Theology Of Book Research Articles

Provision of Books for Poor Clergy Parochial Libraries in the British Isles and the North American Colonies, 1680–1720

For ministers of Word and sacraments in a reformed Church, books were part of their stock-in-trade. By the late seventeenth century books were widely available, and theological books were the staple of the publishing trade. Possession of books distinguished the inventories of deceased clerics whose wills were proved in consistory courts from their lay neighbours, but books were still too expensive for poorer clergy to buy.

Theology and psychology: an essay review on Fraser Watts

In his recent book Theology and Psychology, Fraser Watts explores an area of interdisciplinary dialogue that has become active on many fronts. He traces the main areas of engagement while limiting his purview mostly to psychological explorations of the formation of the human spirit and of religious experience, and theology directed to parallel concepts. Psychology is largely pursued within its subdisciplines pertaining to introspective psychologies, neuroscience, and social psychology. The theology is mostly within the Christian, and especially Anglican, tradition, yet the variety of voices here is also well known. Within these broad limits, and with impressive depth and breadth of scholarship, Watts addresses topics as diverse as evolutionary theory, the nature of consciousness, artificial intelligence, the foundations of morality, the soul, immortality, divine action, the doctrine of the Fall, eschatology, and the origin of belief. Although he provides fair representations of various views, he consistently rejects 'greedy' forms of 'nothing buttery', because he believes that the human person and religious experience are so multifaceted that they cannot be grasped from any single standpoint. In addition, as he points out, various reductionistic claims are simply inaccurate. It is suggested that Watts's thinking shows many parallels with theories developing within the new sciences of complexity. Further development of his work along these lines might have significance both for his own contribution and for the growing field of complexity studies.

Neologische Geschichtsphilosophie. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm JerusalemsBetrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem's Betrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion was a bestseller of the German Enlightenment, although it is a theological book. In this article, his Betrachtungen is treated as a text that tries to synthesize the newly established philosophy of history with more or less traditional theological patterns. Jerusalem uses the argument of universal development and progress in history to demonstrate the evidence of divine providence. His book thus resembles Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts , which it may have influenced. The main purpose of Jerusalem is to calm and pacify the individual's soul. He wants to prove that the individual's life fits into the general order of history, which is also the purpose of ‘profane’ philosophy of history in German Enlightenment. Jerusalem's neological philosophy of history provides new answers to the problem of evil after the decline of a metaphysical theodicy in the tradition of Leibniz.

Classes of readers: Owners of books in 18th-century The Hague

Within the history of books, the second half of the 18th century is viewed as a period in which important developments took place: the production of titles grew substantially and there was increasing differentiation of titles. Common opinion has been that these alterations in the supply of titles cannot but indicate an increasing demand for reading matter. Several explanatory theories have been formulated based on this assumption, for instance Engelsing's Leserevolution and Plumb's connection with an English ‘consumer revolution’. These theories focus on a new, mainly middle class audience. Using data gathered from household inventories, this paper shows that book ownership in the city of The Hague, the political capital of Holland, increased in the first half of the 18th century. After this period, however, growth stagnated, and the number of book owners no longer increased. Thus, we may surmise that the assumed increase in demand for books in the second half of the 18th century was a rather hasty conclusion, and that the growth and differentiation in the supply of books was a result of stagnation in demand. Moreover, the increase in book possession in the first half of the 18th century was not due to a middle class which came to possess ever more books, but due to the lower classes who became owners of (ritual) books for the first time, and especially to the growing collections of the elite. Book possession did become more varied, but this is true only of the period up to about 1750. Additionally, I found no evidence for another general assumption, the secularisation of book possession. The relative proportion of Bibles, hymn and church books indeed decreased, but the possession of collections of sermons and other religious ‘miscellany’ grew. Cluster analysis shows that the possession of theological books seems more strongly related to religious persuasion than to the socio-economic background of the possessors. Application of this method also suggests that the majority of books in 18th-century bookcases in The Hague often served other purposes than reading per se. The texts which literary historians usually associate with the middle classes, like travel stories, novels and spectatorial magazines, only appeared in the libraries of the elite.

