Moderate Theology and Preaching c.1750–1800

Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown

Through the Moderate movement, the clergy of the later eighteenth-century Church of Scotland became actively engaged with the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment. This chapter explores the role of the Moderate sermon in this process of cultural engagement, focusing on two main themes. First, it considers how Moderate sermons in the later eighteenth century conveyed an optimistic, world-affirming and highly practical set of theological teachings. For Moderate preachers, God had given individuals the innate capacity—in the form of the moral sense or conscience—that would enable them to respond actively to the divine guidance of Scripture in exercising self-control and contributing to social progress. Second, the chapter shows how Moderate sermons also proclaimed that God was active in history, using human actors, often in ways not intended by those actors, to advance the divine plan for the world, which involved progress towards a future order of peace and freedom.

Author(s):  
Cristina Gimeno-Maldonado

Resum: Carmelo Esmaltado con tantas brillantes estrelles, cuantas flores terceras, fecundas de frutos de virtud y religión, cultivó y fijo en el cielo de la Santa Iglesia la venerable Orden Tercera de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, és el títol de l’obra que el carmelita aragonès Roque Alberto Faci (1684-1744) va publicar el 1743. El llibre és un tractat per als membres de la tercera ordre del Carmel en què trobem diverses biografies de terciàries carmelites. El que pretendrem a partir de l’anàlisi de la obra i les biografies, és fixar el paper de les terciàries al món carmelita. Per això, analitzarem l’objectiu de l’autor tenint en compte la religiositat i espiritualitat del segle XVIII i la projecció de la Il·lustració. Paraules clau: Carmel, Dones, Religiositat, Seglar, Terciaris Abstract: Carmelo Esmaltado con tantas brillantes estrelles, cuantas flores terceras, fecundas de frutos de virtud y religión, cultivó y fijo en el cielo de la Santa Iglesia la venerable Orden Tercera de Nuestra Señora del Carmen, is the title of the book wrote by the aragonian carmelite Roque Alberto Faci (1684-1744) published in 1743. The issue is a treaty for the members of the Third Order of Carmel where we can find several biographies of the carmelites woman of third order. What we pretend by analyzing their work and biography is to set the role of the woman of the third order in the world Carmel. For that, we aimed copyright considering religiosity and spirituality of the eighteenth century and the projection of the Enlightenment.   Keywords: Carmel, Woman, Religiosity, Secular, Tertiary


1980 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francois Nectoux ◽  
John Lintott ◽  
Roy Carr-Hill

This article is concerned with the way that social statistics reflect particular views of the world, and focuses on the specific case of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's program to develop a set of social indicators. Some illustrations of previous attempts to collect social indicators are given, but the bulk of the article discusses the series of contradictions which regulate the generation and use of statistics by governments, the principal one being between measures which play the ideological role of displaying economic and social “progress” and measures which are of direct use in social planning. This is discussed both for social indicators in general and for social concerns linked to the measurement of health. The article ends with an attempt to evaluate the future of the OECD program within the development of modern capitalism.


1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-188
Author(s):  
Alexander Lipski

It is generally accepted that even though rationalism was predominant during the eighteenth century, a significant mystical trend was simultaneously present. Thus it was not only the Age of Voltaire, Diderot, and Holbach, but also the Age of St. Martin, Eckartshausen and Madame Guyon. With increased Western influence on Russia, it was natural that Russia too would be affected by these contrary currents. The reforms of Peter the Great, animated by a utilitarian spirit, had brought about a secularization of Russian culture. Father Florovsky aptly summed up the state of mind of the Russian nobility as a result of the Petrine Revolution: “The consciousness of these new people had been extroverted to an extreme degree.” Some of the “new people,” indifferent to their previous Weltanschauung, Orthodoxy, adopted the philosophy of the Enlightenment, “Volter'ianstvo” (Voltairism). But “Volter'ianstvo” with its cult of reason and belief in a remote creator of the “world machine,“ did not permanently satisfy those with deeper religious longings. While conventional Orthodoxy, with its emphasis on external rites, could not fill the spiritual vacuum, Western mysticism, entering Russia chiefly through freemasonry, provided a satisfactory alternative to “Volter'ianstvo.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
Marthe Kretzschmar

Knowledge of the materiality of stone during the Enlightenment expanded following the exploration of mineralogical structure, to alter ideas about taxonomy and challenge the role of rocks in the history of the earth. Close studies of the material of marble sculpture generated expertise on grain size, surface varieties and stone deposits. This mode of reception became intertwined with contemporary controversies about the age of the earth. This article focuses on both French sculpture and geological discourses of the eighteenth century to reveal an international and interdisciplinary network centring on protagonists such as Denis Diderot, Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach and Étienne-Maurice Falconet; through these figures, debates can be connected concerning both geology and art theory. Within these contexts, the article discusses the translation processes between these artistic and geological interests.


Author(s):  
Paul Helm

This chapter is an attempt to gauge the theology of the Church of Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century by considering a representative selection of theological writers of that period. Each of those considered—Thomas Blackwell, Robert Riccaltoun, and Thomas Halyburton—held parish ministries, two them for most of their adult lives, and two of them held chairs of theology. Distinct personalities, each upheld the position of the Westminster Standards con animo. Yet each reveal in their different ways an awareness of changes that the Enlightenment was bringing, calling for adaptation to the literary form of theology, or in its apologetic direction.


