scholarly journals Comfort through ‘the lively Word of God’: Katherine Willoughby and the Protestant Funeral Monument

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Lauenstein
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Spatial Presence ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Church Building ◽  
Visual Impact ◽  
The Church

What does the use of biblical scripture, viewed through the funeral monument’s material and spatial presence in the church building disclose about the role of the places for the dead in establishing and maintaining church practices and ritual during the formative years of the Reformation? Taking the lead from the tomb of early evangelical reformer Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk at Spilsby in Lincolnshire, this article examines the relationship between text, space and materiality in the formulation of a protestant rhetoric of congregational equality with its epicentre in the church nave. Tracing the texts and placements of commemorative structures, and their relationship to official as well as more radical protestant texts, including the Elizabethan Injunctions (1559), as well as the writing of John Dod (1615), this preliminary investigation explores the fertile relationship between object and text in the development of Protestant identities.By applying recent archaeological scholarship into the role of ‘presencing’ mechanisms (Graves 2000, & Roffey, 2008) in the medieval and post-medieval church interior to the Willoughby monument in Spilsby’s north chancel, as well as two further examples of the tombs of protestant reformers, the notion of a protestant dismissal of the visual as a tool in devotion will be challenged. By introducing the central role of placement, the approach will destabilize the view that in the protestant church ‘the greatest visual impact came from words’ (MacCulloch, 1999, p. 159), and instead, place language into the wider architectural and spatial narratives of the church interior.

Sola Scriptura in Africa: Missions and the Reformation Literacy Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-87
Author(s):  
Steven van Dyck
Keyword(s):  
Print Culture ◽  
Church History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Print Communication ◽  
Mission Movement ◽  
The Church

This theoretical reflection addresses issues arising in the history of world Christianity, in particular regarding mission churches in Africa since the nineteenth century. The article first evaluates the development of oral, manuscript and print communication cultures in western culture, and their influence since the first century in the Church. Modernity could only develop in a print culture, creating the cultural environment for the Reformation. Sola Scriptura theology, as in Calvin and Luther, considered the written Word of God essential for the Church’s life. The role of literacy throughout Church history is reviewed, in particular in the modern mission movement in Africa and the growing African church, to show the importance of literacy in developing a strong church. In conclusion, spiritual growth of churches in the Reformation tradition requires recognition of the primacy of print culture over orality, and the importance of a culture of reading and study.

Martin Luther and Preaching

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Paulson ◽  
Chris Croghan
Keyword(s):  
Eternal Life ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
God's Will ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

The profound impact of Martin Luther’s theological confession is well documented. What is not as thoroughly explored is Luther’s understanding of the function of preaching, which both rooted his reformational breakthrough and drove the Reformation thereafter. Luther’s simple assertion—instead of the pope, there stands a sermon—resulted in a revolution that impacted all facets of 16th-century life. Luther’s simple assertion concerning proclamation deconstructed a deeply embedded framework that had arisen around Christianity that affected everything from the function of the priest to the definition and role of the church, and even Scripture itself. While Luther learned as he went, especially in the matter of preaching, the unwavering consistency and even simplicity of his theology is breathtaking. Instead of the pope, a sermon which delivers Christ’s forgiveness of sins. Faith in that promise is certain and is not to be doubted in any way. Thus, preaching and nothing else makes the church, not vice versa. The ramifications of this assertion are monumental and far-reaching. Luther’s confession caused great upheaval and consternation in his time and continues to do so even now, since it addresses the basic questions of theology and life, such as the role of the individual in salvation, whether the will is free or bound in relation to God, what the authority of Scripture is in relation to tradition, and what the difference between a command and a promise is. Yet Luther held to the claim that the most important matter was the comfort of the conscience, which can come only through a promise delivered in place and time to a person pro me and thus builds a whole gathering of the faithful as true church. Thus, in the face of outcries and upheaval in Christendom, Luther refused to blame the gospel, but simply preached as he had taught, trusting that the word of God does not return empty but accomplishes what it says. So he trusted that in that proclamation God’s will would be done: killing and making alive, naming and absolving the sin of people desperate to hear that freeing proclamation. Thus the Reformation that followed Luther became a preaching movement that distinguished the law and the gospel and applied both categorically. Proclamation is the moment and fullness of the divine election unto eternal life.

