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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Protestantism & Protestant Churches > Calvinist, Reformed & Presbyterian Churches > General
Irish Presbyterians and the Shaping of Western Pennsylvania,
1770-1830 is a historical study examining the religious culture of
Irish immigrants in the early years of America. Despite fractious
relations among competing sects, many immigrants shared a vision of
a renewed Ireland in which their versions of Presbyterianism could
flourish free from the domination of landlords and established
church. In the process, they created the institutional foundations
for western Pennsylvanian Presbyterian churches. Rural Presbyterian
Irish church elders emphasized community and ethnoreligious group
solidarity in supervising congregants' morality. Improved
transportation and the greater reach of the market eliminated
near-subsistence local economies and hastened the demise of
religious traditions brought from Ireland. Gilmore contends that
ritual and daily religious practice, as understood and carried out
by migrant generations, were abandoned or altered by American-born
generations in the context of major economic change.
Concepts of predestination and reprobation were central issues in
the Protestant Reformation, especially within Calvinist churches,
and thus have often been studied primarily in the historical
context of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Versions of
Election: From Langland and Aquinas to Calvin and Milton, David
Aers takes a longer view of these key issues in Christian theology.
With meticulous attention to the texts of medieval and early modern
theologians, poets, and popular writers, this book argues that we
can understand the full complexity of the history of various
teachings on the doctrine of election only through a detailed
diachronic study that takes account of multiple periods and
disciplines. Throughout this wide-ranging study, Aers examines how
various versions of predestination and reprobation emerge and
re-emerge in Christian tradition from the Middle Ages through the
seventeenth century. Starting with incisive readings of medieval
works by figures such as William Langland, Thomas Aquinas, and
Robert Holcot, and continuing on to a nuanced consideration of
texts by Protestant thinkers and writers, including John Calvin,
Arthur Dent, William Twisse, and John Milton (among others), Aers
traces the twisting and unpredictable history of prominent versions
of predestination and reprobation across the divide of the
Reformation and through a wide variety of genres. In so doing, Aers
offers not only a detailed study of election but also important
insights into how Christian tradition is made, unmade, and remade.
Versions of Election is an original, cross-disciplinary study that
touches upon the fields of literature, theology, ethics, and
politics, and makes important contributions to the study of both
medieval and early modern intellectual and literary history. It
will appeal to academics in these fields, as well as clergy and
other educated readers from a wide variety of denominations.
In Ordained Ministry in Free Church Perspective Jan Martijn
Abrahamse presents a constructive theology of ordained ministry by
returning to the life and thought of the English Separatist Robert
Browne (c. 1550-1633). This study makes a substantial contribution
not only by solving one of the most thorny problems in
congregational ecclesiology, but also by recovering the legacy of
this ecclesial pioneer. Through an in-depth analysis of Browne's
literature, the author provides a covenantal theology of ordained
ministry in conversation with present-day authors Stanley Hauerwas
and Kevin Vanhoozer. Inspired by the emerging trend of 'theology of
retrieval' Abrahamse offers a methodologically innovative way of
doing systematic theology in a manner in which voices from the past
can be made fruitful for today.
In this biography of Reformed theologian Francis Turretin
(1623-87), Nicholas A. Cumming provides critical context for the
life and theology of this important seventeenth-century theologian
and his impact on the Reformed tradition as a whole. Turretin has
commonly been identified as a strict scholastic theologian; this
work places Turretin in his broader context, analyzing his life and
theology in terms of the political and religious aspects of
post-Reformation Europe and his posthumous influence on nineteenth-
and twentieth-century Reformed theology. This work begins with a
biography of Turretin, including his education and ministry, then
proceeds to the context of Turretin's theology in the early modern
and modern periods, particularly in relation to his major work The
Institutes of Elenctic Theology.
In this historical study, Jonathon D. Beeke considers the various
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed expressions regarding
the duplex regnum Christi (the twofold kingdom of Christ), or, as
especially denominated in the Lutheran context, the "doctrine of
the two kingdoms." While a sampling of patristic and medieval
sources is considered, the focus is on select magisterial Reformers
of the sixteenth century and representative intellectual centers of
the seventeenth century (Leiden, Geneva, and Edinburgh). A primary
concern is to examine the development of these formulations over
the two centuries in question, and relate its maturation to the
theological and political context of the early modern period.
Various conclusions are offered that address the contemporary
"two-kingdoms" debate within the Reformed tradition.
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