Puritanism and Natural Theology After the Restoration of 1660 PDF Download

Author: D. A. Walker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 451

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Author: Wallace Williams Marshall
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 153260274X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
The prevailing consensus among historians is that natural theology within Protestantism was born in the eighteenth century as a byproduct of the Enlightenment and had a sharply diminished if not nonexistent role within Puritanism. Based on an exhaustive study of the writings of some sixty English and American Puritans spanning from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, this book demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians not only embraced natural theology on a theoretical level but employed it in a surprising variety of pastoral, apologetic, and evangelical contexts, including their missionary activities to the Indians of New England. Some Puritans even asserted that people who had never heard about Christianity could be saved through the knowledge afforded them by natural theology. This conclusion reshapes our understanding of the history of apologetics and sheds fresh light on the origins of the Enlightenment itself. Puritanism and Natural Theology also examines the crises of doubt experienced by several prominent Puritan theologians, advances our understanding of the oft-debated issue of the role of reason within Puritanism, and sets the Puritans' enthusiasm for natural science within the broader context of their beliefs about natural theology.

Author: Wallace Williams Marshall III
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532602758
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The prevailing consensus among historians is that natural theology within Protestantism was born in the eighteenth century as a byproduct of the Enlightenment and had a sharply diminished if not nonexistent role within Puritanism. Based on an exhaustive study of the writings of some sixty English and American Puritans spanning from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth century, this book demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Puritan theologians not only embraced natural theology on a theoretical level but employed it in a surprising variety of pastoral, apologetic, and evangelical contexts, including their missionary activities to the Indians of New England. Some Puritans even asserted that people who had never heard about Christianity could be saved through the knowledge afforded them by natural theology. This conclusion reshapes our understanding of the history of apologetics and sheds fresh light on the origins of the Enlightenment itself. Puritanism and Natural Theology also examines the crises of doubt experienced by several prominent Puritan theologians, advances our understanding of the oft-debated issue of the role of reason within Puritanism, and sets the Puritans' enthusiasm for natural science within the broader context of their beliefs about natural theology.

Author: Wallace W. Marshall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Natural theology
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Author: Dewey D. Wallace Jr.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199876835
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Dewey Wallace tells the story of several prominent English Calvinist actors and thinkers in the first generations after the beginning of the Restoration. He seeks to overturn conventional clichés about Calvinism: that it was anti-mystical, that it allowed no scope for the ''ancient theology'' that characterized much of Renaissance learning, that its piety was harshly predestinarian, that it was uninterested in natural theology, and that it had been purged from the established church by the end of the seventeenth century. In the midst of conflicts between Church and Dissent and the intellectual challenges of the dawning age of Enlightenment, Calvinist individuals and groups dealt with deism, anti-Trinitarianism, and scoffing atheism--usually understood as godlessness--by choosing different emphases in their defense and promotion of Calvinist piety and theology. Wallace shows that in each case, there was not only persistence in an earlier Calvinist trajectory, but also a transformation of the Calvinist heritage into a new mode of thinking and acting. The different paths taken illustrate the rich variety of English Calvinism in the period. This study presents description and analysis of the mystical Calvinism of Peter Sterry, the hermeticist Calvinism of Theophilus Gale, the evangelical Calvinism of Joseph Alleine and the circle that promoted his legacy, the natural theology of the moderate Calvinist Presbyterians Richard Baxter, William Bates, and John Howe, and the Church of England Calvinism of John Edwards. Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660-1714 illuminates the religious and intellectual history of the era between the Reformation and modernity, offering fascinating insight into the development of Calvinism and also into English Puritanism as it transitioned into Dissent.

Author: Arthur Edward Barker
Publisher: Toronto, U. P
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Author: Gerald Robertson Cragg
Publisher: Cambridge, [Eng.] : University Press
ISBN:
Category : Religious thought
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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"We recognize instinctively the importance of the issues raised in the religious discussion of the Restoration era. The place of reason, the character of morality, the limits of authority, the nature of the universe, the reign of law -- these are all questions which we still debate. What is more, we discuss them in essentially the same spirit as that which first emerged in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The period of transition is the generation which followed the Restoration, and during those years the new lines of thought were marked out." [Introduction] The author's main concern is with the eclipse of Calvinism, the Cambridge Platonists, the religious significance of Locke, Toland and the rise of Deism, the relationship between the Church and the civil power and the question of religious toleration.

Author: Gerald R. Cragg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107640407
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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In this 1957 work, Dr Cragg has written a detailed history of Puritanism in the Commonweatlth.

Author: Michael P. Winship
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030012628X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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On fire for God--a sweeping history of puritanism in England and America Begun in the mid-sixteenth century by Protestant nonconformists keen to reform England's church and society while saving their own souls, the puritan movement was a major catalyst in the great cultural changes that transformed the early modern world. Providing a uniquely broad transatlantic perspective, this groundbreaking volume traces puritanism's tumultuous history from its initial attempts to reshape the Church of England to its establishment of godly republics in both England and America and its demise at the end of the seventeenth century. Shedding new light on puritans whose impact was far-reaching as well as on those who left only limited traces behind them, Michael Winship delineates puritanism's triumphs and tribulations and shows how the puritan project of creating reformed churches working closely with intolerant godly governments evolved and broke down over time in response to changing geographical, political, and religious exigencies.

Author: Peter Toon
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227900049
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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A collection of essays by several scholars, this book is an important study of the origins of post- and pre-millennialism in English theology. Initially, it is shown how the early Lutherans or reformers of the sixteenth century adopted the traditional Augustinian eschatology, a doctrine concerned with the end of the world or of humankind. It analyses how Luther paved the way for the interpretation of revelation not as heralding an apocalypse, but as an important historical and political event. For many Puritans this meant the collapse of the Papacy, the restoration of the Jews, and the dawn of a period of glory for the Church. This book traces the hopes and fears of Christians presented with the prophesised apocalypse, which was at this time felt to be imminent. It discusses the manner in which dogma was adapted to suit the interpretations of each religious sect, and the impact which historical events such as the thirty years war, exerted on these theologians. This is a clear discussion on the important elements of millennialism, and is particularly interesting set in the context of comparing these deeply religious views with our own modern thoughts upon entering a new millennium.