Theological Struggles Research Articles

“It Was a Gift”: Indonesian Christian Bisexual Seminary Students’ Theological Reinterpretation of Bisexuality and Religious Belief

In the Indonesian context, as a religious-heteronormative nation, bisexual identity is generally interpreted as a negative identity in theological discourse. This article offers an alternative theological discourse regarding the meaning of bisexual identity by five Christian bisexual seminary students as a form of self-empowerment within a religious-heteronormative context. This article describes the experiences and theological struggles of five bisexual seminary students in embracing their sexual identities, which are collected through in-depth interviews. This article explores how Indonesian Christian seminary bisexuals synchronize their Christian faith alongside their bisexual identity. The interview data were analyzed using a feminist phenomenological approach. The results showed that Indonesian Christian bisexual seminary students experienced at least three existential struggles due to the incompatibility of their faith and sexual identity: personal, theological, and socio-religious. Theological reinterpretations of non-heteronormative sexual identities, such as bisexuality, became a negotiation strategy to set aside Christian faith and bisexual identity for them. Through hermeneutic and progressive theological discourse exposure in the seminary’s formal education and media, they are queering the theology to reach an existential awareness of bisexuality as a compatible identity besides their Christian faith. This article provides an alternative (queer) discourse based on empirical research that empowers Christian bisexual individuals to uphold their faith without denying their bisexual identity. In addition, this article also exposes the voices and experiences of religious bisexual individuals with low visibility on the LGBTIQ + spectrum, especially in the Southeast Asian context. This article proposes that LGBTIQ + support groups, especially in religious-heteronormative nations like Indonesia, equip religious LGBTIQ + individuals with progressive theological discourse and hermeneutical methods in interpreting sacred texts and beliefs since the progressive theological discourses and hermeneutics are essential to religious LGBTIQ + individuals in upholding their faith and non-heteronormative sexual identity.

RESPONSE OF BOARDING SCHOOLS TO COVID-19

The study of Islamic boarding schools has its dynamics and uniqueness. As an Islamic educational institution, the response of Islamic boarding schools to the issue of Covid-19 has had a sizable social impact in shaping the mindset and religious actions of the surrounding community. This study reveals the dynamics and theological struggles within Islamic boarding schools in response to the policy of handling Covid-19 in Mandailing Natal. This study uses a qualitative descriptive approach, the data informants are residents of Islamic boarding schools consisting of leaders, clerics, students, and the community around the Islamic boarding school. The results of this study found that there were three styles of thinking in each Islamic boarding school in response to the handling of Covid-19, namely conservative, semi-conservative, and non-conservative. In general, Islamic boarding schools accept government policies in dealing with Covid-19, but in practice, Islamic boarding schools tend to ignore the rules. The clerics who are pro in handling Covid-19, provide theological enlightenment to the students and the surrounding community. On the other hand, the clerics who are resistant to handling Covid-19, give the view that Covid-19 is a game by the political elite in government. However, in this case, the resistant kyai did not provoke the students and the community.

THE HYPOSTASIS OF JESUS AND HIS REFLECTIONS FOR CURRENT BELIEVERS

The emergence of several cults that exist as evidence of the difficulty of understanding the concept of Christology as a whole. Therefore, theologians have tried to explain the concept of Christology using a tool, namely the concept of Hypostasis. The concept of the Hypostasis of Jesus is not easy, especially when describing the person of Jesus in terms of his existence as God and man. It is not too easy to understand the concept. Therefore, researchers are trying to find and see the background of concept building and its implementation for believers. From the background description, the following questions emerge: Is the concept of Jesus Hypostasis able to answer the different views on the divinity and humanity of Jesus? How understand the background concept of Jesus' Hypostasis as a theological struggle and its implementation for believers? The research method used is qualitative by applying the theological systematic analysis method. The results of his research show (i) The background of the emergence of heresies that existed at that time encouraged the emergence of the Jesus Hypostasis Concept as an explanatory model for the Christology concept, especially in explaining the divinity and humanity of Jesus; (ii) the concept of Hypostasis as an answer to the unity of nature between God and man in the person of Jesus, without overlapping nature and how it works; (iii) An effort is needed to explain and implement the concept of Hypostasis to believers.

