scholarly journals Sacred Covenant and Huguenot Ideology of Resistance: The Biblical Image of the Contractual Monarchy in Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 589
Author(s):  
Andrei Constantin Sălăvăstru
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The Church ◽  
Constitutional Monarchy

The Bible had been a fundamental source of legitimacy for the French monarchy, with biblical imagery wielded as a powerful propaganda weapon in the ideological warfare which the kings of France often had to wage. All Christian monarchies tried to build around themselves a sacral aura, but the French kings had soon set themselves apart: they were the “most Christian”, anointed with holy oil brought from heaven, endowed with the power of healing, and the eldest sons of the Church. Biblical text was called upon to support this image of the monarchy, as the kings of France were depicted as following in the footsteps of the virtuous kings of the Old Testament and possessing the necessary biblical virtues. However, the Bible could prove a double-edged sword which could be turned against the monarchy, as the ideological battles unleashed by the Reformation were to prove. In search for a justification for their resistance against the French Crown, in particular after 1572, the Huguenots polemicists looked to the Bible in order to find examples of limited monarchies and overthrown tyrants. In putting forward the template of a proto-constitutional monarchy, one of the notions advanced by the Huguenots was the Biblical covenant between God, kings and the people, which imposed limits and obligations on the kings. This paper aims to examine the occurrence of this image in Vindiciae, contra tyrannos (1579), one of the most important Huguenot political works advocating resistance against tyrannical kings, and the role it played in the construction of the Huguenot theory of resistance.

scholarly journals Towards a New Homiletic

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-60
Author(s):  
Liz Shercliff
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Text ◽  
Feminist Methodology ◽  
People Of God ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
New Homiletic ◽  
Women Preachers ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church ◽  
Shared Narrative

Feminism’s contribution to homiletics so far has arguably been restricted to exploring gender difference in preaching. In 2014, however, Jennifer Copeland identified a need not merely to ‘include women “in the company of preachers” but to craft a new register for the preaching event’. This article considers what that new register might be and how it might be taught in the academy. It defines preaching as ‘the art of engaging the people of God in their shared narrative by creatively and hospitably inviting them into an exploration of biblical text, by means of which, corporately and individually, they might encounter the divine’ and proposes that in both the Church and the Academy, women’s voices are suppressed by a rationalist hegemony. For the stories of women to be heard, a new homiletic is needed, in which would-be preachers first encounter themselves, then the Bible as themselves and finally their congregation in communality. Findings of researchers in practical preaching discover that women preachers are being influenced by feminist methodology, while the teaching of preaching is not. In order to achieve a hospitable preaching space, it is proposed that the Church and the Academy work together towards a new homiletic.

Moses and the Magistrate: a Study in the rise of Protestant Legalism

1975 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. D. L. Avis
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Laws ◽  
The Church

‘It is now disputed at every table’, declared Whitgift in 1574, ‘whether the magistrate be of necessity bound to the judicials of Moses’. Edwin Sandys told Bullinger of Zürich in the previous year that it was being maintained, to the great trouble of the Church, that ‘The judicial laws of Moses are binding upon Christian princes, and they ought not in the slightest degree to depart from them’. Though often neglected by historians as an important factor in the Reformation, the question of the validity of the Old Testament judicial (as opposed to moral or ceremonial) law frequently arises in the writings of the Reformers, and their various answers made no slight impact on the course of events. It bears directly on Henry VIII's divorce and the bigamy of Philip of Hesse; the treatment of heresy and the possibility of toleration; the persecution of witches; usury and iconoclasm; Sabbatarianism and the rise of the ‘puritan’ view of the Bible as a book of precedents, and the corresponding shift to legalism in Protestant theology. The question is also of fundamental relevance to the thought of the Reformers on natural law, the godly prince and magistrate, and the so-called ‘third use of the law’. This article is an attempt to survey, up to the end of the sixteenth century, the various interpretations of the Mosaic penal and civil laws, with particular reference to the development of legalistic tendencies after Luther.

Bible and Biblical Theology in the Early Reformation

1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
J. N. Bakhuizen Van Den Brink
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Church

The Reformation gave back the Bible to the people, that is to say the Bible in the vulgar tongue. We may enter now into some of the theological problems implied in this important historical event, by revealing the well-known circumstances of the first religious disputation held at Zürich on 29th January 1523. Zwingli's first thesis was that those who do not recognise the Gospel but by the authority of the Church, err and insult God. The same conviction is repeated in quite the same words and with still greater completeness in the Scots Confession, art. 19. Some months before the disputation, Zwingli had sent his treatise Von Klarheit und Gewissheit des Wortes Gottes, to the Black Friars of Oetenbach. For three years already he had himself been preaching daily in Our Lady's Münster in the capital. In his correspondence with the vicar of Constanz, who seriously disapproved of Zwingli's activity, he published his Apologeticus Archeteles, 1522, in which he said: ‘to this treasure, I mean the certitude of God's Word, our heart should be directed’, and in his second answer to the objections of the vicar he ventured to give the assurance that ‘the people will always surrender themselves with the simplicity of a dove to the sole Gospel, and in proportion as it is the less stained by the dust of human traditions, the people will be the more susceptible to the celestial doctrine in which they take their refuge with all confidence as to a holy anchor’.

