The Church Fathers and the Canonicity of the Apocalypse in the Sixteenth Century: Erasmus, Frans Titelmans, and Theodore Beza

The retrieval of patristic exegesis made great strides during the revival of Renaissance humanism and the spread of European Reformations. While devotion to the recovery of the early Church writings was primarily an intellectual movement, it was shaped and motivated by distinct social, political, religious, and philosophical developments of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe. Humanists appreciated ancient Christian writings because they sought to combine piety with eloquence, which would reinvigorate religion for educated laity. When humanists, such as LeFèvre and Erasmus, offered their translations and interpretation of Scripture and the church fathers, others responded with their own interpretations from Lutheran, Calvinist, Swiss Reformed, Anabaptist, English, or Catholic perspectives. Although the development of confessionalization shaped the integration of Renaissance patristic scholarship, the patristic reception of Protestants and Catholics portrayed both respect and criticism of ancient exegetes because they struggled to define their theological positions among a plurality of interpretations.

Reformed Theology and the Church Fathers

The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198723912.013.2 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 7-23

Author(s):

Aza Goudriaan

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Early Modern ◽

Early Modern Period ◽

Reception History ◽

Reformed Theology ◽

Church Fathers ◽

Early Christian ◽

Modern Period ◽

The Church

The purpose of this chapter is to describe and explain the inherent ambivalence of the reception of patristic writers in (early modern) Reformed theology by concentrating on the early modern period, when patristic authority was discussed intensely, and on those aspects of the reception history that are, more or less strictly, concerned with theology. The theological continuity between Reformed theology and the church fathers is visible most obviously in the adoption of early Christian creeds and in the fact that Reformed theologians commented upon and explained their own confessions by means of compilations of patristic testimonies. The pursuit of catholicity evidenced by numerous other publications and by the corresponding acceptance of patristic heresiology, however, had evident limitations, and was accompanied by caveats and criticisms that have been articulated from the sixteenth century onwards.

Profit ‘That is Condemned by the Word of God’: John Jewel’s Theological Method in His Opposition to Usury

Perichoresis ◽

10.1515/perc-2015-0003 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 39-56

Author(s):

André A. Gazal

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Sixteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Theological Method ◽

Word Of God ◽

Church Fathers ◽

The Subject ◽

Church Councils ◽

The Church ◽

Christian Society

Abstract John Jewel, regarded as the principal apologist and theologian for the Elizabethan Church, was also esteemed as one of England’s most important (if not the most important) authority on the subject of usury, and therefore was cited frequently by opponents of usury towards the end of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth century. One of the most sustained interpretations of Jewel as a theologian on the subject of usury was by Christoph Jelinger, who observed that the late bishop of Sarum employed the same theological method in opposing usury as he did in defending the doctrines and practices of the Church of England against its Catholic opponents, that is, by appealing to the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, Church Councils, and the example of the primitive church. This article seeks to confirm the opinion of Jelinger, and in doing so show that Jewel’s opposition to usury stemmed primarily from the conviction that it was both a vice and heresy that eroded the unifying attribute of Christian society which was love.

Spiritus, ecclesiae anima: Colet, Linacre, and a Galenic Mystical Body

Moreana ◽

10.3366/more.2014.51.3-4.8 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 51 (Number 197- (3-4) ◽

pp. 115-137

Author(s):

Daniel Lochman

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Medical Discourse ◽

Social Contacts ◽

Health Related ◽

John Colet ◽

The Church ◽

The Ideal

John Colet knew Thomas Linacre for approximately three decades, from their mutual residence in Italy during the early 1490s through varied pedagogical, professional, and social contacts in and around London prior to Colet’s death in 1519. It is not certain that Colet knew Linacre’s original Latin translations of Galen’s therapeutic works, the first printed in 1517. Yet several of Colet’s works associate a spiritual physician—a phrase linked to Colet himself at least since Thomas More’s 1504 letter inviting him to London—with Paul’s trope of the mystical body. Using Galenic discourse to describe the “physiology” of the ideal mystical body, Colet emphasizes by contrast a diseased ecclesia in need of healing by the Spirit, who alone can invigorate the mediating “vital spirits” that are spiritual physicians—ministers within the church. Colet’s application of sophisticated Galenic discourse to the mystical body coincided with the humanist interest in Galen’s works evident in Linacre’s translations, and it accompanied growing concern for health related to waves of epidemics in London during the first two decades of the sixteenth century as well as Colet’s involvement in licensure of London physicians. This paper explores the implications of Colet’s adaptation of Galenic principles to the mystical body and suggests that Colet fostered a strain of medical discourse that persisted well into the sixteenth century.

Petrarch's Defense of Secular Letters, the Latin Fathers, and Ancient Roman Rhetoric

Rhetorica A Journal of the History of Rhetoric ◽

10.1525/rh.1993.11.2.119 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 119-134

Author(s):

Brenda Deen Schildgen

Keyword(s):

Classical Rhetoric ◽

Church Fathers ◽

Rhetorical Situations ◽

Epistolary Form ◽

The Church ◽

Roman Rhetoric

Abstract: Like the Church Fathers before him, Petrarch was forced to defend secular learning against its detractors, and his defenses draw on many of the same arguments that Augustine and Jerome had used. In these defenses he blends classical rhetoric and Christian values, and his procedures also follow the traditions of classical rhetoric, relying on the epistolary form and utilizing the Ciceronian manner of debating all topics from opposite standpoints. Perhaps, however, because his indecisiveness complemented the classical rhetorical premise that many issues present many possible resolutions, Petrarch also rejects secular learning in some of his writings. His arguments are therefore conclusive only within their unique rhetorical situations.

