Christian Heresy Research Articles

Book Review: The Gospel according to Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts

The Gospel according to Heretics: Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts. By David E. Wilhite. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2015. xii + 290 pp. $22.99 (paper).Sabellianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Pneumatomachianism, Apollinarianism. The names of these ancient heresies may be familiar to average seminarian or student of theology, but it is far less likely that this same student could identify their distinctive doctrines or theological relevance. Furthermore, those who are aware of convoluted history and political struggles involved in orthodox triumph over these heresies might be inclined to concur with Edward Gibbons famous critique of debates between various parties in Nicene controversy as furious contests waged over the difference of a single diphthong. Yet early Christian heresies do indeed have something to teach us, and in this book David Wilhite seeks to show just what that is.The book has two principal goals. First, it seeks to provide a historically balanced introduction to a variety of ancient Christological heresies spanning second to eighth centuries, and it must be said that Wilhite has achieved this goal with great success. The study of heretics is a notoriously difficult task, because so much of evidence for their teaching must be gleaned from biased and frequently unsympathetic writings of their opponents. Wilhite acknowledges this and prioritizes as much as possible extant writings of heretics he studies. At same time, while he reads orthodox accounts of heretics through a critical hermeneutic of suspicion (p. 6), he does not allow this critical stance to undermine usefulness of orthodox critiques in reconstructing beliefs of their opponents. Also, while book is clearly intended for non-specialists, Wilhites footnotes show that he has kept abreast of most recent scholarship and that he has synthesized insights of this scholarship in his presentation of heresies. Finally, those looking to use book in a class setting will be delighted with its user-friendly formatting. It is divided into ten chapters, each devoted to a single heresy, and each chapter includes helpful summaries and suggestions for further reading.The second goal, observable in title, is to offer a greater understanding of orthodox theology by way of investigating its alternative: gospel according to heretics. …

Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843-64 by Carl S. Kilcourse

Reviewed by: Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843-64 by Carl S. Kilcourse Ryan Dunch (bio) Carl S. Kilcourse. Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843-64. Christianities of the World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xviii, 281 pp. Hardcover, $119.00, see https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137543141, ISBN 978-1-137-54314-1. Taiping Theology sets out to trace the religious world of the Taiping movement in its own terms, as a corrective to past treatments of the movement as either a Christian heresy or a peasant rebellion with incidental religious elements. Rooting his argument in a model of religious vernacularization and localization drawn from recent scholarship on world Christianity (pp. 183-184), the author presents the Taiping religion as "an early form of localized Christianity in China" (p. 180). This important point will meet ready acceptance among scholars of modern China, but the book makes the case in more detail than previous work has done. Revised from a 2013 PhD dissertation in History at the University of Manchester, Taiping Theology is organized into six chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter outlines the history of Christian missionary dissemination in China, focusing on translation and localization of Christian teachings into Chinese contexts. This is mostly familiar ground but necessary context for the study. The five body chapters all deal directly with Taiping texts and ideas. The author, Carl Kircourse, Lecturer in East Asian history at Manchester Metropolitan University, tells us the first two are devoted to theology, followed by one chapter on the Taiping's ethical teachings and two on "religious practice" (p. 24; meaning beliefs applied in limited contexts rather than anything like "lived religion"). There is a good deal that is interesting and original in Kilcourse's study. Chapter 4, "The Heavenly Father and His non-divine Sons," analyzes what the Taiping movement did and did not believe about the status of Jesus and Hong Xiuquan as "sons" of God. This is important, because the accusation that Hong attributed divine status to himself has been one of the chief complaints from [End Page 383] Taiping critics, beginning with the missionary critics of the movement in the 1850s. Through a careful exegesis of Taiping texts, Kilcourse shows that, on the contrary, the Taiping denied divine status to both Jesus and Hong—the sons of God were ontologically distinct from and subordinate to God the Father in Taiping theology. The importance of fathers and sons was also reflected in Taiping ethical teaching, as chapter 5 shows. Despite the Taiping movement's well-known criticisms of Confucius and the dominant culture of their day, Kilcourse argues that the core Confucian concept of filial piety (xiao) remained very central to their ethical teaching, with subordination of children to parents and younger to older being emphasized. He also points to the importance of sexual abstinence in Taiping ethical teaching, as well as the prominence of opium as a major evil to be shunned in their texts. In short, "Confucian assumptions and discourses pervaded the Taipings' ethical teachings," he argues (p. 130). The same interpretive theme of the persistence of Chinese norms within Taiping religious teachings runs through chapter 7, which sets out to correct the common notion that the Taipings were champions of gender equality. Yes, the Taipings insisted that all humans were equal before God, but the subordination of females to male authority was still pervasive in the Taiping world, Kilcourse argues. His primary evidence in this chapter is the "Poems of the Heavenly Father," a book of over five hundred poems that Hong Xiuquan published in 1857 for the instruction of the female servants, attendants, and consorts who staffed Hong's palace. As Kilcourse shows, that book affirms many of the established Chinese ideas about women's deportment and submission to men, including the "three obediences" (sancong) and the virtues of quietness, modesty, and chastity. If anything, these Chinese teachings were amplified by Hong's personal status as son of God and divinely ordained ruler. This book, Kilcourse argues, shows Hong's "continued attachment to Confucian morality and the gender orthodoxy of late imperial China" (p. 174). He does not, however...

