The Evangelical Counter-Enlightenment

The Evangelical Counter-Enlightenment
Author: William R. Everdell
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2021-05-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030697622

This contribution to the global history of ideas uses biographical profiles of 18th-century contemporaries to find what Salafist and Sufi Islam, Evangelical Protestant and Jansenist Catholic Christianity, and Hasidic Judaism have in common. Such figures include Muḥammad Ibn abd al-Waḥhab, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Israel Ba’al Shem Tov. The book is a unique and comprehensive study of the conflicted relationship between the “evangelical” movements in all three Abrahamic religions and the ideas of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Centered on the 18th century, the book reaches back to the third century for precedents and context, and forward to the 21st for the legacy of these movements. This text appeals to students and researchers in many fields, including Philosophy and Religion, their histories, and World History, while also appealing to the interested lay reader.

The Almost Mystic

The Almost Mystic
Author: Steven P. Tungate
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2024-07-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 166678155X

John Wesley, eighteenth century Church of England priest and founder of Methodism, was strongly influenced by the works of Roman Catholic mystics early in his ministry. These writings shaped his widely known doctrine of Christian perfection or entire sanctification. The mystics inspired Wesley to advocate for a lofty spiritual goal that he believed to be attainable in this life. In time, however, he developed many contentions with extremes as well as some particulars found in the mystical tradition. Beginning in 1749, Wesley began to publish his Christian Library--a fifty-volume compilation of abridged works that he believed to be among the best writings on practical divinity that had been published in English. Among this vast collection, he incorporated two works originally written in Spanish including a sampling of Letters by Juan de Avila and the Spiritual Guide by Miguel de Molinos. This book examines Wesley's editing of these works as a way of evaluating Wesley's theology in comparison and contrast with Spanish mysticism. In particular, this book serves as a comparative study among these authors on matters of theological authority, self-knowledge and epistemology, soteriology, spiritual growth, suffering and divine withdrawal, prayer, meditation, contemplation, and the spiritual goal.

The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox

The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox
Author: David McCready
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2020-06-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004426981

In his The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox David McCready presents an account of one of the most significant figures in nineteenth-century Anglicanism.

A Real Christian

A Real Christian
Author: Prof. Kenneth J. Collins
Publisher: Abingdon Press
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2010-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1426721951

A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley fills a void in available books in Wesleyan studies by providing a brief, solid biography that focuses on Wesley himself. While exploring Wesley's ancestry, birth, death, and every major biographical and theological event between, Collins also explores the theme of John Wesley's spiritual growth and maturation. Wesley came to the conclusion that real Christians are those whose inward (and outward) lives have been transformed by the bountiful sanctifying grace of God -- what he termed real Christianity--and this he strove to obtain for himself. Real Christianity, as Wesley understood it, embraces both works of piety and mercy, the person and the social.