Christus Virgo

Bulletin for the Study of Religion ◽

10.1558/bsor.v41i2.22 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 22-27

Author(s):

Sissel Undheim

Keyword(s):

Moral Status ◽

The Other ◽

Late Antique ◽

Church Fathers ◽

Early Christian ◽

Female Sex ◽

The One ◽

The Church

The description of Christ as a virgin, 'Christus virgo', does occur at rare occasions in Early Christian and late antique texts. Considering that 'virgo' was a term that most commonly described the sexual and moral status of a member of the female sex, such representations of Christ as a virgin may exemplify some of the complex negotiations over gender, salvation, sanctity and Christology that we find in the writings of the Church fathers. The article provides some suggestions as to how we can understand the notion of the virgin Christ within the context of early Christian and late antique theological debates on the one hand, and in light of the growing interest in sacred virginity on the other.

The Aggiornamento Phenomenon and the Second Vatican Council

Vestnik of Northern (Arctic) Federal University Series Humanitarian and Social Sciences ◽

10.37482/2227-6564-v053 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 98-105

Author(s):

Hiermonk Ioann ( Bulyko) ◽

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Roman Catholic Church ◽

Second Vatican Council ◽

Church Fathers ◽

John Xxiii ◽

The People ◽

Vatican Council ◽

Pope John Xxiii ◽

The Church

The Second Vatican Council was a unique event in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, it was intended to make the Roman Catholic Church more open to the contemporary society and bring it closer to the people. The principal aim of the council was the so called aggiornamento (updating). The phenomenon of updating the ecclesiastical life consisted in the following: on the one hand, modernization of the life of the Church and closer relations with the secular world; on the other hand, preserving all the traditions upon which the ecclesiastical life was founded. Hence in the Council’s documents we find another, French word ressourcement meaning ‘return to the origins’ based on the Holy Scripture and the works of the Church Fathers. The aggiornamento phenomenon emerged during the Second Vatican Council due to the movement within the Catholic Church called nouvelle theologie (French for “new theology”). Its representatives advanced the ideas that became fundamental in the Council’s decisions. The nouvelle theologie was often associated with modernism as some of the ideas of its representatives seemed to be very similar to those of modernism. However, what made the greatest difference between the two movements was their attitude towards the tradition. For the nouvelle theologie it was very important to revive Christianity in its initial version, hence their striving for returning to the sources, for the oecumenical movement, for better relations with non-Catholics and for liturgical renewal. All these ideas can be traced in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and all this is characterized by the word aggiornamento.

The Book of Common Prayer: A Guide

10.1093/oso/9780190689681.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Charles Hefling

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

The United States ◽

History Of The Book ◽

Book Of Common Prayer ◽

Prayer Book ◽

Corporate Worship ◽

History Of ◽

Common Prayer ◽

The Church

This book surveys the contents and the history of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacred text which has been a foundational document of the Church of England and the other churches in the worldwide community of Anglican Christianity. The Prayer Book is primarily a liturgical text—a set of scripts for enacting events of corporate worship. As such it is at once a standard of theological doctrine and an expression of spirituality. The first part of this survey begins with an examination of one Prayer Book liturgy, known as Divine Service, in some detail. Also discussed are the rites for weddings, ordinations, and funerals and for the sacraments of Baptism and Communion. The second part considers the original version of the Book of Common Prayer in the context of the sixteenth-century Reformation, then as revised and built into the Elizabethan settlement of religion in England. Later chapters discuss the reception, revision, rejection, and restoration of the Prayer Book during its first hundred years. The establishment of the text in its classical form in 1662 was followed by a “golden age” in the eighteenth century, which included the emergence of a modified version in the United States. The narrative concludes with a chapter on the displacement of the Book of Common Prayer as a norm of Anglican identity. Two specialized chapters concentrate on the Prayer Book as a visible artifact and as a text set to music.

Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780198723691.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Emma Mason

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Environmental Crisis ◽

Church Fathers ◽

Communal Experience ◽

In Christ ◽

The Church ◽

Francis Of Assisi

This chapter locates Rossetti in the context of the book’s ecotheological argument, which traces an ecological love command in her writing through her engagement with Tractarianism, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Church Fathers, and Francis of Assisi. It establishes her Anglo-Catholic imagining of the cosmos as a fabric of participation and communal experience embodied in Christ. The first section reads Rossetti in the context of current Victorian ecocriticism, which underplays the role of Christianity in the development of nineteenth-century environmentalism. The next sections question critical readings of Rossetti as a reclusive thinker and argue instead for an educated and politicized Christian for whom indifference to the spiritual is complicit with an environmental crisis in which the weak and vulnerable suffer most. This introduction also refers to the wider field of Rossetti studies and introduces her reading of grace and apocalypse as a major contribution to the intradiscipline of Christianity and ecology.

‘The healthe of my soule’

10.1093/oso/9780198784814.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Nicola Clark

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Early Stage ◽

The Reformation ◽

The Family ◽

Kinship Relations ◽

Royal Supremacy ◽

The Church

Throughout the sixteenth century and beyond, the Howards are usually described as religiously ‘conservative’, resisting the reformist impulse of the Reformation while conforming to the royal supremacy over the Church. The women of the family have played little part in this characterization, yet they too lived through the earliest stages of the Reformation. This chapter shows that what we see is not a family following the lead of its patriarch in religious matters at this early stage of the Reformation, but that this did not stop them maintaining strong kinship relations across the shifting religious spectrum.