Plurality in the Theological Struggle against Apartheid

AbstractThe church struggle against apartheid remains a key case study in ecumenical public theology, with particular relevance for the Reformed tradition. The importance of Christian theology in both the justification of and opposition to apartheid is well known. Also, the process of ecumenical discernment for responding to apartheid became a significant marker in global ecumenical reflection on what today we might describe as public theology. However, the idea of a theological struggle against apartheid risks ironing out the different theological positions that oppose apartheid. This article highlights some of the attempts to analyze the theological plurality in responses to apartheid. Then it proceeds to present an alternative way of viewing this plurality by focusing on the way in which different classic theological questions were drawn upon to analyze apartheid theologically. Using as examples the important theologians David Bosch, Simon Maimela, and Albert Nolan, it highlights how apartheid was described as a problem of ecclesiology, theological anthropology, and soteriology. It argues that this plurality of theological analyses allows us to rediscover theological resources that might be of particular significance as race and racism take on new forms in either democratic South Africa or the contemporary world. Simultaneously, it serves as a valuable example in considering a variety of theological questions when theologically reflecting on issues of public concern.

Możliwy wpływ doktryny na Biblię na przykładzie Eucharystii

Celem artykułu jest pokazanie, że sformułowanie pewnych wersetów w przekładzie Biblii mogło być dostosowane do doktryny tego odłamu chrześcijaństwa, z którego dane tłumaczenia się wywodzą. W tym celu porównane zostaną różne wersje niektórych spośród 68 wersetów Nowego Testamentu, na których opiera się doktryna o Eucharystii. Eucharystia była jednym z zagadnień, które budziły spory między katolikami a protestantami, zwłaszcza w czasie Reformacji protestanckiej. W trakcie badań wziąłem pod uwagę najważniejsze przekłady Nowego Testamentu pochodzące z okresu Reformacji: protestancką Biblię Gdańską z 1606 roku i katolicką Biblię Jakuba Wujka z 1599 roku.

DEVELOPMENTS IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT IN THE POST-REFORMATION FRENCH CHURCHES

The history of the Protestant Reformed churches in France in the century following the Wars of Religion, their trials and sufferings, is well documented. It is a tragic page in modern European history and retains the attention of commentators because rarely has a people group been persecuted so intensely for so long, to the point of virtual extinction. Less known, perhaps because of the linguistic barriers, is the development of church life and the theological struggles in the Protestant churches during that period. Recent publications contribute to rectify this lack. The present article is an introduction to some of the issues of the time which have perennial interest.

Claims to the Sacred

Claims to the Sacred Aysha A. Hidayatullah (bio) It makes sense to me that my book Feminist Edges of the Qurʾan could mask the deep ambivalence, theological struggle, and faithful search that produced [End Page 134] it. After all, academic books, in order to be published, must read in a tone of assertiveness that may, or perhaps even must, obscure the vulnerability and tentativeness of the transformations entailed in the act of writing them. I had anticipated the problem of this very masking and had attempted to address it in a careful preface to the book. In hindsight, I was perhaps mistaken, as a first-time book author at the start of my career, to imagine that a mere preface, or maybe any well-intentioned efforts of my own, could preempt misunderstandings related to that obfuscation. How else, then, could a reading of my book, such as Asma Barlas’s, draw such bold, demarcating lines around my positions so as to question my standing as a Muslim and attribute my efforts to an anti-Qurʾan stance? I have asked myself: What are the conditions that produce such misunderstanding? How could such a reading of my book happen at all? What kind of response is Barlas’s? In the field of feminist scholarship about the Qurʾan, can there be a critique of other scholars’ works that does not appear to—or actually—dismiss them? Is it possible to disagree theologically in a manner that builds and edifies? Can we actually talk with each other at all across major disagreements? Barlas suggests that my engagement with feminist exegesis of the Qurʾan was a detour I could have avoided if I wanted simply to repeat patriarchal assessments of the Qurʾanic text. I submit that it was not a detour but a journey that itself generated the positions I reach in my book, and it was Barlas’s work that in fact helped make Feminist Edges possible. Her work, and that of others I draw upon, forged a path that I have traced and followed in my own way. When I traced that path, it led me to different conclusions that even I did not expect, ones that have suggested to me that a new direction of thinking is needed to step out of a methodological quagmire I point to in feminist exegesis of the Qurʾan. Grappling with feminist Qurʾanic exegesis, of which Barlas is a pioneering scholar, was central to the process that led me to the conclusion that a reassessment of the Qurʾan’s revelatory nature is in order—a position which, I might add, grants me the ability not to abandon the Qurʾan as a sacred text. My mistake, perhaps, was in hoping that my contributions in Feminist Edges might be readily seen as an expansion of feminist work on the Qurʾan, as a critical and deeply felt tribute to the groundbreaking work of my predecessors, rather than a dismissal of it. I now fear the consequences of this miscalculation, and I am left asking what this might imply about the field. In Feminist Edges, I am careful not to claim that the Qurʾan is an intractably patriarchal text. I argue that the application of feminist exegetical methods to the Qurʾan has reached an impasse from our vantage point as contemporary readers. Both the Qurʾan’s egalitarian and hierarchical meanings are significant elements of the text that exist alongside each other, and I am unconvinced that we can find clear support in the text itself for privileging either set of meanings [End Page 135] over the other. This means we cannot definitively establish that the Qurʾanic text coheres with contemporary values of male-female equality. I reach—with an anguish that perhaps cannot register with every reader—a place of uncertainty about the text’s reconcilability with contemporary values of male-female equality. This is a deeply engaged (or what I call “radical”) uncertainty, which has led to some theological disorientations for me as a Muslim that, while very painful for me to bear, also free me to be hopeful that one can cope with and...

