The Course of God’s Providence
The Course of God’s Providence

Author: Philippa Koch

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1479806684

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Shows that a religious understanding of illness and health persisted well into post-Enlightenment early America The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the power of narrative during times of sickness and disease. As Americans strive to find meaning amid upheaval and loss, some consider the nature of God’s will. Early American Protestants experienced similar struggles as they attempted to interpret the diseases of their time. In this groundbreaking work, Philippa Koch explores the doctrine of providence—a belief in a divine plan for the world—and its manifestations in eighteenth-century America, from its origins as a consoling response to sickness to how it informed the practices of Protestant activity in the Atlantic world. Drawing on pastoral manuals, manuscript memoirs, journals, and letters, as well as medical treatises, epidemic narratives, and midwifery manuals, Koch shows how Protestant teachings around providence shaped the lives of believers even as the Enlightenment seemed to portend a more secular approach to the world and the human body. Their commitment to providence prompted, in fact, early Americans’ active engagement with the medical developments of their time, encouraging them to see modern science and medicine as divinely bestowed missionary tools for helping others. Indeed, the book shows that the ways in which the colonial world thought about questions of God’s will in sickness and health help to illuminate the continuing power of Protestant ideas and practices in American society today.

Heavenly Providence
Heavenly Providence

Author: Suk Yu Chan

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2022-08-08

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 3647560715

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Suk Yu Chan provides a revisit of John Calvin's interpretation of the doctrine of divine providence and builds upon a vast repository of quality research conducted by previous Reformation scholars. The author adopts a historical approach to explore Calvin's works from 1534–1559, and argues that from 1534–1541, Calvin used the image of the fountain to portray God as the source of everything, who has power to preserve and give life to all creatures on earth. Between the Latin edition of the Institutes in 1539 and the French translation of that work in 1541, Calvin was indecisive about the definition of special providence, articulating a fitful relationship between providence and soteriology in these two texts. In 1552, Calvin gradually ceased using the image of the fountain to portray God as the source of everything, and he also delivered three definitions of divine providence: general providence, special providence, and the very presence of God. Based on the theological understanding of divine providence which he had developed from 1534–1552, Calvin presented his exegesis on the Book of Job and the Book of Psalms through his sermons and commentaries. Furthermore, Calvin also discussed the importance of the human role in God's providence. While Calvin's theological understanding of God's providence was inherited by his successor, Theodore Beza, Beza applied it differently in his exegesis on the Book of Job. From 1534–1559, Calvin formulated his biblical doctrine of divine providence, articulating that divine providence is heavenly providence which is comprised of eternal predestination and divine preservation.

T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology
T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology

Author: James M. Arcadi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 0567681335

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This handbook provides theological and philosophical resources that demonstrate analytic theology's unique contribution to the task of theology. Analytic theology is a recent movement at the nexus of theology, biblical studies, and philosophy that marshals resources from the analytic philosophical tradition for constructive theological work. Paying attention to the Christian tradition, the development of doctrine, and solid biblical studies, analytic theology prizes clarity, brevity, and logical rigour in its exposition of Christian teaching. Each contribution in this volume offers an overview of specific doctrinal and dogmatic issues within the Christian tradition and provides a constructive conceptual model for making sense of the doctrine. Additionally, an extensive bibliography serves as a valuable resource for researchers wishing to address issues in theology from an analytic perspective.

Five Modes of Scepticism
Five Modes of Scepticism

Author: Stefan Sienkiewicz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-03-28

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0192519271

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Five Modes of Scepticism examines the argument forms that lie at the heart of Pyrrhonian scepticism as expressed in the writings of Sextus Empiricus. These are the Agrippan modes of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity and relativity; modes which are supposed to bring about that quintessentially sceptical mental state of suspended judgement. Stefan Sienkiewicz analyses how the modes are supposed to do this, both individually and collectively, and from two perspectives. On the one hand there is the perspective of the sceptic's dogmatic opponent and on the other there is the perspective of the sceptic himself. Epistemically speaking, the dogmatist and the sceptic are two different creatures with two different viewpoints. The book elucidates the corresponding differences in the argumentative structure of the modes depending on which of these perspectives is adopted. Previous treatments of the modes have interpreted them from a dogmatic perspective; one of the tasks of the present work is to reorient the way in which scholars have traditionally engaged with the modes. Sienkiewicz advocates moving away from the perspective of the sceptic's opponent - the dogmatist - towards the perspective of the sceptic and trying to make sense of how the sceptic can come to suspend judgement on the basis of the Agrippan modes.

Receiving 2 Thessalonians
Receiving 2 Thessalonians

Author: Andrew R. Talbert

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-11-11

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1532673701

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Epochal voices in the reception history of 2 Thessalonians: an invective against the proud from the dais of a basilica in Constantinople; an indictment of clerical simony in a Carolingian monastery that nearly faded from historical memory; a theologically integrative vision of the epistle from Reformation Zürich. These readings participate in “beauty” all the while opening up new questions for later readers of Paul’s letter, and their “meaning” is located in their fittingness to the form of Christ. This work offers a truly interdisciplinary methodology that brings together the wayward children of biblical and theological studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation
The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation

Author: Paul M. Blowers

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019-05-21

Total Pages: 736

ISBN-13: 0191028215

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The Bible was the essence of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation explores a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. Each section contains overviews and cutting-edge scholarship that expands understanding of the field. Part One examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God's word for the church. Part Two looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. Part Three addresses the diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while Part Four canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. Part Five assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. Part Six returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. The overall history of biblical interpretation has itself now become the subject of a growing scholarship and the final part skilfully examines how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Taken together, the chapters provide nuanced paths of introduction for students and scholars from a wide spectrum of academic fields, including classics, biblical studies, the general history of interpretation, the social and cultural history of late ancient and early medieval Christianity, historical theology, and systematic and contextual theology. Readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.