Religion

This book explores the life of Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson, chronicling his childhood and family life, spiritual journey, missionary work, and his role in establishing the Church of God. Its main objective is to reconcile the holiness-pentecostal tradition to its origins, and the trajectory of its subsequent history. The term “plainfolk modernist” is coined, to suggest that both Tomlinson and the world he inhabited expressed a vibrant strain of modernism, though voiced in the idioms of American plainfolk culture.

In Abelard and Heloise, a dual intellectual biography of Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Heloise (d. 1164), I argue that there is a fundamental continuity to the evolution of Abelard’s thought from his early concern with dialectic, to his growing interest in theology in the 1120s and in ethical questions in the 1130s. Heloise was much more than the disciple and lover of Abelard. She emerges as a distinct thinker in her own right, deeply versed in classical ideals of friendship and ethics, which she wished to apply to her relationship to Abelard. While they have both functioned as mythic figures in the western imagination, I argue that both participated in a broader 12th-century renewal of interest in both classical literature and in religious reform. I examine Abelard’s dialectic as a theory not just about universals, but about language as a whole. Tracing the maturing of his dialectic from his earliest glosses to the Logica ‘Ingredientibus’, written after his early affair with Heloise (1115–17), I argue that Abelard was initially unable to come to terms with the ethical questions presented by Heloise in her side of messages (Epistolae duorum amantium) they exchanged during those years. After Abelard became a monk at St Denis, he started to write about theology. I trace the evolution of his theological interests, from his early concern with linguistic concerns to increasing preoccupation with the Holy Spirit and divine goodness, as manifest in Jesus. After Heloise, abbess of the Paraclete from 1129, responded to his Historia calamitatum and demanded he pay greater attention to the community he had founded, Abelard started to devote much more attention to commenting on Scripture and to reflecting on the ethical questions with which she had always been concerned. Accusations spread by St Bernard that Abelard promoted heresy distort the true character of his contribution to theology, on which Heloise exercised a profound influence.

Across Africa, Christianity is thriving in all shapes and sizes. But one particular strain of Christianity prospers more than most — Pentecostalism. Pentecostals believe that everyone can personally receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as prophecy or the ability to speak in tongues. In Africa, this kind of faith, in which the supernatural is a daily presence, is sweeping the continent. Today, about 107 million Africans are Pentecostals — and the numbers continue to rise. This book reviews Pentecostalism in Africa. It shows the amazing diversity of the faith, which flourishes in many different forms in diverse local contexts. While most people believe that Pentecostalism was brought to Africa and imposed on its people by missionaries, the book argues emphatically that this is not the case. Throughout, the book demonstrates that African Pentecostalism is distinctly African in character, not imported from the West. With an even-handed approach, the book presents the religion's many functions in African life. Rather than shying away from controversial issues like the role of money and prosperity in the movement, it describes malpractice when it is observed. The book touches upon the movement's identity, the role of missionaries, media and popular culture, women, ethics, Islam, and immigration.

This is a sequel to Richard Muller's The Unaccommodated Calvin (OUP 2000). The previous book attempted to situate Calvin's theological work in its historical context and to strip away various 20th-century theological grids that have clouded our perceptions of the work of the Reformer. This book carries this approach forward, with the goal of overcoming a series of 19th- and 20th-century theological frameworks characteristic of much of the scholarship on Reformed orthodoxy, or what might be called “Calvinism after Calvin”.

Christianity from its earliest times taught the existence of heaven and hell as places where good and evil deeds in this life were judged, rewarded and punished. In the course of time ideas both of promised bliss and threatened woe went beyond anything than can have a purchase on human experience. Nevertheless, in their most developed form, doctrines of heaven and hell were explorations of moral psychology, as seen in their greatest imaginative expression, Dante's Divine Comedy. The present book explores and comments on ideas about post-mortem existence from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece and Rome, as well as in Christianity and (more briefly) Islam. Having traced the early history, growth, and refinement of these ideas over five millennia, it ends with the discordant voices of spiritualism, liberal theology, Mormonism, Evangelical Christian preachers of Rapture and Armageddon, modern Muslim apocalyptics, and Coptic visions of the Last Days. In a Prologue and an Epilogue the ironic treatment of some of these themes in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is evoked to set them in a context of modernity.