Misja i monastycyzm manichejski w dolinie Nilu i jego wpływ na tamtejsze chrześcijaństwo na przełomie III/IV wieku

Since the discovery of the substantial corpus of Manichaean writings, espe­cially the Kephalaia (editio princeps Polotsky-Böhlig, 1934-1940), the Cologne Mani Codex (= CMC), and the hitherto incompletely published library from Dachla (Ian Gardner, 2000), there can be no doubt as to the activities of the mis­sionaries of the great Persian gnostic Mani in the Southern Nile Valley and Red Sea regions. This fact not only confirms the views of J. Helderman “that the Mani­chaean missionaries entered Egypt from the South-East, i.e. initially to Upper Egypt” (‘Manichäische Züge im Thomasevangelium’, 483f., note 42), but also the historical observations concerning the origins and development of monasticism. The latter was not without Manichaean influence, not merely in Egypt, but also in Nubia and Ethiopia. A mosaic, seemingly depicting Mani (from the collection of Elie Borowski), testifies to the pictorial needs of the Manichaeans as do the mural paintings from Pachoras/Faras depicting the likeness of Onophrios. These demonstrate the popu­larity of the crinite ascetic”, a figure also found in the CMC. It is imperative to recall the decisive importance of the southern kingdoms along the Red Sea during the Axial Age (Karl Jaspers), in order to kindle his­torical awareness in Europe of this currently overlooked region on the eve of its islamicisation – something which for decades I have noted the importance of in numerous publications (cf. foot-note 40). Here, local Christianity (viewed anachronistically) was marked by a heretical-gnostic diversity from the very be­ginning, which in turn weakened the spread of Christian teaching in the region. Islam was initially seen here by some as a Christian heresy (as pointed out by A. v. Harnack) and which even became accepted (e.g. in Ethiopia or Nubia, as noted by H. Jansen, Muhammed [German ed.: Münich 2008], 141). Thus, the local doctrinal pluriformity of Christianity during the jāhiliyya prepared the way for the later Islamic expansion. Manichaeism belongs unequivocally to the “periphery cultures of the Chris­tian world” (Pogranicza chrześcijaństwa) as well as constituting a part of ex­panding Christianity in the Late Antique world. Manichaeism still holds many secrets, but at the same time their answers, as illustrated by this article. Hence, the gnostic element of Early Christianity is worthy of continued intensive study, something which unfortunately in Poland is still quite inadequate.

