Chapter VIII. Translation Of The Bible Into Swedish In 1641—Progress Of The Reformation—Ordinantia Of Westeras In 1544—Changes In Condition Of Bishops, Chapters, And Parish Priests, (Till King John III's Accession To The Throne In 1668)

Scottish fiction about the Reformation is concerned with the mechanics of historical change, which are rendered through a series of enchanted books and people discussed in Chapter 8. In the novel, The Monastery, describing the Dissolution and Reformation, Scott gothicizes the Bible as a magic book and the White Lady as its guardian to dramatize the mysterious nature of religious change, the dependence of the future on a Gothic past, and the need for interpretation. In Old Mortality, Scott’s protagonist escapes the frozen dualities of Covenanter and Claverhouse, revealing historical change itself as problematic in Humean terms and requiring a leap of faith. James Hogg contests this presentation of the Covenanters by re-enchanting them as supposed brownies, as mediators of history and nature, and in his Three Perils of Man reprises Scott’s wizard Michael Scott pitted against Roger Bacon and his ‘black book’ the Bible to present the Reformation as an eternal reality.

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Presbyterian Preaching

The Oxford Handbook of Presbyterianism ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190608392.013.37 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 506-523

Author(s):

Thomas G. Long

Keyword(s):

Digital Media ◽

Emotional Experience ◽

New School ◽

Intellectual Content ◽

The Bible ◽

The Reformation ◽

Korean Presbyterian ◽

Early Expression ◽

History Of ◽

School Conflict

Presbyterian preaching grew from roots in the Reformation, particularly the Calvinist wing. The fullest early expression of the character of Presbyterian preaching is in the Westminster Standards, documents produced in England by an assembly of Calvinist clergy and laymen in the mid-seventeenth century. These documents described the key qualities of Reformed, and thus Presbyterian, preaching: sermons grounded in the Bible, containing significant doctrinal content, and aimed at teaching and edifying congregants.The authors of the Westminster Standards prescribed preaching that was substantive and lively, filled with biblical and doctrinal content, and touched the hearts of hearers. Throughout the history of Presbyterian preaching, however, these twin goals were often difficult to attain. This tension between intellectual, content-centered preaching and more emotional, experience-centered preaching among Presbyterian is evident in such events as the Old Side–New Side controversy in the mid-1700s and the Old School–New School conflict from 1837 to 1869 (both in America), in Scottish Presbyterian preaching in the early nineteenth century, and in Korean Presbyterian preaching during the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twentieth century.Today as many Presbyterian preachers use digital media and conversational-style sermons, a strong desire continues for preaching that is clear, deeply theological and biblical, impassioned, and relevant.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780192898821.003.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Kirsten Macfarlane

Keyword(s):

Unintended Consequences ◽

Religious Culture ◽

Theory Of Change ◽

The Bible ◽

Biblical Scholarship ◽

The Enlightenment ◽

The Reformation ◽

Key Issues ◽

Confessional Identity ◽

The Relationship

The introduction begins by outlining how Broughton’s modern reputation as an angry puritan was created over two centuries by a series of historians with various confessional motivations. Next, it analyses Broughton’s early life as a promising scholar at Cambridge, and explains key issues such as how his beliefs about scripture affected his attitudes to the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible. Finally, it summarizes the three major interventions of this book. The first concerns the relationship between scholars’ beliefs about scripture and the methods they used to study it. Broughton shows that it was possible to be an innovative exponent of the historical-philological method, while also believing that the Bible was infallible and verbally inspired; and that these positions could be mutually reinforcing. But while scholars like Broughton have generally been used as proof of the ‘unintended consequences’ theory of change from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, the introduction uses him to critique this theory. The second intervention concerns the relationship between confessional identity and historical scholarship, building on recent works that have emphasized the impossibility of theologically ‘neutral’ scholarship in this period by extending their findings into new areas such as chronology. Lastly, the third intervention concerns the relationship between elite neo-Latin biblical scholarship and vernacular lay religious culture in this period. It argues that biblical scholarship, even of the most demanding kind, deeply appealed to ordinary readers of scripture, and posits Broughton as a pioneer in the field of accessible, vernacular-oriented— but still highly scholarly—biblical criticism.