scholarly journals Law and the Protestant Reformation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Marriage And Family ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Power Property ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation revolutionized not only theology and the Church, but also law and the state. Though divided into Lutheran, Anabaptist, Anglican, and Calvinist branches, the Reformation collectively broke the international rule of the medieval Church and its canon law, and permanently splintered Western Christendom into competing nations and regions. The Reformation also triggered a massive shift of power, property, and prerogative from the Church to the state. Protestant states now assumed new jurisdiction over numerous subjects and persons, and they gave new legal form to Protestant teachings. But these new Protestant laws also drew heavily on the medieval ius commune as well as on earlier biblical and Roman jurisprudence. This chapter analyses the new Protestant legal syntheses, with attention to the new laws of Church–state relations, religious and civil freedom, marriage and family law, education law, social welfare law, and accompanying changes in legal and political philosophy.

scholarly journals Black women’s bodies as reformers from the dungeons: The Reformation and womanism

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fundiswa A. Kobo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Women's Bodies ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Church Building ◽  
The Church ◽  
Society Today

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective.

scholarly journals Inleiding in die grondslag van die gereformeerde teologie

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
L. F. Schulze
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Theory ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Theology is not a neutral science but should be embedded in the ser­vice of the Church. A close relation between theology and the church is clearly visible in the history of the early church until the era of the Reformation. The disintegration of religion and culture (church and world) during the Renaissance received new impetus from the En­lightenment. Consequently, the tie between church and theology was to a large extent dissolved and theology progressively became a ‘wordly ’ rationalistic enterprise, as a concomitant to what happened in the arts (l'art pour l'art). In this context the problems of defining theology and science are discussed and the popularity of modern scientific theory is uncovered. Finally it is argued that the basis (grondslag) and object for Reformed theology can only be the Word of God

Children, the Liturgy, and the Reformation: the Evidence of the Lichfield Cathedral Choristers

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 261-274
Author(s):  
T. N. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Administrative Records ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

The great interest generated by the theme of this year’s conference reflects the central importance of children in the history of the Christian Church, yet at the same time their omission from much of historical writing. For all but the recent past this is largely the result of the difficulties with the source material itself, and this is certainly true for historians of the Church during the medieval and Reformation periods. The main concern of the administrative records of the Catholic Church was with adults and, in particular, ordained men. It is to the schools that we must look for the most useful references to children and, more specifically, to the choir schools for evidence of the role of boys in the liturgy.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

Historian or Prophet? John Bale’s Perception of the Past

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 156-167
Author(s):  
Susan Royal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
First Generation ◽  
John Bale ◽  
Hildegard Of Bingen ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

The late medieval prophetic tradition played a significant role in how John Bale (1495–1563), England’s first Protestant church historian, formulated his ideas about the nature of revelation, which would become a contentious issue in the course of the Reformation. It is the goal of this essay to examine this first-generation evangelical’s views, which will bring us closer to understanding prophecy and its legitimacy in Reformation-era Europe. In an influential essay, Richard Southern illustrates the important role of the prophetical tradition in premodern historical writing: ‘Prophecy filled the world-picture, past, present, and future; and it was the chief inspiration of all historical thinking.’ But while its significance is easy to pinpoint, the varied nature of prophetic revelation does not make for easy delineations or definitions. Southern names four types of prophecy in the Middle Ages: biblical (Daniel, Revelation); pagan (sibylline); Christian (such as that of Hildegard of Bingen); and astrological (stars and celestial events). Of course, even these are not clearly distinct categories; Southern notes that Merlin is ‘half-Christian, half-pagan’. Lesley Coote points out that the ‘subject of political prophecy is king, people and nation’, separating this from theological, apocalyptic prophecy, though she also asserts that the two are closely related. Bernard McGinn remarks that in the later Middle Ages, prophecy is ‘seen as a divinatory or occasionally reformative activity – the prophet as the man who foretells the future, or the one who seeks to correct a present situation in the light of an ideal past or glorious future’.

scholarly journals Longitudinal, Transverse or Centrally Aligned? In the Search for the Correct Layout of the ‘Protesters’ Churches

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Harasimowicz
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Art History ◽  
Church Architecture ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

The article was written within the framework of a research project “Protestant Church Architecture of the 16th -18th centuries in Europe”, conducted by the Department of the Renaissance and Reformation Art History at the University of Wrocław. It is conceived as a preliminary summary of the project’s outcomes. The project’s principal research objective is to develop a synthesis of Protestant church architecture in the countries which accepted, even temporarily, the Reformation: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Island, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Sweden and The Netherlands. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of spatial and functional solutions (specifically ground plans: longitudinal, transverse rectangular, oval, circular, Latin- and Greek-cross, ground plans similar to the letters “L” and “T”) and the placement of liturgical furnishing elements within the church space (altars, pulpits, baptismal fonts and organs).

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