Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on Natural Reason,Natural Religion,and Revelation

Summary

This article discusses Archibald Campbell's (1691–1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell's writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates.     

New Perspectives on the English Reformation

The historiography of the English Reformation has been driven by several key themes for three or four decades: the chronology of religious change and the success or failure of Protestantism to establish itself, the position of Puritanism vis-à-vis Church conformity, the role of Arminianism (anti-Calvinism) in doctrinal and ecclesiological debates and its impact on ecclesiastical politics and, more latterly, the continuities of ideas and beliefs between medieval Catholicism and Reformation Protestantism. This survey article on six new books in the field of Reformation studies argues that while the current historiography is generating very exciting work on the religious mentalité of early-modern English people and the transmission of ideas across the Catholic-Protestant divide, as well as generating a thriving debate on Calvinist consensus (or not) and the rise of Arminianism (or not), there are further rich seams to mine that incorporate gender into the analysis and that add the Atlantic World perspective to that of the European context for Reformation.     

John Wesley's Conflict with James Hervey and Its Effects in Scotland

The assumption among historians is that Wesley's ministry in Scotland had largely failed because of his conflicting theological views. But upon a more thorough investigation, his problems stemmed from an earlier debate with the Anglican clergyman James Hervey, which was continued by the Scottish minister John Erskine. In his published response to Hervey, Wesley inadvertently included offensive comments about certain Reformed doctrines which Erskine exploited in order to highlight the discrepancies between Wesleyan Methodism and Scottish Presbyterianism. Erskine's insinuation in 1765 that Wesley intentionally concealed his beliefs in order to gain ascendancy in Scotland resulted in the immediate suppression of Methodist growth.     

Not Quite an Insider—A Scottish Perspective on a Future Coronation

Abstract

Post devolution, Scotland is ‘a bit different’, but how does that relate to a coronation? A Scottish sense of exclusion from the English establishment's assumptions of UK dominance might be a way into developing forms that are more widely inclusive. In this article, two distinctively Scottish models—of sovereignty and of being a national church—are offered as bases for exploring the shape of a coronation that tries to express who we all are. The theological understanding of sovereignty which was a key contribution from the churches to the debate on devolution sees the sovereignty of God entrusted to the community of the realm, and entrusted by that community to whatever institutions they deem appropriate; this might be a starting point for planning a coronation. The self-understanding of the Church of Scotland as a national church cherishing its independence from state control and with less ‘stake’ in the monarchy might prompt a different church-state relationship to be expressed in a coronation.     

Divine Healing in Australian Protestantism, 1870–1940

The topic of divine healing was not at the forefront of the Protestant movement during its first three centuries as it reacted to what was seen as an exaggerated and often fallacious miraculous supernaturalism in Roman Catholicism. By the middle of the nineteenth century the Protestant churches in Britain, America, Europe and Australia had to consider divine healing in light of a newly emerging holiness movement. This article examines the developments in practice and theological perspective of the Protestant churches in Australia, particularly as they responded to the clear claims of the growing Pentecostal movement in the nation and the sacramental perspective on healing supported by the High Anglican sector of the Australian Church of England.     

Salafī‐Ashʻarī Polemics of the 3rd & 4th Islamic Centuries

While Sunnism is the largest sect of Islam, Sunnism itself is divided into many strands. The two main strands of Sunnism for the last few centuries are the Atharī (or Salafī) strand, and the Ash?arī strand. This papers seeks to examine the earliest recorded controversies that signal this intra‐Sunnī divide. While each of these two groups has historically attempted to claim true Sunnī ‘orthodoxy’ by denying the legitimacy, and at times even the early existence, of the other, it will be shown that the genesis of this intra‐Sunnī divide dates back to the first century of Sunnism itself, viz., the 3^rd AH/8^th CE centuries, and that there are specific historic incidents that indicate theological tensions within the nascent Sunnī movement that would later be manifested in the two streams of Ash?arism and Salafism. Hence, it can be argued that Sunnism was never truly unified to begin with, and that these incidents demonstrate theological tensions that existed from its very origins.     

