English Theology Research Articles

Regla de Fe y lugares teológicos. Una investigación en las obras principales de Tomás Moro

The major interest of Thomas More, after having entered into the controversy concerning the subject of the Rule of Faith, is to affirm the primacy of the praphetic and teaching authority of the christian community established by Jesus Christ in a visible and hierarchical Church whose principle of life is the Holy Spirit. This is his way of withstanding the lutheran principle of sola scriptura. The subject of the Rule of Faith, as a consequence, is studied in the light of a doctrine on the Church and of its necessary mediation. The Church is the starting point of the spiritual life and the profession of faith of each individual Christian. From this consideration, rich in evangelical sense and in its consequences for the theological method, Thomas More goes on to examine and appraise the different loci which exist in the Christian tradition. He puts the Holy Scriptures in a place of pre-eminence since it is the written Word of God. In spite of the abuses promoted by the reformists, More approves of the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. The study of the Fathers as interpreters of the Holy Scriptures and as qualified witnesses of Tradition has a particular importance in the studies carried out by More. He gathers and makes use of the doctrine of Inspiration which during the Middle Ages was extended to the patristic writings. Nevertheless, he points out and limits the doctrinal value of these writings so that they might be submitted to the authority of the Church. More pauses to consider the General Council of Christianity which represents the highest authority of the Church in all matters concerning doctrine and discipline. The councils bind the christian community not only as exponents of canons which make up the deposit of the Catholic faith. They bind and teach especially as the living Magistery and permanent oracle of the Church which exists in each historical moment. It could be said that in these considerations More tries to reason all the consequences of his criticism to the principle of Sola Scriptura in itself or in parallel versions; the Word is above the texts. The decrees of the General Council, as well as the writings of the Fathers of the Church, have to do with the sense of Faith present in the Christian community which nourishes and receives them at one and the same time. More mentions to the Roman Pontiff as the "oracle of the divine word". This presents us with an interesting development in the English theology of the Renaissance. It amounts to say that in his teaching role, the Roman Pontiff as a summary of the Church.

The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith

The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith

John Holbroke, the Tables of Cambridge, and the “true length of the year”: a forgotten episode in fifteenth-century astronomy

This article examines an unstudied set of astronomical tables for the meridian of Cambridge, also known as the Opus secundum, which the English theologian and astronomer John Holbroke, Master of Peterhouse, composed in 1433. These tables stand out from other late medieval adaptations of the Alfonsine Tables in using a different set of parameters for planetary mean motions, which Holbroke can be shown to have derived from a tropical year of $$365\frac{1}{4} - \frac{1}{132}$$ or $$365.\overline{24}$$ days. Implicit in this year length was a 33-year cycle of repeating solar longitudes and equinox times, which has left traces in other astronomical tables from fifteenth-century England. An analysis of the manuscript evidence suggests that Holbroke owed his value for the “true length of the year” to a certain Richard Monke, capellanus de Anglia, who employed this parameter and the corresponding 33-year cycle in an attempt to construct a perfect and perpetual solar calendar, leading to his Kalendarium verum anni mundi of 1434.

August Tittel (1691–1756): The (Mis)fortunes of an Eighteenth-Century Translator

August Tittel, a Lutheran pastor, translator, ‘minor author’, and fugitive, was best known to contemporaries for his German translation of Humphrey Prideaux’s The Old and New Testament Connected and for his turbulent life. Together with his printed oeuvre, Tittel’s extant correspondence, especially with his patron Ernst Salomon Cyprian, allow us a close scrutiny of the life and work of a minor and troublesome member of the Republic of Letters. Despite its peculiarities, there is much in his career which is indicative of broader trends in early eighteenth-century scholarship, e.g. networks of patronage and a German interest in Jansenist and English biblical scholarship, theology, and confessional polemics. This view of the Republic of Letters ‘from below’ sheds light on a class of minor scholars, which often evades the radar of modern scholarship, but was an essential part of the early modern Republic of Letters.

