Human accountability and divine grace in the Qur’an perceived through an accounting perspective

Grace and Freedom

10.1093/oso/9780197517468.001.0001 ◽

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.

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Jansenist Augustinianism and the Springs of Pastoral Rigorism

10.1093/oso/9780198816652.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Thomas Palmer

Keyword(s):

Human Nature ◽

Human Freedom ◽

Divine Grace ◽

Human Liberty

The central controversy surrounding Jansenism concerned its alleged heterodoxy in respect to divine grace and human liberty. Five propositions regarding fallen human nature, the operation of grace, and the ability of man to cooperate with it were extracted from Jansen’s Augustinus, and condemned by Innocent X in 1653. The Jansenists denied that they maintained the propositions in the condemned sense. Their position was framed against a teaching developed by Molina and other Jesuits (analysed in section II), which, they claimed, attributed so much power to fallen nature as to fall into Pelagianism. The chapter balances accounts which relate the Jansenists’ moral rigorism wholly to their pessimistic assessment of human nature and their predestinarianism. They aimed to establish human freedom and the responsibility of each individual for his own conversion, and the counterpoint to their view of the fall was a mystical optimism regarding the destiny of nature under grace.

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Anglican moral theology today

Anglican Theological Review ◽

10.1177/00033286211020611 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 000332862110206

Author(s):

Peter Sedgwick

Keyword(s):

Moral Virtue ◽

Social Ethics ◽

Moral Theology ◽

Local Communities ◽

Political Life ◽

Common Life ◽

Divine Grace ◽

Deep Appreciation ◽

Moral Enquiry ◽

The Church

Anglican moral theology is a genealogy, in MacIntyre’s use of this concept. It is a tradition that is handed on from one generation to another, practically and theoretically. Moral theology is part of the tradition of moral virtue, practiced by Christians, in local communities, families, and of course the church. What is distinctive in Anglicanism was that after 1580 there emerged an Anglican tradition of moral enquiry, which recognized the Protestant emphasis on scripture and a quite different role for the clergy, alongside a deep appreciation of the old, pre-Reformation tradition of moral theology. Today, the Anglican exemplary tradition also incorporates debates on sexuality, gender, and questions of identity. In social ethics, postcolonial voices show both the idolatry of political life and how our common life can be a locus of divine grace. Anglican moral theology is both very vibrant and deeply pluralist today.

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Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566273.013.47 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 717-738

Author(s):

Kevin Mongrain

Keyword(s):

Christian Tradition ◽

Theological Aesthetics ◽

Natural Form ◽

Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽

Divine Grace ◽

Natural Forms

This chapter considers the extensive corpus of Hans Urs von Balthasar by treating two architectonic themes in his thought: remembrance and beauty. In the first instance, Balthasar sees theology in modernity—especially in the form of neo-scholasticism—as marked by a failure to remember appropriately some essential principles of Christian tradition, most importantly the inseparability of theology and spirituality in an anti-Gnostic key. In the second instance, the theme of theological aesthetics is treated, initially by placing Balthasar’s conception of a true seeing of natural forms against the background of Goethe’s philosophy. The epiphanic nature of all created being, able to reveal to us the glory of God, and yet obscured from us by sin, lies at the heart of Balthasar’s theology. Ultimately, this theology is Christocentric: the crucified and risen Christ-form becomes a permanent sacramental vehicle of divine grace, restoring our sight of natural form and divine glory.

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Amos Yong, ed., The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009). xxiii + 246 pp., $30.00, paper. Thomas Jay Oord, ed., Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009). xiv + 229 pp., $30.00, paper.

Pneuma ◽

10.1163/027209610x12628362888559 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 164-167

Author(s):

A.J. Swoboda

Keyword(s):

Divine Grace ◽

The Earth ◽

The Face ◽

Science And Theology

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Ni fatalidad ni casualidad: el desarrollo histórico de la ciudad de Dios en su peregrinación en la ciudad terrena

Augustinus ◽

10.5840/augustinus201762244/2453 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 9-25

Author(s):

Martin Bellerose ◽

Keyword(s):

Christian Faith ◽

City Of God ◽

Divine Grace ◽

Theology Of History ◽

The Relationship ◽

The City

The article deals with the foundations of Augustine’s Theology of History, as can be read in Book V of The City of God. A distinction among the pagan belief in destiny and Christian faith is made. The text which is analyzed is considered as the source of Augustine’s Theology of History, in Books XV-XVIII of the City of God, and also of his doctrine about Predestination. The article also deals with the relationship within the process of salvation, between divine grace and human deeds.

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Anti-Climacus’ Inverted Dialectic of Divine Grace and Human Activity

Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook ◽

10.1515/kierke-2018-0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 23 (1) ◽

pp. 105-123

Author(s):

Elizabeth Li

Keyword(s):

Human Activity ◽

Human Beings ◽

Divine Grace ◽

The Relationship

AbstractThis article will show that the relationship between divine grace and human activity in the Anti-Climacus works should be understood as an inverted dialectic. Although Anti-Climacus communicates the strictness of Christianity and the importance of undertaking the Christian task, I will argue that the Anti-Climacus works are ultimately aimed at deepening the reader’s understanding of grace. By exploring Anti-Climacus’ accounts of human imagination and will in coming to faith and in the task of following Christ, it becomes clear that human activity ultimately reveals human beings’ limitations and their dependence on grace.

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