Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus.

1989 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Jerry H. Bentley ◽  
Erasmus ◽  
John C. Olin ◽  
Robert Walter
Keyword(s):  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation

Johan Eberlin Von Günzburg's Wolfaria The First Protestant Utopia

1967 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Groag Bell
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Microscopic Analysis ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation

It is now almost a century since a German theologian first discussed the life and work of Johan Eberlin von Günzburg, the Swabian folkpreacher who doffed his Franciscan habit to follow Luther. In the ensuing period, the published writings of this minor Reformation character have been submitted to microscopic analysis, pertaining to his theological, sociological, political and philological style by a variety of German scholars. So far, however, there has been no assessment of Johan Eberlin's significance against the background of Christian Humanism as it applied to the German Renaissance. With two recent exceptions there has been almost no reference to this fascinating figure in the Reformation literature available in the English language. I intend here to remedy this injustice and to throw some light on a personality of considerable historical interest by reviewing the internal evidence of his most important work—that part of his Fünfzehn Bundsgenossen (Fifteen Confederates) which comprises his utopia.

Responsibility

2021 ◽  
pp. 378-396
Author(s):  
William Schweiker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
Ethical Vision ◽  
The Way

This chapter explores the importance of moral responsibility in Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought, which in turn allows the reader to interpret his work within the wider compass of Christian humanism. While Niebuhr’s ethics never showcased the concept of responsibility in the way other thinkers did during his time, he nevertheless insisted that the moral capability of responsibility is basic to human dignity. Utilizing the distinction Max Weber made between two forms of ethics, the chapter suggests that moral responsibility constitutes the ‘form’, rather than the ‘norm’, of Niebuhr’s anthropological project. Niebuhr’s project can be seen as an attempt to retrieve the lost insights of the Reformation regarding sin and grace within the historical condition of modern life initiated by the Renaissance. This orientation in Niebuhr’s work bears some of the features of Christian humanism. The final section discusses how Niebuhr’s theological and ethical vision can contribute to Christian thinking in our time.

Erasmus, Desiderius (c.1466–1536)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Rummel
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
Absolute Knowledge ◽  
The Church ◽  
Textual Critic

Although Erasmus was not a systematic philosopher, he gave a philosophical cast to many of his writings. He believed in the human capacity for self-improvement through education and in the relative preponderance of nurture over nature. Ideally, education promoted docta pietas, a combination of piety and learning. Erasmus’ political thought is dominated by his vision of universal peace and the notions of consensus and consent, which he sees as the basis of the state. At the same time he upholds the ideal of the patriarchal prince, a godlike figure to his people, but accountable to God in turn. Erasmus’ epistemology is characterized by scepticism. He advocates collating arguments on both sides of a question but suspending judgment. His scepticism does not extend to articles of faith, however. He believes in absolute knowledge through revelation and reserves calculations of probability for cases that are not settled by the authority of Scripture or the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church, the conduit of divine revelation. Erasmus’ pioneering efforts as a textual critic of the Bible and his call for a reformation of the Church in its head and members brought him into conflict with conservative Catholic theologians. His support for the Reformation movement was equivocal, however. He refused to endorse the radical methods of the reformers and engaged in a polemic with Luther over the question of free will. On the whole, Erasmus was more interested in the moral and spiritual than in the doctrinal aspects of the Reformation. He promoted inner piety over the observance of rites, and disparaged scholastic speculations in favour of the philosophia Christi taught in the gospel. The term ‘Christian humanism’ best describes Erasmus’ philosophy, which successfully combined Christian thought with the classical tradition revived by Renaissance humanists.

Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus.

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 126
Author(s):  
Henry Heller ◽  
Erasmus ◽  
John Olin
Keyword(s):  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Reformation

scholarly journals Catholic Puritanism in Pre-Reformation England

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-450
Author(s):  
Peter Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation England ◽  
A Current

AbstractThis article seeks to identify a vein of ‘Puritanism’ running through orthodox religious culture in England over the century or so prior to the Break with Rome. It suggests that alongside the strong emphasis on the sensual and material in worship, it is possible to identify a current of austere and moralistic teaching, which was guarded or sceptical about the value of relics, images and pilgrimage. In the religious ferment around the turn of the fifteenth century, such attitudes developed alongside the forms of heterodoxy known as Lollardy, but were often explicitly anti-Lollard in intention. The article argues further that the strain of ‘puritanical’ Catholicism survived and developed through the fifteenth century, and into the sixteenth, partly as a consequence of the ability of print to preserve and promote old arguments. It converged with currents of Christian humanism, as well as providing a point of connection and reception for emergent evangelical ideas in the 1520s and later. The article thus aims to shed new light on the proposition that the origins of the Reformation are best looked for within the confines of late medieval orthodoxy.

A Reappraisal of William Tyndale's Debt to Martin Luther

1962 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Trinterud
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common

The colorful and powerful figure of Martin Luther dominates all study of the early years of the Reformation. Inevitably the first pages of the history of the Reformation in any region will begin with an effort by the author to trace the manner in which Luther's influence reached that area. In the study of the English Reformation one of the common ways of showing Luther's influence is to point to the work of the Bible translator William Tyndale. Numerous books on the English Reformation, on the history of the English Bible, and on Tyndale himself, have made of him a follower and an interpreter of Luther who played a major role in introducing the thought of the great reformer into England. A careful study of Tyndale's works, however, will show that his debt to Luther, and the “Lutheranism” of his views, has been over-stated. Tyndale, like many early sixteenth century religious reformers, made much use of Luther's name, fame, and works but without becoming a follower of those distinctive ideas of the German reformer which set him off from the other advocates of reform at the time. Tyndale's greatest debt was first to Christian humanism and then to the German-Swiss reformers of Zurich and Basel.

WHAT WERE COMMONWEALTH PRINCIPLES?

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 591-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN SCOTT
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Private Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Practical Identity ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Reformation

The historiography of English republicanism is dominated by the concept of classical republicanism. Its greatest shortcoming has been neglect of that subject's religious dimension. The consequent need is not simply to recover the radical protestant republican religious agenda. It is to explain why, when classical republicanism came to England, it did so in the moral service of a religious revolution. One context for the answer lay in Christian humanism. Another was the reformation, both magisterial and radical. Both informed the practical identity of the republican experiment as an attempted reformation of manners. So did the rational Greek moral philosophy, as indebted to Plato as to Aristotle, common to certain humanist and Christian political languages. In addition many of the themes of republican writing reflect the struggle by a traditional society to respond to unsettling forces, not only of political and religious, but also social and economic, change. Drawing upon all of these contexts, republican writers attempted to oppose not only private interest politics, embodied by monarchy or tyranny, on behalf of the public interested virtues of a self-governing civic community. This was part of a more general critique of private interest society; a republican attempt, from pride, greed, poverty, and inequality, to go beyond the word ‘commonwealth’ and reconstitute what Milton called ‘the solid thing’.

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