The Rebuilding Of The Church Of Christ Upon Its Original Foundations In Ms Throughout

The nineteenth-century Scottish theologian Edward Irving has been the subject of a remarkable resurgence of interest in recentÊdecades, but many studies focus on specific aspects of his thought. This biographyÊportrays Irving's life and ministry as a whole, drawing on previously unused letters as well as his published writings to offer a readable and well-grounded narrative. Apart from the personal interest of this story, Irving's thought and practice as a preacher and pastoral theologian remains worthy of serious attention.

The Catholic Apostolic Church combined liturgical worship, charismatic experience, ecumenical vision, and eschatological expectation. Philip Schaff commented that the claims made for its apostles, if true, commanded every Christian's attention. Historians and liturgists alike have been fascinated by the Church, but deterred from researching it because of the notorious difficulty of access to material. This account of the church's growth and decline draws on archival sources from several countries, many not hitherto used for research, and publications in German as well as English. Previous accounts in English have focused on the Church in the English-speaking world, but this book breaks fresh ground by covering the Church's development in every country where it was active. Surveying Catholic Apostolic history, polity, and ministry, it seeks to tell the story rather than using the Church as a test-case for a preconceived hypothesis. In so doing, it opens up a range of lines of inquiry for future researchers.

A fervent millennial hope has often existed at the heart of Protestant evangelicalism. Varieties of eschatology have exercised a profound impact on the movementÕs theology and history. Although millennialism had a respected lineage within conservative Protestantism, it flourished with enormous energy in the early nineteenth century as evangelicals responded to the threat of the American and European revolutions and the cultural pessimism of the Romantic movement. By mid-century, the millennialism that had first been articulated for the defense of Protestant conservatism had paved the way for the subversion of historic theology and church practice, as a growing confidence in biblical inerrancy and the ÒliteralÓ hermeneutic challenged many of the historical assumptions of the evangelical faith. This volume of essays expands on neglected aspects of the impact of the evangelical millennialism in Britain and Ireland between 1800 and 1880, and includes an essay charting recent trends in the study of millennialism.