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A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist

Roger Glenn Robins

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main ... More

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main objective is to reconcile the holiness-pentecostal tradition to its origins, and the trajectory of its subsequent history. The term “plainfolk modernist” is coined, to suggest that both Tomlinson and the world he inhabited expressed a vibrant strain of modernism, though voiced in the idioms of American plainfolk culture.Less

Abelard and Heloise

Constant J. Mews

In Abelard and Heloise, a dual intellectual biography of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164), I argue that there is a fundamental continuity to the evolution of Abelard’s thought from his ... More

In Abelard and Heloise, a dual intellectual biography of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164), I argue that there is a fundamental continuity to the evolution of Abelard’s thought from his early concern with dialectic, to his growing interest in theology in the 1120s and in ethical questions in the 1130s. Heloise was much more than the disciple and lover of Abelard. She emerges as a distinct thinker in her own right, deeply versed in classical ideals of friendship and ethics, which she wished to apply to her relationship to Abelard. While they have both functioned as mythic figures in the western imagination, I argue that both participated in a broader 12th-century renewal of interest in both classical literature and in religious reform. I examine Abelard’s dialectic as a theory not just about universals, but about language as a whole. Tracing the maturing of his dialectic from his earliest glosses to the Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, written after his early affair with Heloise (1115–17), I argue that Abelard was initially unable to come to terms with the ethical questions presented by Heloise in her side of messages (Epistolae duorum amantium) they exchanged during those years. After Abelard became a monk at St Denis, he started to write about theology. I trace the evolution of his theological interests, from his early concern with linguistic concerns to increasing preoccupation with the Holy Spirit and divine goodness, as manifest in Jesus. After Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete from 1129, responded to his Historia calamitatum and demanded he pay greater attention to the community he had founded, Abelard started to devote much more attention to commenting on Scripture and to reflecting on the ethical questions with which she had always been concerned. Accusations spread by St Bernard that Abelard promoted heresy distort the true character of his contribution to theology, on which Heloise exercised a profound influence.Less

After Arminius: A Historical Introduction to Arminian Theology

Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin

“Arminianism” was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it maintains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known ... More

“Arminianism” was the subject of important theological controversies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it maintains an important position within Protestant thought. What became known as “Arminian” theology was held by people across a swath of geographical and ecclesial positions; it developed in European, British, and American contexts, and it engaged with a wide range of intellectual challenges. While standing together in their common rejection of several key planks of Reformed theology, proponents of Arminianism took various positions on other matters. Some were broadly committed to catholic and creedal theology; others were more open to theological revision. Some were concerned primarily with practical concerns; others were engaged in system building as they sought to articulate and defend an overarching vision of God and the world. The story of this development is both complex and important for a proper understanding of the history of Protestant theology. However, this historical development of Arminian theology is not well known. In this book, Thomas H. McCall and Keith D. Stanglin offer a historical introduction to Arminian theology as it developed in modern thought, providing an account that is based upon important primary sources and recent secondary research that will be helpful to scholars of ecclesial history and modern thought as well as comprehensible and relevant for students.Less

The Age of Evangelicalism: America's Born-Again Years

Steven P. Miller

Recent America was awash in a sea of evangelical talk. From the Jesus chic of the Seventies to the satanism scare of the Eighties, the culture wars of the Nineties, and the faith-based vogue of the ... More

Recent America was awash in a sea of evangelical talk. From the Jesus chic of the Seventies to the satanism scare of the Eighties, the culture wars of the Nineties, and the faith-based vogue of the early 2000s, born-again Christianity was seen and heard on many levels. This was a time of evangelical scares, born-again spectacles, and reconsiderations of the status of faith in politics and culture. The Age of Evangelicalism chronicles the place and meaning of born-again Christianity in the United States from the 1970s through the early twenty-first century. It pays special attention to the uses that a diverse array of Americans found for born-again faith—self-proclaimed evangelicals, to be sure, but also secular activists, scholars, journalists, artists, and politicians. The story features familiar actors, along with others not always associated with evangelical faith—Barack Obama, as well as Jimmy Carter; People for the American Way, as well as Moral Majority; and Bob Dylan, as well as Rick Warren. The history of recent evangelicalism is about more than evangelicals themselves. Born-again Christianity provided alternately a language, a medium, and a foil by which Americans came to terms with their times.Less

America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

Mark A. Noll

Examines the emergence – and then the broad effects – of a singularly American synthesis of convictions. That synthesis of evangelical Protestant religion, republican political ideology, and ... More