Francis Bacon’s “Jewish Dreams”: The Specter of the Millennium in New Atlantis

Increasingly, attention is being given to the religious underpinnings of Francis Bacon’s project to reform natural philosophy. Within this discussion, however, his vital invocations of Jewish religion and culture have been ignored or represented as largely static and unproblematic, rather than understood in terms of contemporary cultural and theological struggles. In his utopia New Atlantis , Bacon draws on the dynamics of Christian-Jewish relations for several interrelated polemical purposes. One purpose is to imagine, not a complete sundering of science from religion as some past scholars have concluded but nevertheless a specific kind of division between these two spheres at the level of social organization. Another is to affirm such a qualified division of religion and science at the level of the relationship between God and nature; this division is specifically affirmed against the background of the contemporary upsurge of radical forms of millenarianism and messianism, alluded to in New Atlantis , which put the relationship between God, nature, and earthly political order under new scrutiny. These theologically and politically heretical developments are at the heart of Bacon’s most significant polemical purpose here: to defend his project against a set of vulnerabilities historically associated with natural philosophy’s reception by Christianity, vulnerabilities heightened by Bacon’s apocalyptic framework and its susceptibility to being paralleled with these disruptive eschatologies.

Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 (review)

Reviewed by: Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 Darrin M. McMahon Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803. By Ulrich L. Lehner. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2011. Pp. viii, 266. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-199-59512-9). Ulrich Lehner has written a book that anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century Catholicism and the more general phenomenon of religious Enlightenment will want to read. Focused on the roughly 150 monasteries (composed of some 3500–4000 professed monks) in the German-speaking Benedictine communities of southern and Middle Germany, Austria, and Switzerland over the course of the eighteenth century, the book draws on extensive primary research in local and regional archives as well as the very [End Page 585] best of contemporary scholarship in German and English. Lehner is nothing if not a thorough and industrious scholar, and the wealth of information he has amassed alone makes this book a valuable resource. But he is also a fluid writer, with an eye for piquant details and arresting stories, ensuring that the narrative is enlivened along the way by a great number of vivid and sensitive portraits of individuals, like the “Catholic Werther”(p. 118), Nonnosus Gschall, whose theological struggles and depressive illness led to his self-inflicted demise; the scholar and notorious convert to Protestantism Gregorius Rothfischer; and the Scottish Benedictine Andrew Gordon, whose residence at the Abbey in Regensberg and keen interest in contemporary philosophy (above all, the thought of Christian Wolff) made him a central eighteenth-century intermediary between the Anglophone and German worlds. Lehner organizes his study around a series of “challenges” that beset the Benedictines in the age of Enlightenment. These ranged from the need to grapple with new philosophies, theologies, and understandings of history and natural law to responses to cultural and “lifestyle” changes common to many parts of eighteenth-century Europe. Thus, Lehner traces how changing conceptions of leisure time and the introduction of new luxury items like coffee, tea, and tobacco led some monks to demand greater freedom and independence in which to play cards or billiards or smoke. So, too, did evolving understandings of personal privacy and self-expression lead to conflicts over space and appearance. Did monks have a right to privacy in their cells? Might they even lock their doors? And could they abandon the traditional tonsure in favor of something a little more dashing? By the end of the eighteenth century, Lehner observes somewhat amusingly, “hair emancipators” (p. 41) were a feature of nearly every Benedictine community in the German-speaking world. The attention to such changes in lifestyle and comportment, although certainly interesting in themselves, threatens at times to expand the notion of Enlightenment so broadly as to render it virtually synonymous with eighteenth-century culture as a whole. Yet Lehner’s overriding aim is to show that the Benedictines cannot be sealed off hermetically from the rest of eighteenth-century culture, including the culture of the Enlightenment. In this he succeeds admirably, showing not only how the attitudes of Benedictine monks tracked with wider conceptions of personal liberty that affected their thinking about discipline and punishment, freedom of movement and thought, and the relationship between rulers (abbots) and ruled but also, more specifically, how the order participated directly in the cultural practices and debates of the Enlightenment in a more restricted sense. Through scholarly exchanges and correspondence as well as university teaching, book collecting, travel, and the performance of scientific experiments, enlightened Benedictines showed themselves remarkably receptive to many of the central developments of Enlightenment culture, reading John Locke and Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff, and even Johann Gottlieb [End Page 586] Fichte. Yet Lehner is well aware, too, that this receptivity was apt to provoke a reaction: “The more the Enlightenment shaped all parts of society, the stronger the support for the anti-Enlightenment grew” (p. 7). With the demise of the German Reichskirche in the wake of Napoleon’s armies and the dissolution of the monasteries, light gave way to darkness of many, somber shades. Darrin M. McMahon Florida State University Copyright © 2012 The Catholic University of America Press

