A Companion To Biblical Humanism And Scholasticism In The Age Of Erasmus

This handbook offers a new reading of the humanist-scholastic debate over biblical humanism, lending a voice to scholastic critics who have been unfairly neglected in the historical narrative. The investigations cover controversies beginning in quattrocento Italy and spreading north of the Alps in the 16th century.

Since the nineteenth century, scholars have debated the controversial relationships between humanism, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Challenging the dominant narrative on the subject, Giovanni Tortoriello reconstructs the debates that characterized the early Reformation movements. He shows that Martin Luther's theology of the cross developed in reaction to the irenic tendencies of the Renaissance. With the spread of Platonism, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah in the fifteenth century, the identity of Christianity shifted and the boundaries between the different religions thinned. In response to this attempt to minimize the differences among the various religions, Luther reiterated the centrality and uniqueness of the salvific event of the cross. Confessional biases and theological prejudices have obliterated the role that Platonism, Hermeticism, and Christian Kabbalah played in the early Reformation debates. The author reconstructs these controversies and situates Luther's theology of the cross in this historical context.

Three basic forces dominated sixteenth-century religious life. Two polarized groups, Protestant and Catholic reformers, were shaped by theological debates, over the nature of the church, salvation, prayer, and other issues. These debates articulated critical, group-defining oppositions. Bystanders to the Catholic-Protestant competition were a third force. Their reactions to reformers were violent, opportunistic, hesitant, ambiguous, or serendipitous, much the way social historians have described common people in the Reformation for the last fifty years. But in an ecology of three forces, hesitations and compromises were natural, not just among ordinary people, but also, if more subtly, among reformers and theologians. In this volume, Christopher Ocker offers a constructive and nuanced alternative to the received understanding of the Reformation. Combining the methods of intellectual, cultural, and social history, his book demonstrates how the Reformation became a hybrid movement produced by a binary of Catholic and Protestant self-definitions, by bystanders to religious debate, and by the hesitations and compromises made by all three groups during the religious controversy.

The Introduction and the chapter Toleration and Religious Polemics are available in Open Access. Searching for Compromise? is a collection of articles researching the issues of toleration, interreligious peace and models of living together in a religiously diverse Central and Eastern Europe during the Early Modern period. By studying theologians, legal cases, literature, individuals, and congregations this volume brings forth unique local dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe. Scholars and researchers will find these issues explored from the perspectives of diverse groups of Christians such as Catholics, Hussies, Bohemian Brethren, Old Believers, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Calvinists, Moravians and Unitarians. The volume is a much-needed addition to the scholarly books written on these issues from the Western European perspective. Contributors are Kazimierz Bem, Wolfgang Breul, Jan Červenka, Sławomir Kościelak, Melchior Jakubowski, Bryan D. Kozik, Uladzimir Padalinski, Maciej Ptaszyński, Luise Schorn-Schütte, Alexander Schunka, Paul Shore, Stephan Steiner, Bogumił Szady, and Christopher Voigt-Goy.

This book consists of two open letters by the young John Calvin to evangelical believers who desired to stay and work within the Roman Catholic Church. The first letter exposes the idolatry involved in the Mass, while the second denounces the papal abuses of the pastoral office of the church. Together, they form a resounding call for the necessity of a thoroughgoing Reformation. This translation from David C. Noe makes the two letters available together for the first time in English. Noe also provides a helpful introduction to Calvin’s early life and the problem of evangelical believers remaining in the Roman Catholic Church. This book does not merely provide a helpful view of how Calvin believed the moderate French reform movement should decide between God and the worship of false prophets. It is also an opportunity for us to reflect on the abiding significance of the need for reformation. Table of Contents: Foreword - Bruce Gordon The First Letter: We Must Flee the Forbidden Rites of the Wicked, and Maintain the Purity of the Christian Faith The Second Letter: The Christian Man’s Obligation Either to Fulfill or Renounce the Priestly Offices of the Papal Church

The first comprehensive history of the Catholic Church’s notorious Index, with resonance for ongoing debates over banned books, censorship, and free speech. For more than four hundred years, the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum Prohibitorum struck terror into the hearts of authors, publishers, and booksellers around the world, while arousing ridicule and contempt from many others, especially those in Protestant and non-Christian circles. Biased, inconsistent, and frequently absurd in its attempt to ban objectionable texts of every conceivable description—with sometimes fatal consequences—the Index also reflected the deep learning and careful consideration of many hundreds of intellectual contributors over the long span of its storied evolution. This book constitutes the first full study of the Index of Prohibited Books to be published in English. It examines the reasons behind the Church’s attempts to censor religious, scientific, and artistic works, and considers not only why this most sustained of campaigns failed, but what lessons can be learned for today’s debates over freedom of expression and cancel culture.

The Companion to the Theology of John Mair explores the theological thought of this significant sixteenth-century Parisian scholar. It includes articles exploring his positions on humanism and scholasticism, faith and theology, Trinity and Incarnation, Ethics and Casuistry, Justification and Sacraments.

Eight different historical-theological studies are assembled here under the title Respect for the Jews. They focus primarily on positive Catholic attitudes toward Jews during the turbulent years of the first half of the sixteenth century. The number of authors and texts are relatively small, but need to be brought out into the open. For the first time, a speech in praise of the language of the Jews by the early ecumenist, Georg Witzel (1501–1573), is made available in English. Other Catholic Hebraists who are featured include Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), Matthaeus Adrianus (ca. 1470–1521), Robert Wakefield (died 1537), and Nicolaus Winmann (ca. 1500–1550). Their brilliant works are presented in front of the sinister backdrop of the vicious attacks against the Jews by the well-educated Catholic convert of Jewish descent, Johann Pfefferkorn (ca. 1469–1521), a self-appointed Catholic missionary to the Jews, and also against the background of the scandalous outbursts of the Grobian Reformer, Martin Luther (1483–1546). Volume 4 of the author’s Collected Works fosters the idea that Jews and Christians are “study partners,” rather than antagonists—as visualized in the new statue “Synagogue and Church in Our Time” (as shown on the cover).