2. Supporting background stimuli

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
International Network ◽  
New Birth ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
The Church

‘Supporting background stimuli’ explains how John Wesley’s connections with the Moravians, which had such a dramatic impact upon him when he was a young missionary, reveal that he was part of an international network of revival and awakening that stretched from Germany to England and into the New World. There was a shift from Christianity as a mere system of orthodox beliefs, to Christianity as a living relationship with God that leads to love of God and neighbour. The great themes of this form of Christianity were new birth and sanctification. John Wesley’s job as the Methodists’ leader was to reform the nation, especially the church, and to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land.

Foundations for a New World Order: Uniting Protestant Worship during the World War II Japanese American Incarceration

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-316
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
New World Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

During the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, visions of a peaceful new world order led mainline Protestants to manipulate the worship practices of incarcerated Japanese Americans ( Nikkei) to strengthen unity of the church and nation. Ecumenical leaders saw possibilities within the chaos of incarceration and war to improve themselves, their church, and the world through these experiments based on ideals of Protestant ecumenism and desires for racial equality and integration. This essay explores why agendas that restricted the autonomy of racial minorities were doomed to fail and how Protestants can learn from this experience to expand their definition of unity to include pluralist representations of Christianity and America as imagined by different sects and ethnic groups.

Interchurch Families

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Reardon
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
International Network ◽  
Christian Unity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

In interchurch families, both partners are practising members of their respective churches but wish also to participate in their spouse’s church as far as possible. Can such families really be ecumenical instruments, when they are so different from the organs of dialogue generally established by the churches? Interchurch couples themselves, united in an international network of groups and associations, believe that they can contribute to the growing unity between their churches. The Roman Catholic Church in particular has developed a more positive attitude towards the ecumenical potential of such families since Vatican II. Interchurch families contribute to Christian unity by their very existence as ‘domestic churches’, embodying and signifying the growing unity of the Church. The chapter concludes by suggesting how, with greater pastoral understanding and a deeper appreciation of the relationship between marital spirituality and spiritual ecumenism, they can become more effective ecumenical instruments by their characteristic ‘double belonging’.

The New World in Salvation History

2018 ◽  
pp. 17-47
Author(s):  
Timothy Matovina
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
New World ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
The Church ◽  
Published Account

Readers of Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María, which contained the first published account of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s acclaimed apparitions to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego, rarely recognize that he was trained in the theology of the church fathers, particularly in the writings of Saint Augustine. Interpretations of Sánchez have ranged from positivist condemnations for his lack of historical documentation to laudatory praise for his defense of pious tradition to emphases on his criollo patriotism as expressed through his adulation of Guadalupe and the baroque culture of New Spain. This chapter assesses Sánchez’s work as well as the origins and formative phase of Guadalupan devotion over the century preceding his publication. It illuminates the influence of patristic thought and theological method on Sánchez, as well as the frequently ignored but foundational role of his theology and that of the church fathers on the Guadalupe tradition.

GILBERT MARSHAL (III), EARL OF PEMBROKE

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 337-393
Keyword(s):  
List Type ◽  
Type Number ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Pope Innocent Iv ◽  
The Church

Notification that moved by love of God and reverence for Lord Pope Gregory the earl grants to the abbey his patronage of the church of St Leonard of Magor, Gwent, with its chapels and everything else belonging to it. Chepstow. 23 February 1238.B= Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Register of Pope Innocent IV, fo. 474v (s. xiii).

scholarly journals Die verskynsel van die eenheid-verskeidenheid van die kerk: In gesprek met Calvyn

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Botma ◽  
J. H. Koekemoer
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Dynamic Structure ◽  
Personal Relationship ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Dynamic Character ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Church

The phenomenon of the unity-diversity of the church: A conversation with Calvin This article engages' in a critical dialogue with Calvin's conception of the unity-diversity of the church. Calvin, by understanding faith as the believer's personal relationship with God, stresses the dynamic character of the church. Concerning unity and diversity, Calvin held the view that there is only one Christ. Calvin distinguished between fundamental and secondary truths. In Calvin's view the redemption in Christ is reported monotonously in the New Testament. Contrary to Calvin the article shows that there are diverse interpretations of the Jesus-'Sache' in' the New Testament itself. However, in appreciation of Calvin, it is argued that he - because of the dynamic structure of the church - did not insist on one visible form of organisation for the church.

scholarly journals A Covenantal Christology

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Relational Process

One of the major theological questions confronting the post-Nostra Aetate Church is how to relate the Christian conviction in the universal saving significance of Jesus Christ with the affirmation of the permanence of Israel’s covenanting with God. The meanings of covenant, salvation, and the Christ-event are all topics that must be considered. This paper proposes that covenant, understood in a theological and relational sense as a human sharing in God’s life, provides a useful Christological and soteriological perspective. Jesus, faithful son of Israel and Son of God, is presented as covenantally unifying in himself the sharing-in-life between God and Israel and also the essential relationality of God. The Triune God’s covenanting with Israel and the Church is seen as drawing humanity into an ever-deepening relationship with God through the Logos and in the Spirit, with both Israel and the Church having distinct duties in this relational process before God and the world.