Theology as the Construction of Piety: A Critique of the Theology of Inculturation and the Pentecostalization of African Christianity

This essay argues that an important task of theology is the construction of piety. It draws from a few critical moments in the development of Christianity, such as the development of the doctrine of God and Christology in the early church and the rejection of materialistic Christianity in early modern Europe, to argue that these moments reflect the theological struggle to shape Christian piety. The idea that theology is concerned with the shaping of piety is then used to evaluate African theology of inculturation, which has now flowered in the Pentecostalization of African Christianity. It argues that although the theology of inculturation may be helpful in constructing a viable African theology, uncritically embracing the spiritualized cosmology of African traditional societies in salvific discourses promotes a form of piety that is ill-equipped to overcome the marginalization of the continent in the modern world.

Process Theology's Relevance for Older Survivors of Domestic Violence

Pastoral work with survivors of domestic violence may reveal theological struggles. Understandings of scripture that reinforce a sense of powerlessness and alienation from God may contribute to an impaired relationship and limit resources for healing. One framework for re-imaging a relationship with God is process theology. This framework was applied to a case study for one survivor. The application resulted in a line of inquiry that may assist survivors in their healing process.

Expanding the Concepts and the Field: Feminist Liberation Theology and Beyond

Expanding the Concepts and the Field:Feminist Liberation Theology and Beyond Maaike de Haardt (bio) As one of the organizers of Catharina Halkes's birthday celebration, I was grateful and proud that Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza honored this "festive symposium" by delivering the keynote lecture. To our surprise, she made "celebration," and especially the political importance of feminist birthday celebrations, the central theme of her lecture. Both her presence and her speech made me all the more aware that this event, this celebratory symposium, was indeed more than "just" a birthday celebration. The audience welcomed Schüssler Fiorenza's speech with great enthusiasm. In a way, she put her finger on a sore spot that had not yet attracted public notice: the threat of "kyriachal robbery." Given that so few of Halkes's former male university colleagues were present that day and that we had trouble convincing the university to support the symposium financially—because, they said, it was not a strictly academic affair—her lecture was a timely diagnosis of an attempt at a "kyriarchal robbery of women's intellectual traditions." Schüssler Fiorenza is correct, however, that this was only an attempt. Given the number of wo/men present, the kyriarchal powers only partially succeeded in dismissing the power of Halkes's intellectual and leading status. The threat is a serious one, though. More serious, I believe, than matricide is the commercial sellout or intergenerational communication to which Schüssler Fiorenza also refers. [End Page 114] Although I do see problems in intergenerational feminist theological relations, my approach here is somewhat different. In the present situation at Dutch universities, with ongoing budget cutbacks, constant vigilance and resistance are needed to keep feminist theology and gender studies in the curriculum (even though some men in academia are genuinely supportive). But the threats are subtler and related to feminists' often-insecure institutional teaching and research positions. Women, let alone feminists, are still a minority in the (Dutch) academy, especially in the fields of theology, philosophy, and religious studies. Great effort is required to maintain at least the status quo, let alone improvement in our position. Recently, funding for the famous Catharina Halkes Chair had to be renewed, and although we managed to "save" the chair, its funding was halved. Internal support notwithstanding, the "higher," less transparent levels of academic politics are ultimately where decisions are made and where kyriarchal robbery and intellectual trivialization continue to occur. Indeed, public feminist birthday