This study of Johannine exegesis in the sixteenth century covers nearly every important commentator on John from the first half of the century, and examines the medieval and patristic traditions on which they drew. But while comprehensive in its scope, this book centers on the John commentary of Wolfgang Musculus (1497- 1563), an influential leader of the Protestant Reformation in the cities of Augsburg and Bern. As a theologian and biblical scholar, he authored a large number of theological and exegetical works which remained popular well into the seventeenth century. Despite his influence,...

The mid-seventeenth century saw both the expansion of the Baptist sect and the rise and growth of Quakerism. At first, the Quaker movement attracted some Baptist converts, but relations between the two groups soon grew hostile. Public disputes broke out and each group denounced the other in polemical tracts. Nevertheless in this book, Underwood contends that Quakers and Baptists had much in common with each other, as well as with the broader Puritan and Nonconformist tradition. By examining the Quaker/Baptist relationship in particular, Underwood seeks to understand where and why Quaker views...

This book is a study of the life, monastic writings, and spiritual theology of John Cassian (c., 360-435). His Institutes and Conferences are a remarkable synthesis of earlier monastic traditions, especially those of fourth-century Egypt, informed throughout by Cassian's awareness of the particular needs of the Latin monastic movement he was helping to shape. Sometimes portrayed as simply an advocate of the sophisticated spiritual theology of Evagrius of Ponticus (360-435), Cassian was actually a theologian of keen insight, realism, and creativity. His teaching on...

This book argues the provocative thesis that Philip Melanchthon, so often pictured as hopelessly caught in the middle between Erasmus and Luther, and more "Erasmian" than Lutheran in his thought, was, at least in his theological methods and views, not Erasmian at all, but in fact sharply opposed to Erasmus. Author Timothy J. Wengert builds his case largely on the basis of Melanchthon's Scholia on the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians, employing the critically important but seldom used second edition of 1528, which was produced in the aftermath of Luther and Erasmus's famous debate...

This book attempts to understand Calvin in his 16th-century context, with attention to continuities and discontinuities between his thought and that of his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Muller pays particular attention to the interplay between theological and philosophical themes common to Calvin and the medieval doctors, and to developments in rhetoric and method associated with humanism.

In the public religious controversies of sixteenth-century France, no subject received more attention or provoked greater passion that the eucharist. In this study of Reformation theologies of the eucharist, Christopher Elwood contends that the doctrine for which French Protestants argued played a pivotal role in the development of Calvinist revolutionary politics. By focusing on the new understandings of signs and symbols purveyed in Protestant writing on the sacrament of the Lords Supper, Elwood shows how adherents to the Reformation movement came to interpret the nature of power and the...

Barbara Pitkin traces the way in which Calvin's exegetical labors contributed to his understanding of faith. Through detailed analysis of Calvin's interpretation of selected biblical passages, this study shows how his views evolved. Pitkin describes the gradual development of the mature Calvin's view that faith exhibits a twofold character--saving faith and providential faith--that corresponds to the twofold aspect of its object--Christ as both the incarnate and eternal Son of God.

With the accelerating discovery of human genes, public health professionals are increasingly confronted with a large body of scientific information that will guide public health action. Because the broad mission of public health is to fulfill society's interest in assuring conditions in which people can be healthy, the integration of new genetic information in public health research, policy, and program development is unavoidable. Public health leadership is urgently needed to use genetic information to improve health and prevent disease, and to address ethical, legal and social issues...

This book deals with the impact of the Reformation debate in Germany on the most prominent intellectual movement of the time: humanism. Although it is true that humanism influenced the course of the Reformation, says Erika Rummel, the dynamics of the relationship are better described by saying that humanism was co-opted, perhaps even exploited, in the religious debate.

Phyllis Trible's Texts of Terror is a landmark among those studying women of the Bible. Focusing on stories of the maltreatment of women, Trible paved the way for subsequent feminist exegetes who have been very critical of such stories in the Bible, and who see Christianity as an unredeemably patriarchal religion. It is commonly said that these Old Testament stories of rape, murder, torture, and abandonment passed without comment until recent times. Here, Thompson traces and analyzes various Christian interpretations of these bible stories of women. In drawing attention to views...