sixteenth century; and in 1824 William Cobbett began the first of his sixteen weekly instalments on a history of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, in order to call attention to the plight of labourers in the British Isles. In the history of the Reformation, duly manipulated (‘rightly interpreted’), men found precedents for their own positions and refutation of their opponents' arguments.


Author(s):  
Norman Tanner

This chapter covers ecclesiology in the Western (or Catholic) church from the beginning of the schism between the churches of East and West—between Rome and Constantinople—in 1054 until the eve of the Reformation in 1517. Ecclesiology is taken to mean the nature or constitution of the church. The topic is considered from various standpoints: how it was viewed or taught by church officials, including the popes of the period, by councils, by theologians and other writers, and by the laity. Thereby the subject is treated from the standpoints of both the institutional church and the people of God, both ‘from above’ and ‘from below’. The chapter is divided chronologically into three periods: the Gregorian reform and its aftermath, from the mid-eleventh to the late twelfth century; the ‘long’ thirteenth century; the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries including the Avignon papacy, the conciliar movement, and the early Renaissance.


1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-232
Author(s):  
A. G. Hebert

The subject is the Bible, and its relation to the Church. Hence I shall not attempt to deal with the so-called Bible Difficulties, or with the Higher Criticism, or to develop a theory of Inspiration. I must try to give a line about the general interpretation of the Bible, as being God's Book and truly inspired, written in the Church and for the Church's use; and as written by men, because it has been God's method to reveal Himself through men. It was written by men, and tells a story which is real history; therefore we must have thorough critical investigation of the Bible. It is God's Book because it tells the story of God's saving Purpose, worked out in the history of the believing and worshipping People of God, Israel, His chosen nation. Because this story is true, we have nothing to fear from the Higher Criticism. If that Criticism has been at fault, as it often has been, it is because it has often failed to see the record, as it needs to be seen, from the point of view of believing and worshipping Israel.For the Church is the People of God, God's Israel. As such, it has existed not for some 1900 years only, but for more than 3000 years, since the day when the Lord God redeemed it out of Egypt and made His Covenant with it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-303
Author(s):  
Tarald Rasmussen

AbstractThe Reformation came to Norway along with Danish annexation of political and ecclesiastical power. For this reason, Norwegian history writing seldom appreciated the history of the Norwegian Reformation, and preferred to look further back to the history of the Middle Ages in search of national, as well as religious, roots of Norwegian Christianity. This was already the case in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Norwegian historical writing. In nineteenth century historical research, the strategy was underpinned by focussing on the medieval period of Christianization: Norwegian Christianity was imported from the West, from England. Here, the Pope was not at all important. Instead, some key Reformation values were addressed in a kind of “proto-Reformation” in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The King was the ruler of the church; native, Old Norse language was used and promoted; and the people (strongly) identified themselves with their religion.


2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Ellingsen

AbstractThe work of Alister McGrath and Julius Kostlin challenges the often-cited claim regarding Luther's dependence on Augustine. The article demonstrates that such critics fail to recognise the rich diversity of the African father's thought, but have been inclined to read it systematically the way the Roman Catholic interpretative tradition has. Text study of Augustine's writings, as well as Luther's comments about the African father, reveals that the Reformer's insights about soteriology (including the externality and passivity of righteousness as well as other aspects of his dialectical thinking) are affirmed by Augustine. Likewise, even Luther's critiques of Augustine lend insight into the Reformer's appropriation of his thought. The article demonstrates that when Luther diverges from the African father the two men are addressing incompatible pastoral concerns, but when he is inspired by Augustine their pastoral contexts are similar. This insight sheds fresh light on the sense in which we can speak of an Augustinian character of the Reformation. The article's findings also lend further credence to the possibility that there is a pattern to the use of Christian concepts in the history of the church, whereby, in similar contexts such as in response to perceived Pelagianism, Christians have pretty much responded similarly throughout the centuries.