Ciało złe i dobre. Kwestia pochodzenia i natury ciała Adama i Chrystusa we wczesnochrześcijańskich ruchach heretyckich

The article expounds on the groundwork laid by the first Latin treaty De haeresibus by Philastrius, the fourth-century bishop of Brescia, analyzed on the background of writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen, how the rooted in Gnosticism representatives of early Christian heresies (Carpocratians, Saturninus, Valentinus, Apelles, Marcion, Manicheans) have comprehended the genesis of man’s body. After a general delivery of early Christian doubts regarding the value of human flesh, different varieties of heretical paradox – ensuing from Platonic and Gnostic cosmo-anthropological tendencies – are presented. The paradox could be formulated in the following manner: human body of the first man Adam – and correspondingly all of his descendants – is genetically and ontologically evil as being an elementary constituent of the material world. Hence the flesh of a new Adam, i.e. Christ, must come form another realm and be free of the earthly materiality in order to be good by nature and worthy of Saviour’s person. The presented mode of thinking instigated the rise of theological misconceptions, in particular the eschatological ones denying human body the possibility of resurrec­tion and recognizing – in a Gnostic fashion – the liberation of man from flesh, not his salvation alongside his body.

Minimal Faith and Irenic Ideals in Seventeenth-Century Scholarly Circles

This article shows how the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), inspired by his friend Isaac Casaubon, sought to introduce a procedure for mitigating strife in the Christian church. He proclaimed a division between a set of self-evident, universally accepted key tenets, to be endorsed by all believers, and a larger number of secondary, not completely certain articles of faith, which were to be left open for friendly debate. The doctrine of the Trinity belonged to the second category; it should be treated in a careful, detached way, in words that did not go beyond the terminology of the Bible. However, defenders of this irenic stance laid themselves open to severe criticism: the example of the conservative Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius illustrates how they were censured for giving up divinely inspired truth for a chimerical unionist ideal which cajoled them into reintroducing the early Christian heresy of Arianism, now called Socinianism.

Mississippi praying: southern white evangelicals and the civil rights movement, 1945-1975

ContentsList of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xiIntroduction: History, White Religion, and 1the Civil Rights Movement1 Segregation and the Religious Worlds of White Mississippians 152 Conversations about Race in the Post-War World 393 Responding to Brown: The Recalcitrant Parish 634 Strange and Serious Christian Heresy: Massive Resistance and the Religious Defense of Segregation 795 Ask for the Old Paths: Mississippi's Southern Baptists and Segregation 1056 Born of Conviction: The Travail of Mississippi Methodism 1277 The Jackson Church Visits: Good Quarter-Time Church with a Bird Dog and Shotgun 1558 Warped and Distorted Reflections: 181Mississippi and the North9 Race and the Restructuring of American Religion 199Conclusion: A Theology on the Wrong Side of History 231Notes 241Index 285About the Author 290

What is Heretic in Christian Heresies?

What is Heretic in Christian Heresies?

Ethnicity, Economics, and Diplomacy in Dionysios of Corinth

Sometime in the latter half of the second century, Bishop Dionysios of Corinth began writing letters to Christian communities around the eastern Mediterranean. Of these letters, which remain only as fragments and summaries in Eusebius'sEcclesiastical History, we know of eight, including one addressed to a woman named Chrysophora. Though Dionysios is not often mentioned in histories of second-century Christianity, he was famous enough in his own day that his advice was requested from as far as the Black Sea and his letters were tampered with by those seeking to lend his authority to their theological positions. When Dionysios has been discussed by historians of early Christianity, his work has been mined for what it can tell us about early Christian letter collections, for the names of other second century bishops, and for fights over various early Christian heresies. Though I draw on these studies, I am here concerned with examining Dionysios's surviving letters as political rhetoric within what Loveday Alexander has called the “social networks” of early Christianity. Rather than focusing on questions of episcopal succession or early Christian letter collections, I consider how Dionysios's letters functioned as political instruments that knit together early Christian communities as they made their way to and from Corinth aboard merchant ships and overland caravans, moving amongst the myriad of people and goods that flowed through Roman trade routes in the eastern Mediterranean.

Why Did Constantine Label Arius a Porphyrian?

Constantine stigmatised the condemned theologian Arius as a Porphyrian, though the Neoplatonist Porphyry is not represented elsewhere as the author of any Christian heresy. It is argued here that Constantine saw both Arius and Porphyry as enemies of his own understanding of Christ, the Logos or Word, as an actualised potentiality of the Father. Arius, holding the Logos to be “ from nothing”, could not embrace the notion of Christ as the logos prophorikos proceeding from the logos endiathetos ; Porphyry expressly denied that either of these epithets was consistent with the discrete identity of Christ as second person of the Trinity.