Book Reviews : Collections of Theological Books

Book Reviews : Collections of Theological Books

Les néologues autour de Friedrich Nicolai et de sa revue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-1792). Une volonté de réforme théodogique «éclairée»

Roger Kirscher : Neologians in the circle of Friedrich Nicolai's Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1765-1792). Nicolai's periodical played a major role, due to its large number of reviews of very varied works, to its long life and its very wide readership. Theological book reviews, the most numerous, were written by a small number of mainly Lutheran theologians, who have been identified. The objective of these "neologians" was to discover the authentic meaning of the Scriptures which, according to them, had been confiscated by orthodox Lutherans and their rigid dogma. Thus Scripture was subjected to philological and historical criticism in order to make revelation "intelligible". This led to a questioning of doctrines such as eternal punishment, original sin, grace and the Trinity. This relativisation of doctrine produced an ethical theology centred on the vita activa and the practice of virtue, separating theology from religion. Without undermining the divinity of Christ or immortality, the neologians opened the path to Kant's conception of moral autonomy.

Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages: Studies on Texts and Performance

The studies assembled in this work include Medieval writings of many kinds - sermons, books of theology, epics and romances, as well as technical treatises on music - containing a wealth of information about the music and instruments of the Middle Ages.

The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216-1218 ed. by Nicholas Vincent

The Letters and Charters of Cardinal G1,tala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England, 1216-1218. Edited by Nicholas Vincent. [The Canterbury and York Society, Volume LXXXIII.] (Rochester, New York: The Boydell Press. 1996. Pp. xcvi, 193, $45.00.) The thirty-month-long legatine mission to England of Guala Bicchieri certainly coincided with political events of considerable consequence: the deepening of baronial revolt against King John, foreign invasion by the rebels' ally (Louis of France, the future Louis VIII), John's death and his son Henry's disputed succession, the creation of a viable minority government for the new child-king, royalist victory in the ensuing civil war, and the pacification of the country. Historians have long known that Guala's activities to assist the royalist cause-for such was the job assigned him by his superiors, Popes Innocent III and Honorius III-had been considerable. Now Nicholas Vincent of Christ Church College, Canterbury, has exhaustively quarried the letters and other written notices regarding this legation, thereby contributing considerably to our understanding of the politics and diplomacy of the time as well as the relationship between the papacy and English church. The volume comprises two large parts: a sixty-four-page-long introductory essay, which reviews Guala's biography and the history of his English legation, and the ctca (letters to and from Guala. contemporary written references about him by others) relating to his mission (including appendices one and two), In the former part Vincent ranges through a comprehensive variety of topics: the nature of papal legation during the early thirteenth century, Guala's peacemaking activities in England, the legate's relations and interactions with the local episcopate and religious houses, his legitimate-albeit controversiallevying of taxes. (procurations) on individual English churches and prelates to finance his mission, his harsh punishment of those English clergy who rebelled against John and young Henry, Guala's contribution to the later practice of papal provision, the legate's judicial activities, his role as a propagator of ecclesiastical reform, his entourage and their activities. and the form and style of the epistolary documents that Guala and his clerks produced. A Lombard from Vercelli, Guala made his first recorded appearance in 1187 as cathedral canon in that city. Although he was later styled in iure civili peritissimus by all English chronicler, we know practically nothing regarding his education. Vincent suggests that Guala's subsequently attested judicial expertise and his ownership of many theological books might indicate some formal training in both law and theology Innocent III named him cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Porticu in 1205, and Guala spent the next years in a variety of curial activities, including two legatine missions (to northern Italy in 1206 and to France in 1208-09), Sometime in 1210-11 lie was promoted to cardinal-priest of S. Martino in Montibus. Guala was among the participants at Innocent's great Lateran Council, where most probably he received the pope's appointment to his English legation. In the aftermath of the extorted issue of Magna Carta and the deterioration of the political situation,John had requested that Innocent send a legate. For his part the pope urgently desired peace in England and between the French and English kings in order to rally crusading support for embattled Latin Outremer Innocent was also mindful of his role as John's feudal overlord. When the pope died in July 1216, his successor, Honorius III, maintained his predecessor's policy and reappointed Guala. The legate departed from Rome in late February, 1216; after a fruitless attempt to enlist the French King Philip II's support in restraining his son Louis from military support for rebellious English barons, Guala finally arrived in England on May 20. As the civil war intensified and Louis invaded the kingdom with a French army, the legate acted forcefully as the leading clerical supporter of the royalist cause. …

Tragedy, Tradition, and Theology in the Book of Lamentations

This article offers a tragic reading of Lamentations, and then uses this reading to get at what is distinctive in the biblical book's theology. The tragic dimension of Lamentations is explicated by showing, first, that the biblical book shares important features, such as historical context, trajectory of the organizing pattern, setting, treatment of the problem of evil, and centrality of the tragic hero, with other tragedies in world literature, and, second, that the poet's tragic vision takes up and manipulates ideas and imagery well known from the Israelite literary tradition. A concluding section treats four issues that are central to the theology of Lamentations: the valuation of human suffering, the authentication of human defiance, the desire for divine and human compassion, and the theological relevance of aesthetics.

