scholarly journals The Doctrine of Soteriology from a Comparative Perspective

Author(s):  
Dominic Onsongo Nyambisa

Although the doctrine of soteriology (salvation) is core to Christianity, it has divided ecclesiology for over five centuries, since the Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century. There is a misunderstanding on the role of grace and works of faith in the process of attaining salvation, especially between the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, particularly the Lutherans. The misunderstandings have been visible in the process of teaching and practice of this doctrine to their respective memberships; and many Christians are in dilemma in regard to work or not to work so as to earn salvation. The teaching on justification that leads to salvation deals with how both grace and works are involved in the process that leads to salvation. The use of the Hegelian dialect, in this article, helps us to find and propose a common way of understanding soteriology. It also guides us in understanding the teachings from the proponents of salvation by grace alone and from those who antagonistically propose that both God’s grace and a believer’s works play a role in God’s salvific plan in an individual. We therefore aim at finding a way of teaching Christians in our contemporary world in matters regarding soteriology from its doctrinal perspectives. It is anticipated that this will help in addressing the rift that obtains in the teaching of the doctrine of soteriology. Hence, this article will strive to shed more light on how one could receive justification in order to be in God’s salvific plan.

Author(s):  
Mark Greengrass

Letter exchange occupies a significant and growing role in the activities of the Protestant Reformers. This chapter offers explanations for its growing significance in the evolution of the Protestant Reformation. It analyses what over a century of investment in editing the correspondence of the magisterial Reformers has achieved. It offers a yearly profile of the surviving editorial correspondence. At the same time, it underlines the limitations of our concentration on the letters of magisterial Reformers by examining the role of letter exchange in the political evolution of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, and especially in the context of the coalitions at a distance that sustained it. It ends by evoking martyr letters, as found in the martyrologies of John Foxe and Jean Crespin, but also in a devotional context in Hutterite and Anabaptist dissenting traditions.


1992 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-238
Author(s):  
Howard Clark Kee

“[T]he vitality of the church is regained when it recovers the revolutionary insights of its founders, Jesus and Paul. In the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and in the renewal movements that have taken place in both Roman Catholic and Protestant circles in the present century, it has been the fresh appropriation of the insights of Jesus and Paul about the inclusiveness of people across ethnic, racial, ritual, social, economic, and sexual boundaries that has restored the relevance and vitality of Christian faith and has lent to Christianity as a social and intellectual movement a positive, humane force in the wider society.”


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Daniel Hummel

A small but growing area of public administration scholarship appreciates the influence of religious values on various aspects of government. This appreciation parallels a growing interest in comparative public administration and indigenized forms of government which recognizes the role of culture in different approaches to government. This article is at the crossroads of these two trends while also considering a very salient region, the Islamic world. The Islamic world is uniquely religious, which makes this discussion even more relevant, as the nations that represent them strive towards legitimacy and stability. The history and core values of Islam need to be considered as they pertain to systems of government that are widely accepted by the people. In essence, this is being done in many countries across the Islamic world, providing fertile grounds for public administration research from a comparative perspective. This paper explores these possibilities for future research on this topic.


Author(s):  
Matthew A. Shadle

Pope John Paul II wrote his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus to offer a Catholic vision of political and economic life after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the democratization of many countries in Latin America and Asia. The encyclical provided a stronger defense of the free-market economy than had previous Catholic social teaching, and neoconservative Catholics saw it as a vindication of their views. Centesimus Annus also harshly condemns consumerism, however, and proposes that the state has a greater role in ensuring that the economy serves the common good than do the neoconservatives. John Paul II recognizes the essential role of human creativity and ingenuity in the economy, but balances this by emphasizing that the human person is the recipient of God’s grace.


Author(s):  
Lucia Dacome

Chapter 7 furthers the analysis of the role of anatomical models as cultural currencies capable of transferring value. It does so by expanding the investigation of the early stages of anatomical modelling to include a new setting. In particular, it follows the journey of the Palermitan anatomist and modeller Giuseppe Salerno and his anatomical ‘skeleton’—a specimen that represented the body’s complex web of blood vessels and was presented as the result of anatomical injections. Although Salerno was headed towards Bologna, a major centre of anatomical modelling, he ended his journey in Naples after the nobleman Raimondo di Sangro purchased the skeleton for his own cabinet of curiosities. This chapter considers the creation and viewing of an anatomical display in di Sangro’s Neapolitan Palace from a comparative perspective that highlights how geography and locality played an important part in shaping the culture of mid-eighteenth-century anatomical modelling.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
KAARLO HAVU

Abstract The article analyses the emergence of decorum (appropriateness) as a central concept of rhetorical theory in the early sixteenth-century writings of Erasmus and Juan Luis Vives. In rhetorical theory, decorum shifted the emphasis from formulaic rules to their creative application in concrete cases. In doing so, it emphasized a close analysis of the rhetorical situation (above all the preferences of the audience) and underscored the persuasive possibilities of civil conversation as opposed to passionate, adversarial rhetoric. The article argues that the stress put on decorum in early sixteenth-century theory is not just an internal development in the history of rhetoric but linked to far wider questions concerning the role of rhetoric in religious and secular lives. Decorum appears as a solution both to the divisiveness of language in the context of the Reformation and dynastic warfare of the early sixteenth century and as an adaptation of the republican tradition of political rhetoric to a changed, monarchical context. Erasmus and Vives maintained that decorum not only suppressed destructive passions and discord, but that it was only through polite and civil rhetoric (or conversation) that a truly effective persuasion was possible in a vast array of contexts.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
F.W. De Wet

The necessity of explicating metatheoretical assumptions regarding the view on reality in cientific practical theological research This article is the second in the research project “Metatheoretical assumptions in Practical Theology”. In this project – as indicated in the previous article − a group of reformed theologians is elucidating and discussing their metatheoretical and other perspectives regarding research in Practical Theology. In this article the necessity to explain metatheoretical assumptions concerning a view on reality, is discussed from a reformed perspective. The practical theological implications of a view on reality with its roots in the sixteenth-century protestant Reformation are critically compared with an alternative view on reality in the contemporary context which focuses more on the horizontal dimension of the action events taking place in praxis. This comparison is done with a view to responding to this alternative view in a responsible way. Essential characteristics of the sixteenth-century reformed view on reality seem to be its Scripture-determined vision and theocentric focus as well as the way in which human life and actions are represented as reflections of the “imago Dei”. The need to critically reflect on these characteristics and to newly align this view on reality with respect to challenges posed in the contemporary context, is explored.


2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
CASPER SYLVEST

AbstractThis article deploys a historical analysis of the relationship between law and imperialism to highlight questions about the character and role of international law in global politics. The involvement of two British international lawyers in practices of imperialism in Africa during the late nineteenth century is critically examined: the role of Travers Twiss (1809–1897) in the creation of the Congo Free State and John Westlake’s (1828–1913) support for the South African War. The analysis demonstrates the inescapably political character of international law and the dangers that follow from fusing a particular form of liberal moralism with notions of legal hierarchy. The historical cases raise ethico-political questions, the importance of which is only heightened by the character of contemporary world politics and the attention accorded to international law in recent years.


1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.


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