“In the execution of his office”: lay officials and the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline in Scotland,c. 1600-1660

ABSTRACT

Consistorial discipline was central to the application of Reformed Christianity in early-modern Scotland. This article argues that both elders and deacons were frequently drawn into personal disputes that were more communal than theological. Neighbours’ complaints served to emphasise Reformed ideals of honesty and good reputation but could also undermine the foundations of Reformed discipline. In response, consistories across Scotland came to identify disputes involving one official as slights on the entire session. While officials were reliant on an increasing sense of corporate identity to protect them, neighbours’ involvement shows the degree of lay support and participation in the Reformed Church.     

Modern revolutions: An introduction to the analysis of a political phenomenon

This paper provides an interpretation of the movement of Arendt's thought in her Denktagebuch, from 1950 to 1973. This movement results in an incipient political philosophy based on new concepts of freedom, equality, and solidarity. As a contribution to debates on the normative foundations of Arendt's political thought, the paper seeks to show that her incipient political philosophy is based on an ethical understanding of the human condition as constituted by its openness to the divine, the worldly, and the (human) Other. Despite its fragmentary nature and its politically problematic indebtedness to theological traditions, Arendt's private thought nevertheless allows us to rethink her place in the history of European ideas. Beyond that, it also provides a powerful alternative to the view that ethical and political thought must remain ‘political not metaphysical’.     

Obeying,Believing and Rebelling

Abstract

This article offers a decisive alternative to a growing consensus within public theology that political liberalism represents the pro-Pelagian, atomistic and un-ecclesial face of modernity. Through a careful reappraisal of the sceptical theology of Michel de Montaigne I claim that contemporary Christian advocates of liberalism can develop a deeply Augustinian counter-account which has the ability to reconcile notions of individual autonomy and conscience with a strong sense of ecclesial authority. At the centre of this innovative settlement, I point to the value of Montaigne’s theological anthropology, which, in its sensitivity to human fragility and sin, offers a rich validation of pluralistic and tolerant societies by contesting absolutist claims to both knowledge and power. In framing political liberalism in these explicitly theological terms, such an account comes into sharp confrontation with the movement known as Radical Orthodoxy, which has defined the liberal tradition as intrinsically anathema to an authentically Christian understanding of politics. In contrast, this article claims that political liberalism, far from being automatically antagonistic to Christian theological commitments, can be justified by them.     

A Vision of an Anglican Imperialism: The Annual Sermons of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts 1701–1714

This article examines the first two decades of the oldest continuing Anglican missionary society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1710. It argues that, contrary to the prevailing historiography of the British missionary movement, this early eighteenth‐century society was genuinely evangelistic and marks the real beginning of that movement. The society also marks the beginning of a formal, institutional engagement by the Church of England with the British Empire. In the Society's annual anniversary sermons, and influenced by the reports sent by its ordained missionaries in North America, the Church of England's metropolitan leadership in England constructed an Anglican discourse of empire. In this discourse the Church of England began to fashion the identities of colonial populations of Indigenous peoples, white colonists, and Black slaves through a theological Enlightenment understanding.     

Reconstituting Community in Divided Society: Faith-inspired Civil Organizations and the Case of Corrymeela

Abstract

Faith-inspired civil organizations (FICOs) are growing in recognition for their relational and sustainable approaches and contributions to peacebuilding, especially in areas where religious or cultural identities have complicated contexts of violent conflict. The capacity of FICOs to penetrate the deeper and long-term obstacles to peacebuilding is largely a consequence of their underlying faith-based motivations and methods for intervention. This article explores one particular FICO: the Corrymeela Community, which has played a notable public role in the work of peacebuilding and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. In examing the theological roots and operational character of Corrymeela, this article explores possible answers to three important questions. First, as a Christian-inspired organization emphasizing an ecumenical, interfaith approach to sustainable peace, where does Corrymeela locate its theological understanding of violent conflict and purposeful intervention? Second, how does this theological understanding inform and shape its operational strategies for strategic peacebuilding in Northern Ireland? Finally, in a “post-Troubles” Northern Ireland, what is the way forward for such an organization? How might its work and lessons-learned as a FICO continue to impact Northern Ireland, while at the same time contribute to the convoluted work of reconciliation in other regions confronting religiously-fueled violence?     

