Volume III examines the history of theology and the basic innovations in theological thought during the Renaissance era. It explores the councils, people, movements, pedagogy, and theological methods of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies examines the creation of the academic Bible. Beginning with the fragmentation of biblical interpretation in the centuries after the Reformation, Michael Legaspi shows how the weakening of scriptural authority in the Western churches altered the role of biblical interpretation. Focusing on renowned German scholar Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), Legaspi explores the ways in which critics reconceived the role of the Bible. This book offers a new account of the origins of biblical studies, illuminating the relation of the Bible to churchly readers, theological interpreters, academic critics, and people in between. It explains why, in an age of religious resurgence, modern biblical criticism may no longer be in a position to serve as the Bible's disciplinary gatekeeper.
How the Catholic Church got started. Covers Sts. Peter and Paul; first Popes; the written and unwritten word; Council of Jerusalem; persecutions; religious life of early Christians; early popes and martyrs; birth of the New Testament.
The early centuries of the Christian era were marked by a variety of theological ideas in differing stages of development. Numerous theologians emerged with proposals about what the Christian church should believe and how theological ideas related to each other. Some of these theologians gained more prominent status and their ideas became sources on which others built. Patristic theology is thus a formative period, a yeasty time in which theological doctrines took on many stages of complexity. This outstanding handbook by a leading specialist in Patristic Theology provides students and scholars with easy access to key terms, figures, socio-cultural developments, and controversies of this period, extending to the ninth-century. McGuckin's introductory essay outlines the main intellectual issues in the early church. His concluding Bibliographic Guide Essay and General Bibliography also features a Website Resources Guide to assist readers with additional ways to study this period. The entries are written to help those with no previous theological knowledge understand the major dimensions of each topic. The result is an eminently useful, reliable, and unique resource.
With a foreword by Diego Quaglioni. This book analyses the bearing of one of the most long-standing debates of the Middle Ages, the distinction between potentia Dei absoluta and ordinata (God’s absolute and ordered power), on the modern Western legal tradition.
Anyone who is interested in constructive theology needs a knowledge of the history of Christian theology. In succession to the classic History of Christian Doctrine by G. P. Fisher, Professor Cunliffe-Jones has brought together a team of experts in the various periods to provide a new and comprehensive survey of the field.All the great themes, the Fathers, the Heretics of the long story here find their due place, from sub-apostolic Christianity to Vatican II. Also featured are the contribution of Orthodox theology to the whole development, the complex problems of the pre-Reformation period and the troubled modern period with its new perspectives of Church and society and its deep underlying malaise. Includes contributions from G. W. H. Lampe, Kallistos Ware, David Knowles, E. Gordon Rupp, Benjamin Drewery, Basil Hall, T. H. L. Parker, H. F. Woodhouse, R. Buick Knox and John H. S. Kent.
Many factors contributed to the Protestant Reformation, but one of the most significant was the debate over the doctrine of justification by faith alone. In fact, Martin Luther argued that justification is the doctrine on which the church stands or falls. This comprehensive volume of 26 essays from a host of scholars explores the doctrine of justification from the lenses of history, the Bible, theology, and pastoral practice—revealing the enduring significance of this pillar of Protestant theology.