The Trinity House at Deptford in the Sixteenth Century

AbstractThe christological hymn in Philippians 2, rich as it is in theological potential, has always been a fruitful locus in the history of biblical interpretation for engaging in a number of doctrinal disputes which revolve around questions of the nature of Christ. Thus, an analysis of any chapter in the history of interpretation of the hymn (or at least parts of it) is necessary for understanding the ways in which Paul's text has informed christological discourse or, vice versa, how certain ways of thinking about Christology inform interpretations of the passage. In the sixteenth century, the hymn also serves as a jumping-off point for discussions of the authority of scripture in matters of doctrine, for whether Paul provides sufficient doctrinal fodder to ground an orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (particularly of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son) will be brought into question, in particular, by Erasmus. Erasmus’ understanding of the passage, as it appears in his Annotations, was criticised by numerous Catholics, and the ensuing debate (especially between Erasmus and Lefèvre) is fairly well known. The response Erasmus (and the surrounding debate) elicits from John Calvin, however, has scarcely been mentioned and, to my knowledge, never been examined in depth – this, despite the fact that Calvin's engagement with Erasmus on Philippians 2:6–7 departs from his usual method of perspicua brevitas in commentary writing, and constitutes a significant digression on an array of christological and hermeneutical issues. These two verses, and their reception in the sixteenth century, provide a useful lens for analysing the christologies and the hermeneutical strategies of two biblical humanists who, perhaps, are not often enough considered alongside one another. A close reading of these two exegetes’ interpretations of Philippians 2:6–7 will be followed by a consideration of the significance of their emphasis on the radical humility of Christ, which emphasis serves as a departure from the bulk of the antecedent exegetical and theological tradition.

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Adam Pastor, Antitrinitarian Antipædobaptist

Papers of the American Society of Church History ◽

10.1017/s1079902800114056 ◽

1917 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 73-99 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Albert Henry Newman

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Holy Spirit ◽

Church Membership ◽

Christian Faith ◽

Infant Baptism ◽

The Holy Spirit ◽

Doctrine Of The Trinity ◽

The Church ◽

The Trinity ◽

Traditional Doctrine

The intellectual, social, and religious upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of which the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolution were phases, along with the decidedly skeptical tendency of the Scotist philosophy which undermined the arguments by which the great mysteries of the Christian faith had commonly been supported while accepting unconditionally the dogmas of the Church—together with the influence of Neoplatonizing mysticism which aimed and claimed to raise its subjects into such direct and complete union and communion with the Infinite as to make any kind of objective authority superfluous:—all these influences conspired to lead many of the most conscientious and profoundly religious thinkers of the sixteenth century to reject simultaneously the baptism of infants and the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Infant baptism they regarded as being without scriptural warrant, subversive of an ordinance of Christ, and inconsistent with regenerate church membership. Likewise the doctrine of the tripersonality of God, as set forth in the so-called Nicene and Athanasian creeds, involving the co-eternity, co-equality and consubstantiality of the Son with the Father and the personality of the Holy Spirit, they subjected to searching and fundamental criticism.

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Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes: the Cult of Women Saints in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century England

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400012079 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 175-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Eamon Duffy

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Medieval England ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Women Saints ◽

John The Baptist ◽

Late Medieval England ◽

The Trinity ◽

The Middle Ages

The cult of the saints, according to Emile Male, ‘sheds over all the centuries of the middle ages its poetic enchantment’, but ‘it may well be that the saints were never better loved than during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’ Certainly their images and shrines were everywhere in late medieval England. They filled the churches, gazing down in polychrome glory from altar-piece and bracket, from windows and tilt-tabernacles. In 1488 the little Norfolk church of Stratton Strawless had lamps burning not only before the Rood with Mary and John, and an image of the Trinity, but before a separate statue of the Virgin, and images of Saints Margaret, Anne, Nicholas, John the Baptist, Thomas à Becket, Christopher, Erasmus, James the Great, Katherine, Petronilla, Sitha, and Michael the Archangel.

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Not So Unorthodox: A Reevaluation of Tricephalous Images of the Trinity

Theological Studies ◽

10.1177/0040563918766704 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 79 (2) ◽

pp. 399-426

Author(s):

Gesa Elsbeth Thiessen

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Folk Art ◽

Christian Art ◽

The Trinity

Among the various iconographies of the Trinity which emerged in Christian art, the three-headed or trifrons image has a contested history. Warned about and censured by two popes, Urban VIII and Benedict XIV, this iconography, despite condemnations, was applied, however, by leading Renaissance artists and survived into the nineteenth century in folk art. This article considers its pre-Christian background, the sixteenth-century theological debates, and, finally, in a detailed engagement with a range of tricephalous images, it critically reevaluates and seeks to demonstrate the disputed orthodoxy of this iconography from a theological, artistic, and aesthetic perspective.

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The Institutiones minoris dialecticae of Domingo Bañez. An Interpretation of Aristotelic Logic

Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval ◽

10.21071/refime.v23i.8986 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 23 ◽

pp. 327

Author(s):

Emanuele LACCA

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Cultural Environment ◽

School Of Salamanca ◽

Historical Trajectory ◽

The Trinity

Study of the reception of Aristotelian syllogistic in the sixteenth century and, in particular, the philosophy of Domingo Bañez, is a very important for showing how Aristotle’s philosophy was taken up within the cultural environment of the School of Salamanca. This article, after a brief presentation of the historical trajectory bringing Aristotelian syllogistic to Bañez, shows how, in his Institutiones minoris dialecticae, he faces the problem of the Trinity, and how this work is valued for its usefulness in the understanding of the divine mystery.

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Adam Pastor (ca. 1500–ca. 1565)

Church History and Religious Culture ◽

10.1163/18712428-bja10023 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 101 (2-3) ◽

pp. 175-193

Author(s):

Theo Brok

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Gradual Development ◽

The Trinity ◽

Lower Rhine

Abstract Adam Pastor was an itinerant Anabaptist bishop in the Lower Rhine region. Ordained by Menno Simons around 1542, he is best known for the division that unfolded between Dirk Philips and Menno Simons, which led to the first schism in Mennonitism. Although sixteenth-century contemporaries described him as an important bishop alongside Menno, Mennonite historiography since then has largely ignored him. Pastor’s theological views are known primarily from his Onderscheytboeck [Book of Distinctions] of ca. 1554. The recent discovery of an earlier and hitherto unknown version of this writing, however, demonstrates a more gradual development of Adam Pastor’s “spiritualism.” In 1547 Pastor opposed Menno’s Melchiorite doctrine of the incarnation. Several years later, he arrived at the inevitable conclusion and denied—at least implicitly—the Trinity. The result was his break with Menno and Dirk and a subsequent division between the bishops from the Northern Netherlands and those of the Lower Rhine.

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Maxims of Foreign Policy

Itinerario ◽

10.1017/s0165115300044508 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 62-79

Author(s):

W.J. Boot

Keyword(s):

Foreign Policy ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Foreign Relations ◽

East Asian ◽

Modern Period ◽

Cultural Sphere ◽

Japanese Identity

In the pre-modern period, Japanese identity was articulated in contrast with China. It was, however, articulated in reference to criteria that were commonly accepted in the whole East-Asian cultural sphere; criteria, therefore, that were Chinese in origin.One of the fields in which Japan's conception of a Japanese identity was enacted was that of foreign relations, i.e. of Japan's relations with China, the various kingdoms in Korea, and from the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, with the Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and the Kingdom of the Ryūkū.

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