"In 1576, as the Protestant Reformation continued to sweep across Western Europe and Catholic prelates tried to stem the tide through diligent application of Trent's reforming agenda, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Charles Borromeo (1538-84) penned a letter to his clergy. In order to restore the Church to its former glory, he enjoined his "beloved brethren" to "bring back good observances and holy customs which have grown cold and been abandoned over the course of time." Chief among them, he wrote, was the custom, which although ancient, had been "practically lost nearly everywhere in Italy . . . I mean the practice that ecclesiastical persons not grow, but rather shave the beard, . . .a custom of our Fathers, almost perpetually retained in the Church" that was "replete with mystical meanings.""--

In Beards, Azymes, and Purgatory A. Edward Siecienski argues that seemingly minor issues--the beardlessness of the Latin clergy, the Western use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and the doctrine of Purgatory--played a significant role in the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

This book examines the contentious relationship between oath-taking, confessional subscription, and the binding of the conscience in reforms led by John Calvin. Calvin and his closest Reformed colleagues routinely distinguished what they believed were impious rules and constitutions in the Roman Church--human traditions claiming to bind the consciences of the faithful by putting them in fear of losing their salvation--and legitimate church observances, such as oaths and formal subscription to Reformed confessional standards. Doctrinal and moral reform in the cities became difficult, however, when friends and foes alike accused Calvin and his partners of burdening consciences with extra-Scriptural statements of faith composed by human authorities--a claim that, if true, would necessarily shape our assessment of the integrity of Calvin's Reformation. In light of these conflicts, author Timothy R. Scheuers offers a close reading of the texts and controversies surrounding Calvin's struggle for reform. In particular, he shows how they reveal the unique challenges Calvin and his colleagues encountered as they attempted to employ oath-swearing and formal confession of faith in order to consolidate the reformation of church and society. This book demonstrates how oaths and vows were used to shape confessional identity, secure social order, forge community, and promote faithfulness in public and private contracts. It also illustrates the complex and difficult task of protecting the individual conscience as Calvin sought to bring his new take on Christian freedom into Reformed communities.

In John Locke's Theology: An Ecumenical, Irenic, and Controversial Project, Jonathan S. Marko offers the closest work available to a theological system derived from the writings of John Locke. Marko argues that Locke's intent for The Reasonableness of Christianity, his most noted theological work, was to describe and defend his version of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity and not his personal theological views. Locke, Marko says, intended the work to be an ecumenical and irenic project during a controversial time in philosophy and theology. Locke described what qualifies someone as a Christian in simple and irenic terms, and argued for the necessity of Scripture and the reasonableness of God's means of conveying his authoritative messages. The Reasonableness of Christianity could be construed as personal, but mainly in the sense that it puts the burden of understanding Scripture and arriving at theological convictions on the autonomous individual, rejecting the notion that one should base one's doctrinal opinions on so-called authorities. His work was inadvertently controversial partly because then, like today, readers typically failed to make a distinction between Locke's personal and programmatic positions. Marko also points to places in Locke's corpus where he avoids advocating for a particular sectarian position in his treatment of theological doctrines. What is more, it shows why attempting to categorize Locke--a philosopher, theologian, and political scientist all at once--according to traditional Christian paradigms is a dangerous misstep and a difficult scholarly feat.

This book explores the origins and development of one of the most significant doctrines of Reformation theology. The innovative ways in which the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli and his successor Heinrich Bullinger thought about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments left an indelible mark on the Reformed tradition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Distinctively, Zwingli and Bullinger emphasized the continuity of both testaments and spoke of a single covenant between God and humanity. This would become one of the defining teachings of Reformed Christianity. This book follows the development of their "covenant theology" in the Reformation and argues for its adoption by John Calvin in Geneva and the German theologians of the post-Reformation era.

This study examines the ethical character of John Calvin and his Genevan colleagues' evangelizing of France. It reveals that Calvin's plans for proselytizing his homeland involved lying, deception, and obfuscation which were employed as a means of evading detection by the French authorities. Balserak considers important questions about the relationship between godliness and cunning, about Calvin's manufacturing of his image, and about the lengths to which he and his colleagues went to spread their gospel.

Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854--1921) found himself between two eras. The end of the "long nineteenth century" and the experience of World War I marked how much the world around him had changed. This book examines Bavinck's theological methodology with a particular focus on its influence by the German historicist movement. Author Cameron D. Clausing uses Bavinck's doctrine of the Trinity to test the argument that while not embracing all of the relativizing implications of the movement, the role of history as a force that both shapes the present and allows for development into the future has a demonstrable influence on Bavinck's theological methodology. To make this argument Clausing considers Bavinck's larger nineteenth-century context. He traces the development of both history and theology being understood as sciences in the university and how this required a reimagining of both disciplines. It could be said that theology was thoroughly historicized in the nineteenth century. The book considers the three principia of Bavinck's theological methodology: Revelation; Confession; and Christian Consciousness. When considering revelation, Clausing focuses on Bavinck's argument that revelation takes its shape from the Triune God. He demonstrates how Bavinck understood the incarnation and Pentecost to be the pinnacles of divine self-revelation. When looking at confession, the author argues that Bavinck retrieved theological insights from early modern Reformed orthodoxy, particularly in the way Bavinck engaged with the Synopsis Purioris Theologiae. Finally, the book examines how Bavinck did not think that a particular time in the past was a "golden age" of theology, but that theology had to continue to develop. Therefore, as Clausing investigates Bavinck's understanding of the Christian consciousness, he demonstrates how Bavinck saw the need for theology to continue to develop and change. He demonstrates this in all parts by an examination of Trinitarian theology showing that Bavinck engaged with and developed his Trinitarian theology in light of nineteenth-century philosophical categories, particularly the language of "absolute divine personality".