Hobbes’s Erastianism and Interpretation

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
A.P. Martinich
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter is a response to Jeffrey Collins, who maintains that Hobbes was Erastian and promoted Independency and irreligious views. The author agrees that Hobbes was an Erastian; the Act of Supremacy made Erastianism law. Hobbes’s support for Independency was hedged at best. Some of his other views are original and non-standard but not intended to be irreligious. The author shows that Collins sometimes omits crucial evidence or draws the wrong inference from the evidence. Hobbes worshipped according to the rite of the Church of England, and his justification for the unity of religion and government was in line with the ideal of ancient Israel taught in the Old Testament. Hobbes argued that Christianity is not politically destabilizing and tried to reconcile Christian doctrine with modern science. The author’s reply to Collins is guided by the idea that interpretation is a form of inference to the best explanation.

New directions in voicing a vocation

Theology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 122 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-179
Author(s):  
Sally Myers
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Ministry Training ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Church ◽  
Comprehensive Study

This article compares contemporary theological frameworks used to define ‘vocation’ and ‘ministry’ with the reported experience of those overseeing, exploring and exercising a calling to ministry within the Church of England. A comprehensive study of the recommended reading for those exploring vocation and ministry revealed the terms to be ill-defined and tending towards polarization around two viewpoints – sacerdotal priesthood rooted in the Old Testament, and presbyteral leadership rooted in the Epistles – with little theological attention being given to other perspectives, not least the ministry of Jesus as presented in the gospels. It also revealed many missing voices within the recommended reading. It found that candidates rehearsed a limited and polarized understanding of vocation and ministry, effectively learning ‘BAPspeak’ (a language to be used at bishops’ advisory panels that recommend whether candidates should enter ministry training), but that their personal experience of vocation and subsequent ministry was much more diffuse, diverse and Jesus-shaped.

1998 Belief, openness and religious commitment

Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 123 (4) ◽  
pp. 271-277
Author(s):  
Maurice Wiles
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Moral Basis ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Spiritual Tradition ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Mystery Of God ◽  
The Church

Canon Professor Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) wrote this article in retirement. At the outset of his career he was an Evangelical (as his review of Barth, also reproduced in this centenary issue, indicates), but by the 1970s he had moved to, and continued in, a distinctly more liberal direction. A gradual realization of the ‘complexity of the issues involved’ in theology (and, not least, within the Bible) spurred this move, as this article suggests. His aim finally is to search for ‘an intellectual and moral basis for sharing conscientiously and wholeheartedly in the rich spiritual tradition of Christian worship, belief and practice, without blinding oneself to its faults’. As a young man Wiles was recruited to work on code breaking at Bletchley Park during the war. In maturity he held the Regius Chair of Divinity at Oxford from 1970 until 1991. He also chaired the Church of England doctrine commission that produced the liberal report Christian Believing (1976) and contributed to the controversial book The Myth of God Incarnate the following year. Among his own books were The Making of Christian Doctrine (1967), The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (1974), Faith and the Mystery of God (1982) and, using his patristic skills, his late study of Arianism, Archetypal Heresy (1996). Editor.

The Shaking of the Seven Hills

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 439-455
Author(s):  
P. D. L. Avis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of justification, for Luther the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae, was for the authors of the report Doctrine in the Church of England (1938) not worth mentioning. Here, however, the members of the Archbishops' Commission on Christian Doctrine were not representative of the Anglican tradition as a whole which has not been remiss in attending to the matter of justification. The doctrine presents a challenge to the Anglican attempt to find a via media and there are pronounced oscillations of emphasis in the Anglican tradition on this question, represented by Bishop Bull and J. H. Newman on the right and Hooker and F. D. Maurice on the left. Newman's Lectures on Justification provoked further efforts to find a synthesis and led, by the end of the nineteenth century, to a restatement of the doctrine of justification within Anglican theology, which though in certain respects catholic in form, was definitely evangelical in spirit.