People of the Book

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-103
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Fundamental Issue ◽  
Public Statement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation

This chapter talks about identity as the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation. It recounts how the Protestants of Geneva and Rouen forced biblical names on children being baptized in order to make a bold and public statement of their intention to distance themselves from Catholicism. It explains how the use of names associated with the New and Old Testament not only embody the Protestants' great enthusiasm for the Bible, but how they also encouraged an identification specifically with the people of Israel. The chapter looks at John Calvin, who was a generation younger than Martin Luther and leader of the two largest movements associated with the Reformation. It compares Calvin and Luther's attitudes towards the Jews, in which Calvin has generally been considered the more sympathetic since he did not write anything that was as substantial and vicious as Luther's text.

From Areopagus to Corinth (Acts 17:22–31; I Cor 2:1–5) A Study on the Transition from the Power of Knowledge to the Power of the Spirit

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Pathrapankal
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
The Other ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Change Of Perspective ◽  
The Church

AbstractHow are we to understand Christian mission in our time? Is it the obedient response to the commission of his disciples by Jesus after his resurrection (Mt 28:18–20)? What should be the motivating power behind the mission of the church? Is it patterned on the conquest expeditions of the people of Israel narrated in the Old Testament? The long history of the mission of the church, especially as organized by the West, would give us such an impression. This approach has more the nature of exercising power over the other, the power of knowledge and the power of self to win over the other. From the time of the Roman Emperor, Constantine, this had been the pattern in the history of the western church. But times have changed and there is a real shift in the understanding of Christian mission in the context of religious pluralism. The Bible itself seems to support and substantiate this change of perspective of understanding mission as the operation of the power of the Spirit of God. Taking two New Testament writings, the Acts of the Apostles and the first Letter to the Corinthians as paradigms, the author tries to see how Paul first of all attempted to preach the gospel in Athens with the eloquence and wisdom of the Greeks and then changed his approach in Corinth to give centrality to the power of the Spirit of God. Although we may not argue for a historical sequence for this change of attitude in the case of Paul, applying new developments in biblical interpretation, we can still propose it as a trans-textual approach with a message for our time. The Word of God has within itself a dynamism to take on new meanings and new horizons of ideas through its encounter with new contexts in a pluralistic world.

The Church of the Reformation Faces Today's Challenges

1950 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-464
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Hromádka
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Protestant Theologian ◽  
The Right ◽  
Princeton Theological Seminary ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
The Church

Prefatory Note—Dr. Joseph L. Hromádka, Dean of the Jan Hus Theological Faculty in Prague, is considered the foremost Protestant theologian and Church leader in Czechoslovakia. He fled the Nazi terror and came to the United States to spend eight years in exile as a professor of theology in Princeton Theological Seminary. Shortly after the War closed, during the summer of 1947, he and his family returned to his native land to help in the reconstruction. Political conditions changed rapidly and the Communist Party came into power early in 1948. Since that time Dr. Hromádka and his colleagues have had to face a new situation. They have tried to maintain a Christian position in their national revolution, believing that while the new order represents an inevitable development in history, the Christian must not withdraw from it, but take a positive yet critical attitude towards it and give his Christian witness in it. That this is being done is evidenced by this powerful address, which is here presented in unabridged form. Some think that Hromádka has gone too far in working with the new order, although they admire his courageous stand and his precarious position. Others, who know the European situation, feel that he is on the right course, and that his future will no doubt determine the future of evangelical Christianity in all Communist countries. Communists in Czechoslovakia respect men like Hromádka, because they know that such Christians are sincere, fearless, and incorruptible. They also know that Christians like Hromádka have great social concern for the people. This address, delivered a few months ago to several thousand people in one of the large halls of Prague, is based upon Psalm 75 and will indicate to those who read the Psalm how relevant the Bible is! It reveals the core of the Protestant faith of the Reformation which is coming to renewed life in many areas of the Church. The address also communicates the tension which in a sense always exists between the Church and the world, the tension which in our time has become acute.—E. G. Homrighausen.

