The four companion volumes of Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions contribute to a contextual evaluation of the mutual influences between scriptural exegesis and hermeneutics on the one hand and practices or techniques of interpretation in natural philosophy and the natural sciences on the other. We seek to raise the low profile this theme has had both in the history of science and in the history of biblical interpretation. Furthermore, questions about the interpretation of scripture continue to be provoked by current theological reflection on scientific theories. We also...

The four companion volumes of Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions contribute to a contextual evaluation of the mutual influences between scriptural exegesis and hermeneutics on the one hand and practices or techniques of interpretation in natural philosophy and the natural sciences on the other. We seek to raise the low profile this theme has had both in the history of science and in the history of biblical interpretation. Furthermore, questions about the interpretation of scripture continue to be provoked by current theological reflection on scientific theories. We also...

Walking the first mile of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, the visitor is struck by the sight of the Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, German, Armenian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches. These buildings reflect the religious, cultural, and social diversity that has been characteristic of the city since Tsar Peter the Great invited thousands of foreigners from all over Western Europe to build this settlement at the estuary of the Neva River. On the occasion of the third centenary of St. Petersburg (2003), historians and archivists from Russia as well as other European...

This book is a first monograph on the life and work of Petrus van Mastricht (1630-1706). Expanding the new interest in Protestant scholasticism this book portrays Mastricht as a post-Reformation reformed theologian, philosopher and Christian Hebraist. The result provides a fresh appraisal, in particular, on the relationship of biblical exegesis, doctrine, polemic, and praxis.

The name of Arminius (1559/60 - 1609) is connected with a specific variant of the Reformed tradition: more rational and humanistic than mainstream Calvinism. This book gives an impression of the current research into his work. The focus is on the influence of Arminianism all over Europe, mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. An extensive survey of the portraits of Arminius and a comprehensive bibliography of his writings complete this book.

Calvinism's influence and reputation have received ample scholarly attention. But how John Calvin himself - his person, character, and deeds - was remembered, commemorated, and memorialized, is a question few historians have addressed. Focussing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this volume aims to open up the subject with chapters on Calvin's monumentalization in statues and museums, his appearance in novels, children's books, and travel writing, his iconic function for Hungarian nationalists and Presbyterian missionaries to China, his reputation among Mormons and freethinkers, and...

Church discipline and the Reformed consistory, whether in Hungary, the Swiss world, France, The Netherlands or the British Isles, have become the subject of intense scholarly discussion. The fifteen essays gathered in this volume examine the process of censure and excommunication across Europe from the mid-sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries. They reevaluate the relationship of women to ecclesiastical authority and explore the complex ways in which exclusion from the Lord's Supper operated. Several contributors trace the decrease in excommunication over time; others underscore...

This book revisits four early-modern debates of Reformed theology concerning the will of God. Reformed scholasticism advocated a particular relationship between divine knowledge, will, and power, which was altered by Jesuits, Remonstrants, Descartes, and Spinoza. In all these debates modal categories like contingency and necessity play a prominent part. Therefore, these positions are evaluated with the help of modern modal logic including possible world semantics. The final part of this study presents a systematic defense of the Reformed position, which has been charged of theological...

Famous mainly for his chansons and epigrams, the French poet Clement Marot (1496-1544) also supplied the texts for the Huguenot Psalter. Did he only paraphrase the Psalms to do Marguerite de Navarre, the leading lady of reform-oriented France, a favour, or was there more to it? This book offers a new approach to this question, which has got stuck in a yes-no discussion. A breakthrough is forced by the author's focussing on the Psalm paraphrases themselves, which until now have never actually been included in Marot research. Analysed from a multidisciplinary perspective the successive versions...

Pietist movements challenged traditional forms of religious community, group formation, and ecclesiology. Where many older accounts have emphasized the individual and subjective nature of Pietists to the exclusion of community, one of the hallmarks of Pietism has been the creation of groups and experimentation with new forms of religious association and sociality. The essays presented here reflect the diverse ways in which Pietists struggled with the tension between the separation from the "world" and the formation of new communities from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century in Europe...