Pardoning Puritanism: Community, Character, and Forgiveness in the Work of Richard Baxter

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth-century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights.     

Pardoning Puritanism: Community,Character, and Forgiveness in the Work of Richard Baxter

The English Puritan Richard Baxter (1615–1691) developed an account of forgiveness that resonates with twentieth‐century virtue ethics. He understood forgiveness as one component of a larger disposition of character developed in community as human beings recognize themselves as sinful creatures engaged in complex relationships of dependency and responsibility, with both God and one another. In the midst of these relationships, persons experience divine and human forgiveness and discover opportunities to practice forgiveness in return. Baxter thus negotiated a distinctive relationship between Christian hope for reconciliation and more stereotypical Puritan emphases on punishment, civil order, and justice. At the same time that recent moral reflection allows us to raise questions about some features of Baxter's argument (such as his treatment of anger), his work provides important resources for correlating dispositions with concrete obligations, establishing a place for forgiveness in the public realm, and counterbalancing the modern emphasis on individual rights.     

The Motherhood of the Church in Henri de Lubac and John Calvin

Both Henri de Lubac and John Calvin described the Church as ‘mother’. From the patristic tradition, the motherhood of the Church had two dimensions: (i) the Mother Church as an institution delimited by the episcopacy of which inclusion was a necessity for salvation; and (ii) the Church as the mother of believers through whose ‘motherly’ care of bringing to life, nourishing and teaching through the sacraments God makes provision for his children. Both de Lubac and Calvin stress the maternal functions of the Church, but differ over how the Church’s motherhood relates to its visible identity and why inclusion in the Church is necessary for salvation. This article argues that this connection represents a rich theme for ecumenical ecclesiology. Despite divergent ecclesiological grammars and themes, Catholic and Reformed traditions are drawing from a shared patristic inheritance which gives good ground for dialogue for respective ecclesial self-understandings.     

The death of an alleged heretic,Richard Hunne (d.1514), explained

Abstract

On 4 December 1514, a suspect heretic named Richard Hunne died while being held in Lollards Tower, the bishop of London’s prison in Old St Paul’s. The discovery of Hunne’s body, hanged, provoked sharp dissension between Church and State while also triggering an anticlerical backlash among London’s citizenry in the years preceding the Reformation. This study will consider if Hunne’s death was murder, as John Foxe, the martyrologist, subsequently insisted, or suicide, as claimed by the church authorities and by Thomas More in his later published treatment of the affair. A definitive answer to this question has eluded historians for 500 years, but here a new explanation, judicial but bungled torture, is suggested as the key to this death in custody.     

Militant atheism,pragmatism, and the God-shaped hole

This paper addresses recent examples of militant atheism. It considers the theistic reply that describes atheism as deriving from a “God-shaped hole” in the human soul. The paper will argue that American pragmatism offers a middle path that avoids militant atheism without suffering from this problem. The paper describes this middle path and considers the problem that is seen in Rorty’s recent work: how the pragmatist can remain critical of religious fundamentalism without succumbing to a militant version of atheism. The solution proposed is tolerant acceptance of religion along with melioristic criticism developed within shared norms of inquiry.     

The End of the Incarnation: John Owen,Trinitarian Agency and Christology

Recent interpreters of John Owen incorrectly argue that Owen's trinitarian theology undermines the doctrine of inseparable operations (Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa). On the contrary, this article argues Owen upheld this doctrine like his Reformed Orthodox contemporaries, using the incarnation as a test case. Owen maintained the incarnation was an undivided act of the Trinity, which had its appropriative terminus on the Son alone – a pattern of thought he extended to the Spirit's work on the Son's humanity. Owen's creative use of the tradition is an example for contemporary theologians who would emphasize the Spirit's role in Christology.     

Oikonomia,Incarnation and Immediacy: The Figure of the Jew in St John of Damascus

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of oikonomia in the writings of St John of Damascus and how that role is integral to the construction of the figure of the Jew.     

John Dewey,The Other Face of the Brazilian New School

This paper intents to analyze the influence of John Dewey’s ideas in the movement that defended the educationl renovation in Brazil (named New School) at the end of the 1920s and in the 1930s. For this, it explains two trends of that movement: the first is described by the metaphor of industrial or mechanical efficiency, whose emphasis was in the power derived from the disciplinary idea of progress, which was embedded in the process of rationalization of the social relations submitted by a factory model; the second, developed by influence of Dewey, is characterized by a project of democratization of society and school that prevented the individual massification and the adoption of the rationalizing model inspired by the factory without any criticism. When Dewey was put in the center of the debate on political, pedagogical and social goals of the Brazilian New School, he was called to introduce a series of concepts that helped to find the balance between the respect for individuality and the observation of the social needs. This paper has some of the conclusions of a major research project, “Philosophy and Science in the New Educational Discourse (Brazil: l930–1960),” sponsored by CNPq.     

