John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion

John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
Author: Bruce Gordon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2016-05-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400880505

An essential biography of the most important book of the Protestant Reformation John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a defining book of the Reformation and a pillar of Protestant theology. First published in Latin in 1536 and in Calvin's native French in 1541, the Institutes argues for the majesty of God and for justification by faith alone. The book decisively shaped Calvinism as a major religious and intellectual force in Europe and throughout the world. Here, Bruce Gordon provides an essential biography of Calvin's influential and enduring theological masterpiece, tracing the diverse ways it has been read and interpreted from Calvin's time to today. Gordon explores the origins and character of the Institutes, looking closely at its theological and historical roots, and explaining how it evolved through numerous editions to become a complete summary of Reformation doctrine. He shows how the development of the book reflected the evolving thought of Calvin, who instilled in the work a restlessness that reflected his understanding of the Christian life as a journey to God. Following Calvin's death in 1564, the Institutes continued to be reprinted, reedited, and reworked through the centuries. Gordon describes how it has been used in radically different ways, such as in South Africa, where it was invoked both to defend and attack the horror of apartheid. He examines its vexed relationship with the historical Calvin—a figure both revered and despised—and charts its robust and contentious reception history, taking readers from the Puritans and Voltaire to YouTube, the novels of Marilynne Robinson, and to China and Africa, where the Institutes continues to find new audiences today.

The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations

The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations
Author: Ulinka Rublack
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 849
Release: 2017
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199646929

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online

After Arminius

After Arminius
Author: Thomas H. McCall
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020-11-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019087421X

Inspired by the ideas of the Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius, Arminianism was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and still today remains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known as Arminian theology was held by people across a wide swath of geographical and ecclesial positions. This theological movement was in part a reaction to the Reformed doctrine of predestination and was founded on the assertion that God's sovereignty and human free will are compatible. More broadly, it was an attempt to articulate a holistic view of God and salvation that is grounded in Scripture and Christian tradition as well as adequate to the challenges of life. First developed in European, British, and American contexts, the movement engaged with a wide range of intellectual challenges. While standing together in their common rejection of several key planks of Reformed theology, supporters of Arminianism took varying positions on other matters. Some were broadly committed to catholic and creedal theology, while others were more open to theological revision. Some were concerned primarily with practical matters, while others were engaged in system-building as they sought to articulate and defend an over-arching vision of God and the world. The story of Arminian development is complex, yet essential for a proper understanding of the history of Protestant theology. The historical development of Arminian theology, however, is not well known. In After Arminius, Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin offer a thorough historical introduction to Arminian theology, providing an account that will be useful to scholars and students of ecclesiastical history and modern Christian thought.

A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson

A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson
Author: Shannon L. Mariotti
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2016-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0813167787

Marilynne Robinson is arguably one of the most important writers of our time. Her voice resonates across the richly imagined American landscapes within which she grounds her stories of love and loss, alienation and belonging, injustice and redemption. Robinson's award-winning body of work -- including Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award -- has cultivated admiration all over the world, offering readers new and profound interpretations of the meanings of transience, presence, convention, and resistance. In A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson, Shannon L. Mariotti and Joseph H. Lane Jr. assemble both rising and established political theorists to explore the juxtaposition of Robinson's nonfiction works and her novels, and to examine their connections to contemporary political issues. The collection analyzes Robinson's writings on American democracy, community, and freedom, and it includes an engrossing interview with the author specifically conducted for this volume. From an exploration of the democratic potential in being a "housekeeper of homelessness" to a study of models of action against racial injustice, this volume provides fascinating new insights into Robinson's work and how it reflects and reassesses American political culture and theory.

