Andrew Melville is chiefly remembered today as a defiant leader of radical Protestantism in Scotland, John Knox's heir and successor, the architect of a distinctive Scottish Presbyterian kirk and a visionary reformer of the Scottish university system. While this view of Melville's contribution to the shaping of Protestant Scotland has been criticised and revised in recent scholarship, his broader contribution to the development of the neo-Latin culture of early modern Britain has never been given the attention it deserves. Yet, as this collection shows, Melville was much more than simply a religious reformer: he was an influential member of a pan-European humanist network that valued classical learning as much as Calvinist theology. Neglect of this critical aspect of Melville's intellectual outlook stems from the fact that almost all his surviving writings are in Latin - and much of it in verse. Melville did not pen any substantial prose treatise on theology, ecclesiology or political theory. His poetry, however, reveals his views on all these topics and offers new insights into his life and times. The main concerns of this volume, therefore, are to provide the first comprehensive listing of the range of poetry and prose attributed to Melville and to begin the process of elucidating these texts and the contexts in which they were written. While the volume contributes to an on-going process that has seen Melville's role as an ecclesiastical politician and educational reformer challenged and diminished, it also seeks to redress the balance by opening up other dimensions of Melville's career and intellectual life and shedding new light on the broader cultural context of Jacobean Scotland and Britain.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson is one of the most eminent public intellectuals in America today. In addition to literary elegance, her trilogy of novels (Gilead, Home, and Lila) and her collections of essays offer probing meditations on the Christian faith. Many of these reflections are grounded in her belief that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer John Calvin still deserves a hearing in the twenty-first century. This volume, based on the 2018 Wheaton Theology Conference, brings together the thoughts of leading theologians, historians, literary scholars, and church leaders who engaged in theological dialogue with Robinson's published work-and with the author herself.

Perceptible inspiration, a term used by John Wesley to describe the complicated relationship between Holy Spirit, religious knowledge, and the nature of spiritual being, is not unlike the term 'Methodist' which was also coined by critics of Methodism during the eighteenth century in Britain. John Wesley's adversaries, especially the pseudonymous John Smith with whom Wesley exchanged letters for a period of three years, frequently challenged the plausibility of direct spiritual sensation, which Wesley defended. What does Wesley mean by perceptible inspiration? What does the teaching reveal about the nature and existence of God in Wesley's thinking? What does it suggest about the spiritual nature of humankind? In John Wesley's Pneumatology, it is argued that 'perceptible inspiration' more than a sidebar of Methodist thought, offers a useful model for considering the various features of Wesley's views on the work of the Spirit in relation to human existence, participatory religious knowledge, and moral theology.

Catherine Booth's achievements - as a revivalist, social reformer, champion of women's rights, and, with her husband William Booth, co-founder of the Salvation Army - were widely recognized in her lifetime. However, Catherine Booth's life and work has since been largely neglected. This neglect has extended to her theological ideas, even though they were critical to the formation of Salvationism, the spirituality of the movement she cofounded. This book examines the implicit theology that undergirds Catherine Booth's Salvationist spirituality and reveals the ethical concerns at the heart of her soteriology and the integral relationship between the social and evangelical aspects of Christian mission in her thought. Catherine Booth emerges as a significant figure from the Victorian era, a British theologian and church leader with a rare if not unique intellectual and theological perspective: that of a woman.

The Church of England and the First World War (first published in 1978) explores in depth the role of the church during the tragic circumstances of the First World War using biographies, newspapers, magazines, letters, poetry and other sources in a balanced evaluation. The myth that the war was fought by 'lions led by donkeys' powerfully endures turning heroes into victims. Alan Wilkinson demonstrates the sheer horror, moral ambiguity, and the interaction between religion, the church and war with a scholarly, and yet poetic, hand. The author creates a vivid image of the church and society, includes views of the Free Churches and Roman Catholics, portrays the pastoral problems and challenges to faith presented by war, and the pressures for reform of church and society. The Church of England and the First World War is written with compelling compassion and great historical understanding, making the book hard to put down. This expert and classic study will grip the religious and secular alike, the general reader or the student.

