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This book examines the contentious relationship between oath-taking, confessional subscription, and the binding of the conscience in reforms led by John Calvin. Calvin and his closest Reformed colleagues routinely distinguished what they believed were impious rules and constitutions in the Roman Church--human traditions claiming to bind the consciences of the faithful by putting them in fear of losing their salvation--and legitimate church observances, such as oaths and formal subscription to Reformed confessional standards. Doctrinal and moral reform in the cities became difficult, however, when friends and foes alike accused Calvin and his partners of burdening consciences with extra-Scriptural statements of faith composed by human authorities--a claim that, if true, would necessarily shape our assessment of the integrity of Calvin's Reformation. In light of these conflicts, author Timothy R. Scheuers offers a close reading of the texts and controversies surrounding Calvin's struggle for reform. In particular, he shows how they reveal the unique challenges Calvin and his colleagues encountered as they attempted to employ oath-swearing and formal confession of faith in order to consolidate the reformation of church and society. This book demonstrates how oaths and vows were used to shape confessional identity, secure social order, forge community, and promote faithfulness in public and private contracts. It also illustrates the complex and difficult task of protecting the individual conscience as Calvin sought to bring his new take on Christian freedom into Reformed communities.
Conscience in Early Modern English Literature describes how poetry, theology, and politics intersect in the early modern conscience. In the wake of the Reformation, theologians attempt to understand how the faculty works, poets attempt to capture the experience of being in its grip, and revolutionaries attempt to assert its authority for political action. The result, Abraham Stoll argues, is a dynamic scene of conscience in England, thick with the energies of salvation and subjectivity, and influential in the public sphere of Civil War politics. Stoll explores how Shakespeare, Spenser, Herbert, and Milton stage the inward experience of conscience. He links these poetic scenes to Luther, Calvin, and English Reformation theology. He also demonstrates how they shape the public discourses of conscience in such places as the toleration debates, among Levellers, and in the prose of Hobbes and Milton. In the literature of the early modern conscience, Protestant subjectivity evolves toward the political subject of modern liberalism.
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's writings, Martin Luther is ubiquitous. Too often, however, Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism has been set aside with much less argumentative work than is appropriate in light of his sustained engagement with Luther. As a result, Luther remains a largely untouched hermeneutic key in Bonhoeffer interpretation. In Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther, Michael P. DeJonge presents Bonhoeffer's Lutheran theology of justification focused on the interpersonal presence of Christ in word, sacrament, and church. The bridge between this theology and Bonhoeffer's ethical-political reflections is his two-kingdoms thinking. Arguing that the widespread failure to connect Bonhoeffer with the Lutheran two-kingdoms tradition has presented a serious obstacle in interpretation, DeJonge shows how this tradition informs Bonhoeffer's reflections on war and peace, as well as his understanding of resistance to political authority. In all of this, DeJonge argues that an appreciation of Luther's ubiquity in Bonhoeffer's corpus sheds light on his thinking, lends it coherence, and makes sense of otherwise difficult interpretive problems. What might otherwise appear as disparate, even contradictory moments or themes in Bonhoeffer's theology can often be read in terms of a consistent commitment to a basic Lutheran theological framework deployed according to dramatically changing circumstances.
Paul Cefalu's study explores the relationship between moral character and religious conversion in the poetry and prose of Sidney, Spenser, Donne, Herbert, and Milton, as well as in early modern English Conformist and Puritan sermons, theological tracts, and philosophical treatises. Cefalu argues that early modern Protestant theologians were often unable to incorporate a coherent theory of practical morality into the order of salvation. Cefalu draws on fresh historicist theories of ideology and subversion, but takes issue with historicist tendency to conflate generic and categorical distinctions among texts. He argues that imaginative literature, by virtue of its tendency to place characters in approximately real ethical quandaries, uniquely points out the inability of early modern English Protestant theology to merge religious theory and ethical practice. This study should appeal not only to literary critics and historians, but also to scholars interested in the history of moral theory.
The book is the first major study to bring together the two early twentieth-century theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, and Simone Weil, French philosopher and convert to Christianity. Both were victims of Nazi oppression, and neither survived the war. The book explores the two theologians' reflections on Christian responsiveness to God and neighbour, being the interdependence of the two great commandments of the Jewish Law reiterated by Jesus. It sets out the common ground and the differing emphases in their interpretations. For Bonhoeffer, responsiveness was the transformation of the whole person effected by faith (Gestaltung), and the responsibility (Verantwortung) for one's actions which it implies. For Weil, responsiveness was the hope and expectation of grace (attente) reflected in attention, the capacity to listen to, understand and help others. Both Bonhoeffer and Weil faced a world dominated by aggression and horrendous suffering. Both endeavoured to articulate their responses, as Christians, to that world. The relevance of their thought to the twenty-first century is explored, in relation to perspectives on grace and freedom, on aggression, suffering, and forgiveness, and on the role of the church in society. Conclusions are illustrated by reference to contemporary theologians including Rowan Williams, Daniel Hardy, Frances Young and David Tracy.
These essays present a unique description and analysis of Luther's relation to the learning of his time by some of the most outstanding scholars of our time. The essays also persuasively demonstrate the significance of Luther's contribution to learning for today's education, theology, and culture.