A Text with Teeth: Augustine’s Exegesis of Song of Songs 4:2 as Paradigm of His Hermeneutics

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

In the second book of his treatise on scriptural interpretation, On Christian Doctrine, Augustine introduces the theme of the obscurity of some biblical texts with a quotation from the notoriously difficult Song of Songs: ‘‘Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes coming up from the washing, which all give birth to twins, and there is not one among them that is barren’’ (4:2). Unsurprisingly, he finds references to baptism and the double commandment of love of God and neighbour. What strikes a modern reader is Augustine’s unembarrassed use of violent imagery to describe how the saints cut off errors and then chew the newly converted until they are soft for digestion by the Church. In later texts, Augustine will advert to the violence of biblical imagery to emphasize the necessity of transformation into the likeness of God and to reinforce the eschatological hope of the Church. This paper will examine the role of difficulty and obscurity in Augustine’s understanding of the process by which Scripture forms and orients its readers to prepare them for the vision of heaven.

SERMON AND STORY IN GEORGE MACDONALD

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 577-587
Author(s):  
Martin Dubois
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
George Macdonald ◽  
Righteous Anger ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Economic Necessity ◽  
Literary Fame ◽  
The Church

George MacDonald took to preaching early in life. In his boyhood he once “rushed into the kitchen, jumped upon the clean-scrubbed table, and began a learned discourse, indicating Bell Mavor, the maid, as a reprobate past redemption”: She flicked at him with her dish-clout, when he turned upon her in righteous anger, as he set straight the improvised bands about his neck: “Div ye no ken fan ye’re speakin’ til a meenister, Bell? Ye's no fleg [frighten] awa’ the Rev. Geordie MacDonald as gin he war a buzzin’ flee [fly]! Losh, woman, neist to Dr. Chaumers [Thomas Chalmers], he's the grandest preacher in a’ Scotland!” (Greville MacDonald 59) Before long MacDonald would grow uneasy with the Calvinist beliefs from which this childhood frolic takes its bearings. He would later characterise the religion of his youth as one in which “hell is invariably the deepest truth, and the love of God is not so deep as hell” (Robert Falconer 1: 152). Coming to feel “that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong” (qtd. in Greville MacDonald 155), MacDonald in maturity embraced a broad and undogmatic theology, and – at the urging of F. D. Maurice – eventually joined the Church of England. Yet the impulse to preach never left him. MacDonald is now principally remembered as a writer of fantasy and fairy tales, but his literary career was in one sense a stand-in for the pulpit. He briefly served as a Congregationalist minister in Arundel before being forced out for his unorthodox views on salvation. Unable to secure another appointment, and sustaining “a hand-to-mouth existence” with his family in Manchester, MacDonald came to prose fiction “through economic necessity” (Raeper 103, 125). Even once he had achieved literary fame, MacDonald continued to preach occasionally by invitation. Over the course of his lifetime he would also publish several volumes of sermons never delivered – not simply spiritual reflections, but, as the title of a series of his volumes has it, Unspoken Sermons (1867–1889).

Calude d'Abbeville and the Tupinamba: Problems and Goals of French Missionary Work in Early Seventeenth-Century Brazil

1989 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Fishman
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
New World ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The People ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
Spiritual Energy ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

The Catholic church during the era of the Catholic Reformation experienced great vitality and vigor. Missionary activity was one of the clearest indications of this renewed spiritual energy. Simultaneously with Catholic revitalization there occurred the expansion of European commerce and colonization. In the wake of the Age of Discovery portions of Africa, Asia, and the New World became more accessible to Europeans. The Catholic church, by means of its religious orders, carried Christianity to the inhabitants of these regions. The drive and dedication which led to reform of the church within Europe also fueled an intense missionary commitment towards the people of other continents. The dedication and zeal of the regular clergy reflected the apostolic tradition within the church, but this older ideal was enhanced by a new spirit of expansionism. The Catholic religious orders shared the urge of many of their secular contemporaries to take advantage of new opportunities for growth overseas.

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