Thomas Hobbes, Heresy, and the Theological Project of Leviathan

In the later years of his life, Thomas Hobbes developed an intense interest in the history of Christian heresy, an interest which informed half a dozen of his manuscripts and publications. These heresy writings have typically been studied within the context of Restoration church politics. This article offers a broader account of the significance of these writings. It reads them as extensions of Hobbes’s longstanding project of theological reform. Hobbes’s heresy writings were not merely intended to defend him from prosecution under English law. They also constituted an audacious and risky reassertion of the assault on Trinitarian orthodoxy that Hobbes had supposedly retracted in the Latin translation of Leviathan. The article concludes by considering what this interpretation might tell us about Hobbes’s vacillating commitment to religious toleration.

From Invitation to Provocation: “Holy Cruelty” as Christian Mission in Ninth-Century Córdoba

Ninth-century treatises written by Eulogius (d. 859) and Paulus Alvarus (fl. ninth century) have been studied in some detail for their anti-Muslim rhetoric and for what they have to say about a group of ninth-century martyrs killed in Córdoba, Spain. Less attention is given to how the authors pair their views of Christian mission with what one of them refers to as “holy cruelty”. With this in mind, this study examines how Eulogius’ construction of Islam as a Christian heresy informed his view of mission. Building off of this, we will also examine how Alvarus saw his notion of hatred for the enemies of God as a justified means for engaging Muslims.

Das Ende des Heidentums in Hispania.

Sources about the religious history of the Iberian Peninsula in Late Antiquity are dominated by a Christian bias. The general tendency of those sources is to negate the very existence of Paganism in the 5th , 6th, and 7th century: Instead, it is claimed that all inhabitants are Christians and religious conflicts are explained as arising from superstition, magical practices or Christian heresies. This article argues that Paganism coexisted with Christianity much longer than is commonly assumed.

The place of grace in anthropology

Prologue In the introduction to this book we observed that the word “honor” had entered anthropology only in the 1960s and we gave some considerations to account for this, to my mind curious, lacuna. The word “grace” is today in a condition somewhat comparable to “honor” in the 1960s and it is one of the aims of this essay to endow it with the recognition it deserves. I have found only three authors who have called attention to its existence as a general anthropological concept briefly only 1 and none who has undertaken a detailed examination of its logic and potential usage. This, despite the enormous importance of a concept of this order in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, the huge theological literature on the subject — (surely the anthropology of religion can no more ignore Western theology than the anthropology of law can ignore Western jurisprudence?) — and the fact that a large number of Christian heresies were provoked by disagreements as to the nature of grace, from the Pelagians onwards. But blindness in this matter can hardly be attributed simply to the parochialism of modem university disciplines or the social

Diskursive Identitätsbildung

The early reactions of Christianity towards the Islam demonstrate not only hostility and apologetic methods, but also an attempt to redefine Christian identity. For John of Damascus Islam was just a Christian heresy which has to be combated in an adequate manner. Theodor Abu Qurrah introduced a new method of rational argumentation to support his own Christian identity. Mar Timotheos offers an example for the inculturation of Christianity in an Arabian context.

Kajian atas Pemikiran John Wansbrough tentang Al-Qur’an dan Nabi Muhammad

The study of Islam among Western thinkers seems not monolithic. In the real of orientalists who use historical analysis to respond Islam with a negative value, such as regarding Islam none more than a Christian heresy. Meanwhile, a positive understanding toward Islam has done by some Islamolog, such as W. Montgomery Watt. The differences are more based on their worldview, phenomenological approach, and interpretations. Then, other understanding of Islam according to sociologists, secularists, humanists, and Western modernists. This article discusses the views of John Wansbrough toward al-Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad. The study focused on the work of John Wansbrough, entitled “Qur’anic Studies Source and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation”. There are three issues raised in this article: Wansbrough’s view on al-Qur’an, Muhammad prophethood, and Isra’ (nocturnal journey). Regarding to al-Qur’an, wansbrough sees that al-Qur’an has influenced by Jews and Christian, it is fusion of tradition, and even it is the creation of the post-prophetic. Therefore, the critism from other thinkers, such as orientalists as well as coming from Muslims themselves also received a sufficient portion. There are two methods utilized by Wansbrough, historical method and literary analysis. He used historical approach to study the contents of al-Qur’an, and literary analysis to analyze the revealed stories in the Qur’an.