The evil of the holocaust demands a radical rethink of the traditional Christian understanding of Judaism. This is because the anti‐Judaism of the Christian Church prepared the way for the holocaust. This rethink includes looking at theological responses to the holocaust and examining which, if any, are adequate. It also means looking at issues of suffering and forgiveness in both Judaism and Christianity. On examination, the approach of the two religions is not as far apart as is sometimes suggested. The basic covenant is not with either Judaism or Christianity but with humanity. These, like other religions, are different, distinctive voices in response to God's primal affirmation of human life, which for Christians is achieved and given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians should not set out to convert Jews. Jesus is, traditionally, a highly divisive figure for the two religions but modern scholarship, including Jewish scholarship, has revealed some common ground. In addition to the common ground here, there is a shared hope and a common task though contentious questions still remain on questions such as Israel and Jerusalem. The church has a particular responsibility to ensure that its teaching and preaching is not implicitly anti‐Judaic.

Explores the history and doctrines of Traditionalism, a movement established by Ren” Gu”non in the 1920s, and later developed further by Julius Evola (in politics), Frithjof Schuon (in religion), and Mircea Eliade (in academia). Traditionalism sees modernity as terminal decline from traditional metaphysical truth, and attempts to remedy this at both a personal and societal level. All responses depend on the recovery of lost tradition, notably of the “perennial philosophy.” Personal responses are generally religious, and Sufism (mystical Islam) was the most important of these, followed by Freemasonry. Societal responses range from Eliade’s scholarly investigation of archaic religion to Evola’s ultra fascism, by 2000 a major stream in far-right thought. The book examines the origins of Traditionalism in the Renaissance, and then traces the development of the groups and movements that resulted, as well as modification in doctrine. The final chapter looks at Traditionalism’s possible influence in the future, and asks why so many intellectuals found this anti-modernist movement so attractive.

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most important theologians, philosophers, and Sufis of Islam. Born around 1056 in northeastern Iran, he became the holder of the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce that position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of mysticism in Islam, and integrating both these traditions—falsafa and Sufism—into the Sunni mainstream. Using the most authoritative sources, including reports of his students, his contemporaries, and his own letters, this book reconstructs every stage in al-Ghazali’s turbulent career. The al-Ghazali that emerges still offers many surprises, particularly on his motives for leaving Baghdad and the nature of his “seclusion” afterwards. In its close study of al-Ghazali’s cosmology—meaning, how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God’s power, and how the universe is structured—the book reveals the significant philosophical influence on al-Ghazali. His cosmology has always been one of the most challenging aspects of his work. This book shows how al-Ghazali created a new discourse on cosmology that moved away from concerns held earlier among Muslim theologians and Arab philosophers. This new cosmology was structured to provide a framework for the pursuit of the natural sciences and a basis for science and philosophy in Islam to continue to flourish beyond the 12th century.

This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.

Alexander Forbes, Bishop of Brechin from 1847 to 1875, was the first member of the Oxford Movement to become a bishop. A leading example to many Tractarians and Anglo–Catholics in the Episcopal Church, and in the Church of England, he also became well known to various Roman Catholics in Europe for his work for Catholic reunion in the 1860s. As bishop, and also incumbent of the Scottish Episcopalian congregation in the newly industrialized Dundee, Forbes developed a Tractarian slum ministry unique among Anglican bishops in Britain. It was the influence of the Oxford Movement during the early 1840s that shaped Forbes's social commitment towards the labouring poor, coupled with his inherited Tory paternalism. The Movement also imparted to Forbes a strong belief in the importance of dogmatic theology, as a remedy for the Church period. In 1857, the Tractarian dogmatics of his teaching initiated the Eucharistic controversy within the Episcopalian Church and seriously divided Episcopalian High Churchmen and the Tractarians led by Forbes. In 1860 he was tried for heresy. Although censured, he continued to work for the defence of Scottish traditions in his Church, and for Anglican–Roman Catholic reunion. By the time of his untimely death in 1875, Forbes's place as a leader and example to many sympathizers of the Oxford Movement in Scotland and England was cemented.