Calvin and His Influence, 1509-2009

Calvin and His Influence, 1509-2009
Author: Irena Backus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2011-09-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019991138X

This volume collects papers initially written as the plenary addresses for the largest international scholarly conference held in connection with the 500th anniversary of Calvin's birth, organized in Geneva by the Institute of Reformation History. The organizers chose as theme for the conference ''Calvin and His Influence 1509-2009,'' hoping to stimulate reflection about what Calvin's ideas and example have meant across the five centuries since his lifetime, as well as about how much validity the classic interpretations that have linked his legacy to fundamental features of modernity such as democracy, capitalism, or science still retain.

Calvin and the Resignification of the World

Calvin and the Resignification of the World
Author: Michelle Chaplin Sanchez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2019-03-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1108473040

Provides the first extended study of Calvin's 1559 Institutio in conversation with critical theorists of religion, modernity, sovereignty, and political theology.

Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia

Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia
Author: Page Herrlinger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501771167

Drawing on multiple archives and primary sources, including secret police files and samizdat, Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia reconstructs the history of a spiritual movement that survived persecution by the Orthodox church and decades of official atheism, and still exists today. Since 1894, tens of thousands of Russians have found hope and faith through the teachings and prayers of the charismatic lay preacher and healer, Brother Ioann Churikov (1861–1933). Inspired by Churikov's deep piety, "miraculous" healing ability, and scripture-based philosophy known as holy sobriety, the "trezvenniki"—or "sober ones"—reclaimed their lives from the effects of alcoholism, unemployment, domestic abuse, and illness. Page Herrlinger examines the lived religious experience and official repression of this primarily working-class community over the span of Russia's tumultuous twentieth century, crossing over—and challenging—the traditional divide between religious and secular studies of Russia and the Soviet Union, and highlighting previously unseen patterns of change and continuity between Russia's tsarist and socialist pasts. This grass-roots faith community makes an ideal case study through which to explore patterns of spiritual searching and religious toleration under both tsarist and Soviet rule, providing a deeper context for today's discussions about the relationship between Russian Orthodoxy and national identity. Holy Sobriety in Modern Russia is a story of resilience, reinvention, and resistance. Herrlinger's analysis seeks to understand these unorthodox believers as active agents exercising their perceived right to live according to their beliefs, both as individuals and as a community.

Continental Tourism, Travel Writing, and the Consumption of Culture, 1814–1900

Continental Tourism, Travel Writing, and the Consumption of Culture, 1814–1900
Author: Benjamin Colbert
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-08-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030361462

This book explores the boundaries of British continental travel and tourism in the nineteenth century, stretching from Norway to Bulgaria, from visitors’ albums to missionary efforts, from juvenilia to joint authorship. The essay topics invoke new aesthetics of travel as consumption, travel as satire, and of the developing culture of tourism. Chronologically arranged, the book charts the growth and permutations of this new consumerist ideology of travel driven by the desires of both men and women: the insatiable appetite for new accounts of old routes as well as appropriation of the new; interart reproductions of description and illustration; and wider cultural manifestations of tourism within popular entertainment and domestic settings. Continental tourism provides multiple perspectives with wide-ranging coverage of cultural phenomena increasingly incorporated into and affected by the nineteenth-century continental tour. The essays suggest the coextension of travel alongside experiential boundaries and reveal the emergence of a consumerist attitude toward travel that persists in the present day.

Pathways in Theology

Pathways in Theology
Author: Piet Naud‚
Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2015-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1920689648

This volume exhibits the engaging and challenging work of public and ecumenical theologian Piet Naud‚. The collection of 26 essays, written over three decades, constitutes an important contribution to public theology by critically and creatively evaluating diverse pathways through the landscape of Ecumenical, African, and Reformed theologies.

After Jonathan Edwards

After Jonathan Edwards
Author: Oliver Crisp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2012-08-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0199756309

This set of essays offers a fresh look at how Edwards's ideas were transmitted, received, and reworked in the different phases of the life of the New England Theology. They also trace the way in which his thought, and that of his intellectual progeny, had an international impact on the shape of theology in the UK, Europe, and Asia, and on present-day Reformed theology.