2020 ◽  
pp. 132-167
Author(s):  
Graham Harrison

This chapter sets out a detailed account of America’s capitalist transformation from the early 1700s. It shows how homestead and plantation agriculture generated a colonial economy. It stresses the importance of independence and then the civil war to the construction of a state and a nation. The chapter looks in detail at the varied forms of production throughout the territory and highlights the centrality of frontier expansion and dispossession. It discusses the role of plantation slavery and its abolition in capitalist growth. It then goes on to look at the ‘gilded age’ as one of developmentalism: forging a national economy, promoting industry, and conflating security issues with economic growth. It notes the slow social progress and crisis-prone nature of capitalist development, arguing that this is in the nature of capitalist transformation. It concludes by noting that the world of ‘late’ development is constructed by Britain and America’s capitalist transformations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Ossi

Vivaldi's concerto titles draw ambivalent reactions from historians, who see them as commercial hooks, rarely reflecting musical substance. But titles condition a work's reception, connecting it to a cultural context by which to steer a listener's reactions, both intellectual and affective. Eighteenth-century writers on aesthetics recognized the role of textual “ideas” in the reception of music. Vivaldi's Il Proteo, ò Il mondo al rovverscio is regarded as a “trick piece” in which the solo violin and cello parts are “reversed,” each being written in the other's clef. The concerto, however, invokes a deeper conception of the mundus inversus metaphor, in that it constitutes a remarkably sophisticated exploration of upside-down compositional practices. While the opening movement challenges notions of “correct” musical syntax, evoking the Carnival celebrations of the “world upside down,” the last presents a well-ordered example of Vivaldian ritornello form. Vivaldi included Il Proteo as the first concerto in a large group sold to Pietro Ottoboni in the mid-1720s, twelve of which bear titles. Some are as concrete as “The Four Seasons,” but others are more abstract, deriving from affective or intellectual subjects such as“Il riposo.” Il Proteo, in this context, seems especially sophisticated, cleverly satirizing some of the composer's own trademark compositional techniques. Its self-conscious treatment of style appears to address contemporary debates regarding music's ability to carry “meaning,” an ability that members of Ottoboni's Arcadian Academy seemed to deny but that others, such as the philosopher Antonio Conti, endorsed. Might Vivaldi have fueled these debates with a provocative set of concertos headed by Il Proteo?


1960 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
George L. Mosse

The relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment presents a subtle and difficult problem. No historian has as yet fully answered the important question of how the world view of the eighteenth century is related to that of traditional Christianity. It is certain, however, that the deism of that century rejected traditional Christianity as superstitious and denied Christianity a monopoly upon religious truth. The many formal parallels which can be drawn between Enlightenment and Christianity cannot obscure this fact. From the point of view of historical Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, the faith of the Enlightenment was blasphemy. It did away with a personal God, it admitted no supernatural above the natural, it denied the relevance of Christ's redemptive task in this world. This essay attempts to discover whether traditional Christian thought itself did not make a contribution to the Enlightenment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK R. F. WILLIAMS

AbstractThis article assesses the role of memory, interiority, and intergenerational relations in the framing of early modern experiences and narratives of travel. It adopts as its focus three generations of the Clerk family of Penicuik, Scotland, whose travels through Europe from the mid-seventeenth century onward proved formative in the creation of varied ‘cosmopolitan’ stances within the family. While such widely studied practices as the ‘Grand Tour’ have drawn on discourses of encounter and cultural engagement within the broader narratives of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, this article reveals a family made deeply anxious by the consequences of travel, both during and after the act. Using diaries, manuscript correspondence, memoirs, and material objects, this article reveals the many ways in which travel was fashioned before, during, and long after it was undertaken. By shifting focus away from the act of travel itself and towards its subsequent afterlives, it explores the ways in which these individuals internalized what they experienced in the course of travel, how they reconciled it with the familiar, quotidian world to which they returned, and how the ‘cosmopolitan’ worldviews they brought home were made to inform the generations that followed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 118-139
Author(s):  
Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo

Abstract The role of education and research in social progress is vital. Since China was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001, its economic, financial and trade assistance with Africa has intensified, reflecting certain aspects of the claims associated with the Bandung Conference in 1955. And Japanese relations with Africa, which were at their peak from the end of 1980s through the beginning of the 1990s, have steadily been declining. Furthermore, as China has become the second largest economy in the World since 2010, it has begun projecting its influential power in Africa. Despite the newfound emergence of Chinese power in Africa, it is Japan that has created the strongest institutional support of its activities in the name of new Japan International Cooperation Agency ( JICA), which redefines Japan relationship with Africa through the TICAD initiative. The competition between these two powers can benefit Africa if she can build her political leverage in her own capacity to identify her priorities with confidence and determination. Using comparative and historical perspectives, this article focuses on the examination of the new trends regarding Chinese and Japanese assistance to Africa with a particular focus on education and research.


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