Socinianism, Islam and the Radical Uses of Arabic Scholarship

Socinianism —or, broader: anti-trinitarianism— was often paralleled to Islam: both the Christian heresy and the Muslim religion reject the doctrine of the Trinity and regard Jesus only as a prophet, not as a god. There are indeed numerous historical connections between both currents. From Michael Servetus onward, the Qur’ān and islamic writings had an impact on the emerging Socinian critique. Antitrinitarians tried to establish a historical genealogy from early (Ebionite) Christianity through Islam (which preserved the true monotheistic idea) to the present. They often took their knowledge from much more orthodox Christian Arabist scholarship, which provided e.g. translations of passages from al-Qarāfī’s critique of St. Paul. Moreover, some bold writers like Aubert de Verse even proposed a historical-critical approach to the text of the Qur’ān , having in mind the model of Richard Simon’s historical criticism of the Old Testament.

Early Modern Communism: The Diggers and Community of Goods

Early Modern CommunismThe Diggers and Community of Goods Ariel Hessayon Freedom is the man that will turn the world upside downe, therefore no wonder he hath enemies. —Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London and the Armie (1649), preface I. Positioning the Diggers within a Communist Tradition Since their rediscovery in the nineteenth century—first by Liberal, Socialist, and Marxist historians and then by Protestant nonconformists—the English Diggers of 1649–50 have been successively appropriated; their image refashioned in the service of new political doctrines that have sought legitimacy partly through emphasizing supposed ideological antecedents. In a previous article I demonstrated that recent attempts to incorporate the Diggers within a constructed Green heritage are unconvincing and that at worst these emerging “Green narratives” are insensitive to historical context.1 Similarly, here I want to show how, either through lack of understanding the finer points of Protestant theology or deliberate distortion, most explanations of the Diggers’ implementation of the doctrine of community of goods have been misleading. [End Page 1] Although the term “Communism” is anachronistic in an early modern context—the Chartist Goodwyn Barmby apparently coined it in 1840—Friedrich Engels nonetheless used it in his study of The Peasant War in Germany (summer 1850). Engels, at that time a journalist and political activist with republican sympathies, linked the revolutionary struggle of the German people in 1848 with the defeated uprising of their forebears.2 Moreover, since the 1890s a number of scholars writing in the wake of the emergence of British socialism and burgeoning trade union movement have used the word to describe an ideology that burst forth during the English Revolution. This recurring fascination with the antecedents of communism and concomitant positioning of the Diggers with a constructed if multifaceted communist tradition stretching continuously from the German Peasants’ War to the Russian Revolution—Gerrard Winstanley’s name appears eighth on a list of 19 European radicals commemorated on a twentieth-century obelisk known as the “Column of Revolution” erected in Alexander Garden, Moscow3—has, however, largely obscured an important theological aspect of the discussion. For although the Diggers’ radical activities are best understood as a practical response to the ravages of the English Civil Wars, widespread poverty, desperate food shortages, economic decay, and outbreaks of plague, their adoption of community of goods was based on a proscribed reading of a biblical text: And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. (Acts 4:32) Communal ownership of property and belongings had been a characteristic feature not only of several ancient Christian heresies but also of certain Protestant sects, all of whom envisaged themselves as communities imitating apostolic practice. Probably influenced by Baptist precedents,4 and perhaps aware of the examples of a handful of separatist congregations and even some teachings espoused by members of the Family of Love (a heretical sect founded in the mid-sixteenth century), Winstanley, who like his fellow Digger William Everard had been a believer in adult baptism, envisaged his little group as both a spiritual and temporal community of love and righteousness, members of Christ’s mystical body living in the last days before the destruction of Babylon and coming of the Lord, the King of Righteousness, who would [End Page 2] remove the curse placed upon the Creation and make the earth a common treasury. Indeed, although the Diggers welcomed newcomers who would willingly submit to their communal precepts, Winstanley thought that only those who had undergone an illuminating spiritual transformation could willingly dispense with their possessions and have all things common. Yet Winstanley was also careful to stress that his notion of community did not extend to sharing women; a stigma that had attached itself to the Anabaptists after their forerunners had seized the town of Münster in 1534, proclaiming it the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2) and forcefully establishing polygamy. Accordingly, Winstanley distanced himself from the perceived sexual excesses of the “Ranters,” condemning their conduct as carnal rather than spiritual. This emphasis on morality links...