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Erasmus, Desiderius (c.1466–1536)

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy ◽

10.4324/9780415249126-c014-1 ◽

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.

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Unsettling Theology: Sunday school children reading the text of the Bible in the age of recolonisation

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v72i1.3569 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 72 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Nico Botha

Keyword(s):

School Children ◽

Life Experiences ◽

Sunday School ◽

Real Life ◽

Blood Disease ◽

Reformed Church ◽

The Bible ◽

The People ◽

The Reformation ◽

Women Abuse

During Women’s month in South Africa (August), a group of Sunday school children from the rural congregation of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA), Middelburg- Nasaret, got together to read the narratives of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus and the healing of the woman suffering from a blood disease. The exercise which appears to be quite innocent is in a sense subversive in its hidden script. In the Reformed tradition, the pulpit as a centre of reading and preaching the Word has become the ‘holy of holiest’ which nobody, leave alone children, except the ordained minister could occupy. This is of course contrary to the intention of the Reformation to return the Bible to the people and have the people return to the Bible. The reading exercise of this article goes beyond all exegetical and theological presuppositions, unsettling conventional interpretations of Scripture. The children allow their real life experiences in the township of having witnessed, among others, child and women abuse to inform their reading of Mark 5:21–43. In the process they avoid a linear reading of the Bible which is based on the explication-application scheme of matters. Put differently, instead of doing a deductive reading of the portion, i.e. trying to explain or exegete the text clinically and then applying it to their context, they read it inductively, resulting in a hope sharing and hope giving understanding of the rising from the dead of the 12-year-old girl and the healing of the woman with a blood disease. A major spin-off of such reading of the Bible by children is the unlocking of refreshingly new avenues of reading the Bible and interpreting the text.

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In the Beginning Was the Image

In the Beginning Was the Image ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190074401.003.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. xxii-16

Author(s):

David H. Price

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

Medieval Theology ◽

Renaissance Humanism ◽

The Bible ◽

The Reformation ◽

Northern Renaissance ◽

The New Testament ◽

History Of ◽

Classical Culture ◽

In The Beginning

Renaissance artists represented the Bible as the preeminent monument of classical culture well before humanist scholars began their revolutionary efforts to recover the ancient forms of biblical texts. Once Renaissance humanism and the Reformation turned decisively to biblical philology (and began overturning the authority of the Vulgate Bible and medieval theology), artists supported their creation of innovative conceptualizations of the Bible. Remarkably, the three most influential artists of the Northern Renaissance—Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Hans Holbein the Younger—made profound contributions to all the major Renaissance and Reformation Bibles in Germany and Switzerland and to the biblical humanist movement generally. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the history of biblical humanism, including the emergence of new authoritative Bibles beginning with Erasmus’s first edition of the New Testament in the original Greek.

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The Letters of Pope Innocent III to Ireland

Studies in Church History ◽

10.1017/s0424208400004290 ◽

1964 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

pp. 154-159

Author(s):

P.J. Dunning

Keyword(s):

Canon Law ◽

Short Communication ◽

The Other ◽

British Isles ◽

The Reformation ◽

Peace Settlement ◽

Pope Innocent Iii ◽

King John

The purpose of this short communication is to call attention to an attempt to establish a definitive calendar of Pope Innocent III’s letters to Ireland, and also to indicate very briefly the value of those letters. The two chief ways in which papal letters have been transmitted are through originals or through copies. Copies of letters have survived in a variety of ways: in monastic or episcopal cartularies, in the rolls of royal chancery, in collections of canon law, but for this period mainly in the official papal registers.The dispersal of monastic archives during the Reformation period, together with the deliberate destruction of papal letters after 1536, partly explains why comparatively few original papal letters of medieval popes to the British Isles have survived. For Ireland, only five original letters of Innocent III are at present known to exist. Two of these are confirmations of property: one to the monastery of St Andrew of Stokes of its possessions in Ireland; and the other to the convent of Graney. The three remaining letters are connected with the peace settlement between Pope Innocent III and King John.

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