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into the exegetical and theological underpinnings of the Westminster Confession's chapter on the law by delivering an in-depth analysis of Anthony Burgess's Vindiciae Legis.After a brief introduction to Burgess and his historical context, Casselli details the logical course of Burgess's book considering the law as given to Adam, the law given to.

The essays collected in Reformed Scholasticism continue Willem van Asselt's endeavours towards a reassessment of (Reformed) scholasticism through various historical case studies and theological analyses, while they also criticize various aspects of this reassessment.

A critical but sympathetic treatment of Pierre Bayle. Once known as the 'Arsenal of the Enlightenment,' his concepts were widely adopted by later thinkers, but since his time there has been nothing but disagreement about how Bayle is to be interpreted.

This chapter presents an outline of John Damascene's theological development. One could argue for a Damascus period (c. late 680s–early 710s) and a Jerusalem period (c. early 710s–early 740s), the former being shorter and formative and the latter longer and productive. The Jerusalem period was conditioned by John's becoming a monk and entering the priesthood. The Byzantine trajectory of the reception of John Damascene's Œuvre was the strongest throughout the “Middle Ages” and probably the earliest. From the sixteenth century up to the middle of the seventeenth century the Damascenian Œuvre appealed particularly to moderate Roman Catholic humanism, as exemplified in cases such as those of Jacobus Faber Stapulensis and Leo Allatius. In general, the Roman “school of thought” concerning the Damascene has tended to treat John's Œuvre as a justification either for later Roman Catholic developments in belief and practice or against Protestant challenges to traditional Roman Catholic piety.

From the late thirteenth through late seventeenth centuries, a single three-word Latin phrase—sapiens dominabitur astris, or “the wise man will be master of the stars”—proliferated in astrological, theological, philosophical, and literary texts. It became a convenient marker denoting orthodox positions on free will and defining the boundaries of the scientifically and morally legitimate practice of astrology. By combining the methodology of a diachronic historical survey with a microhistorical focus on evolving phraseology, this study argues that closely examining the use of this phrase reveals how debates about the meanings of wisdom, free will, determinism, and the interpretation of stellar influence on human events changed radically across four centuries of Western European cultural and intellectual history. The first half of this article charts the scholastic response to theological criticisms of astrology and the reconciliation of Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology with Catholic theology, paying special attention to its implications for astrology as viewed through scholarly uses of the phrase. The second half of the article shows how the phrase developed a multitude of idiosyncratic meanings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fracturing its late medieval scholastic unity, as new forms of philosophical, socio-political, religious, and scientific critiques upended astrological beliefs and practices. Ultimately, this paper argues that examining the theory and praxis of astrology through the changing phraseological meanings of “sapiens dominabitur astris” allows historians and cultural anthropologists to better discern the dialectical (as opposed to binary) relationships between free will and determinism in the West.

The History of Political Thought is a discipline which is very closely aligned with the Anglophone liberal political tradition. It has not, consequently, ever had very much to say about warfare. Richard Tuck's important research marks an exception in this field, but Tuck's work is marked by significant omissions. He defined Catholic scholasticism too narrowly, omitting the Franciscan followers of John Duns Scotus, and excluded Protestant scholasticism (except the work of Hugo Grotius) entirely from consideration. Remedying these omissions leaves us with an early modern theorization of war that appears much less ripe for secularization than scholars have previously supposed.

El trabajo pretende encuadrar teórica e históricamente y presentar un conjunto de artículos sobre la actualidad y proyección de la tradición escolástica. El punto de partida es el giro antropológico que, en el seno de la escolástica y al principio del siglo XIV, privilegió el estudio de las ciencias prácticas, en particular la ética, el derecho y la política y, en consecuencia, el obligado desarrollo de una teología moral preocupada por la convivencia humana. La segunda escolástica, prolongando esta tradición a lo largo de los siglos XVI y XVII, no pudo permanecer ajena a las implicaciones de los profundos cambios que estaban teniendo lugar: el Descubrimiento de América, la Reforma protestante el desarrollo de un protocapitalismo comercial y el fortalecimiento de las monarquías. Conforme la Reforma se consolidaba en buena parte de los territorios europeos, entre las diversas confesiones se levantaron fronteras intelectuales. No obstante -y este es el centro de los trabajos presentados- estas fronteras resultaron porosas y, a pesar del clima de enfrentamiento, diversas vías de comunicación indirecta consiguieron mantener una única república intelectual.

How did the Bible survive the Enlightenment? In this book, Jonathan Sheehan shows how Protestant translators and scholars in the eighteenth century transformed the Bible from a book justified by theology to one justified by culture. In doing so, the Bible was made into the cornerstone of Western heritage and invested with meaning, authority, and significance even for a secular age. The Enlightenment Bible offers a new history of the Bible in the century of its greatest crisis and, in turn, a new vision of this century and its effects on religion. Although the Enlightenment has long symbolized the corrosive effects of modernity on religion, Sheehan shows how the Bible survived, and even thrived in this cradle of ostensible secularization. Indeed, in eighteenth-century Protestant Europe, biblical scholarship and translation became more vigorous and culturally significant than at any time since the Reformation. From across the theological spectrum, European scholars--especially German and English--exerted tremendous energies to rejuvenate the Bible, reinterpret its meaning, and reinvest it with new authority. Poets, pedagogues, philosophers, literary critics, philologists, and historians together built a post-theological Bible, a monument for a new religious era. These literati forged the Bible into a cultural text, transforming the theological core of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the end, the Enlightenment gave the Bible the power to endure the corrosive effects of modernity, not as a theological text but as the foundation of Western culture.

Thomas More is a complex and controversial figure who has been regarded as both saint and persecutor, leading humanist and a representative of late medieval culture. His religious writings, with their stark and at times violent attacks on what More regarded as heresy, have been hotly debated. In Writing Faith and Telling Tales , Thomas Betteridge sets More's writings in a broad cultural and chronological context, compares them to important works of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century vernacular theology, and makes a compelling argument for the revision of existing histories of Thomas More and his legacy. Betteridge focuses on four areas of More's writings: politics, philosophy, theology, and devotion. He examines More's History of King Richard III as a work of both history and political theory. He discusses Utopia and the ways in which its treatment of reason reflects More's Christian humanism. By exploring three of More's lesser known works, The Supplication of Souls , The Confutation , and The Apology , Betteridge demonstrates that More positioned his understanding of heresy within and against a long tradition of English anti-heretical writing, as represented in the works of Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Love. Finally, Betteridge focuses on two key concepts for understanding More's late devotional works: prayer and the book of Christ. In both cases, Betteridge claims, More seeks to develop a distinctive position that combines late medieval devotionalism with an Augustinian emphasis on the ethics of writing and reading. Writing Faith and Telling Tales poses important questions concerning periodization and confessionalization and will influence future work on the English Reformation and humanist writing in England.

Many factors contributed to the abandonment of the research and teaching program of Scholastic theology in the eighteenth century. The most important ones with respect to the history of theology were the following: 1. Already in the seventeenth century we note a critique of Scholastic theology within the Church, chiefly in Protestantism where, after all, it had to be established on a new basis. In the name of Christian life and piety this critique was aimed at a pursuit of theology that had been reduced to Scholastic quaestiones, the defense of orthodoxy, and interconfessional polemics, all of which was then carried