You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Brother I cannot tell you what is best for you—staying there or coming here. If it only concerned yourself! would say, stay. But if you are concerned about your descendents I would say, come." Writing from his Michigan farm to relatives back in Overijssel, Jacob Dunnink voiced a perspective at once uniquely his own and typical of his immigrant community in 1856. Dutch American Voices brings together a full spectrum of such perspectives, as expressed in immigrants' letters to their families and friends in the Netherlands. From the terse notes of first-time writers to the polished chronicles of skilled correspondents, the letters are presented in engaging English translations that capture th...
The doctrine of creation is obviously one of the first things, but it is also one of the last things since the world to come is also, by definition, creation. The simple truth that it is so is incontestable since neither the world to come nor those whose dwelling it is built to be are God. But the way in which this is so is the subject of a long, long debate in Christendom, with the question of whether and in what degree the life to come is continuous with this one. How common is the “thing” in “first thing” and “last thing”? Our answer to this question conditions our answer to many others: the relationship of philosophy to theology, of the church to the saeculum, of the kingdom of Christ to the visible church. This volume brings together the careful investigations of established and emerging historians and theologians, exploring how these questions have been addressed at different points in Christian history, and what they mean for us today. Includes contributions from James Bratt, E.J. Hutchinson, Matthew Tuininga, Andrew Fulford, Laurence O'Donnell, Benjamin Miller, Brian Auten, and Joseph Minich.
Recent decades have witnessed the fragmentation of Reformation studies, with high-level research confined within specific geographical, confessional or chronological boundaries. By bringing together scholars working on a wide variety of topics, this volume counteracts this centrifugal trend and provides a broad perspective on the impact of the European reformation. The essays present new research from historians of politics, of the church and of belief. Their geographical scope ranges from Scotland and England via France and Germany to Transylvania and their chronological span from the 1520s to the 1690s Considering the impact of the Reformation on political culture and examining the relatio...
This study examines Calvin's belief that he was a prophet "placed over nations and kingdoms to tear down and destroy, to build and to plant" (Jer 1: 10). With this authority, Calvin pursued an expansionist agenda which blended religious, political, and social aspects towards the goal of a Protestant France .
Renaissance images could be real as well as linguistic. Human beings were often believed to be an image of the cosmos, and the sun an image of God. Kathryn Banks explores the implications of this for poetic language and argues that linguistic images were a powerful tool for rethinking cosmic conceptions. She reassesses the role of natural-philosophical poetry in France, focusing upon its most well-known and widely-read exponent, Guillaume de Saluste Du Bartas.Through a sustained analysis of Maurice Sceve's Delie , Banks also rethinks love lyric's oft-noted use of the beloved as image of the poet. Cosmos and Image makes an original contribution to our understanding of Renaissance thinking about the cosmic, the human, and the divine. It also proposes a mode of reading other Renaissance texts, and reflects at length upon the relation of 'literature' to history, to the history of science, and to political turmoil.
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.
This volume contributes to the current reassessment of the "Glorious Revolution" by bringing together the work of leading American, British, and Dutch scholars who present a series of interpretive case studies on a wide variety of political, economic, religious, and cultural issues. What emerges from these fifteen essays is the conviction that in spite of differing angles of approach, the process of reinterpreting the Revolution requires a combined study of English and Dutch history within the context of European history. The long tradition of viewing the events of 1688-89 as a uniquely British affair, which gave birth to liberal England with its contingent political and religious liberties, is finally put to rest.
This study centers on the question: how do particular readers read a biblical passage? What factors govern each reading? DeLapp here attempts to set up a test case for observing how both socio-historical and textual factors play a part in how a person reads a biblical text. Using a reception-historical methodology, he surveys five Reformed authors and their readings of the David and Saul story (primarily 1 Sam 24 and 26). From this survey two interrelated phenomena emerge. First, all the authors find in David an ideal model for civic praxis-a “Davidic social imaginary” (Charles Taylor). Second, despite this primary agreement, the authors display two different reading trajectories when di...
This book solves a centuries-old mystery from the Reformation that forces us to rethink how humans engage with the past.
Providing a detailed account of the emergence and development of the public disputations between D.V. Coornhert (1522-1590) and Reformed ministers, this book explores the religious and political dimensions of a controversy that reflects issues and arguments at the core of the Dutch Revolt.