Safeguarding Interiority

Enthusiasm ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 63-104
Author(s):  
Monique Scheer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Religious Enthusiasm ◽  
The Church

Following Chapter 1’s exploration of knowledge about emotions, Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examine how this plays out in practice. Chapter 2 looks at reactions to religious enthusiasm in nineteenth-century Germany to understand the demand for an interiorizing emotional practice. Starting with an examination of how the term Schwärmerei early in this period is redefined to create a kind of “proper,” inward religious experience, the chapter then focuses on the debates around how that interiority is to be accomplished. The emotional practices of evangelical revivals, the so-called “Protestant sects” and new forms of Methodism making their way across the Atlantic engender fascinated repulsion among liberal Protestant and scientific observers, but the focus in this chapter is on the deep and rather complex concern about them in the clerical press. German Lutheran pastors, unlike their more secular contemporaries, seek to maintain the possibility that the Holy Spirit can enter the heart, but view the exaltations of the “sects” as too exterior and superficial, and thus potentially dangerous. Harking back to older discourses, they fear such practices of enthusiasm can endanger the very institution of the Church.

Pneumatology

2021 ◽  
pp. 150-164
Author(s):  
Robert W. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Mystical Union ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Hypostatic Union ◽  
The Church ◽  
Father And Son

Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit played a central role in his theology. Beginning with the immanent Trinity, Edwards argued that the Holy Spirit is the bond of union of the Godhead who unites Father and Son in a communion of infinite, divine love. He then applied this concept Christologically to the hypostatic union, and soteriologically to the mystical union the Church enjoys with God. By closely identifying the Spirit with the divine affection that is communicated to the redeemed, Edwards effectively built his pneumatology directly into his discussions of grace, faith, and religious experience, a point which ensured that his doctrine of the Holy Spirit would pervade much of his writing.

Novatian's De Trinitate, 29: Evidence of the Charismatic?

1977 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-318
Author(s):  
Ronald Kydd
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Century ◽  
De Trinitate ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Equal Space ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Father And Son

This paper focuses attention upon the twenty-ninth chapter 1 of De Trinitate, a third-century theological treatise. Its author, Novatian, was a prominent member of the Roman College of Presbyters. However, his position did not engender feelings of loyalty sufficient to prevent his taking a surprising course of action when Cornelius became the Bishop of Rome in A.D. 251: he had himself consecrated to the same position. This step was a major factor in his being excommunicated in the same year. Subsequently, his personal status among the orthodox declined sharply, and very soon thereafter the records fall silent about him. However, in spite of this he continues to have a place among the theologians of the Church—a place which has been won for him almost single-handedly by De Trinitate. The book appeared in the A.D. 240s, being in fact the first major theological work to be written in Latin in Rome. Novatian produced it while still an eminent, well-respected member of the Roman church. As the title suggests, De Trinitate is about the Trinity, but Novatian by no means devotes equal space to all three members. His discussion of the Holy Spirit seems rather truncated when compared to the treatment afforded to the Father and Son, with virtually everything which is said about the Spirit appearing in chapter 29. Yet it is this chapter which will occupy our attention in this paper, because it appears to contain material which may provide hints about the religious experience of the Roman church in the mid-third century.

Eating with penitence: An essay on the local church eating responsibly

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-463
Author(s):  
David W. Priddy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Church ◽  
Industrial Agriculture ◽  
Specific Program ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Local Congregations ◽  
Ecological Concern ◽  
The Church

In this essay, I pose the question, “How might local congregations participate in food reform and agricultural renewal?” Given the problems of industrial agriculture and the wider ecological concern, this question is pressing. Instead of advocating a specific program, I focus on how the Church might address this question while keeping its commitment to being a repentant Church. First, I discuss the significance of attention and particularly the habit of attending to the Word and Sacrament. This posture, I argue, maintains the Church’s integrity, preventing it from merely branding itself or relying on its own resources. Second, I briefly explore the association of eating with the mission of the Church in the New Testament, highlighting the repeated theme of judgment and call to humility in the context of eating. Third, I draw out the importance of continual remorse over sin. This attitude is essential to the Church’s vocation and rightly appears in many historic liturgies. I argue that this posture should extend to the question of eating responsibly. Penitence demonstrates the Church’s relationship to the wider world and testifies to the source of the Church’s own life, the Holy Spirit, who does the work of renewal.

The Welsh Evangelical Community and ‘Finney's Revival’

1978 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Carwardine
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
High Pressure ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Second Great Awakening ◽  
New Divinity ◽  
Public Commitment ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Spiritual State

The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the emergence in American Calvinist churches of a new brand of religious revivalism. Energetic evangelicals successfully challenged the authority of a Calvinist theology which had seemed to emphasise the exclusiveness of the elect, and man's helplessness and inability to act in securing his own conversion. These evangelicals adopted a revivalism which, in contrast, reminded man of his responsibility and power, and which experimented with means to win converts that conservative evangelicals thought an affront to the operations of the Holy Spirit. The ‘new measures’, as they were called, included more direct preaching, often by revivalists who itinerated solely to stir churches and win converts, the ‘protracting’ of services over several days or weeks, and the ‘anxious seat’—the use of a special pew at the front of the congregation where those concerned for their spiritual state could go to be exhorted and prayed for, and where a public commitment might be expected. These measures—and the ‘New Divinity’ which gave them theological justification—became increasingly widespread during the 1820s and 1830s, the climax of the ‘Second Great Awakening’. In large part the impetus for change had come from the rapidly-growing Methodists, Arminian in theology and determined exponents of a high-pressure revivalism; but within the Calvinist churches the single most influential agent of change was the ‘high priest’ of revivalism, Charles Grandison Finney.