William Tyndale: A Biography by David Daniell

William Tyndale: A Biography. By David Daniell. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 1994. Pp. x, 429. $30.00.) When David Daniell's biography appeared as part of William Tyndale Quincentenary celebrations (1494-1536), I wondered what else could be said about first translator of New Testament and Pentateuch from Greek and Hebrew into English. I had been disappointed by C. H. Williams' 1969 biography, and then wished that publishers had simply reprinted J. F. Mozley's 1937 biography, which they did in 1971. Although Daniell is not a professional historian, he is a Shakespeare scholar and editor of modern-spelling versions of Tyndale's New Testament (1989) and Old Testament (1992). He thus brings a broad and deep knowledge of Renaissance English to bear on Tyndale's clear and vivid prose. In my opinion, best parts of this biography are chapters which analyze Tyndale's biblical translations. Studying table of contents and prologue to aborted Cologne edition of 1525, Daniell notes their resemblance to Luther's New Testament of 1522 (p. 110). His chapter on Tyndale's Pentateuch explains general principle of three-consonant form of most Hebrew words (pp. 300 ff.) but also examines specific passages as translated in Vulgate, Wyclif A and B, Tyndale, and King James Version (pp. 285-286). In Gen. 3:4, Then said serpent unto woman: tush ye shall not die, Daniell tries to gage exact tone of colloquial Tush by measuring it against Tush in Hamlet, The Taming of Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing (pp. 407-408, n. 3). Daniell praises directness of Tyndale's translation of 2 Samuel 22, the aliens...shall tremble for fear by contrasting it with a modern version, 'foreigners will be disheartened' as if they can't find luggage trolleys at Heathrow (p. 342). Although Daniell gives a chapter each to Tyndale's first theological book, Wicked Mammon, and his major political treatise, Obedience of a Christian Man, he skims over other exegetical and polemical writings. Critical editions of all of these will be published by Catholic University of America Press as Independent Works of William Tyndale. Daniell is well aware of work of revisionist historians J. J. Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, and Eamon Duffy, who defend character of medieval church and claim that Reformation was forced upon English people from above (p. 398, n. 29). Daniell answers Duffy at some length (pp. 398-399, n. 36), opposing biblical Protestantism to folk Catholicism. Unlike Duffy, I would mourn loss to English Christianity, not so much of saints and sacramentals, but of centrality of Mass and unity of Christendom. In other passages Daniell takes a militant Protestant position, Repentance and belief come from reading, which brings salvation. This is sound New Testament doctrine: boil that book down, and this is what you get (p. 148). Unlike Daniell, I would assert primacy of Two Great Commandments for Gospels and, for Paul, union of believers in Christ. While student of Bible and church history will find much to learn and enjoy in Daniell's biography of Tyndale, Catholic reader will be pained by his chapter on Sir Thomas More, first on More's account, then on Daniell's. …

Karl Barth's critically realistic dialectical theology: its genesis and development, 1909-1936

'McCormack is master of this voluminous material. He is scrupulously at home in the intricate, dramatic background of Swiss socialist politics ...The result is a masterly study, often as compelling as its theme.' George Steiner, Times Literary Supplement 'This meticulous and definitive study ...supersedes most previous interpretations.' Colin Gunton, Theological Book Review 'it should quickly attain classic status. It is an exceptionally fine and erudite piece of work...The results of this painstaking attention to detail are truly ground-breaking. This is a major intellectual achievement, an interpretative act of great courage, and Barth studies will never look the same.' Graham Ward, Expository Times This book is a new, major intellectual biography of perhaps the most influential theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth. It offers the first full-scale revision of the well-known theologian Hans Urs Balthasar's seminal interpretation of Barth, which was first published in 1951. Drawing on a wealth of material, much of it unpublished during Barth's lifetime, as well as a thorough acquaintance with the best of recent German scholarship, Professor McCormack demonstrates that the fundamental decision which would control the whole of Barth's development - the turn to a new, critically realistic form of theological objectivism - was already made during the years in which Barth was at work on his first commentary on Romans. Professor McCormack further argues that the most significant subsequent decisions - both material and methodological - were made in Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics of 1924/5, and not later in the 1931 book on Anselm, as has often been alleged. Finally, he seeks to show that von Balthasar's description of a turn from dialectic to analogy, which provided the foundation for the neo-orthodox reading of Barth in the English-speaking world, fails to take seriously enough the extent to which dialectic remained a constitutive feature of Barth's outlook in the Church Dogmatics. This unique and important work provides not simply a fresh interpretation of Barth's development, but also a new paradigm for understanding the whole of Barth's theology.

