Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Vincent Evener
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Mystical Tradition ◽  
Union With God

Sixteenth-century church reformers needed not only to define the content and sources of truth, but also to teach Christians how to discern between truth and falsehood and how to shape their lives accordingly. This study of Martin Luther and his first intra-Reformation critics, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer, shows that each connected suffering and truth, drawing upon teachings about annihilation of the self and union with God found in the Eckhartian mystical tradition. At the same time, Luther, Karlstadt, and Muntzer understood the concepts of annihilation and union differently, and each worked to form Christians into distinct kinds of ecclesial-political actors. The reformers not only democratized mysticism, as some scholars have recognized, but they used mysticism in the service of division—to define true versus false faith and doctrine, and to teach discernment of true versus false teaching and teachers. Such arguments required a sophisticated conception of false suffering that dismissed opponents’ suffering as a mere show or as suffering in the service of falsehood. This book seeks to bridge a gap between classical Reformation scholarship and more recent studies of discipline, asking how reformers wanted to equip Christians for discernment and self-discipline. Suffering especially threatened to unmoor self-discipline and cloud discernment.

Enemies of the Cross

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Evener
Keyword(s):  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Self ◽  
Union With Christ ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Present Book ◽  
Union With God ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Individual

The present book argues that Martin Luther and his first allies and intra-Reformation critics (Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer) appealed to suffering to teach Christians to distinguish between true and false doctrine, teachers, and experiences. In so doing, they developed and deployed categories of false suffering, in which suffering was received or simply feigned in ways that hardened rather than demolished self-assertion. These ideas were nourished by the reception of teachings about annihilation of the self and union with God received from post-Eckhartian mysticism. Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer developed this mystical inheritance in different directions, each of which intended to shape Christians for differing forms of ecclesial-political dissent: Luther redefined union with God as a union with Christ through faith and the Word, and he counseled Christians to endure persecution as divine work under contraries; Karlstadt described union with God as “sinking into the divine will,” and he upheld this union as a postmortem goal that required, here and now, constant self-accusation and improvement on the part of the individual and the community; Müntzer looked for God to possess souls according to the created order, making Christians into actors for the execution of God’s will on the earthly plane. The democratization of mysticism that so many scholars have attributed to these reformers’ teachings involved a delimitation: mysticism joined to Reformation teaching was used to identify false experiences, false teachers, and ultimately false Christianity.

Prophecy and Politics in Istanbul: Charles V, Sultan Suleyman, and the Habsburg Embassy of 1533-1534

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Finlay
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Charles V

AbstractThree prophecies current in Istanbul in the summer of 1533 pointed toward the imminent destruction of the Ottoman empire by Christian powers. One of the predictions stated that Alvise Gritti, the bastard son of the doge of Venice, would bring about the ruin of the Ottomans. A confidant of Sultan Srlcyman and the grand vizier, Gritti was deeply involved in the war of the Ottomans against Charles V of the Spanish-Habsburg empire, as a commander of Ottoman troops, advisor on Western affairs, and governor-general of the Hungarian kingdom. Widely detested by Ottoman officials, however, Gritti felt that his power was waning in 1534. In response, he perhaps was inspired to play out his prophetic role, for he told an ambassador of Charles V that he would help the emperor's forces capture Istanbul while Sultan Süleyman was away at war. Millenarian speculation was widespread in the early sixteenth century, but sometimes it had direct consequences inasmuch as it came to figure in the calculations of political actors. Examination of the prophecies of 1533 within the context of the time nicely illustrates how prophecy and politics could have a reciprocal relationship, with the former being tailored to the occasion and the latter responding to apocalyptic foreboding.

Claiming Martin Luther King, Jr. for the right: The Martin Luther King Day holiday in the Reagan era

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802199593
Author(s):  
Francesca Polletta ◽  
Alex Maresca
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
General Abstract ◽  
The Right ◽  
Reagan Era ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Roll Back

The article traces how American conservatives laid claim to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. We focus on a key moment in that process, when Republicans in the early 1980s battled other Republicans to establish King’s birthday as a federal holiday and thereby distinguish a conservative position on racial inequality from that associated with southern opposition to civil rights. The victory was consequential, aiding the New Right’s efforts to roll back gains on affirmative action and other race-conscious policies. We use the case to explore the conditions in which political actors are able to lay claim to venerated historical figures who actually had very different beliefs and commitments. The prior popularization of the figure makes it politically advantageous to identify with his or her legacy but also makes it possible to do so credibly. As they are popularized, the figure’s beliefs are made general, abstract, and often vague in a way that lends them to appropriation by those on the other side of partisan lines. Such appropriation is further aided by access to a communicative infrastructure of foundations, think tanks, and media outlets that allows political actors to secure an audience for their reinterpretation of the past.

