|
Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches > Anglican & Episcopalian Churches
During a period of great religious upheaval, Anglican philosopher
and ecclesiastic Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871) became famous
for his 1858 Bampton Lectures, which sought to defend traditional
faith by employing a skeptical philosophy. Understanding Mansel and
the passionate debate that surrounded his career provides insight
into the current struggle for ancient religions to articulate their
traditions in a modern world. In Scripture, Skepticism, and the
Character of God Dane Neufeld explores the life and thought of the
now forgotten nineteenth-century theologian. Examining the
ideological differences between this philosopher and his
contemporaries, Neufeld makes a case for the coherence of Mansel's
position and traces the vestiges of his thought through the
generations that followed him. Mansel found himself at the centre
of an explosive debate concerning the Christian scriptures and the
moral character of the God they described. Though the rise of
science is often credited with provoking a crisis of doubt,
shifting ideas about humanity and God were just as central to the
spiritual unrest of the nineteenth century. Mansel's central
argument, that the entire Bible must be read as a unified witness
to the reality of God, provoked disagreement among theologians,
churchmen, and free thinkers alike who were uncomfortable with
certain aspects of the scriptural portrayal of God's activity and
character. Mansel's attempt to reconcile theological skepticism
with scripturalism was misunderstood. He was branded a hopeless
fideist by the free thinkers and a dangerous skeptic by high,
broad, and evangelical churchmen alike. Many of the controversies
in contemporary Christianity concern the collision between modern
morality and biblical renderings of God. Neufeld argues that Henry
Mansel, while a deeply polarizing figure, brought clarity and
precision to this debate by exposing what was at stake for
Christian belief and biblical interpretation in the Victorian
period.
|
You may like...
Desmond Tutu
Adrian Hadland
Paperback
R109
R96
Discovery Miles 960
|