Yahweh, Women, and the Trinity

1975 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 234-242
Author(s):  
Jay G. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
New Age ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Trinity

“Might it not be possible, just at this moment when the fortunes of the church seem to be at low ebb, that we may be entering a new age, an age in which the Holy Spirit will become far more central to the faith, an age when the third person of the Trinity will reveal to us more fully who she is?”

The Church and the Development of Doctrine

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Chan
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Healthy Development ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
Living Body ◽  
Living Tradition ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Church

AbstractDoctrines are the authoritative teachings of the Church, yet the modern church is hampered by its inability to speak authoritatively even to its own members on matters of doctrine. One reason is that doctrines are widely perceived as archaic and fixed formulations with little significance for the present day. True doctrines, in fact, are constantly developing as the Church moves towards eschatological fulfillment. Yet for doctrines to develop properly there needs to be a proper ecclesiology. The Church is not an entity that God brought into being to return creation to its original purpose after the Fall; rather, the Church is prior to creation, chosen in Christ before the creation of the world (Eph. 1.4). It is a divine-humanity, ontologically linked to Christ the Head. It is the living Body of Christ, the totus Christus.Within the continuing life of prayer and worship, the Church’s doctrines are re-enacted, renewed and developed. These acts constitute the ecclesial experience or the living tradition. The living tradition is the transmission and development of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the on-going practices of the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost is not just to enable the Church to preach the gospel but to constitute the Church as part of the gospel itself. That is to say, the gospel story includes the story of the Spirit in the Church. The third person of the Godhead is revealed as such in his special relation to the Church. The Church, therefore, could be called the ‘polity of the Spirit’, that is, the public square in which the Spirit is especially at work to bring God’s ultimate purpose to fulfillment. There is, therefore, no separation between ecclesiology and pneumatology. They are necessary for maintaining the living tradition and ensuring the healthy development of doctrine until the Church attains unity of the faith. Pentecostals who see the Pentecost event as the distinctive mark of their identity have a special role to play: by becoming more truly catholic in their ecclesiology, they become more truly Pentecostal. This accords well with their early ecumenical instinct.

Eugene IV and the First Dissolution of the Council of Basle

1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loy Bilderback
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Other ◽  
Essential Singularity ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Prime Determinant ◽  
The Will ◽  
Great Schism ◽  
The Church ◽  
Will Of God ◽  
Divine Guidance

The Council of Basle was officially charged with three basic concerns: the reform of the Church in head and members; the extirpation of heresy, particularly Bohemian Hussitism; and the attainment of peace among Christian Princes. Yet, the Council was most absorbed by, and is most remembered for, a fourth, unscheduled concern. From its outset, the prime determinant of the actions and decisions of the Council proved to be the problem of living and working with the Papacy. In retrospect it is easy to see that this problem was insoluble. One could not expect the efficient functioning of the Church if there was doubt or confusion about the will of God, and the presence of such doubt and confusion was certain so long as even two agencies could gain support for their contentions that they were directly recipient to the Holy Spirit. Singularity of headship was absolutely necessary to the orderly processes of the Church. Yet the contradiction of this essential singularity was implicit at Constance in the accommodation, by one another of the curialists, the protagonists of an absolute, papal monarchy, and the conciliarists, who sought divine guidance through periodic General Councils. This accommodation, in turn, was necessary if the doubt and confusion engendered by the Great Schism was to be resolved. At Basle, this contradiction was wrought into a conflict which attracted a variety of opportunists who could further their ancillary or extraneous ends through a posture of service to one side or the other, and in so doing they obfuscated the issues and prolonged the struggle.

John Carroll and the Appeal to Evidence: A Pragmatic Defense of Principle

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-309
Author(s):  
Joseph M. McShane
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Active Intervention ◽  
The World ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
New Republic ◽  
John Carroll ◽  
The Church

Throughout his career John Carroll supported the American religious settlement with surprising and consistent enthusiasm. Indeed, his enthusiasm for the religious liberty of the new republic seemed to be boundless. Thus he never tired of celebrating and advertising its benefits. He assured American Catholics that it was “a signal instance of [God's] mercy” and a product of the active intervention of Divine Providence and the Holy Spirit, who have “tutored the minds of men” in such a way that Catholics could now freely worship God according to the “dictates of conscience.” Flushed with pride, he even predicted that if America were wise enough to abide by the terms of this providential arrangement, the nation would become a beacon to the world, proving that “general and equal toleration…is the most effectual method to bring all denominations of Christians to an unity of faith.” Finally, confident that the extraordinary freedom accorded American Catholics would make the American church “the most flourishing portion of the church,” he urged European states and churches to follow America's inspired lead.

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