Isaac Watts. Reason, passion and the revival of religion. By Graham Beynon . (Studies in English Theology.) Pp. viii + 220. London–New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. £95. 978 0 5676 7013 7

Isaac Watts. Reason, passion and the revival of religion. By Graham Beynon . (Studies in English Theology.) Pp. viii + 220. London–New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. £95. 978 0 5676 7013 7

To Accommodate the Earthly Kingdom to Divine Will: Official and Nonconformist Definitions of Witchcraft in England (ca. 1542–1630)

ABSTRACT This article compares and contrasts England's first three Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, and 1604) with demonological treatises published by English theologians and clerics between 1580 and 1627 with the intention of highlighting the different ways both types of texts defined witches and their actions. This research focuses on cunning folk as healers to emphasize the disparity of interests and aims that underpinned the representation of witchcraft in civil law and religious treatises concerning that issue. I suggest that during Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, discussions about the definition of witchcraft became one of the battlefields where those who thought the English Reformation had achieved its ends and those who propelled a more thorough disciplining of the population to create a godly society collided. I argue that demonological works served, among other purposes, to express grievances about the official religious policy.

Wilhelm Ockham i Tomasz Bradwardine o wolnej woli Boga i człowieka

The paper deals with the fourteenth century theological discussion on the God’s and human free will. The dramatis personae are William of Ockham and Thomas Bradwardine. In his opus magnum entitled De causa Dei contra Pelagianum... Bradwardine recalls a quarrel between St. Augustine and Pelagius concerning free will, free choice and predestination. Considering yourself as the true Augustinian, Bradwardine accuses Ockham of being the Pelagian. The paper presents opinions of both English theologians against the background of Bradwardine critics of semi-pelagianism.

Profile of William Kaelin, Peter Ratcliffe, and Greg Semenza, 2016 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Awardees

Fire in the air, fire in the cell Toward the end of the 18th century, the Swedish apothecary, Carl Scheele, determined that approximately one-fourth of the volume of air was “feuer luft,” or “fire air”: that is, the component of the atmosphere that allows substances to burn. At almost the same time the English theologian and philosopher, Joseph Priestley, found a method to purify this gas; and in both cases, determination and an ingenious use of tools and techniques enabled them to determine that a specific aspect of the air around us is absolutely required for combustion. After a fortuitous meeting with Priestley, the French aristocrat, politician, and scientist, Antoine Lavoisier, was able to replicate Priestley’s method of purification, and gave the resulting substance the name of oxygen. Both Priestley and Lavoisier later saw their laboratories destroyed by mobs; Lavoisier was executed soon after and Priestley fled to America. Scientists were then, as now, not immune to conflagrations of ignorance. However, although their laboratories burned, the resulting work and the gas remain central to our understanding of life. In September, the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award was given to three successors to the legacies of Scheele, Priestley, and Lavoisier: two Americans, Gregg Semenza and William Kaelin, Jr., and Sir Peter Ratcliffe of the United Kingdom (Fig. 1). These researchers were recognized for their discovery of how animal cells adapt to variations in oxygen tension. Fig. 1. The 2016 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award honored William G. Kaelin, Jr., Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe, and Gregg L. Semenza (shown in order) for their discovery of the cellular mechanisms for oxygen sensing in animals. Images courtesy of the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation. Although oxygen is a necessary factor in cellular respiration, it has been known … [↵][1]1Email: rsj33{at}cam.ac.uk. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

The Making of Modern English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford, 1833–1945.By Daniel Inman.

<i>The Making of Modern English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford, 1833–1945.</i>By Daniel Inman.

Malvern (1941) as a pioneering venture in Christian Ecotheology

The 1941 Malvern Conference included significant environmental statements, which have gradually been forgotten. In this article I point out their relevance and discuss their possible influence. I analyse the background of these environmental statements and suggest that British theology has probably played a stronger role in environmentalism than has previously been understood. I analyse the ecotheological positions of Malvern and William Temple in the context of a typology of ecotheological stances as developed by Willis Jenkins. While the exact influence of Malvern is difficult to assess, I refer to sources which show that its environmental content was noticed by certain prominent thinkers and contributed, for its part, to the development of ecumenical ecotheology.

Vito Mancuso in English: Presenting the Thought of a Contemporary Radical Catholic Theologian and Philosopher to the English-Speaking World

Vito Mancuso is an Italian theologian and philosopher of religion, who deflects from traditional Catholic theology with the intention to draft a new perspective on how theology should be understood, not only in the academy but also in public and private life. This is why he resorts to Hegelian concepts, which redefine most of what traditional theology has held dear throughout history, with a specific focus on how to turn theology from ideas defined by divinity to notions explained by anthropology. A prolific writer, Mancuso has written almost one book per year for the past decade or so, while he is also very active in the media by giving interviews and writing short articles for famous Italian newspapers, such as La repubblica. In all his endeavors, Mancuso attempts to provide contemporary society with a view of God which is essentially human and profoundly anthropologic in nature in the hope that such an understanding of God will make sense of humanity’s current issues and struggles. Despite the rather controversial fame he acquired in Italy, Mancuso is virtually unknown to the English-speaking public, so this paper is an attempt to present him to those who are not only versed in English theology and philosophy of religion, but also to those who still believe that theology and philosophy of religion may be valuable instruments for the information and transformation of today’s society.

Enemy Within? The Appeal of the Discipline of Sociology to Religious Professionals in Post-War Britain

This article explores the contingencies shaping a particular moment in post-war British theology, a time when sociological descriptions of contemporary society were given new authority by church leaders and theologians anxious to discover a new way through the challenges facing their churches. Attention focuses on the history of religious sociology in Britain, and on industrial mission, social history, and theological radicalism as they converged in the work of a number of British commentators in the 1950s and 1960s. The article also considers the significance of this development for the theory and historiography of secularisation.

‘Vex the devil’: Scripture, God-talk and holiness at Villa Road

Abstract This article gives a critical account of the engagement with Scripture among a group of women and men from the Villa Road Methodist Church, Handsworth, Birmingham, UK. It presents research done in community during 2004/05 for the unpublished thesis, ‘Mary in the Kitchen, Martha in the Pew: Patterns of Holiness in a Methodist Church’ (MPhil., Birmingham, 2006), updated to include critical engagement with contemporary scholarship in Black British theology, womanist and feminist theology, holiness teaching and hermeneutics, and congregational studies. Working from ethnographic research, the article considers three clusters of emphasis, or creative tensions, in the use of Scripture: gender and God, thanksgiving/resistance in response to evil, and displacement/home-coming. The article argues that these themes specially concern the negotiation of identity and relationship between self, God, Scripture and context.

Book Review: The Making of Modern English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford, 1833–1945

The Making of Modern English Theology: God and the Academy at Oxford, 1833-1945. By Daniel Inman. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2014. xii + 334 pp. $34.00 (paper).Of the many High Church Anglicans associated with the University of Oxford during the period covered by this excellent book, the two best-known groups wrote the Tracts for the Times (1833-1841) and Lux Mundi (1889). In a book developed from his Oxford doctoral dissertation, Daniel Inman paints a fascinating contrast between the two groups' impact on the institutional approach to theology at Oxford.Here John Keble, John Henry Newman, and Edward Bouverie Pusey are depicted as the forces of Oxford conservatism. Above all, Pusey's longevity as Regius Professor of Hebrew (fifty-four years, more or less the period covered in the book's first two chapters) was a brake on internal reform at the university. Pusey also became the chief spokesman against the external reforms made by the government. The Tractarians held that the university was a seminary of the Church of England, so all undergraduates should be required to learn the rudiments of religion in order to attain a BA and tutors should guide their students in the practical appropriation of the Christian faith. The academic study of theology, by contrast, should be left to those in holy orders pursuing the higher degrees of BD and DD. To make theology the stuff of competitive examination at an undergraduate level was, according to Pusey, to degrade the holiness of the subject matter. Even when Pusey was forced to introduce a School of Theology in 1869, to go alongside the other schools such as Modem History in providing curricula and competitive exams for undergraduate study, he ensured a conservative curriculum and exams. Historical study, for instance, was to end with the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and the Bible was not to be treated historically. When the Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, William Bright, proposed adding a course on the Reformation, Pusey rather hyperbolically said the work of my whole life was here undone (p. 148). Inman perhaps understates the age-old story of a younger generation at odds with an older generation, which explains both Newman's fervor in the 1830s for a new model of tutorship (for the practice of which he was fired as tutor by his mentor, Edward Hawkins) and Pusey's resistance to change in the 1870s from his mentee, Bright.Inman shows that, in spite of many twists and turns along the way (such as Essays and Reviews and the reforms of other British universities), until the First World War a succession of High Church professors and the votes of clergy alumni in the university's Convocation preserved the state of affairs at Oxford that Pusey promoted. The postmortem influence of Pusey seems so great, in fact, that as late as 1913 the clergy alumni in Convocation conclusively rejected the proposals for reform made by the High Church successors of Pusey. For more than twenty years after Lux Mundi, its editor Charles Gore was Bishop of Oxford and its contributor Henry Scott Holland was Regius Professor of Divinity at the university. The Lux Mundi group (discussed in chapter 3) decided that the reform of university theology must come from the High Church professors themselves if it was to appeal to the clergy alumni. The proposals that were rejected sought to ease denominational restrictions on studying theology at Oxford, and to promote the study of all the religious phenomena of humanity, even non-Christian religions (p. …

Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought ed. by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick

Reviewed by: Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought ed. by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick Mark Mattes Engaging Bonhoeffer: The Impact and Influence of Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought. Edited by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016. xxiv + 351 pp. Kirkpatrick, lecturer at the University of Oxford, assembles fifteen high-quality essays that assess the impact of Bonhoeffer’s thinking on Christian ethics. All essays assume some familiarity not only with Bonhoeffer’s thought and Bonhoeffer scholarship but also with trends in Christian ethics over the last eighty years. The book merits the attention of thinkers both within and outside of Bonhoeffer studies. Keith Clements shows how Bonhoeffer was mediated to the English-speaking world through two English theologians, John A. T. Robinson, and Ronald Gregor Smith. Robinson used Bonhoeffer’s concept of “religionless Christianity,” in which faith is no longer privatized or used to legitimate power in order to develop a Christian theology for a secular age (3). In contrast, Smith utilized Bonhoeffer’s [End Page 463] affirmation of human agency in order to affirm humanity’s contribution to history in opposition to the Platonic favoritism of the eternal over the temporal (7). For Smith, that the transcendent is to be met in this world, not the world to come (8), counters a secularistic reductionism that rules out a transcendent dimension to reality altogether. Eleanor McLaughlin explores Bonhoeffer’s impact on the “Death of God” theologians in the mid-twentieth century, such as Thomas Altizer, for whom God was not to be found in church but instead in the secular world (33). Altizer could draw from Bonhoeffer’s conviction that a “suffering God” disbarred from the world is the God who can help a humanity “come of age” (39). Tom Greggs outlines the complicated theological rapport between Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer. In spite of Bonhoeffer’s charge that Barth is a revelational “positivist,” that is, God is known solely through his revelatory word and not in nature or history, each theologian appreciated the other’s work (61). Robin Lovin compares Bonhoeffer’s ethics with Reinhold Niebuhr’s. For Niebuhr, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is not do-able, as Bonhoeffer suggests, but instead is an “impossible ideal” which “inspires and judges us” (70). Matthew Kirkpatrick compares Bonhoeffer with Joseph Fletcher’s “situation ethics.” Unlike Fletcher who believes some good can always be wrestled from every situation, no matter how bad, Bonhoeffer urges us, if need be, to disobey the law, become guilty, if one can thereby help the neighbor (101). Guido de Graaff compares Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas. While both reject a foundationalist approach to ethics which wants to establish Christian ethics in some neutral, broader stance than what faith provides, Bonhoeffer’s ethics is less amenable to the virtue ethics Hauerwas espouses. Both however sense the at times tragic implications of Christian behavior. For pacifist Hauerwas, non-violence can expose others to suffering while for Bonhoeffer the life of discipleship is costly (136). Geffrey Kelly and Matthew Kirkpatrick note that Bonhoeffer laid the foundations for Liberation theology when he claimed that in Jesus Christ God became a “beggar among beggars,” an “outcaste among outcastes,” and denied “cheap grace” (155). In consequence, for Liberation theologians, to know God is tantamount to doing justice (157). H. Martin Rumscheidt explores how Dorothee Soelle drew out the implications of Bonhoeffer’s “religionless Christianity” [End Page 464] in order to develop a more thorough-going secular theology sensitive to feminist concerns. Christine Schliesser notes Bonhoeffer’s impact on Jürgen Moltmann for whom a truly loving God is one who suffers (198). Philip Ziegler charts the impact of Bonhoeffer on Wolf Krötke, a theologian active in East Germany, who highlighted the Bonhoefferinan conviction that God gains ground and power in the world by being powerless (217). Christopher Holmes shows how Eberhard Jüngel articulated the ontological implications of the Trinitarian theology assumed by Bonhoeffer (236). Peter Frick indicates that Gerhard Ebeling, with Bonhoeffer, sought a theology that engages the “real world,” though accentuating Luther’s law and gospel distinction, which Bonhoeffer seldom did (246ff ). Brian Gregor shows how Paul Ricoeur appropriated Bonhoeffer by affirming that the God “of...

The Old Testament and Judaism in the Last Anglican Sermons of John Henry Newman

The article discusses the unexplored question of the role played by the Old Testament and Judaism in the transition of John Henry Newman, a prominent nineteenth-century English theologian, from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Based primarily on the analysis of the sermons given by Newman in the early 1840s, prior to his conversion in 1845, it argues, first, that Newman, while remaining an adherent of supersessionism, took a stand against marginalization of the Old Testament. His attitude to Judaism of the biblical period was imbued with a sense of deep respect. Second, Newman intensely appealed in his sermons to the Old Testament tropes, drawing, for example, direct parallels between himself and the prophet Elijah. Third, he used the Old Testament as a prooftext for his principle of doctrinal development in Christianity, which allowed him to consider the emergence of new formulations and dogmas as a natural process and the Roman Catholic Church as “true.” The sermons in question, undeservedly overlooked by researchers, indicate that awareness of the role that Judaism played in the genesis of Christianity was fundamental in the development of this principle.

Demonios reformados. Providencia, tentación e internalización del mal en las demonologías de George Gifford, William Perkins y Richard Bernard = Reformed demons: providence, temptation and internalization of evil in the demonologies of George Gifford,...

Protestant Reformation produced in England profound transformations in Christian theology. Local demonological literature was one of the fields where those modifications were more evident. Considering the treatises of George Gifford, William Perkins and Richard Bernard, published between 1587 and 1627, this paper aims to unravel the way English protestant high theology conceived the role of God and demons in the cosmos, as well as their relationship with men. This will intend to demonstrate that English demonologies have two idiosyncratic features: providentialism and the internalized nature of demonic threat. From these ideas, the aforesaid theologians sought to spread the essential postulates of the Reformation with the subsequent intention of eliminating any remnant of practices and beliefs associated with popery.

Letting English Words Stand: Thomas More, William Tyndale and the Common Expression of English Theology

Letting English Words Stand: Thomas More, William Tyndale and the Common Expression of English Theology

‘A Clear and Present Danger’: The Current Challenges to British Theological Education

Theological education is in danger in the UK, and this is especially so through independent denominational or interdenominational colleges teaching courses validated by secular universities. This article discusses the reasons for this.

Missionaries, Modernism, and German Theology: Anglican Reactions to the Outbreak of War in 1914

AbstractThis paper discusses the Anglican reaction to the so-called “Appeal to the Civilised World” of October 1914 in its broader context. After briefly outlining the direct response to the Appeal it then goes on to discuss the prevailing perception of Germany by English theologians as well as the complex relationship of English theology to German liberalism. It moves on to discuss the aftermath of the inter-denominational Kikuyu Missionary Conference which had taken place in 1913. This had divided the Anglican Communion since Anglo-Catholics, led by Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar, disapproved of intercommunion with nonepiscopal churches. After the outbreak of war, there were calls from Germany for unity in the mission field since Christian nations could not be seen to be at war with one another. Anglo-Catholic opposition to Kikuyu was coupled with a long-standing anti-liberalism which soon became fiercely anti-German in its rhetoric. Somewhat unwittingly the primitive German and English propaganda machines helped seal the fate of liberal theology into the next generation on account of its “Made in Germany” origins.