celebrations are important: they recall and foster this part of our struggle. But they also confront administrators with the limits of their own power. They cannot prevent the Dutch "Women and Faith Movement" from appropriating and acknowledging both Halkes and Schüssler Fiorenza as great women theologians and leaders.1 In her powerful plea for feminist birthday celebrations Schüssler Fiorenza points to other concerns, related to more feminist theological struggles, visions, and most of all, to the future of feminist theology. Her anxiety is focused on an envisioned lack of knowledge of feminist theological history and the importance that knowledge of this history has for the future of the "feminist religious and intellectual past." Hers is a vision not only of a history of ideas but also of the women who shaped this intellectual history—they are the reason for celebration. On these points, she was most critical of feminist studies in religion and worried about the future of feminist theology and the generational differences in "doing" and "naming" feminist scholarship. I recognize the institutional problems she mentioned and share her criticism of the disciplinary mechanisms of the academy, the preference for "great men" and disciplinary segregation. However, I worry that her analysis and diagnoses of the next generation are perhaps too simple or too exclusively focused on one—normative—feminist theological model (in aims and name) to offer concrete means for continued feminist change within academia. Let me offer, from the perspective of the Dutch context, some further thoughts on these points in order to develop a more nuanced view of this multifaceted intergenerational [End Page 115] problematic than Schüssler Fiorenza was able to present in her short piece. With Schüssler Fiorenza and Halkes, I emphasize...

Irenaeus and Genesis: A Study of Competition in Early Christian Hermeneutics. By THOMAS HOLSINGER-FRIESEN.

If the second century is portrayed as a battleground for the theological struggle among various Christian traditions, one of the crucial fields of that confrontation was interpretation of the Old Testament. Yet, even further within this field, the central place belonged to various, often contradictory, theological explorations of the biblical narrative on the creation of the first human beings (Genesis 1–2). Holsinger-Friesen’s study selects this important narrative to offer ‘a sympathetic reading’, as he promises, of two emerging Christian viewpoints: the first one represented by Irenaeus of Lyons and the other by his Ophite and Valentinian opponents. In the author’s view, Irenaeus’ interpretation of the Genesis narrative responded to alternative exegesis, theology, and anthropology, which the bishop of Lyons found erroneous and dangerous. Irenaeus’ effort to counterbalance the teaching of his adversaries produced one of the most creative visions of the relationship between human and divine with, as Holsinger-Friesen points out, the fundamental notion of ‘recapitulation’, which as a hermeneutical circle binds together the story from Genesis 1–2 with a particular model of Christology. Next, the specific construction of Christology serves as an interpretative key to explore the creative story from Genesis. In brief, recapitulation as the central motif of Holsinger-Friesen’s study is discussed as the core of the nexus: exegesis, Christology, and anthropology.

The War Discourses of William Ellery Channing: Pacifism and Just War in Antebellum American Religious Liberalism

William Ellery Channing, one of the most important theological figures of early nineteenth century America, produced a remarkable body of writings on war. These writings, spanning more than three decades, epitomize the moral and theological struggles of early progressive Christians around issues of peace and war. This paper argues that Channing's war writings are both a reflection of their time and ahead of their time. They are rooted in the social and political realities of antebellum America and in the early liberal theology that Channing himself helped to define, yet they anticipate several late twentieth-century developments in just war thinking and foreshadow many of the strategies advocated by contemporary proponents of the emerging “just peacekeeping” paradigm.

Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria (review)