The changing relationship between the church and its supporters is key to understanding changing religious and social attitudes in Victorian Britain. Using the records of the Anglican Church's home-missionary organizations, Flew charts the decline in Christian philanthropy and its connection to the growing secularization of society.

John S. Peart-Binns brings us a fresh and distinctive view of Herbert Hensley Henson, the eighty-sixth Bishop of Durham, who is shown here to have formed his own character and forged his own way amidst the chaos of the shifting and unpopular labour laws, two World Wars, the abdication crisis of 1936 and the misconceptions of those around him. Hensley Henson was an outspoken controversialist who never feared to assert his opinion. Peart-Binns goes beyond the traditional notions of biography - Hensley Henson's complex childhood; education at Oxford; his ministry at Ilford and Barking, Canon of Westminster and Bishop of Durham - and withal provides a rich psychological insight into the nature of the indefatigable and quick-witted though sharp-tongued figure. This perspective illuminates the Bishop's often overlooked theological thoughts and political views. The furore surrounding his appointment as Bishop of Hereford is analysed and his volte face from being a solid bulwark of the Establishment to being a trenchant advocate of Disestablishment is evaluated. Hensley Henson emerges clearly as differing from our familiar image of him, which can be found in novels, newspapers and magazines of the time, and in his own autobiography. Peart-Binns provides a permanent and deserved niche for him in the history of the Church. 'Herbert Hensley Henson: A Biography' examines the life and times of this formidable and astute character of the twentieth century. This work will inform those interested in the twentieth century, and delight any who are intrigued by Hensley Henson's indomitable spirit. John S. Peart-Binns was born and brought up in Bradford and now lives with his wife Annis in the South Pennines. He has written twenty biographies of Anglican bishops. His research has brought him a large collection of material relating to over 400 bishops (past and present) of the Church of England and of the other churches of the Anglican Communion, which now forms The Peart-Binns Episcopal Biography Archive at the University of Bradford. 'This study of Hensley Henson is a splendid addition to the works of one who must surely be considered the doyen of biographers of modern Anglican leaders. Balanced and sensitive to subtlety in the complexities of Henson's changing opinions, Peart-Binns gives an honest assessment of a truly independent mind.' Edward Norman former Canon Chancellor of York Minister and Emeritus Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University.

Nationhood, Providence, and Witness argues that problems with recognizing the State of Israel lie at the heart of approaches to nationhood and unease over nationalism in modern Protestant theology, as well as modern social theory. Three interrelated themes are explored. The first is the connection between a theologian's attitude to recognizing Israel and their approach to the providential place of nations in the divine economy. Following from this, the argument is made that theologians' handling of both modern and ancient Israel are mirrored profoundly in the question of recognition and ethical treatment of the nations to which they belong, along with neighboring nations. The third theme is how social theory, represented by certain key figures, has handled the same issues. Four major theologians are discussed: Reinhold Niebuhr, Rowan Williams, John Milbank, and Karl Barth. Alongside them are placed social theorists and scholars of religion and nationalism, including Mark Juergensmeyer, Philip Jenkins, Anthony Smith, and Adrian Hastings. In the process, debates over the relationship between theology and social theory are reconfigured in concrete terms around the challenge of recognition of the State of Israel as well as stateless nations. Carys Moseley studied Classics and Theology at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh, and has taught Theology and Christian Ethics at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Nations and Nationalism in the Theology of Karl Barth (2013). 'Here is a lively study of nationhood . . . that] will undoubtedly raise hackles, provoke discussion and dissent. . . . Here is swashbuckling, stimulating theology, which should be carefully studied not only by theologians, but by people of many faiths, political and social theorists, and ethicists. Alan P.F. Sell, author of 'Philosophy, Dissent and Nonconformity' (2003) and 'Confessing the Faith Yesterday and Today' (2013). Nationalism and the concept of nationhood is something Christian theologians have shied away from. The tragedy of the Holocaust, the European experience during the twentieth century, and the fractious state of the Middle East during the twenty-first have given us all pause for thought. On the basis of a fresh understanding of Israel, Moseley tackles negative attitudes toward the integrity of stateless nations and suggests creative ways in which current missiology and theological ethics can respond positively. D. Densil Morgan, Professor of Theology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

