ON FINDING THE THEOLOGICAL MESSAGE OF OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS: A PLEA FOR PAYING ATTENTION TO THE REDEMPTIVE-HISTORICAL CONTEXT

What is the theological message of an Old Testament book? How should one proceed in attempts to trace and formulate it? The answer to these questions is vital for the study biblical theology. These are likewise relevant for students working on the exegesis of a pericope or ministers preparing a sermon series on a specific book. In this study, I will argue that it is not only helpful but also necessary to pay more attention to the position of the books in the broad context of the history of Israel and the history of redemption. As this context is particularly relevant for the interpretation of the historical books and the prophets, I will focus on examples taken from these books.

Sources of History as Theology

Much ink has been spilled about Edwards’s A History of the Work of Redemption, and one is reminded that “any discussion of what Edwards would have done in developing the Redemption sermon series into a mature treatise must be inconclusive.” This chapter attempts to look at Edwards’s proposed “body of divinity in an entire new method,” by offering a fresh evaluation of its continuity and discontinuity with early modern systems of divinity. Therefore, the chapter first gives a succinct overview of various thoughts on Edwards’s intended “body of divinity,” followed by an overview and examination of relevant works of seventeenth-century systematic theology. Thirdly, Mastricht’s treatment of the De dispensatione fœderis gratiæ (On the dispensations of the covenant of grace) will be considered in relation to Edwards’s Redemption Discourse, the three later notebooks about the “History of Redemption,” and the section of the letter to the Princeton Board.

Pentecostalism, Political Masculinity and Citizenship

Africa has become a key site of masculinity politics, that is, of mobilisations and struggles where masculine gender is made a principal theme and subjected to change. Pentecostalism is widely considered to present a particular form of masculinity politics in contemporary African societies. Scholarship on African Pentecostal masculinities has mainly centred around the thesis of the domestication of men, focusing on changes in domestic spheres and in marital and intimate relations. Through an analysis of a sermon series preached by a prominent Zambian Pentecostal pastor, this article demonstrates that Pentecostal discourse on adult, middle- to upper-class masculinity is also highly concerned with men’s roles in sociopolitical spheres. It argues that in this case study the construction of a born-again masculinity is part of the broader Pentecostal political project of national redemption, which in Zambia has particular significance in light of the country constitutionally being a Christian nation. Hence the article examines how this construction of Pentecostal masculinity relates to broader notions of religious, political and gendered citizenship.

Sermons, Separatists, and Succession Politics in Late Elizabethan England

In late 1599 the population of York was able to witness a fairly extraordinary sight. In York Castle, the Catholic prisoners of conscience, as they saw themselves (though others regarded them as dangerous political dissidents), were being compelled to listen, once a week, to a Protestant sermon. These sermons were preached at them by a slate of godly ministers. This exercise was something the prisoners actively contested by murmuring, blocking their ears, shouting, and attempting to rush out of the hall. The prisoners' antics provoked the authorities into increasingly coercive measures to make them hear the Word of God. This outwardly rather ridiculous and unseemly charade went on, week after week, for nearly a year, at which point the whole business was abandoned by the lord president, Lord Burghley, as a waste of time. However, by decoding the extant manuscript narrative that we have of the sermon series and by looking at who was involved in this business and why, and what political messages were being sent during the course of it, we can say something about the popular politics of late Elizabethan England. In particular, we can comment on the strategies adopted by those who were anticipating the moment, surely not far off, when Tudor power would be extinguished and Elizabeth's crown would pass to her successor.

God’s World Is Not an Animal Farm – Or Is It? The Catachrestic Translation of Gender Equality in African Pentecostalism

Building on scholarly debates on Pentecostalism, gender and modernity in Africa, this article engages a postcolonial perspective to explore and discuss the ambivalent, even paradoxical nature of African Pentecostal gender discourse. It analyses the conceptualization of gender equality, in particular the attempt to reconcile the notions of ‘male–female equality’ and ‘male headship’, in a sermon series delivered by a prominent Zambian Pentecostal pastor, and argues that the appropriation and interruption of Western notions of gender equality in these sermons can be interpreted, in the words of Homi Bhabha, as a catachrestic postcolonial translation of modernity. Hence, the article critically discusses the Western ethnocentrism in some scholarly debates on gender and Pentecostalism in Africa, and points to some of the fundamental questions that Pentecostalism and its ambivalent gender discourse pose to gender-critical scholarship in the study of religion.