Grace and Freedom

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Ultimate Cause ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
The Church

Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or “Calvinist” theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century with a focus on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, and his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his contemporaries affirmed that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insisted on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of libertarian freedom or compatibilism. In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of various Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and on several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called second scholasticism. His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the Continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.

William Perkins and His Contemporaries on “Free Will”

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-44
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Assurance Of Salvation ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
The Church

William Perkins’ thought on grace and free choice belongs to the context of the Elizabethan Settlement and developing English Reformed theology in an era of polemics with Roman Catholic adversaries. The works in which he deals with this issue exposit and defend English Reformed theology, address matters of doctrinal definitions, and deal with problems of piety, conscience, and assurance of salvation. Perkins’ several expositions of the problem of human freedom were written during a period of ongoing debate, sparked by the Reformers, between Protestants and Roman Catholics over this issue, particularly in relation to the economy of salvation and the question of the catholicity of Protestantism. His context in the particular historical stage or moment of this debate is also of significance. He has been variously identified in scholarship as a distinctly English churchman and prominent apologist of the Church of England, a “father of Puritanism,” an exponent of early Reformed orthodoxy, a supralapsarian Calvinist, and one among several ancestors of the anti-Arminian line of English theology in the early modern era.

Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Church

Perkins’s work has been shown to stand at the intersection of the strongly traditionary and catholic defense of the Church of England against Roman polemics with the early Reformed orthodox appropriations of scholastic argumentation. Early orthodox Reformed theology, in the works of William Perkins and his contemporaries, developed a highly nuanced understanding of human free choice and divine grace, distinguished according to the four states of human nature. His resolution of the issue of divine grace and human freedom drew eclectically on arguments from the Thomist tradition and from patterns in late medieval voluntarism. At the same time, it reinforced and refined the heritage of the Reformation on the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. The Reformed orthodoxy represented by Perkins and his contemporaries insists that God guarantees the free choice of free creatures, who always must act according to their natures.

Free and Rational: Suárez on the Will

2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney Penner
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Philosophy ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
Recent Attention

Abstract: Despite the importance of Suárez’s defense of the freedom of the will at the threshold of early modern philosophy, his account has received scant recent attention. This paper aims partially to redress that neglect. Suárez’s position can be understood as a balancing act between desiring to attribute libertarian freedom to agents and desiring to maintain the will’s status as a rational appetite. Hence, he rejects an intellectualism that says that choices are necessitated by the intellect’s judgements (since he does not think that the judgements themselves can be directly free), but affirms that only what is judged good can be chosen.

Remembering the English Reformation in the Revision of the Communion Liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, 1906–1920

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-257
Author(s):  
Dan D. Cruickshank
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Liturgical Theology ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Prayer Book ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Main Period ◽  
The Church

This paper will examine how the Convocations of the Church of England remembered their past liturgies, and the reformation theology that formed the previous Prayer Books of the Church, in their main period of work on the revision of the Prayer Book from 1906 to 1920. Focusing on the Communion Service, it considers the lack of defenders of the 1662 Communion service and its reformed theology. It will examine how the 1549 Prayer Book was used as a basis for reordering the Communion service, and how this original Prayer Book was seen in relation to preceding medieval Roman Catholic theology. Ultimately it considers how a re-imagination of the English Reformation was used to justify the incorporation of liturgical theology that had no historical basis in the Church of England.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Libertarian Freedom ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This study of William Perkins’ thought on grace and free choice places his thought in the variegated tradition of the Reformation as established by writers like Calvin, Vermigli, Bullinger, and Musculus. More specifically, his thought can be placed in the version of that tradition exemplified in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England and in the Elizabethan Settlement. Closer examination of Perkins’ thought in its context yields a window on the more technical understanding of the relationship of divine grace to human knowing and willing, which demonstrates its eclectic reception of late medieval scholasticism, its elaboration of the work of the Reformers, and its distance from modern theories of compatibilist and libertarian freedom. This work traces Perkins’ views on the nature of free will both as created and in the fallen and regenerate states of humanity, correlating them with the views of Reformed contemporaries, and lining out the issues that they sought to address.

Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Calvinists

2021 ◽  
pp. 423-441
Author(s):  
Jonathan Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Diverse Group ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Infant Baptism ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Independent Churches ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Church

Eighteenth-century evangelical Calvinists were a diverse group of people, but the majority of them adhered to Reformed theology. They debated how best to practise their faith, including the proper mode of baptism. Whereas the English Particular Baptists and others insisted that believers be immersed upon a profession of faith as an adult, others, including the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, practised infant baptism. Evangelical Calvinists furthermore sometimes clashed on ecclesiastical policies. The Baptists and Congregationalists, for instance, established independent churches, contrasting the hierarchical structures of the Church of England and Presbyterianism. Despite their diversity on doctrinal and ecclesiastical matters, eighteenth-century evangelical Calvinists were unified in proclaiming that salvation came exclusively by divine grace mediated through Christ’s death on the cross, and that conversion was the means by which God redeemed the elect.

The Lady is a Catholic: Lady Lovell's Reply to Sir Edward Hoby

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
The Church

The first decade of James I's reign saw a wave of high-profile clerical conversions to the Church of Rome. Among the best-known cases are those of James Wadsworth, who travelled to Spain with Sir Charles Cornwallis's embassy in 1605, where, as William Bedell's biographer Alexander Clogie disgustedly recalled, he was ‘cheated out of his religion by the Jesuits and turned apostate’; Theophilus Higgons, a member of Christ Church, Oxford, who converted in 1607; his friend and Oxford contemporary Humphrey Leech, who followed him in 1609 and later joined the Society of Jesus; and Benjamin Carier, a royal chaplain and prebendary of Canterbury, who converted in 1613. As the work of Michael Questier has taught us, religious conversion was by no means an uncommon phenomenon in early modern England. Yet these cases had the potential to inflict serious damage on the Jacobean church, not only because they threatened to neutralise the propaganda advantages to be gained from Roman Catholic converts to the Church of England such as Marc’ Antonio de Dominis, but also because they drew unwelcome attention to doctrinal divisions within the Church of England over such issues as anti-popery and the theology of grace.

Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 11th July 1982

Moreana ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 41 (Number 157- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
John McConica
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
International Commission ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

During the period in which these papers were given, there were great achievements on the ecumenical scene, as the quest to restore the Church’s unity was pursued enthusiastically by all the major Christiandenominations. The Papal visit of John Paul II to England in 1982 witnessed a warmth in relationships between the Church of England and the Catholic Church that had not been experienced since the early 16th century Reformation in England to which More fell victim. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission was achieving considerable doctrinal consensus and revisionist scholarship was encouraging an historical review by which the faithful Catholic and the confessing Protestant could look upon each other respectfully and appreciatively. It is to this ecumenical theme that James McConica turns in his contribution.

The Church of England and the Churches of Europe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Claydon
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Church

In the period 1662–1829 the Church of England saw itself simultaneously as a national Church for England, as a branch of the European Protestant Reformation, and as a part of a community of Churches across the continent. These identities caused tensions by suggesting different answers to the question of who were true Christians abroad. Anglicans might feel affinities both with Roman Catholic establishments and with the Protestant populations who challenged them. These tensions were managed in part by ambiguity and a determination not to press one identity too hard at the expense of others. This allowed the Church to maintain strong links with a wide variety of the faithful overseas. But tensions were also managed by an increasing spirit of accommodation. Both the Toleration Act of 1689 and the eventual emancipation of Dissenters and Catholics were aided by the struggles of the Church to contain its own internal diversity.

What is Distinctive about Methodist Ecclesiology? A Response to Papers by Miriam Haar, Justus Hunter and Robert Martin

Ecclesiology ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-74
Author(s):  
Kenneth Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Church

Does Methodism want a distinctive ecclesiology? British Methodism assumes its ecclesiology from the Church of England which explains its lack of ecclesiological thinking, its genuine desire for reunification, and indeed its focus on ecclesia in actu. But there can be no ecclesia in actu apart from ecclesia per se. Being and doing are one in God. The Church, grounded in the dynamic being of God in Trinity, celebrates in the action of the Eucharist the wholeness of God’s presence with his world. Proleptically the Church includes the whole of creation and all people. Hence, when as the Body of Christ we pray the Our Father with our Lord, we pray on behalf of all, not just for ourselves. But what then do we mean by apostolicity? Perhaps in Methodism we would be well occupied exploring more keenly with the Roman Catholic Church what we each mean by being a society within the church. Outler may have been right when he opined that Methodism needed a Catholic Church within which to be church.

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