Reviewed by: Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria Adam H. Becker Christine Shepardson, Anti-Judaism and Christian Orthodoxy: Ephrem's Hymns in Fourth-Century Syria. North American Patristics Society Patristic Monographs Series 20 Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 2008 Pp. xii + 191. $34.95. This is a book that needed to be written. It fruitfully synthesizes two disparate scholarly trends. The first is the historiographical transformation of Ephrem of Nisibis from an obscure, eastern, Semitic, turgid poet of little relevance to mainstream patristics into a pro-Nicene exponent of an anti-Arian Christianity akin to the fourth-century Greek fathers. The second trend concerns the increased focus over the past ten years on Jewish-Christian relations with particular attention to the social context and rhetorical function of Christian anti-Jewish literature. The latter trend is especially relevant to Ephrem because scholars have long noted the severity of his anti-Judaism. In this revised dissertation Christine Shepardson provides a brief, readable monograph, accessible to scholars of Syriac literature, patristics, and the history of late antiquity. The first chapter presents the background and context of Ephrem's works and sets the stage for Shepardson's broader argument that "Ephrem's Syriac texts demonstrate his passionate participation in the imperial theological struggles of the fourth century, as well as his relation to his Greek-speaking contemporary Athanasius" (3). In Chapter Two she places Ephrem's often vitriolic writing within the tradition of early Christian anti-Judaism, especially that of the ante-Nicene period, and then examines Ephrem's anti-Jewish language and motifs. Ephrem's rhetoric depicting Jews and Christians as clearly distinct categories, Shepardson argues, does not represent social reality, but rather is an ideological attempt to impose a binary opposition on the more blurred communal boundaries of fourth-century Nisibis and Edessa. Ephrem's claims about Jews are really about the limits of Christianity, and Shepardson rejects the claims of earlier scholars such as Edmund Beck—the modern editor of Ephrem's works—that Ephrem was responding to aggressive Jewish proselytism. She then turns to "Ephrem's Use of Scriptural History" (Chapter Three) and addresses the broader category of "Jew" developed by Ephrem through his exegesis, especially of paradigmatic [End Page 477] biblical events such as the episode of the golden calf and the Jewish rejection of Jesus. The book takes a more innovative turn in its analysis of the relationship between Ephrem's anti-Judaism and his polemic against "Arian" Christianity (Chapter Four). The "Jews" are no longer simply the actual Jews and Judaizing Christians of Ephrem's community; the category "Jew" has expanded to fit Ephrem's "Arian" Christian opponents as well. This chapter also compares Ephrem's attacks on "Arians" to those of Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and John Chrysostom, thus demonstrating the usefulness of reading Ephrem next to the fourth-century Greek fathers. In the final, brief chapter, Shepardson makes the case that Ephrem and Syriac Christianity must be removed from its isolation from the Roman Empire and early Christianity. While Shepardson's book suggests that an ideological counterposition developed in reaction to a certain social reality and yet ultimately affected that reality, she is in fact only addressing images, inasmuch as most of our evidence unfortunately consists of these highly ideological texts. Nonetheless, her presentation would have benefited from a closer look at the evidence for actual Jews in the region, which, aside from one long footnote (17–18 n. 62), she fails to do. The tenor of those scholars who argue for looking at Ephrem next to contemporary Greek authors is accurate, but it would be helpful if we had a better sense of how this "Nicene Roman Empire" was imagined by someone like Ephrem (despite 106 n. 1). Does he ever mention Nicaea? Furthermore, Ephrem's works are engaged in a deep theological mode that may help us to understand better his anti Judaism (e.g., "truth" and "symbol" in Hymns on Unleavened Bread 19 [32]; "hidden" and "revealed" [54, 90]). Shepardson is, however, more interested in the possible function of his arguments, that is, as tools for creating starker communal boundaries, than in how anti-Judaism...

The reception of the Barmen Declaration in South Africa

The reception of the Barmen Declaration in South Africa

New England Puritans: The Grandparents of Modern Protestant Missions

New England Puritanism was decisive in preparing for the “Great Century of Missions.” Reaching the Native Americans was a leading rationale for the Puritans crossing the Atlantic in the first place. John Eliot established precedents that were looked to as models of missionary practice. David Brainerd joined Eliot as a model missionary, mostly through the writings of Jonathan Edwards, the last great Puritan. To that, Edwards added his emphasis on prayer and his theological struggles for an evangelistically minded Calvinism. His writings were key in teaching English Particular Baptists, among others, that God used means “for the conversion of the heathen.”