John Knox has suffered in this century from that trick of the popular imagination that seizes on one aspect of a historical figure and elevates it into the whole man. At one time he was the foremost Scottish genius, but in our day there have been those who would have us believe that he was a ranter, an iconoclast and perhaps a hypocrite. The Author of this classic biography has sought to find the truth between these two extremes. He shows us Knox against the disturbed currents of the Continent, where mediaeval Christendom was at an end and no new order had yet emerged from the chaos of creeds and philosophies. No man could stem these currents, but John Knox in his own country gave them a direction. He became, if not the leader, at least the inciter of a revolution. He set his mark indelibly on history, and not only that of his native land; his influence upon the English court was considerable, but he also became a figure of European significance. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history of the Reformation in this island, than that of John Knox" wrote the historian Froude. The Author has given us a balanced assessment of the life and times of this remarkable man.

Thomas Cartwright was the leader of the Elizabethan Puritans and his intellectual pre-eminence was widely acknowledged. Standard-bearer of the Prebytero-Puritans against Whitgift, he was held to have vanquished his powerful adversary by the publication of his Rest of the Second Replie (1557) Cartwrightiana is the first of 2 volumes giving authoritative editions of the works of the early Elizabethan Puritans - Cartwright, Browne and Harrison. It contains among others: accounts of Cartwright's examination before the Commissioners in 1590, Resolution of Doubts about entering the Ministry, several of his letters, A Short Catechism (1579), The Holy Exercise of a True Fast (1580) and a Preface to an Hospital for the Diseased 1959

Teaching on the sanctification of Christians using the difficult word "perfection" has been part of Christian spirituality through the centuries. The Fathers spoke of it and Augustine particularly contributed his penetrating analysis of human motivation in terms of love. Medieval theologians such as Bernard and Thomas Aquinas developed the tradition and wrote of levels or "degrees" of "perfection" in love.However, the doctrine has not fared so well among Protestants. John Wesley was the one major Protestant leader who tried to blend this ancient tradition of Christian "perfection" with the Reformation proclamation of justification by grace through faith. This book seeks to develop Wesley's synthesis of patristic and Reformation theology in order to consider how Christian "perfection" can be expressed in a more nuanced way in today's culture. Noble examines what basis may be found for Wesley's understanding of sanctification in the central doctrines of the church, particularly the atonement, the doctrine of Christ, and the most comprehensive of all Christian doctrines, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. What he sets out is a fully trinitarian theology of holiness.

First published in 1999, This book is a wide-ranging and authoritative review of the reception in England and other countries of Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the English Martyrs from the time of its original publication between 1563 and 1583, up to the nineteenth century. Essays by leading scholars deal with the development of the text, the illustrations and the uses to which the work was put by protagonists in subsequent religious controversies. This volume is derived from the second John Foxe Colloquium held at Jesus College, Oxford in 1997. It is one of a number of research publications designed to support the British Academy Project for the publication of a new edition of Foxe's hugely influential text.

Much of the emerging protestantism of the sixteenth century produced a Reformation in conscious opposition to formal philosophy. Nevertheless, sectors of the Reformation produced a spiritualizing form of Platonism in the drive for correct devotion. Out of an understandable fear of idolatry or displacement of the uniquely redemptive place of Christ, Christian piety moved away from the senses and the material world - freshly uncovered in the Reformation. This volume argues, however, that in the quest for restoring "true religion", sectors of the Protestant tradition impugned too severely the material components of prior Christian devotion. Larry Harwood argues that a similar spiritualizing tendency can be found in other Christian traditions, but that its applicability to the particulars of the Christian religion is nevertheless questionable. Moreover, in that quest of a spiritualizing Protestant "true religion", the Christian God could shade toward the conceptual god of the philosophers, with devotees construed as rationalist philosophers. Part of the paradoxical result was to propel the Protestant devotee toward a denuded worship for material worshipers of the Christian God who became esh.

