Freedom and Responsibility

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-184
Author(s):  
Thomas H. McCall ◽  
Keith D. Stanglin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

In Chapter 4, we survey how claims to knowledge of God were defended in the nineteenth-century Methodist context; we look both at the theological methods that were employed and how apologetic impulses functioned within those prolegomena. Turning to the doctrine of God, we trace some of the momentous changes that took place as Wesleyan theology wrestled with modern challenges in relation to its classical inheritance (especially in relation to classical doctrines of perfection, simplicity, aseity, immutability, and omniscience as well as Trinitarian theology). With regard to theological anthropology, we see how the major Methodist theologians wrestled not only with long-standing disputes (for example, the mind–body relation) but also with current debates (for example, race and ethnicity). We trace the Wesleyan debates (both internally, and against traditional Reformed theology as well as revisionism and modernism) over the doctrine of original sin.

scholarly journals Reformed identity revisited: Proposals in the spirit of Ecclesia Semper Reformanda est

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Vorster
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Human Uniqueness ◽  
Existential Perspective

This article commences by reflecting on the evolving nature of traditions. In order to pass the continual test of plausibility and authenticity, traditions need to be flexible enough to incorporate new insights into its core intellectual matrix. Implausible elements need to be re-articulated or dispensed with. This rationale is subsequently applied to the reformed tradition who considers the necessity to continually reform itself (Ecclesia Semper Reformanda est) as a fundamental aspect of the tradition. Recently, various tenets of the reformed faith have come under scrutiny. These include the reformed faith’s understanding of God’s relation to creation; its view of human uniqueness; its understanding of original sin and the transmission of sin; and its supposed sola Scriptura approach to ethics. This article addresses these critiques by proposing that reformed theology incorporates the notion of creation as a gift in its thinking; that it dispenses with attempts to provide a historical narrative on the origin and transmission of sin and rather approach the theme from an existential perspective; and that it works towards an ethics that is scripturally based but ecclesiastically shaped.

SENTIMENT AND MATERIALITY IN LATE VICTORIAN BOOK COLLECTING

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-820
Author(s):  
David C. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Book Collecting ◽  
The Mind ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Bibliographic Study

In the first half of the twentieth century, analytic bibliographers in Britain turned their attention to the systematic study of the nineteenth-century book. Developing their subject, they felt compelled to distance themselves from the Victorian book collector, who touched off a “suspicion . . . deeply ingrained in the mind of scholars and librarians” (Sadleir, “Development” 147). A new generation of bibliographers – Michael Sadleir, John Carter, and Graham Pollard – acknowledged that Victorian collecting had laid the foundations for the bibliographic study of books by “modern” (i.e., nineteenth-century) writers, as opposed to incunabula, the traditional focus of British book collecting. The contribution was regarded as fundamentally flawed, however, owing to a “sentimental element” in Victorian collecting (Carter and Pollard 101).

The Contemporary Reception of Aquinas on the Natural Knowledge of God

2021 ◽  
pp. 595-611
Author(s):  
David VanDrunen
Keyword(s):  
Natural Theology ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Summa Theologiae ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Natural Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Attributes Of God

This chapter considers key themes from Thomas Aquinas’ view of the natural knowledge of God, or natural theology, from the opening of his Summa theologiae. It is written from the perspective of Reformed theology, which has traditionally supported natural theology of a certain kind, despite its recent reputation as an opponent of natural theology. According to Thomas, natural theology is insufficient for salvation and is inevitably laden with errors apart from the help of supernatural revelation. But human reason, operating properly, can demonstrate the existence and certain attributes of God from the natural order, and this natural knowledge constitutes preambles to the articles of the Christian faith. The chapter thus engages in a critically sympathetic analysis of these themes and suggests how a contemporary reception of Thomas might appropriate them effectively.