St. Augustine's Novelistic Conversion

ST. AUGUSTINE'S NOVELISTIC CONVERSION Tyler Graham Syracuse University In his famous biography of St. Augustine, Peter Brown attempts to explainwhat set the Confessions "apart from the intellectual tradition to which Augustine belonged" (Augustine ofHippo 169). While he concedes that "the Confessions are a masterpiece ofstrictly intellectual autobiography" (167), he concludes that it is more important to realize that they "are, quite succinctly, the story of Augustine's 'heart,' or of his 'feelings'—his affectus"(169). He continues to explain that "in the Confessions, however, the evocation of Augustine's feelings forms part of the wider study of the evolution ofhis will" (172). Thus, Brown suggests that Augustine's central anthropological concern is to determine the origin and/or causes ofhuman desire (i.e. the "evolution of will"). Augustine's "exhaustive analysis ofhis motives" (as Brown describes it) is linked to his lifetime struggle to explain the complex interaction between his free will and a divine will (grace) to transform his "sinful" desires and create a "new heart" within him. In Brown's view, the Confessions reflect Augustine's struggle to discover whether desire originates in God or man. We can agree with Brown that this theological agenda is important to Augustine, for it will resurface in all of his theological struggles stretching from his pre-Christian engagement with the Manichees to his final battle with Pelagius. Nevertheless, I will argue in this paper that the Confessions reflect another important dimension to Augustine's morphology ofdesire. Regardless 136Tyler Graham of its divine or human source, Augustine's desires often begin with the imitation of another person. In portraying examples of his life up to and including his famous conversion in the year 386 (Book VIII), Augustine consistently shows that his desires have been copies or imitations ofvarious models whom he has chosen to follow. Writers such as Brown have considered the importance ofdesire (or the will) in the Confessions, and critics like Geoffrey Harpham (whom we will address later) have examined Augustine's interest in mimesis during various scenes in the book. Yet, with the exception ofAvitol Wohlman, no one (to my knowledge) has adequately considered the combination of the two: mimetic desire. In the first book ofthe Confessions, Augustine recounts his childhood, and, by the eighth chapter, he has already introduced a theme which will haunt the entire work: the link between desire and language. My desires were internal; adults were external to me and had no means ofentering into my soul. So I threw my limbs about and uttered sounds, signs resembling my wishes. (1:8) Language is born as a result ofthe need to express desire. For Augustine, words, gestures, and all utterances connect the "internal" wants to the "external" object ofcommunication (in this case, adults). In fact, ifAugustine links desire with the soul (external adults could not "enter his soul"), then language becomes the bridge between souls: it communicates desire from soul to soul. When Augustine reaches boyhood, and he begins to learn the accepted modes of articulation, the link between language and desire remains: "By groans and various sounds and various movements of parts of my body I would endeavor to express the intentions ofmy heart to persuade people to bow to my will" (1:13). Language communicates desire, but it also seeks to transform and generate desire. Beyond simply explaining his wishes, Augustine's language is persuasive, seeking to get others to "bow to my will." Whereas some people would like to remember their childhood as a time of innocence, joy, and peace, Augustine depicts his early life as "sinful," unhappy, and fraught with tears and conflicting interests. For an infant ofthat age, could itbe reckoned good to use tears in trying to obtain what it would have been harmful to get? . . The feebleness of infant limbs is innocent, not the infant's mind. (1:11) St. Augustine 's Novelistic Conversion137 Although he does notrememberbis own infancy, Augustine extrapolates from his analysis ofother children. I have personally watched and studied a jealous baby. He could not yet speak and, pale with jealousy and bitterness, glared at his brother sharing his mother's milk. Who is unaware ofthis fact ofexperience? Envy among infants is universal...

Conflicten Rond Predikantsbenoemingen in Enkele Hollandse Steden, Ca. 1670-1770

AbstractWithin the rather complex relationship between State and Church the appointment of ministers has always been of the greatest importance. Attempts to make a regulation, which would be valid in all the towns of the province of Holland, were not successful because of the fundamental disagreement between church and civil authorities on the limits of competence on both sides. The "broad" church council, composed of ministers, elders and deacons and sometimes also former elders and representatives of the town government (commissarissen politiek) officially decided on the selection of ministers. In almost every town however, the church council had to ask the burgomasters for permission to set the procedure in motion. In the end the council had to present a select list of three candidates and finally the name of the candidate the majority of its members thought preferable. This procedure offered the town governments ample opportunities to intervene. They could decline to initiate the selection process, impose conditions or veto unsuitable candidates. Many church councils considered these interventions as unacceptable encroachments on their rights and freedom. The appointments of ministers were always potential causes of discord between the civil authorities and the church councils. The article deals with the many conflicts in a number of towns in the province of Holland between 1670 and 1770. The beginning is marked by the political crisis of 1672 which resulted in the restoration of the stadholderly regime under William III. The Voetians, the Reformed orthodoxy, hoped for support of the stadholder in their theological struggle with the adherents of Coccejus. In the second half of the 18th century this conflict had lost its original character and furthermore the dissension within the Reformed Church was no longer mainly based on disagreement between these two groups but the changed situation had produced a tripartition. Somewhat later political elements began influencing the internal relations. Analysis of the conflicts leads to the conclusion, that local circumstances often played a decisive part. It also demonstrates the complex and comprehensive character of these collisions. Yet it is possible to categorize the various conflicts by distinguishing between different, although closely interconnected, dominating factors: 1. religious antagonism within the Reformed Church (the richtingenstrijd); 2. discord between political factions within the town governments; 3. differing opinions on the relation between church and state at the local level and more specifically the part played by the church council in the selection procedure; 4. nepotism and favouritism; and 5. meddling by the Orange stadholders in the appointments of ministers under William III and after the restoration of the Orangist regime in 1747.