Methodism played an important part in the spread of Christianity from its European heartlands to the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. From John Wesley's initial reluctance, via haphazard ventures and over-ambitious targets, a well-organized and supported Wesleyan Society developed. Smaller branches of British Methodism undertook their own foreign missions. This book, together with a companion volume on the 20th century, offers an account of the overseas mission activity of British and Irish Methodists, its roots and fruits. John Pritchard explores many aspects of mission, ranging from Labrador to New Zealand and from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, from open air preaching to political engagement, from the isolation of early pioneers to the creation of self-governing churches. Tracing the nineteenth-century missionary work of the Churches with Wesleyan roots which went on to unite in 1932, Pritchard explores the shifting theologies and attitudes of missionaries who crossed cultural and geographical frontiers as well as those at home who sent and supported them. Necessarily selective in the personalities and events it describes, this book offers a comprehensive overview of a world-changing movement - a story packed with heroism, mistakes, achievements, frustrations, arguments, personalities, rascals and saints.

Christianity Today Book of the Year In the overlooked moments and routines of our day, we can become aware of God's presence in surprising ways. How do we embrace the sacred in the ordinary and the ordinary in the sacred? Framed around one typical day, this book explores life through the lens of liturgy-small practices and habits that form us. In each chapter, Tish Harrison Warren considers a common daily experience-making the bed, brushing her teeth, losing her keys. Drawing from the diversity of her life as a campus minister, Anglican priest, friend, wife, and mother, Warren opens up a practical theology of the everyday. Each activity is related to a spiritual practice as well as an aspect of our Sunday worship. Liturgy of the Ordinary is now part of the IVP Signature Collection, which features special editions of iconic books in celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of InterVarsity Press.

Ernst Troeltsch focuses his Protestantism and Progress on two main areas. First, he centers on the intellectual and religious situation, from which the significance and the possibilities of development possessed by Christianity might be deduced. This leads to an engaging historical investigation regarding the spirit of the modern world. Troeltsch argues that the modern world can only be understood in the light of its relation to earlier epochs of Christian civilization in Europe. He notes that for anyone who holds the opinion that in spite of all the significance that Catholicism retains, the living possibilities of development and progress are to be found on Protestant soil, the question regarding the relation of Protestantism to modern civilization becomes of central importance.

Troeltsch also distinguishes elements in modern civilization that have proven their value from those which are merely temporary and lead nowhere. He gives the religious ideas of Christianity a shape and form capable of doing justice to the absoluteness of religious conviction, and at the same time considering them in harmony with what has actually been accomplished towards solution of the practical problems of the Christian life.

A new introduction by Howard Schneiderman brings this monumental work into the twenty-first century, and explains why its ideas are more important than ever, one hundred years after its original publication.

Martin Luther considered the reading of God's word to be his primary task as a theologian, a pastor, and a Christian. Though he is often portrayed as reading the Bible with a bare approach of sola Scriptura-without any concern for previous generations' interpretation-the truth is more complicated. In this New Explorations in Theology (NET) volume, Reformation scholar Todd R. Hains shows that Luther read the Bible according to the rule of faith, which is contained in the church's ancient catechism of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed. Hains carefully examines Luther's sermons to show how Luther taught the rule of faith as the guard and guide of Bible reading. This study will helpfully complicate your view of Luther and bring clarity to your own reading of God's Word. Featuring new monographs with cutting-edge research, New Explorations in Theology provides a platform for constructive, creative work in the areas of systematic, historical, philosophical, biblical, and practical theology.