Church Extension in Town and Countryside in Later Nineteenth-Century Leicestershire

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 427-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Urban Religion ◽  
Rural Religion ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Regular Contact ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

Studies of nineteenth-century urban religion have often been conducted with very little reference to the surrounding countryside. Even Obelkevich in his stimulating study of rural religion in Lincolnshire suggested that there, ‘In the Church of England, though the ideal and model of the village parish church continued to inspire town churchmen, towns and villages largely remained in separate compartments. Only through Methodism did the towns have much effect on village religious life. . . . The circuit, the key unit of Methodist organization, brought preachers and people from towns and villages into regular contact with each other and made it possible for the financial and human resources of the town chapels to contribute to the life of the outlying village chapels’. But the methodist exception is significant, not so much in a denominational sense (although the methodist form of organisation was in theory the best for this purpose) but because it is an example of a situation in which the money and men available in any one particular place were not sufficient to carry out what the church concerned wished to do there. It was therefore necessary to tap the resources of other places to help. In large towns such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, and in some of the smaller industrial towns as well, the necessary resources often had to be found within the town or not at all; and to that extent the study of urban religion on its own is understandable. But in many parts of the country rural evangelism was felt to be as urgent a priority as urban evangelism. The church of England sought to overcome the consequences of rural neglect; and all nonconformists, not only methodists, attempted to involve town members in the life of country chapels. Thus in less exclusively industrial parts of the country than Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and the Black Country, a genuine conflict of priorities between town and countryside could arise.

scholarly journals Levirate marriage amongst the Hebrews and widow's inheritance amongst the Yoruba: A comparative investigation

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samson O. Olanisebe ◽  
Olusegun A. Oladosu
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Comparative Investigation ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
The People ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

In ancient Israel, even though widowhood was not something people were praying for, when it came, the people involved were protected by the legal and customary structures already in place. One of those structures in the Old Testament is the institution of the levirate marriage where the right and the possession due to a widow without a son for her late husband could be protected and appropriated. A similar custom was also found amongst the pre-colonial Yoruba people through the widow�s inheritance which guarantees the welfare of the widow after the demise of her husband. However, these structures have been dismantled by Christianity, thereby exposing the majority of present-day widows to untold hardship. This article, therefore, through historical, descriptive and comparative methods, examines the customs of the levirate marriage and widow�s inheritance in the two cultures, ascertains how effective they were in addressing the welfare and protection of the rights and privileges of widows and recommends how the church can better see to the welfare of the widows in the society.

The Anglican Imagination of Matthew Arnold

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Matthew LaGrone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay is an attempt to write Matthew Arnold into the narrative of Anglican thought in the nineteenth century. Overviews of general religious thought in the Victorian era give an appropriate nod to Arnold, but the institutional histories of the Anglican Church have not acknowledged his contributions to defining Anglican identity. In many ways, this is quite understandable: Arnold broke with much of traditional Christian doctrine. But, and just as significant, he never left the Church of England, and in fact he was an apologist for the Church at a time when even part of the clergy seemed alienated. He sought to expand the parameters of permitted religious opinion to include the largest number of English Christians in the warm embrace of the national Church. The essay concludes that the religious reflections of Arnold must be anchored in an Anglican context.

Rendering unto Caesar?: The Politics of Church of England Clergy since 1980

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clive D. Field
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Degree Of Separation ◽  
Analysis And Synthesis ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

ABSTRACTThis is the first systematic attempt to chart the evolving political views of contemporary Church of England clergy. The article is based upon a comparative quantitative analysis and synthesis of eighteen national and four local surveys conducted between 1979 and 2004. Ministerial opinions on the state's influence on the Church and the Church's influence on the state are both considered. Ten specific conclusions are drawn. While the clergy generally cling to the concept of an Established Church, they are very critical of some of the traditional manifestations of that establishment. They also mostly think it highly appropriate for the Church to intervene in the world of party politics, and not simply on moral issues. In this they are positioned ahead of the thinking of many of the committed Anglican laity, for whom a degree of separation of religion and politics remains the ideal. The academic, ecclesiastical and political implications of these findings are briefly explored.

scholarly journals Die een wat sal kom: 'Messiaanse tekste' in die Ou Testament en ander Joodse geskrifte

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alphonso Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Long Time ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The one who is to come: �Messianic texts� in the Old Testament and other Jewish writingsAccording to the New-Testament authors, the life of Jesus, as Christ, should be seen in light of the Old-Testament texts. It seems that all the messianic texts in the Old Testament had been fulfilled in Jesus. The Messiah, who had been expected for a long time, was born in Bethlehem. This interpretation by the New-Testament authors has caused the church and Christians throughout the centuries to read the Old Testament as a prophecy, which is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This interpretation has caused impatience with Jews, who did not accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. This article addresses the question: How did ancient Israel understand the concept �messiah�? It seems that the term is much more complex than a single meaning would allow the reader to believe. This article thus focuses on the theological functioning of the term within the Hebrew Bible as well as in other Jewish writings.

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