Traditionalism and Revelation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Francesca Aran Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Original Source ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Biblical Anthropology

Traditionalism is the doctrine that God revealed himself to our first parents, and this revelation is the source of our knowledge of God: ‘the knowledge’, as London cabbies still call it, was passed on from its original recipients down the generations. Our knowledge of God is thus mediated through tradition; its only direct source is a divine revelation made to our original forebears. Traditionalism thus tends to accentuate that we cannot know God through our own efforts, for instance by philosophical proofs. Transmission from a single original source explains the analogies between religions and mythologies, while the ‘telephone game’, or ‘Chinese whispers’, over the millennia explains the diversities. Invented in the nineteenth century, traditionalism was at once a contribution to theory of religions, a piece of biblical anthropology, and a theory of revelation and its development. Traditionalists have held that without an original, igniting act of divine revelation to our first ancestors, it would be impossible for the human race to become a knowing, speaking creature, to create institutions, and act morally, or to obtain knowledge of God.

Revisionist Theologies of Salvation

2020 ◽  
pp. 42-118
Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Liberal Theology ◽  
Existential Interpretation ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Human Liberation

What unites revisionist theologies of the cross is the rejection (sometimes with qualification) of the idea of vicarious substitution and the Anselmian analysis of its rationale. They all reject or reinterpret the doctrine of “original sin.” They propose an “existential” interpretation of the cross, and relate it to the imperative for human liberation. These ideas are in continuity with liberal theology of the nineteenth century. What is more specifically novel is their reliance on critical biblical studies and above all their acceptance of contemporary science, especially its account of human evolution.

‘One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism’?

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-112
Author(s):  
Josiah Baker
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Further Development

The emerging ecumenical activities of Classical Pentecostals affect and are affected by the relations between Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostals. The commitments of Trinitarian Pentecostals to Oneness Pentecostals could hinder their involvement in ecumenical contexts that reject Oneness Pentecostals, while their increasing Trinitarian commitments could strain their already tenuous relationship with Oneness Pentecostals. This article is a programmatic essay that explores the emerging tension through its focal point of baptism, an important subject in intra-Pentecostal and ecumenical discourse. The author unpacks the origins of the problem facing Trinitarian Pentecostals before articulating why baptism is the proper locus for beginning to resolve the tension. He argues that the tensions for Pentecostals caused by the doctrine of God are best resolved by the further development by Pentecostals of their Trinitarian theology. The author concludes with necessary steps to be taken in this doctrinal formulation within intra-Pentecostal and ecumenical contexts.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

ORNAMENT AND DISTRACTION: PERIPHERAL AESTHETICS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-255
Author(s):  
Alison Georgina Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William James ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Related Phenomenon ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Optical Character ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind

In the section devoted to “Attention”inThe Principles of Psychology(1890), William James describes how the “‘adaptation of the attention’” can alter our perception of an image so as to permit multiple visual formulations (417). In his example of a two-dimensional drawing of a cube, we can see the three-dimensional body only once our attention has been primed by “preperception”: the image formed by the combination of lines has “no connection with what the picture ostensibly represents” (419, 418). In a footnote to this passage, however, James uses an example from Hermann Lotze'sMedicinische Psychologie(1852), to show how a related phenomenon can occur involuntarily, and in states of distraction rather than attention:In quietly lying and contemplating a wall-paper pattern, sometimes it is the ground, sometimes the design, which is clearer and consequently comes nearer. . .all without any intention on our part. . . .Often it happens in reverie that when we stare at a picture, suddenly some of its features will be lit up with especial clearness, although neither its optical character nor its meaning discloses any motive for such an arousal of the attention. (419)James uses the formal illogicality of the wallpaper (its lack of compositional center prevents it from dictating the trajectory for our attention according to intrinsic aesthetic laws) to demonstrate the volatility of our ideational centers, particularly in moments of reverie or inattention. Without the intervention of the will, James says, our cognitive faculties are always in undirected motion, which occurs below the strata of our mental apprehension. Momentary instances of focus or attunement are generated only by the imperceptible and purely random “irradiations of brain-tracts” (420). Attention, for James, is the artistic power of the mind; it applies “emphasis,” “intelligible perspective,” and “clear and vivid form” to the objects apprehended by the faculties of perception, it “makesexperience more than it is made by it” (381). Reverie, a moment when attention has been reduced to a minimum, thus demands an alternative aesthetic analog, where composition is reduced to a minimum too.

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