Christ's Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (review)

Reviews375 Christ's Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings, by Sarah Beckwith; xii & 199 pp. New York: Routledge, 1993, $74.50. In this handsome yet costly volume, Sarah Beckwith traces the uses of Christ's body in the social, political, and theological struggles in late medieval England. Imaging of Christ was often used as a model for control and maintenance of the social status quo, as Beckwith displays in a telling anecdote about Christological imaging and the suppression of the Peasant's revolt (pp. 23-24). In these historical contexts, argues Beckwim, "Christocentric devotion becomes a medium for the production of identity" (p. 1) and, as she argues throughout, a principle for social ordering. These conflicts are particularly acute and dramatic, as Beckwith displays, in the context ofWyclif, Lollardy, and the attacks on the clergy's monopoly over the meaning of Christ's body during the ideologically turbulent fourteenth century. Chapter One does some "ground clearing" (p. 5) as Beckwith takes on critical assessments of mysticism that remove it from historical and social contingencies and see it as "a timeless encounter with God" (p. 16) . She quotes with approval Szarmach's comment that mysticism is itself a construct" (p. 11). To develop this attack and this reimagining of mysticism, Beckwith wants to "restore a politics of utterance" to the texts and practices under investigation (p. 19). This sensitivity to the "constitutive dialogism" of the mystical texts points to the problem of authority, for mystical texts are really quite bold in their "transcription of die voice of God himself' (p. 20). In adding to that voice, the mystical dialogue reveals that "authority, in the guise ofthe last word of God, is being continuously supplemented and fractured" (p. 20). This implicit challenge to authority forms part of the materialist history of public and private sacrality that Beckwith traces. Chapter Two focuses on "Christ's body and the imaging of social ordering" and displays how "the signification of Christ's body is a contested social arena in late medieval English society" (p. 26) . Christ's body serves as the "focus and medium through which clerical control seeks to establish itself . . . borrowing from an older language of the body as image of society" (p. 32). In opposition to this quest, however, Beckwim finds a fracturing and a destabilization of the body of Christ and traces its "transformation" (p. 38) as Wyclif and others attack images and challenge transubstantiation. The imaging of Christ is central to "a debate about the relations of sacred and social power" (p. 45). Chapter Three opens with a useful excursus on affective piety in die Bernardian and Franciscan traditions, tracing the significance of the imago dei and the concept of imitatio Christi. The chapter then focuses on two texts and a historical exemplum, showing how the English works The Prickynge ofLove and The Mirrour of the Blessed Lyfofjesu Christ take part in an imaging of Christ that both expands popular piety and undoes institutional sacramentalism, even though works such as the Mirror explicitly attack Lollardy and shore up 376Philosophy and Literature institutionally sanctioned devotional uses of Christ's body. This provocative irony drives much of Beckwith's study. The final chapter studies these issues in The Book ofMargery Kempe. Kempe embodies many of the tensions and the tendencies that Beckwith has traced. As part of a social class "developing its own cultural insignia" Kempe "might have been a typical candidate for crucifixion piety." And for her, Christ's body is "open enough to let her in, porous to her and intimate with her; [and at the same time] closed enough to make it a special privilege that she should be included" (p. 111). A short conclusion reviews the implications of this "materialist study" of the images of Christ's body and the struggle over "sacrality" as catholicity and protestantism "play out their tropes and struggle for cultural capital" (p. 117). Beckwith's notes are almost as long as her text, and the twenty pages ofworks cited and fifteen page index make the book a fine resource on Christological imagery. The prose, diough at times laden with quotations and distracting theoretical paradigms, nonetheless constructs an argument which will inspire...