The library of Hendrik Gabriël van Gameren, Bishop of Antwerp (1700-75)

AbstractLittle is known of the books belonging to private owners in eighteenth-century Antwerp. This article describes the library of one of the prelates of the city; numerous other studies will have to be published before a reliable overview can be provided. Before he was appointed Bishop of Antwerp in 1758 Hendrik Gabriël van Gameren had been a professor in the Theological Faculty of Louvain University. In this capacity he had, among other things, collaborated on the new edition of 'Duhamel's Bible' (Louvain 1740). Otherwise Van Gameren played no distinguished part in society either as a professor or as a bishop. He was however a close friend of the highest official in the country, Patrice-François de Neny; it seems very probable that he shared the latter's Jansenist convictions. There are two documents which allow us an insight into his collection of books: a printed auction catalogue (Louvain 1775) and the ledger of the Louvain auctioneer-bookseller Jan Frans van Overbeke. The latter organised the auction of Van Gameren's library and carefully noted in a register the names of buyers and the prices obtained. He furthermore indicated which of the titles in the catalogue had really belonged to Van Gameren. These sources disclose that Van Gameren possessed a scholarly library of only limited extent (550 titles) which consisted almost exclusively of theological, church-historical and canon law books. The authors most represented were Karel van den Abeele, J.B. Thiers and Louis Maimbourg. But polemical literature concerning the Jesuit problem and Jansenism was also widely represented. The books were mostly of Southern Netherlandish and French origin. It is further noticeable that they are mostly recent works, especially in Latin or French, far fewer in Dutch. And although the Bishop's exlibris is known, he does not appear to have been a true bibliophile. The limited and single-track nature of the collection and the complete absence of any works in connexion with the Enlightenment lead to the assumption that the Bishop's heirs did not send his complete library to auction. To gain a definite answer to this we would have to dispose of an estate inventory. Regrettably no such document has been preserved.

Predated Protestant works in Nijhoff-Kronenberg

AbstractThis article follows on from my earlier piece in this journal, 'The Van Oldenborch and Vanden Merberghe pseudonyms'. With the demonstration that these were not true people but pseudonyms - the first was even used by various printers - the picture of the history of the Dutch Protestant book has been substantially altered. It was not these 'phantoms' who were the most important publishers in this domain, but Adriaen van Berghen, Matthaeus Crom, and the latter's brother-in-law Steven Mierdmans, while, after 1550, the hitherto unknown Frans Fraet occupied the most prominent position. About half the Dutch-language books which Dr Kronenberg included in her systematic index under the heading Luther: Voor en tegen de Hervorming, appear to date from after 1540 and thus fall actually outside the chronological limits of the Nederlandsche Bibliographie van 1500 tot 1540. We also see that the existing view according to which the role of Antwerp was exhausted after 1540 must be revised. Only after the execution of Fraet at the beginning of 1558 did Emden manage to corner the market. Besides giving a supplementary record of works which have received too early a dating from Nijhoff-Kronenberg, this article gives the titles of a number of theological books which have wrongly been omitted.

The Evocative Religion of Jehovah's Witnesses: An Analysis of a Present-Day Phenomenon. By Matthew Alfs. Minneapolis, Minn.: Old Theology Book House, 1991. ii + 518 pp. $27.95.

The Evocative Religion of Jehovah's Witnesses: An Analysis of a Present-Day Phenomenon. By Matthew Alfs. Minneapolis, Minn.: Old Theology Book House, 1991. ii + 518 pp. $27.95.