Examines the emergence – and then the broad effects – of a singularly American synthesis of convictions. That synthesis of evangelical Protestant religion, republican political ideology, and commonsense moral reasoning came into existence during the second half of the eighteenth century and then exerted a telling influence on American life through the time of the Civil War. Elsewhere in the North Atlantic world, the main Christian traditions opposed both “Real Whig” republicanism and the “commonsense” principles of the era's new moral philosophy. Not so in America. Through a series of contingent circumstances – revival in the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the struggle for independence, a great surge of evangelical denominations in the new republic, and the leadership of Protestant thought and agencies in creating a national culture – distinctly American forms of Christian republicanism and theistic common sense became the common intellectual coinage of the new United States. In turn, these patterns of thought pushed theology, for both educated elites and sectarian populists, toward greater stress on the individual, on free will, and on personal appropriation of the Bible. The very centrality of commonsense Christian republicanism also, however, set the stage for the intellectual tragedy of the Civil War – when dedicated Christians, both North and South, were convinced that the Bible supported only their own side. The story is at once a great triumph of creative theological energy and a significant tragedy of theology captured by culture.Less

American Methodist Worship

Karen B. Westerfield Tucker

This book offers a comprehensive examination and analysis of American Methodist worship, tracing its evolution from John Wesley to the end of the twentieth century. Attention is paid to the ... More

This book offers a comprehensive examination and analysis of American Methodist worship, tracing its evolution from John Wesley to the end of the twentieth century. Attention is paid to the officially approved liturgical texts of ten American Methodist denominations. Yet, these texts do not reveal the full complexity of Methodist worship – leaders of worship have always had the freedom to depart from the established forms, and some characteristically Methodist worship services were organized without official texts. Therefore, other sources are scrutinized to provide a broader assessment. This book draws upon personal diaries and journals, church and secular newspapers, and materials from local church archives, thus exposing the processes and influences – ecclesiastical, social, and cultural – that motivated Methodists to rethink their theology of worship and to reorganize their worship praxis. Such an approach permits consideration of the nontextual matters of liturgical space, choreography, and ritual performance. Methodist worship's interactions with the wider society and cultures are addressed, and an evaluation is made of how particular factors and developments evident in national life affected liturgy and the performance of worship in what may be identified as the “Americanization” of Methodist worship.Less

American Saint Francis Asbury and the Methodists

John Wigger

Francis Asbury (1745–1816) is one of the most important religious leaders in American history. He guided the creation of the American Methodist church, the largest church in nineteenth-century ... More

Francis Asbury (1745–1816) is one of the most important religious leaders in American history. He guided the creation of the American Methodist church, the largest church in nineteenth-century America and the foundation of much of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements. The United States remains a deeply religious nation and Asbury is an important reason why. Yet Asbury did not lead in ways that we expect. He did not look like the ministers of colonial America, nor does he look like many high profile religious leaders today. The son of an English gardener, he had only a few years of formal education before being apprenticed to a metalworker at age fourteen. He never wrote a book and was often a disappointing preacher. He never married or owned a home, rarely spoke at church conferences, and often felt insecure in public. Yet in this definitive biography Asbury emerges as an effective and influential leader. His life of prayer and voluntary poverty were legendary, as was his generosity to the poor. Offsetting his poor public speaking was his remarkable ability to connect with people one-on-one or in small groups as he crisscrossed the nation. Asbury rode more than 130,000 miles from 1771 to 1816, tirelessly organizing the church’s expansion into every state and territory. He traveled more extensively across the American landscape than anyone of his generation. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, John Wigger reveals how Asbury shaped Methodism to engage ordinary Americans, establishing patterns that are still evident today.Less

Anglican Evangelicals: Protestant Secessions from the Via Media, c. 1800-1850

Grayson Carter

This study examines, within a chronological framework, the major themes and personalities that influenced the outbreak of a number of Evangelical clerical and lay secessions from the Church of ... More

This study examines, within a chronological framework, the major themes and personalities that influenced the outbreak of a number of Evangelical clerical and lay secessions from the Church of England and Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Though the number of secessions was relatively small, between a hundred and two hundred of the ‘Gospel clergy’ abandoned the Church during this period, their influence was considerable, especially in highlighting in embarrassing fashion the tensions between the evangelical conversionist imperative and the principles of a national religious establishment. Moreover, through much of this period there remained, just beneath the surface, the potential threat of a large Evangelical disruption similar to that which occurred in Scotland in 1843. Consequently, these secessions provoked great consternation within the Church and within Evangelicalism itself, contributed to the outbreak of millennial speculation following the ‘constitutional revolution’ of 1828–32, led to the formation of several new denominations, and sparked off a major Church–State crisis over the legal right of a clergyman to secede and begin a new ministry within Protestant Dissent.Less