This focused concentration and celebration of Anglican life could not be more timely. Debates on sexuality and gender (including women bishops), whether or not the church has a Covenant, or can be a Communion, and how it is ultimately led, are issues that have dominated the ecclesial horizon for several decades. No book on Anglicanism can ever claim to have all the answers to all the questions. However, Martyn Percy's work does offer significant new insights and illumination - highlighting just how rich and reflexive the Anglican tradition can be in living and proclaiming the gospel of Christ. These essays provide some sharply-focused snapshots of contemporary Anglicanism, and cover many of the crucial issues affecting Anglicans today, such as the nature of mission and ministry, theological training and formation, and ecclesial identity and leadership. Church culture is often prey to contemporary fads and fashion. Percy's work calls Anglicanism to deeper discipleship; to attend to its roots, identity and shape; and to inhabit the world with a faith rooted in commitment, confidence and Christ.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The followers of the martyred Bohemian priest Jan Hus (1371-1415) formed one of the greatest challenges to the medieval Latin Church. Branded as heretics, outlawed, then forced to fight for their faith as well as their lives, the Hussites occupy one of the most colorful and challenging chapters of European religious history. The essays reprinted in this book (along with one here first published in English and additional notes) explore the essence of the early Hussite movement by focusing on the nature and development of heresy both as accusation and identity. Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe first examines the definition of heresy, and its comparative nature across Europe. It investigates the unique practices of popular religion in local communities, while examining theology and its unavoidable conflicts. The repressive policy of crusade and the growth of martyrdom with its inevitable contribution to the formation of Hussite history is explored. The social application of religious ideas, its revolutionary outcomes, along with the intentional use of art in pedagogy and propaganda, situates the Czech heretics in the fifteenth century. An examination of leading personalities, together with the eventual and more formal church administration, rounds out the study of this remarkable era.

Till now history has neglected the utterly radical nature of Luther's thought. In bringing together the political, theological, conceptual and cultural dimensions of Luther's work, Montover brings his readers to an awareness of their truly radical nature. Luther's understanding of the universal priesthood of believers was not simply another evangelical concept that dealt only with the office of ministry. In serving as a means for reordering the concepts of temporal authority and the temporal order it challenged the cosmological foundations of the political structure of his day. A compelling work that can only serve to revive the study of this monumental figure of theology.

Pietism is a reform movement originating among German Lutherans in the 17th century. It focused on personal faith, reacting against Lutheran Church's emphasis on doctrine and theology over Christian living. The movement quickly expanded, exerting an enormous influence on various forms of Christianity, and became concerned with social and educational matters. Indeed, Piestists showed a strong interest in issues of social and ecclesial reform, the nature of history and historical inquiry, the shape and purpose of theology and theological education, the missional task of the church, and social justice and political engagement. Though, the movement remained largely misunderstood, especially in Anglo-American contexts: negative stereotypes depicted Pietism as a quietist and sectarian form of religion, merely concerned with the "pious soul and its God." The main proposal of the editors of this volume is to correct this misunderstanding: assembling a deep collection of essays written by scholars from a variety of fields, this work demonstrates that Piestism was a movement characterized by great depth and originality. Besides, they show the vitality and impulse of Pietism today and emphasize the ongoing relevance of the movement for contemporary problems and questions.

In this notable contribution to the study of John Wesley and George Whitefield, Ian Maddock discovers the affinity between two preachers often contrasted as enemies. The controversial Free Grace episode of the early eighteenth century, which highlighted the theological divisions between Wesley's Arminianism and Whitefield's Calvinism, has influenced the scholarly division of these forerunners of the Eighteenth Century Revival, resulting in a polarised critical heritage. In a critical assessment of John Wesley, the 'scholar preacher', and George Whitefield, the 'actor preacher', Maddock gives due attention to their differences but unifies them in their commitment to the authority of the Bible, their rhetorical devices and their thematic similarities, showing how they often explicated different theories with the same evidence. Men of One Book explains how these contemporaries, who each knew of the other at Oxford University and as preachers, each faced ecclesiastical opposition and social stigma, but sought for a print-and-preach ministry in which the spoken and written word would spread the Gospel throughout the transatlantic world. 'Men of One Book' is a volume that will interest anyone concerned with the Eighteenth Century Revival, the rise of Methodism or the history of evangelicalism. Ian J. Maddock is Lecturer in Theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College, and received his PhD from the University of Aberdeen. 'A wonderful comparative treatment of the two dominant preachers of the first Great Awakening. Maddock is equally sure-footed working meticulously through the voluminous manuscript sermons of Wesley and Whitefield as if painting the details of their complex and interwoven leadership of the evangelical revivals. There is no other work that so faithfully renders portraits of these two on their own terms as well as in relation to each other.' Richard Lints, Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Theology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary