Humanitas as Discriminating Factor in the Educational Writings of Erasmus and Luther

2005 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riemer A. Faber
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Desiderius Erasmus ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Practical Advice ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Classical Culture

AbstractBetween 1520 and 1530 Desiderius Erasmus published several treatises on education in which he provides practical advice about subjects worthy of study and the ideological assumptions which support it. Drawing special attention to his understanding of the natural capabilities of humanity, this article seeks to illustrate the relation between one of Erasmus's theological premises and his promotion of classical culture. During the same period Martin Luther wrote three influential educational tracts and also engaged Erasmus in a debate over the freedom of the will, which forced both the Christian humanist and the Wittenberg reformer to express clearly their understandings of humanity in its natural state. A comparison of their divergent theological positions reveals a fundamental difference in their views of education and its value. Whereas Erasmus justifies the study of ancient secular authors by means of his positive notion of humanitas, Luther subordinates education to the theological rediscoveries of the Wittenberg reformation. The article concludes that further comparative studies of various theological presuppositions and the educational programs they support will advance the understanding of the connections between the ideals and the realities of schooling in sixteenth-century Europe.

Liberty and Religion

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilary Gatti
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Dominican Order ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Giordano Bruno ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Thinking

This chapter addresses the question of liberty in sixteenth-century religious debates. It first takes a look at the discussion between the Augustinian friar Martin Luther and Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam concerning the freedom of the will. The chapter then turns to the theological thinking of John Calvin and the reintroduction into the Protestant world of the notion of heresy. Hereafter the chapter details the circumstances surrounding the dramatic rupture between the friar Giordano Bruno and the Dominican order, including the philosophical doctrines which eventually landed him in the Inquisition. Finally, this chapter follows up on Bruno's insights through the commentary of theologians Richard Hooker and Jacob Harmensz, who is more widely known as Jacobus Arminius.

Rethinking Renaissance Aristotelianism: Bernardo Segni’s Ethica, the Florentine Academy, and the Vernacular in Sixteenth-Century Italy*

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 824-865 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Lines
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Italian Translation ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will

AbstractIn 1550 Bernardo Segni, a member of the Florentine Academy, published an Italian translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Practically unstudied, Segni’s work represents an important moment in the evolution of vernacular Aristotelianism (and philosophy more generally) in the Renaissance. This essay examines Segni’s approach to the text, his familiarity (or not) with the Greek and Latin traditions, and his discussion of a philosophical problem, the freedom of the will. It shows that in all these areas Segni was well aware of Latin interpretations. The essay thus argues that studies of Renaissance Aristotelianism need to abondon their longstanding concentration on the Latin tradition alone and consider the complex and multilevel interactions of Latin and vernacular philosophy.

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.

Free Agent or ‘Conscious Automaton’? Contrasting Interpretations of the Individual in Spencer's Writing on Social and Moral Life

2003 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Offer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
Policy Sociology ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Individual

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.

Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart

1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
American Mind ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Work ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.

scholarly journals Evangelical Responses to the Question of Religious Pluralism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Cecily May Worsfold
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Core Beliefs ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Will ◽  
Evangelical Movement ◽  
Will Of God

<p>The relatively recent rise of religious pluralism has significantly affected the evangelical movement, the roots of which are traceable to the sixteenth century Reformation. In particular, the theological implications of religious pluralism have led to debate concerning the nature of core beliefs of evangelicalism and how these should be interpreted in the contemporary world. While evangelicals continue to articulate a genuine undergirding desire to “honour the authority of Scripture”, differing frameworks and ideals have led to a certain level of fracturing between schools of evangelical thought. This research focuses on the work of three evangelical theologians – Harold Netland, John Sanders and Clark Pinnock – and their responses to the question of religious pluralism. In assessing the ideas put forward in their major work relevant to religious pluralism this thesis reveals something of the contestation and diversity within the evangelical tradition. The authors' respective theological opinions demonstrate that there is basic agreement on some doctrines. Others are being revisited, however, in the search for answers to the tension between two notions that evangelicals commonly affirm: the eternal destiny of the unevangelised; and the will of God that all humankind should obtain salvation. Evangelicals are deeply divided on this matter, and the problem of containing seemingly incompatible views within the confines of “evangelical belief” remains. This ongoing division highlights the difficulty of defining evangelicalism in purely theological terms.</p>

scholarly journals Edwards on the Incompatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free Will

Sententiae ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-45
Author(s):  
Oleh Bondar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Divine Foreknowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Theological Fatalism ◽  
Nelson Pike ◽  
Necessity Of The Past

In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.

scholarly journals La circolazione dei modelli: calchi da Michelangelo tra Emilia e Veneto, nella seconda metà del Cinquecento

Venezia Arti ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Fadda
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Reggio Emilia ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Michelangelo Buonarroti ◽  
San Lorenzo ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Will ◽  
King Of France ◽  
Francis I

In Reggio Emilia, the sculptor Prospero Spani, also known as Clemente (1516-1584), created two statues representing Adam and on the facade of the cathedral. Along with Saint Daria and Saint Crisanto, they were both commissioned in 1552. The two statues indisputably draw inspiration from Dawn and Dusk, which are part of the monument dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, work of Michelangelo Buonarroti. In January 1892, Eva’s leg by Prospero Clemente broke and fell to the ground. During the restoration, it was noticed that the leg and all other statues were empty inside. There is no formal documentary evidence of Clemente travelling to Florence, where Buonarroti's New Sacristy was opened to the public in 1556 and where, only later on, by the will of Cosimo I, were carried out some engravings representing the whole composition. Despite the existence of other drawings, casts were mainly responsible for spreading Michelangelo’s inventions for the Medici tombs. In the sixteenth century, it was only possible to talk of a culture of casts after 1540 King Francis I Valois’ initiative to ask Francesco Primaticcio – who was already occupied working for him at the decoration of Fontainebleau – to procure the moulds of Rome’s best ancient statues in order to reproduce them. Among the commissioned casts there were also those from Michelangelo, an artist who was extremely admired by the French. As known, masterpieces realised for the King of France had an immediate impact in Italy, which was primarily possible thanks to Primaticcio’s numerous trips in Emilia, where the painter had his own home and used to recruit his collaborators.

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