Understanding Islam – in the light of Bullinger and Wesley

The paper examines what Bullinger and Wesley say about Islam and elements in their theology relevant to relations with those of other faiths. Bullinger regarded Islam as a Christian heresy. He argues that Muslims do not confess a single article of the Christian faith and are guilty of inhuman cruelty. Wesley’s comments are brief, though also critical. After arguing that Scripture does not damn all heathen outside God’s people, Bullinger considers non-biblical heathen. He draws particularly on Romans 1 and 2 and Cornelius. Wesley appears not to distinguish heathen before and after Christ. He sees Muslims as not having heard the gospel, so that certain texts do not apply. Final judgment belongs to God not us. He is God of all, not of some. His attitude to all is one of mercy. He judges according to the light people have. The conclusion notes various similarities and differences.

The Gnostics: Identifying an Early Christian Cult. By Alastair H. B. Logan

Pp. xvii, 150 , London/NY , T & T Clark , 2006 , $140.00/$23.00 . Until recently the notion of ‘Gnostic heresy’ appeared firmly established in early Christian historiography. Generations of theology students have written essays on how the ‘Gnostic threat’, characterized by bleak dualism, strict predestination and a contempt for the ethics and sacraments of the mainstream churches, was providentially defeated. But a number of contemporary scholars have been undermining the whole concept of Gnosticism, pointing out that the term is a modern concoction and that the great mass of teachers and texts subsumed under it have little in common, while that little does not serve to differentiate them clearly from the mainstream Christianity of their time. Alastair Logan published his Gnostic Truth and Christian Heresy in 1996 and has now supplemented it with this new and briefer volume, made up of various essays and papers. He is not as radical as Michael Allen Williams, who in his Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’ (1996) argued that the whole concept of Gnosticism should be jettisoned. Logan wishes to restrict the term, however, to those early Christians who called themselves, or were called, Gnostics or who at least made equal use of the ‘classic’ Gnostic myth summarized in Irenaeus I. 29–30 and shared a common pattern of initiation (the ‘five seals’). This excludes Valentinians as well (less surprisingly) as the Marcionites. Logan argues in addition that Gnostics can be identified according to modern social theory as a ‘cult’, that is, a deviant movement within the main Christian body, rather than a ‘sect’, separatist and exclusive. In the central chapters of the book he attempts to define the specific features of Gnostics in opposition to mainstream Christians, whom he calls (with some anachronism) ‘Catholics’. He stresses a negative view of the universe as a place to be rescued from, concern with sacraments as the mode of escape, and the protection of the self by an ascetic lifestyle, together with a lack of concern for canon, structures and hierarchy. But do these features really differentiate Gnosticism from many other strands in early Christianity, such as Encratism? And Catholicism, if defined as the opposite, was a slow and gradual growth. Indeed, Logan's study reinforces the arguments of Pétrement and others that Gnosticism was a genuinely Christian movement, not an alien religion that took on some of the trappings of Christianity. It is not surprising that attempts to shunt Gnosticism away to some strange penumbra distort the shape and spirituality of second-century Christianity.

Causa Gratiae - Theological Analysis of Augustine's on Grace and Free Will

Augustine is unanimously considered to be the greatest church father of western Christianity. His major theological controversy was against Pelagianism, a Christian heresy identifying God's grace with His endowment of man with free choice in creation. When challenged to address the issue of juxtaposition of God's grace and human free choice, Augustine responds by writing On Grace and Free Will, where he opens his discussion by the proof of free choice. Further in the argument, however, he definitely abandons this notion and moves towards lifting up and praising the primacy and sole agency of the activity of God's grace.