1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven G. Ellis

The present paper is intended as a contribution to the recent debate on the failure of the Irish Reformation. It commences with a critical summary of the modern historiography of the subject which serves also to highlight a potentially significant imbalance between the early and later Reformation periods in the identification and exploitation of relevant source material by historians. Arguably, the nature of the evidence hitherto deployed goes far towards explaining the dimensions of the present controversy. The paper addresses this controversy mainly in two ways. First, it aims to draw attention to, and analyse, a neglected source compilation which is of central importance in assessing the reasons for the failure of the Irish Reformation. Second, and partly in order to.establish the full significance of this evidence, it seeks to develop a wider perspective from which to assess the potential for, and chronology of, religious change in Ireland.


2018 ◽  
pp. 306-312
Author(s):  
Veniamin F. Zima ◽  

The reviewed work is devoted to a significant, and yet little-studied in both national and foreign scholarship, issue of the clergy interactions with German occupational authorities on the territory of the USSR in the days of the Great Patriotic War. It introduces into scientific use historically significant complex of documents (1941-1945) from the archive of the Office of the Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) of Vilnius and Lithuania, patriarchal exarch in Latvia and Estonia, and also records from the investigatory records on charges against clergy and employees concerned in the activities of the Pskov Orthodox Mission (1944-1990). Documents included in the publication are stored in the archives of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Estonia, Lithuania, Leningrad, Novgorod, and Pskov regions. They allow some insight into nature, forms, and methods of the Nazi occupational regime policies in the conquered territories (including policies towards the Church). The documents capture religious policies of the Nazis and inner life of the exarchate, describe actual situation of population and clergy, management activities and counterinsurgency on the occupied territories. The documents bring to light connections between the exarchate and German counterintelligence and reveal the nature of political police work with informants. They capture the political mood of population and prisoners of war. There is information on participants of partisan movement and underground resistance, on communication net between the patriarchal exarchate in the Baltic states and the German counterintelligence. Reports and dispatches of the clergy in the pay of the Nazis addressed to the Metropolitan Sergius (Voskresensky) contain detailed activity reports. Investigatory records contain important biographical information and personal data on the collaborators. Most of the documents, being classified, have never been published before.


Author(s):  
G. Sujin Pak

The Reformation of Prophecy presents and supports the case for viewing the prophet and biblical prophecy as a powerful lens by which to illuminate many aspects of the reforming work of the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It provides a chronological and developmental analysis of the significance of the prophet and biblical prophecy across leading Protestant reformers in articulating a theology of the priesthood of all believers, a biblical model of the pastoral office, a biblical vision of the reform of worship, and biblical processes for discerning right interpretation of Scripture. Through the tool of the prophet and biblical prophecy, the reformers framed their work under, within, and in support of the authority of Scripture—for the true prophet speaks the Word of God alone and calls the people, their worship and their beliefs and practices, back to the Word of God. The book also demonstrates how interpretations and understandings of the prophet and biblical prophecy contributed to the formation and consolidation of distinctive confessional identities, especially around differences in their visions of sacred history, Christological exegesis of Old Testament prophecy, and interpretation of Old Testament metaphors. This book illuminates the significant shifts in the history of Protestant reformers’ engagement with the prophet and biblical prophecy—shifts from these serving as a tool to advance the priesthood of all believers to a tool to clarify and buttress clerical identity and authority to a site of polemical-confessional exchange concerning right interpretations of Scripture.


Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.


Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
Samuel M. Otterstrom ◽  
Brian E. Bunker ◽  
Michael A. Farnsworth

Genealogical research is full of opportunities for connecting generations. Millions of people pursue that purpose as they put together family trees that span hundreds of years. These data are valuable in linking people to the people of their past and in developing personal identities, and they can also be used in other ways. The purposes of this paper are to first give a short history of the development and practice of family history and genealogical research in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has developed the FamilySearch website, and second, to show how genealogical data can illustrate forward generation migration flows across the United States by analyzing resulting patterns and statistics. For example, descendants of people born in several large cities exhibited distinct geographies of migration away from the cities of their forebears.


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