Sixteenth-Century Reformed Reception of Aquinas

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-143
Author(s):  
David S. Sytsma
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Doctrine Of God

The knowledge of Aquinas’ works among Reformed authors of the sixteenth century varies widely from those, such as John Calvin, who rarely cite him, to Peter Martyr Vermigli, who received a doctorate in the via antiqua at Padua and drew heavily on Thomas even after his conversion to Reformed Protestantism. Martin Bucer initiates a trend in the 1530s of placing Thomas among the ‘sounder scholastics’ on account of his Augustinian soteriology. Leading Reformed theologians follow Bucer’s terminology and comparatively positive estimate of Thomas, even while polemicizing against medieval scholasticism and perceived Pelagian tendencies within late medieval theology. By the end of the sixteenth century Reformed theologians regularly cite Thomas favourably, albeit also eclectically. Aquinas’ influence on nascent Reformed orthodoxy, and to a lesser extent earlier theologians, is evident on a wide variety of topics, including prolegomena, biblical hermeneutics, the doctrine of God, predestination, humanity, free will, natural law, and Christology.

scholarly journals John Calvin's Christological Assertion of Word Authority in the Context of Sixteenth Century Ecclesiological Polemics

1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-486
Author(s):  
John D. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Face ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
The Church

The late medieval synthesis reflected in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) generally and in the doctrine of transubstantiation in particular established an understanding of the nature of the church and authority that was to be varied and wide in its effects. Transubstantiation as doctrine and as coalescor of Church worship laid the groundwork for a particularly formative understanding of the ekklesia of Christ. It issued in a view of immanental, divine authority and grace that would come to manifest itself in the indulgences, the treasury of merits, invocation of saints, relics, etc. To be critical of the Mass was to bring into question the entire hierarchy of the Church and its authority on earth. In this context of strong ecclesiological authority, God was reckoned primarily as immanent and immediate through the papal head. In the face of this development, John Calvin asserted that Christ, as center of all true Christian reality, is the necessary focus and the preeminent authority in and to the Church through the Word of God, the Scriptures.

scholarly journals John Ireland and the Transformation of Scotist Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-95
Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
John Duns Scotus ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Duns Scotus ◽  
Perfect Being Theology

John Ireland was the most distinguished Scottish theologian of the fifteenth century. Significantly, his own theology was deeply impacted by that of John Duns Scotus, whom he was proud to acknowledge a fellow countryman. This chapter discusses Ireland’s theology, focusing on his transformation of key Scotist motifs. It reveals Ireland’s profound debt to a Scotistic pattern of perfect-being theology, both directly and indirectly through the mediation of Ramon de Sabunde, the controversial fifteenth-century member of the school of Ramon Lull. It also positions his complex discussion of grace and free will as a pastoral via media between an Augustinian-Scotist and Ockhamist account of predestination. Overall, Ireland’s distinctive theological synthesis represents a creative response to some of the key debates of late medieval theology, and one whose influence was felt on the next generation of Scottish theologians.

Sixteenth-Century Reception of Aquinas by Luther and Lutheran Reformers

2021 ◽  
pp. 103-120
Author(s):  
David Luy
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
The Relationship

Luther’s reception of Aquinas depended to a large extent upon various receptions and uses of Aquinas’ theology he encountered in the early sixteenth century. The construal of Aquinas that Luther appropriated from these various sources rendered the angelic doctor indistinguishable in many salient respects from late medieval nominalist thinkers. As a result, Luther’s critique of Aquinas is frequently little more than a reiteration of arguments he had already formulated in his early anti-scholastic writings where Aquinas was not a significant person of interest. By the late 1510s, Luther came to blame Aquinas for the ascent of a pernicious Aristotelianism in medieval theology and thus felt compelled to reject Aquinas and Thomism in very strong terms. It is clear in retrospect that Luther misinterpreted Aquinas at a number of critical junctures. This fact raises important questions about the relationship between the theology of Luther and the theology of Aquinas.

Lutherans and the Suffering of Christ

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Heal
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Mining Region

Chapter 5 focuses on one particular type of Lutheran devotional image: the crucifix. It examines transformations in Lutheran Passion piety from the early Reformation to the era of Paul Gerhardt (1607–76), using this to illustrate the increasing significance accorded to images. Luther himself had condemned the excesses of late-medieval Passion piety, with its emphasis on compassion for Christ and the Virgin Mary, on physical pain and on tears. From the later sixteenth century onwards, however, Lutheran sermons, devotional literature, prayers and poetry described Christ’s suffering in increasingly graphic terms. Alongside this, late-medieval images of the Passion were restored and new images were produced. Drawing on case studies from the Erzgebirge, a prosperous mining region in southern Saxony, and Upper Lusatia, the chapter investigates the ways in which images of the Passion were used in Lutheran communities during the seventeenth century.

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

Schools of Empiricism

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-289
Author(s):  
Andreas Friedolin Lingg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Mining District ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Scientific Observation ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Mining Town ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Abstract Recent research emphasizes that empiricist approaches already emerged long before the seventeenth and eighteenth century. While many of these contributions focus on specific professions, it is the aim of this article to supplement this discourse by describing certain social spaces that fostered empiricist attitudes. A particularly interesting example in this respect is the mining region of the Erzgebirge (Saxony) in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. The following article will use this mining district as a kind of historical laboratory, as a space not only for scientific observation but also as a structure within which specific forms of knowledge were socially tested, to show how the economic transformation of this region supported the rise of characteristic elements of empiricist thinking. It is common practice to link the appraisal of useful knowledge, (personal) experience and the distrust towards (scholastic) authorities in those days with only small minorities. By addressing not only the struggles of the commercial elites but also the challenges faced by the average resident of a mining town, this paper tries to add to this view by demonstrating how entire masses of people inhabiting the late medieval Erzgebirge were affected by and schooled to think in empiricist ways.

Public and Private: The Late Medieval Wall Paintings of Haddon Hall Chapel, Derbyshire

2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 179-205
Author(s):  
Mellie Naydenova
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Public Statement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
Private Devotion

This paper focuses on the mural scheme executed in Haddon Hall Chapel shortly after 1427 for Sir Richard Vernon. It argues that at that time the chapel was also being used as a parish church, and that the paintings were therefore both an expression of private devotion and a public statement. This is reflected in their subject matter, which combines themes associated with popular beliefs, the public persona of the Hall's owner and the Vernon family's personal devotions. The remarkable inventiveness and complexity of the iconography is matched by the exceptionally sophisticated style of the paintings. Attention is also given to part of the decoration previously thought to be contemporary with this fifteenth-century scheme but for which an early sixteenth-century date is now proposed on the basis of stylistic and other evidence.

Confessions

2018 ◽  
pp. 18-41
Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
The Future

This chapter discusses the conceptual and practical tools of Catholicism that many colonial subjects used to shape their futures. Christianity came with a host of ideas and practices that influenced one's relationship to the future, even the future of eternity in the form of salvation or damnation. Introduced through European missionaries in the sixteenth century, such concepts as free will and sin demanded new ways not only of thinking about religion and spirituality but also of living and relating to time. The chapter draws on a rich body of scholarship related to these themes but also delves into a unique set of primary sources, especially the intriguing genre of confession manuals. When examined over the arc of the colonial period, these sources reveal an evolving sense of individual futuremaking through the tools of Catholicism.

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