Between the Islamic and Chinese Universal Empires: The Ottoman Empire, Ming Dynasty, and Global Age of Explorations

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 422-456
Author(s):  
Yuan Julian Chen
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
The Self ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

Abstract This article studies two sixteenth-century Asian texts: Khitay namah, a Persian travelogue about the Ming dynasty written by the Muslim merchant Ali Akbar and presented to the Ottoman sultan, and Xiyu, an illustrated Chinese geographical treatise with detailed travel itinerary from China to Istanbul by the Ming scholar-official Ma Li. In addition to demonstrating the breadth of Ottoman and Chinese knowledge about each other in the global Age of Exploration, these two books, written respectively for the monarchs of the self-proclaimed Islamic and Chinese universal empires, reflect the Ottoman and Chinese imperial ideologies in an era when major world powers aggressively vied for larger territories and broader international influence. Both the Ottoman and Chinese authors recast the foreign Other as the familiar Self – Ali Akbar constructed an Islamized China while Ma Li depicted a Sinicized Ottoman world – to justify their countries’ claims to universal sovereignty and plans for imperial expansion. Like many contemporary European colonial writers, Ali Akbar’s and Ma Li’s exploration of foreign societies, their literary glorification of their own culture’s supremacy, and their imposition of their own cultural thinking on foreign lands all served their countries’ colonial enterprise in the global Age of Exploration.

Converts

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Conversions ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter examines the religious conversions in sixteenth-century England. Some historians have rightly warned us that there was more to the Reformation than a succession of individual religious conversions, noting that most people didn't undergo one. But without such conversions there could have been no Reformation, and attempting to untangle them draws us to the mysterious seed beds in which change first took root. For historians have to make sense of a paradox: that a convert's radical rejection of the old and familiar could not come out of nowhere; that it must somehow be grounded in earlier attitudes and experiences. The chapter first considers the English authorities' response to the Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther and to ‘Lutheran’ heresy before discussing William Tyndale's Worms New Testament and the public abjuration of heresy. It also analyses the deep and bitter divisions between heretics and Catholics over religion.

Liberty and Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Gatti
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Thinking

This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the freedom of the will. The chapter then turns to the theological thinking of John Calvin and the reintroduction into the Protestant world of the notion of heresy. Hereafter the chapter details the circumstances surrounding the dramatic rupture between the friar Giordano Bruno and the Dominican order, including the philosophical doctrines which eventually landed him in the Inquisition. Finally, this chapter follows up on Bruno's insights through the commentary of theologians Richard Hooker and Jacob Harmensz, who is more widely known as Jacobus Arminius.

Wang Yangming (1472–1529)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shun Kwong-Loi
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
Chan Buddhism ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Wang Yangming ◽  
The Mind

Wang Yangming was an influential Confucian thinker in sixteenth-century China who, like other Confucian thinkers, emphasized social and political responsibilities and regarded cultivation of the self as the basis for fulfilling such responsibilities. While sometimes drawing on ideas and metaphors from Daoism and Chan Buddhism, he criticized these schools for their neglect of family ties and social relations. And, in opposition to a version of Confucianism which emphasized learning, he advocated directly attending to the mind in the process of self-cultivation.

L’analisi ġazaliana del concetto di ittiḥād

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Ines Peta
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Union With God

Abstract The aim of this contribution is to highlight al-Ġazālī’s account of ittiḥād or “union” with God; to this purpose, we have traced and examined, within his works, the various passages dedicated to the subject. This analysis shows that al-Ġazālī, although critical of the doctrine of ittiḥād understood in the literal sense, accepts it in a metaphorical way, interpreting it as the state of obliteration of the self (fanā’) in the divine uniqueness (tawḥīd). Even though he defines tawḥīd, in its highest sense, as “not seeing in existence but One”, the terminological and content analysis of the ġazalian passages clearly shows, in our opinion, that he does not adhere to the monism inherent in the so-called waḥdat al-wujūd; on the contrary he strongly supports the monotheistic paradigm. The assertion that God is the only real existent – to be understood in Avicennan terms as the only necessarily existent –, does not imply in fact that creatures are deprived of their own substantial reality and is therefore consistent with the statement that everything has God as its sole creator. In this sense, the ġazalian need to point out that the “absorption” of the Sufi into God is not ittiḥād but tawḥīd is not a mere terminological issue or an instrumental attempt to make “orthodox” an “heterodox” doctrine, but it is the proper expression of the true meaning of that “absorption”, and it’s no coincidence that it corresponds to the foundation of Islam: monotheism.

REBELLION, RESISTANCE, AND A SWISS BRUTUS?

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDRIES RAATH ◽  
SHAUN DE FREITAS
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Economic Exploitation ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Divine Justice

Early sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland witnessed, amongst their peasants, a growing dissatisfaction with economic exploitation and the increasing power of political rulers. The Protestant Reformation at the time had a profound influence on the moulding of this dissatisfaction into a right to demand the enforcement of divine justice. The Swiss reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, provided parallels for the demands of the peasants, while the German reformers, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, criticized the rebellious methods of the peasantry. Against this background the young Swiss reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, responded more positively towards the claims of the peasants by opposing the views of the Lutheran reformers in his play ‘Lucretia and Brutus’. In this drama, Bullinger propounds the first steps towards the development of his federal theory of politics by advancing the idea of oath-taking as the mechanism for transforming the monarchy into a Christian republic. The idea of oath-taking was destined to become a most important device in early modern politics, used to combat tyranny and to promote the idea of republicanism.

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