Augustine, the Trinity, and the Church: A Reading of the Anti-Donatist Sermons

Adam Ployd

This study investigates the relationship between Augustine’s trinitarian theology and his anti-Donatist ecclesiology in a series of forty-one sermons that he preached between December 406 and ... More

This study investigates the relationship between Augustine’s trinitarian theology and his anti-Donatist ecclesiology in a series of forty-one sermons that he preached between December 406 and mid-summer 407, including the enarrationes on the Psalms of Ascent (119–133), the first sixteen tractates on the Gospel of John, and the ten tractates on the First Epistle of John. Augustine uses pro-Nicene principles and exegesis to construct his understanding of the church against the Donatists. In doing so, he depicts a church whose identity and integrity are grounded in the life and work of the triune God, rather than in the relative moral purity of human bishops and the closely guarded boundaries of the visible communion. This reading locates Augustine’s exegesis in the context of his Latin pro-Nicene predecessors, especially Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan. From this tradition Augustine adapts scriptural readings that shape his understanding of the church as the body of Christ united by the love of the Holy Spirit who is given in baptism. Augustine thus constructs an image of the church as united through the work of the Trinity in such a way that the life of the church shares in the life of the Trinity.Less

Augustine's Early Theology of Image: A Study in the Development of Pro-Nicene Theology

Gerald P. Boersma

This book examines Augustine’s early theology of the imago dei, prior to his ordination (386–391). The book makes the case that Augustine’s early thought is a significant departure from Latin ... More

This book examines Augustine’s early theology of the imago dei, prior to his ordination (386–391). The book makes the case that Augustine’s early thought is a significant departure from Latin pro-Nicene theologies of image only a generation earlier. The book argues that although Augustine’s early theology of image builds on that of Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, and Ambrose of Milan, Augustine was able to affirm, in ways that his predecessors were not, that both Christ and the human person are the image of God. Augustine’s Latin pro-Nicene predecessors understood the imago dei principally as a Christological term designating a unity of divine substance. According to the book, Augustine’s early theology of image has its initial departure not in the controversy of Nicaea but, rather, in the philosophical engagement of Plotinian metaphysics, in which all finite reality is an image of ultimate reality. For this tradition, an image need not imply equality; an image can be more or less like its source. The book maintains that Augustine’s early writings describe Christ as an image of equal likeness while the human person is an image of unequal likeness. A Platonic and participatory evaluation of the nature of “image” enables Augustine’s early theology of the image of God to move beyond that of his Latin predecessors and affirm the imago dei both of Christ and of the human person.Less

Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism

Wendy Raphael Roberts

Beginning with Isaac Watts’s Horae Lyricae (1706) and concluding with the burgeoning poetic print culture of the early nineteenth century, Awakening Verse unfolds how evangelical ministers, ... More

Beginning with Isaac Watts’s Horae Lyricae (1706) and concluding with the burgeoning poetic print culture of the early nineteenth century, Awakening Verse unfolds how evangelical ministers, itinerants, and laypeople in colonial British North America capaciously engaged prevailing ideas about literary taste and created a distinct transatlantic poetics grounded in Watts’s notion of the “plainest capacity.” From the evangelical women who were instrumental in the development of bountiful verse ministries and the creation of poetic coteries to the itinerant ministers for whom poetics and its attendant sociability were central, evangelicals produced new forms of the “poet-minister,” “print itinerancy,” and “espousal poetics” that emerged as crucial practices of revivalism and facilitated rearrangements of ecclesiastical, gendered, and racialized authority. Well-known poet-ministers, such as the Scottish Ralph Erskine, the Bostonian Sarah Moorhead, and the Virginian James Ireland, reimagined formal poetic elements in the service of saving souls. Others, like Samuel Davies and Phillis Wheatley, became enmeshed in critical debates over the racialization of evangelical verse. Countless others, in print and in manuscript, joined with Watts to save poetry from its “profligate” uses. Awakening Verse shows that American literary and religious histories that regularly exclude one hundred years of verse severely impoverish the understanding of early evangelicalism and American poetry. Taking revival poets and their verse as seriously as they and their contemporaries did provides an entirely new understanding of eighteenth-century evangelical and literary culture, one in which poetry serves as one of the primary actors in the creation, maintenance, and adaptation of evangelical culture and religious enthusiasm animates American poetics.Less

Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation: Restoring Particularity

Tom Greggs

This book explores the dynamics of the Spirit and Son in the economy of salvation. It offers an interpretation of Barth and Origen around this theme, bringing them into a formative dialogue for a ... More

This book explores the dynamics of the Spirit and Son in the economy of salvation. It offers an interpretation of Barth and Origen around this theme, bringing them into a formative dialogue for a constructive theology of universal salvation. Examining Barth's doctrine of election and Origen's understanding of apokatastasis, the book proposes that a proper understanding of the eternal salvific plan of God in the person of Jesus Christ points towards universal salvation. However, salvation is not achieved through a general principle or rule; it is achieved through the very particularity of the Son in whom all humanity is saved. Further place for human particularity is established through the economy of the Spirit. Origen and Barth's economic pneumatologies indicate the reverse dynamic to that of their interpretation of the Son's economy: while the particularity of the Son has universal effects for all particulars, the universality of the Spirit particularizes that universal in individuals and communities in the present. However, this is in a manner which avoids a binary separation of Christians (as the saved) from all other humans (as the damned); instead, Christians are led into the ever greater depths of God, in a manner which allows God's Spirit to be present in diverse ways with humans and human communities in their temporal particularities. This dynamic of Spirit and Son in salvation allows for the place of faith, ongoing history, and community within a soteriological schema which offers a universal hope of salvation in Christ.Less

The Beauty of Jesus Christ: Filling out a Scheme of St Augustine

Commenting on a royal wedding song in his Expositions of the Psalms, St Augustine of Hippo recognized beauty at every stage in the story of Jesus Christ—from his pre-existence ‘in heaven’, through ... More

Commenting on a royal wedding song in his Expositions of the Psalms, St Augustine of Hippo recognized beauty at every stage in the story of Jesus Christ—from his pre-existence ‘in heaven’, through the incarnation, childhood, public ministry of preaching the kingdom and working miracles, passion, crucifixion, entombment, resurrection, ascension, and glorious life ‘in heaven’. By dwelling on the passion, Augustine showed that he knew the difficulty involved in acknowledging that Jesus was beautiful ‘under the scourges’ and beautiful ‘on the cross’. Augustine never filled out his laconic summary. This book breaks new ground by using Augustine’s summary and illustrating the beauty of Christ in every ‘mystery’ of his story. It adds to Augustine’s list by exploring the beauty of Christ revealed in his so-called ‘hidden life’, the transfiguration, and post-resurrection sending of the Holy Spirit.Less

The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance

Richard Viladesau

This volume represents the first part of a study of the concept and the symbol of the cross in Christian theology and imagination. It examines the theology of the cross in both its conceptual and ... More

This volume represents the first part of a study of the concept and the symbol of the cross in Christian theology and imagination. It examines the theology of the cross in both its conceptual and aesthetic mediations within specific historical contexts, from the early church to the eve of the renaissance. Each chapter is introduced by a discussion of an artwork — a representation of Christ’s crucifixion — that exemplifies the focus of the chapter. There follows an exposition of a theological paradigm for the interpretation of the Christ’s passion as a salvific event, i.e., a particular Christian soteriology, as seen in the works of classic theologians. These theological ideas are compared and contrasted with aesthetic works that were contemporaneous with the theological classics or that illustrate a parallel theological attitude. The general method is one of correlation between two kinds of interpretation of the Christian tradition and of human experience: between theology as explicit systematic thought and as affective and communicative images. Within the aesthetic realm, this volume emphasizes visual art (various styles of cross and crucifix) and Christian poetry, both liturgical and non-liturgical.Less

Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain

Stephen Haliczer

Within a culture of male domination, women in the period of the Counter‐Reformation achieved recognition and status as mystics, and their influence extended to all realms of society, including the ... More

Within a culture of male domination, women in the period of the Counter‐Reformation achieved recognition and status as mystics, and their influence extended to all realms of society, including the aristocracy. A mystic's acceptance, however, was predicated upon her strict adherence to ecclesiastical orthodoxy and hierarchy. Further, her childhood and adult convent life were marked by excessive austerity and, in many instances, abuse. If the mystic had a proper pedigree, succeeded in building a support system of male authorities, and could demonstrate her divine favor through visions and miracles, then she had the potential to become canonized. While women mystics did not challenge male authority within the church and indeed often were willing supporters of it, they did serve as inspiration to their male contemporaries and to generations of women who followed.Less