The Vulnerability of the Word

2019 ◽  
pp. 236-290
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Middle Portion ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Church ◽  
Biblical Concepts

Chapter 7 demonstrates the importance of biblical interpretation to Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism. Beginning with the Barthian inspiration for a theological reading of scripture as the book of the church, Bonhoeffer develops a biblical hermeneutic for transformative, humanist reading of the Bible that incorporates historical critical tools in seeking out God’s address in concrete life situations. After describing Bonhoeffer’s incarnational approach to the biblical text, and his criticism of verbal inspiration, the middle portion of this chapter describes Bonhoeffer’s theological interpretation of the Old Testament, pointing out striking parallels to patristic interpretation, including the Bible’s sacramental role for Christformation. The same sacramental ontology that governs his general hermeneutics and ethics also help explain Bonhoeffer’s often misunderstood notions of non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts, non-religious Christianity, and a world come of age. The remainder of the chapter clarifies the meaning and humanist implications of these ideas, showing their congruence with Bonhoeffer’s increasing appreciation of the Old Testament’s importance for a this-worldly Christianity that celebrates God’s presence in the midst of life.

scholarly journals The Ecclesiology of Israel’s Scriptures

2018 ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
R. W. L. Moberly
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
People Of God ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church

This chapter begins by exploring the dilemma: How can there be an ecclesiology of the Hebrew Scriptures in the absence of a church? We might say that the theological account of ‘the people of God’ in the Old Testament informed and shaped the Christian sense of ‘the people of God’ in the New. Or we could go further and affirm that there was indeed a church in or of Israel. The chapter then reviews Christian attempts to provide (a) a synthesis of historical and theological interpretations of the Old Testament (Hanson and Goldingay) and (b) canonical approaches (Childs, Lindbeck, and Radner). The remainder of the chapter offers a reading of selected Old Testament passages, seeking to bring together Israel and the church according to the three themes: vocation and assurance; warning and challenge; failure and hope. These readings of the biblical text are followed by reflections on their theological and ecclesiological implications.

scholarly journals The World of the Bible: Indispensable Context in the Study of the Old Testament

Kairos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
Monika Bajić
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Message ◽  
The Church

The Bible was not originally written for the modern reader, but the testimony of the Church is that it continues to speak God’s word to readers/hearers today. However, many modern Bible readers come across texts that need further explanation because the biblical authors did not offer clarification of their writings. They assumed the readers of their time were familiar with the background and could understand the reported events without further explanation. To achieve a “legit” interpretation of Old Testament texts, we first need to understand Scripture correctly, meaning that the biblical text must be read in its narrower and broader context. Only within a context does it become clear what the author meant to say. The main argument of this article is to exhibit that the Bible can only be fully understood against the backdrop of the Ancient Near East (ANE). The broader context consists of the knowledge of surrounding nations during Bible times (i.e., Hebrew Bible). By examining ANE texts and archeological findings we achieve a more complete and enriched comprehension of a given scriptural text or passage. This article exhibits through some concrete examples how archeological findings, inscriptions, and Ancient Near East texts can aid in understanding the broader context of the Old Testament world. In return, the wider context of the Bible world can enlighten or clarify a difficult, incomprehensible, or ambiguous biblical text and henceforth scriptural interpretation become more accurate and closer to the original message and meaning.

The Reformation of Prophecy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Sujin Pak
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Priesthood Of All Believers ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
The People ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Developmental Analysis ◽  
Sacred History

The Reformation of Prophecy presents and supports the case for viewing the prophet and biblical prophecy as a powerful lens by which to illuminate many aspects of the reforming work of the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It provides a chronological and developmental analysis of the significance of the prophet and biblical prophecy across leading Protestant reformers in articulating a theology of the priesthood of all believers, a biblical model of the pastoral office, a biblical vision of the reform of worship, and biblical processes for discerning right interpretation of Scripture. Through the tool of the prophet and biblical prophecy, the reformers framed their work under, within, and in support of the authority of Scripture—for the true prophet speaks the Word of God alone and calls the people, their worship and their beliefs and practices, back to the Word of God. The book also demonstrates how interpretations and understandings of the prophet and biblical prophecy contributed to the formation and consolidation of distinctive confessional identities, especially around differences in their visions of sacred history, Christological exegesis of Old Testament prophecy, and interpretation of Old Testament metaphors. This book illuminates the significant shifts in the history of Protestant reformers’ engagement with the prophet and biblical prophecy—shifts from these serving as a tool to advance the priesthood of all believers to a tool to clarify and buttress clerical identity and authority to a site of polemical-confessional exchange concerning right interpretations of Scripture.

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