The Evocative Religion of Jehovah's Witnesses: An Analysis of a Present-Day Phenomenon. By Matthew Alfs. Minneapolis, Minn.: Old Theology Book House, 1991. 518 pp. $27.95

The Evocative Religion of Jehovah's Witnesses: An Analysis of a Present-Day Phenomenon. By Matthew Alfs. Minneapolis, Minn.: Old Theology Book House, 1991. 518 pp. $27.95

The roads and highways of ancient Israel

This book aims to reconstruct, in a more detailed and comprehensive way than has been done hitherto, the road network that existed in Israel during the Iron Age.--'Theological Book Review.'

From Sin to Salvation: Stories of Women's Conversions, 1800 to the Present.

... fascinating... Theological Book ReviewBy examining women's conversion experiences, the author provides a corrective to the much popularized TV evangelism. She examines the stories U.S. women have told of their profound realization of their sinfulness and the necessity of turning to God's grace and love for forgiveness.

A THEOLOGICAL BOOK — AND AN ADVENTURE

Geist und Materie (Interkulturelle Theologie, III), by Walter J. Hollenweger.LOSS AND GAIN: The Way of Polemic and Dialogue in Post‐Colonial Asia: Donald Nicholl taught History and Religious Studies for a quarter of a century in Britain and the USA.Western Colonialism in Asia and Christianity, edited by M.D. David.Themes in Hinduism and Christianity. A Comparative Study, by Roger Hooker.Love Meets Wisdom. A Christian Experience of Buddhism, by Aloysius Pieris, SJ. Maryknoll.Social and Historical Change: An Islamic Perspective, by Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. (Translated from Persian by R. Campbell).ASPECTS OF THE CHURCH'S IDENTITY AND TASK IN AFRICA: John Mbiti comes from Kenya.World Christianity: Southern Africa, edited by Marjorie Froise.Liberation Theology in Tanzania and South Africa, by Per Frostin. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press.An Experience of Pastoral Theology in Southern Africa, by Eugene Lapointe.The Meaning of Religious Conversion in Africa, by Cyril C. Okorocha.Africa: the Gospel Belongs to Us, by Valentino Salvoldi and Renato Kizito Sesana.

An Introduction to the Religious Thought of Seiichi Yagi

Japanese Christianity has a history of only one hundred years insofar as the Protestant church is concerned. Japanese theology before World War II was, as a matter of course, rather immature and the theological books published during the time were, generally speaking, mainly ethico-practically oriented books or the translations of foreign theological books. After the end of World War II, not a few able young theological students were sent to European countries and to the United States for the purpose of studying theology. Those students who were sent immediately after the end of the war were especially carefully selected because the international circumstances of the time did not allow many students to go abroad. From about 1960 on, the students of the first generation, so to speak, who were trained in the foreign countries after the Second World War began to come home. The credit for raising the theological level of Japan after the war goes to these persons. One of the most remarkable persons among them is Seiichi Yagi, who has also done much for building up Japanese theology through his attempt at facilitating the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism. the present essay, I want, in the first place, to introduce Yagi's thought concerning the New Testament and, second, to present his attempt at facilitating the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism. My comment on Yagi's thought will be found in the last part of this essay. his maiden work, Formation of New Testament Thought (1963), Yagi examined the New Testament by the theological types he found in it; that is, the theme of interpersonality, the theme of individuality, and the theme of community. Jesus had spoken of love, human life, and the law corresponding to these themes respectively, and what Jesus ultimately wanted to say by means of them was, according to Yagi, Reign of God. The love advocated byJesus is personal relationship which has been formed on the fact that man is originally and essentially in the relation (Christ andJesus, pp. 47-48). Martin Buber once said, In the beginning was relation. Accordingly, those who do not presuppose and do not care about their neighbors not only lack love, but also distort their own way of being. And human life, the second theme ofJesus' message, will be fulfilled only when man lives in relationship naturally, leaving a

Richard Hooker on the Lawful Ministry of Bishops and Kings

The part of Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity most attractively relevant to the theme of this conference is Book V, the first spiritually constructive exposition of the religion of the Book of Common Prayer. Hooker’s edifying account of the public duties of religion in the first seventy-five chapters of Book V and of the ordained ministry in the concluding six chapters can readily be appreciated today on its merits, leaving aside the fact that the religion of the Prayer Book was legally prescribed for all English Christians when Hooker wrote. It is on this currently unattractive fact of legal prescription that I want to concentrate, however, for it sets the historical context for the public devotional theology of Book V. To understand Hooker’s justificatory account of this fact is to become clearer about an essential difference between what is going on today when people minister and are ministered to in accordance with Anglican religious forms and what Hooker, at least, held to be going on when these forms were used in the sixteenth century.