Profit and Piety: Thomas More,John Colet,and the London Mercery

Abstract

This study offers a new comparison between Thomas More's and John Colet's ideology concerning wealth and property and their activities with the Mercers’ Company, in order to demonstrate their humanist aims of bringing virtue (pietas) and learning to society partly by means of business. It is argued that, as in the wider Church, there was a reciprocal relationship between profit and piety in the life and works of the two humanists, despite their apparent dismissive attitudes to money in their writings. As a result of their work, not only did the Mercers benefit from the two men's skills, but London gained a new school, the re-foundation of the Guild of the Holy Name of Jesus and the improvement of the hospital of St. Thomas of Acre along with More's legal and diplomatic services, which improved international trade relations, especially with the Low Countries. Their humanist philanthropy exhibited the active side of their devotional lives in their educational aims, civic service and social reform.     

Social Dominance Orientation and John Henryism at the Intersection of Race and Class

Three studies were conducted to explore the relationship between social dominance orientation (SDO) and John Henryism (JH). Each study was framed using an intersectionality perspective which predicted that specific combinations of social identities would impact endorsement of SDO and JH in unique ways. We hypothesized that upper‐class non‐Whites would be higher in SDO and lower in JH than any other class/race identity combination. As predicted, a Class × Race interaction emerged for both SDO and JH in Study 1 (N = 387), with upper‐class non‐Whites displaying the highest levels of SDO and the lowest levels of JH. Study 2 (N = 340) replicated these findings and also explored the impact of context‐level class on SDO and JH. Using a qualitative method, in Study 3 (N = 23) we found that upper‐class non‐Whites described their social class positions in ways highly consistent with SDO, whereas middle/working‐class non‐Whites described their experiences in ways consistent with JH.     

An Annotated Catalogue of Protestant Editions in English of Works by and Relating to Saint Augustine of Hippo, 1529-1700

Abstract

Adducing works attributed to Augustine in support of reformist doctrine dates back to Reformation beginnings, and in England early writers like Tyndale (Christian Obedience) and E. Fox (Determinations) appealed to him. In both cases, ancient authority is brought to bear on current issues. Such use of Augustine then and later is closely tied to contemporary events, making a clear understanding of the role of Augustine essential to interpretation of the period. Due to confusable names and variant spellings, an exact figure of editions of works connected with Augustine in English in the early modern era is not quite possible yet, but Early English Books Online (TCP) suggests up to 1000. The catalogue here is an annotated list of forty-four separate works in ninety-six editions which can fairly be described as ‘Protestant Augustinian'. These are either translations of his works, or texts substantially based on his works. Included is an appendix of a further ninety-four Protestant works in 209 editions in which a significant Augustinian element can be detected, a summary table of the pattern of publication of the items listed, and a brief survey of Augustine's English Protestant readership.     

The Otherness of Children as a Hint of an Outside: Michel Foucault,Richard Yates and Karl Barth on Suburban Life

Abstract

The essay shows how the ordinary life of children might save suburbia from itself. Disenchanted with contemporary existence, temptations of ideality tend to both vilify and verify suburban life as banal, yet to the extent that suburban life means life with children, profound possibilities subsist in that strange world. The argument unfolds in three parts. Beginning with Michel Foucault, the author shows how power courses through every form of life, colonizing depth such that desire reveals power's most fundamental expression. Secondly, Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road exemplifies power's machinations as Yates compassionately portrays the tragedy of belittling ordinary life. Finally, the author turns to Karl Barth in order to resituate Foucault's account of immanence within a larger horizon where children might be embraced as the aleatory play of difference of God's peace and patience.     

John Plaifere (d.1632) on conditional predestination: a well-mixed version of scientia media and resistible grace

This article argues that John Plaifere's doctrine of predestination appearing in Appello Evangelium (1651) can be labelled as ‘conditional predestination’, since it embodies two Arminian features: scientia media and resistible grace. His conditional predestination needs to be considered as recognizing at least five different variations of predestination in his time. It is distinctive in English Arminianism, but not because Plaifere introduces scientia media and resistible grace or because he is unique in adopting these notions (as is not the case). Rather, Plaifere's doctrine of predestination is distinctive because it is a hybrid version embracing core tenets of Molina, Arminius, Arminianism, and the Remonstrants. Although not every English Arminian or Dutch Remonstrant had much concern for scientia media, Plaifere's conditional predestination advances resistible grace, which is substantially based on the notion of scientia media as its metaphysical foundation. In analyzing Plaifere's Appello Evangelium, one can gain a sense of the specific technical-theological components with which English Arminianism was constructed.     