Bible and Novel: Narrative Authority and the Death of God

Norman Vance

This study seeks to develop a new context for reading later Victorian fiction, specifically the work of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Mary Ward and Rider Haggard. With Eliot and her successors the ... More

This study seeks to develop a new context for reading later Victorian fiction, specifically the work of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Mary Ward and Rider Haggard. With Eliot and her successors the Victorian novel acquired greater cultural centrality, just as the authority of the scriptures and of traditional religious teaching seemed to be declining. The book considers whether serious, allegedly secular novelists supplanted the Bible or whether they anticipated some of the insights of contemporary theologians and writers of fiction by reimagining and reformulating rather than abandoning essentially religious themes and insights. The history of Bible reading is reviewed to stress the relatively late insistence on biblical literalism which eventually precipitated loss of confidence in the Bible in the light of modern knowledge. The novelists discussed, all of Anglican nurture though unconventional in different ways, are shown to have continued older traditions of reading the Bible for underlying moral and religious significance rather than just the literal meaning. The novels considered demonstrate new ways of imagining biblical concerns such as the sublime, the messianic and pilgrimage. The conclusion suggests the novelists discussed as pioneers of the pot-secular and proposes connections between their work and the subsequent emphasis on religious experience rather than religious dogma.Less

The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society

John Fea

Endorsed in its time by Francis Scott Key, John Jay, and Theodore Roosevelt, the American Bible Society (ABS) is a seminar institution for American Protestants. The groups were founded in 1816 with ... More

Endorsed in its time by Francis Scott Key, John Jay, and Theodore Roosevelt, the American Bible Society (ABS) is a seminar institution for American Protestants. The groups were founded in 1816 with the goal of distributing free copies of the Bible in local languages throughout the world. Today, the ABS is a Christian ministry based in Philadelphia with a $300 million endowment and a mission to engage 100 million Americans with the Bible by 2025. The ABS’s primary mission—to place the Bible in the hands of as many people as possible—has caused the history of the organization to intersect at nearly every point with the history of the United States. For the last two hundred years, the ABS has steadily increased its influence both at home and abroad, working with all Christian denominations in the United States and internationally, aligning itself whenever possible with the gatekeepers of American religious culture. Over the years ABS Bibles could be found in hotel rooms, bookstores, and airports; on steam boats, college and university campuses; the Internet; and even behind the Iron Curtain. Its agents, Bibles in hand, could be found on the front lines of every American military conflict from the Mexican-American War to the Iraq War. However and wherever the United States developed, the ABS was there, never wavering in its mission and its commitment to be the guardian of a Christian civilization.Less

The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times

David W. Kling

This book examines the dynamic interplay between scripture and society. Kling traces the story of how specific biblical texts have at different times emerged to be the inspiration of movements that ... More

This book examines the dynamic interplay between scripture and society. Kling traces the story of how specific biblical texts have at different times emerged to be the inspiration of movements that have changed the course of history. He selects eight specific texts (sometimes a single verse, other times a selection of verses or chapters, even books) and demonstrates how each shaped the direction of Christian history. These texts include the story of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19: 16–22) as an inspiration for Anthony and the beginnings of monasticism; the “Petrine text” (Matthew 16:18) as the basis for the papacy; the centrality of the Song of Songs in medieval Christendom, particularly as interpreted through the mystical leanings of Bernard of Clairvaux; Romans 1:17 and its influence upon Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation; Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, embraced by Anabaptists as a call to radical discipleship, including pacifism; the varied applications of the exodus motif and Moses figures in African-American history, from slavery to Martin Luther King to liberation theology; the Book of Acts with its references to the outpouring of the Spirit and speaking in tongues as the basis for the rise of modern Pentecostalism; and Galatians 3:28, which has been adopted by feminists as a rallying cry for women’s ordination. Kling’s study demonstrates that scripture has functioned in a dialectical interplay of influences; texts have shaped history and history has shaped the interpretation of texts. Specifically, texts have functioned in at least five ways: (1) as transforming agents to another way of thinking and acting, believing and behaving; (2) as recreated meaning, undergoing multiple interpretations and applications; (3) as comprehending sources, drawing other biblical texts into their thematic orbit; (4) as hermeneutical keys unlocking the essential meaning in or resolving tensions within scripture; and (5) as secondary justifications, legitimizing after the fact to support existing historical realities.Less