H. Richard Niebuhr's Reading of George Herbert Mead: Correcting,Completing, and Looking Ahead

In this essay, I reconstruct H. Richard Niebuhr's interpretation of George Herbert Mead's account of the social constitution of the self. Specifically, I correct Niebuhr's interpretation, because it mischaracterizes Mead's understanding of social constitution as more dialogical than ecological. I also argue that Niebuhr's interpretation needs completing because it fails to engage one of Mead's more significant notions, the I/me distinction within the self. By reconstructing Niebuhr's account of faith and responsibility as theologically self‐constitutive through Mead's I/me distinction, I demonstrate Niebuhr's deep yet unacknowledged agreement with Mead: the self is constituted by its participation in multiple communities, but responds to them creatively by enduring the moral perplexity of competing communal claims. I conclude by initiating a constructive account of conscience that follows from this agreement. Conscience is more ecological than dialogical because it regards our creative participation in multiple ecologies of social roles oriented by patterns of responsive relations.     

Impressions of the Church of Sweden: liberal and catholic with nuances of Lutheranism

The Church of Sweden is difficult to describe or to characterise, whether as a Folk Church, a national church, as catholic or liberal, or as, in some sense, Lutheran. This article refers to aspects of its complex relations with the Roman Catholic Church and with Lutheranism at large. The author detects, from ecumenical agreement and practice, an incipient new communion of churches, based on a common claim to be catholic and also to be open to developments in society. This group includes the Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in the USA, the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht and the Philippine Independent Church, all of which are in communion with each other. The author's presentation is set out in relation to the Church of Sweden's liturgical and sacramental life, its church–state relations, and in an account of the rather asymmetrical shape of ecumenism in Sweden, in all of which the question of gender plays a role.     

Mary, the Reformation and some Scots!In Memory of John Macquarrie (1919–2007)

Since Vatican II great progress has been made towards an ecumenical understanding and appreciation of our Blessed Lady, even as there has been a certain development in Catholic understanding. This essay looks briefly at Reformation mariologies, those of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli before moving on to consider three Scots: John Knox, Edwin Muir and John Macquarrie. Arguably, John Macquarrie has shown one of the most careful retrievals of Marian theology, not least in his  Principles of Christian Theology  and  Mary for All Christians.  His final mariological sounding took him back to his Celtic roots, and is summarized here. John Macquarrie died in 2007, and this essay is dedicated to his memory.     

Messianism and Kingship in the Gospel of John: A Comparison Between the Fourth Gospel and the Royal Psalms 2, 72, and 110

The article shows that messianism and kingship in the Gospel of John are involved in the royal psalms, such as Psalms 2, 72, and 110. Although these psalms were never quoted in the Gospel of John, there is a strong likelihood that the royal psalms have been alluded in the Gospel of John. This article examines the similarities and differences between the royal psalms and the Gospel of John, and, thus, shows how each present the messiah as the ideal king, concentrating on the terms “the Son of God,” “the Son of man,” and “the kingdom of God” that John shares with the royal psalms in terms of the messianic views. It appears that John uses the terms, in a unique way to emphasize the divine aspect of the messiah, by putting weight on the main characteristics of the messiah as the ideal king who was pre-existent before creation.     

Fitting Ethics to the Land: H. Richard Niebuhr's Ethic of Responsibility and Ecotheology

Much of ecotheology and environmental philosophy has moved deductively from theological and ethical constructs to questions of how we should relate to the natural world. Such approaches are limited in their ability to guide us toward appropriate environmental action for they do not necessarily fit the way the natural world actually functions. Niebuhr's ethic of response, on the other hand, begins with the concrete situation and is inherently ecological for it focuses on interrelationships in an on-going community. It is inductive in character and open to being informed by new findings in the natural and social sciences; thus it is exceptionally well suited to environmental problems, which involve complex scientific, social, and economic questions.     

Take care of egotism,and redemption will take care of itself: Comments on Tracy Llanera's Richard Rorty: Outgrowing modern nihilism

This commentary critically examines two facets of Tracy Llanera's recent book Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism. First, it considers her interpretation of Richard Rorty's redemptive project. It argues that, while Llanera succeeds in resolving tensions in Rorty's public-private distinction, her account downplays the role of abnormal discourse within projects of self-creation. Second, it raises several questions about Llanera's strategy for situating this redemptive project within debates concerning existential nihilism. On her view, one ought to follow Rorty in addressing the problem of egotism instead of the problem of nihilism, since the former is prior to the latter. But it is not clear who counts as an egotist, or why egotists are especially prone to becoming nihilists. Moreover, there are reasons to think that egotism and nihilism are fundamentally different kinds of problems.     

Justice as the Practice of Non-Coercive Action: A Study of John Dewey and Classical Daoism

In this essay, I will argue for an understanding of justice that is grounded in our imperfect world by drawing upon the works of John Dewey and the Classical Daoist philosophers. It will require a reconstructed understanding of persons as a field/continuum of interrelations and an updated understanding of human action and agency. This understanding of justice takes the form of non-coercive action, interaction that respects the particularity of each lived situation. The practice culminates in an ability to respond to the environment considered to be ziran (自然) or ‘self-so’ by the Daoist Philosophers. As described in the Dao De Jing, it is the cultivation of the ‘Three Jewels of the Dao’, the most central of them being compassion making, this practice of justice as non-coercive action also understandable as the practice of compassion as described by the Classical Daoist philosophers.