Theological Education in Australia 1964–2020: Intellectual Authority in a Changing Socio-Political Landscape*

This paper examines the intellectual authority of theological education in modern Australia by tracing its provision from one set of arrangements (the first settlement) inherited from the nineteenth century to another (the second settlement) in the half century from the mid-1960s to ca. 2020. The paper investigates what happened when the exclusion of Theology from the public higher education system was reversed by the Martin Report of 1964, with particular reference to the legitimacy and authority of Theology as public knowledge. A survey of the landmark developments in this transformation, the paper is divided into two parts. Relations of the theological education sector with the structures of the regulatory environment of higher education are examined in the first. Developments within the sector itself are considered in the second. It is argued that the confluence of these two streams has transformed the nature and public standing of Australian theological education. Paradoxically this dramatic improvement coincided with decline in the social salience of Christianity itself, a development which posed afresh the question of the legitimacy of theological knowledge in a way that raises the perennial issue of the relation between Christianity and culture.     

Europe revisited: 1979

The article offers a study of the theological method of Henry Dodwell, the most distinguished British savant of the late Stuart period and a leading figure in the Non-Juring movement. The study takes the form of arguments for the extension of the contemporary dispute between the Ancients and Moderns, in its historiographical dimension, into the field of divinity; for substantial modification of the claims made in discussions of the dispute about the inherent conflict between the Renaissance's desire for revivification of the past and its historical scholarship; and for reconsideration of the relationship between 17th century critical scholarship and the Enlightenment.     

Ribbonmen and radicals: the cultivation of Irishness and the promotion of active citizenship in mid-Victorian Glasgow

A secular, at times radical, tradition of organising and representing Irishness in Scotland had been moulded before 1861. However, in that year, local branches of a new Dublin-centred organisation, the National Brotherhood of St Patrick (NBSP), appeared, offering a new sense of purpose. As this article will argue, the Brotherhood probably had at its core local Ribbonmen (some of them in all probability with “advanced nationalist” views in that post-1848 period) and they were now keen to engage in an “open” subscriber association less obviously prone to the accusations of conspiracy which their previous clandestine solidarity had generated. The NBSP and a later association, the Irish National Association of Scotland, provided opportunities for a more public leadership to emerge and gave Irish-Scots workers important associational experience. In the longer term, this associational activity represents a key stage in the development of a social radical discourse, later so characteristic of Irish Home Rule politics in Scotland.     

Co-optation and Its Discontents: Seventh-Day Adventism in 1950s China

Most studies of Christianity in the early PRC have focused on the politicization of religious practices under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, explaining how the Christian faith empowered people to resist the state’s atheistic propaganda. In fact, both Communist officials and Christians invoked ideas about transcendent power and moral purpose, blurring the boundary between secular and religious concerns. The state-sanctioned patriotic religions had greatly impacted the political and theological orientations of Chinese Christians in the Maoist era. This article looks at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Shanghai, one of the first Protestant denominations to be denounced in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. When the state infiltrated the Adventist institutions, some of the pro-government Adventist leaders worked with the officials to bring the church closer to the socialist order. Most of the Adventists, however, resisted the state and organized themselves into a diffused network of house churches. This study highlights the fluid and complex political environment that the Adventists experienced, and the ways they interacted with the Maoist state. The reorientation of theological concerns, the new strategies for evangelization, and the growth of autonomous church networks enabled the Adventists to be a fast-growing religious movement.     

Conservation charity land ownership in Scotland

Land ownership in Scotland has been the subject of increasing public debate. This paper traces the establishment of the conservation land ownership movement in Scotland from 1931. Charitable donations influence and affect the ability of voluntary bodies to acquire land. Voluntary ownership increased dramatically from the 1960s and the growth in outdoor recreation focused attention on the way mountain estates are managed by charities. Public bodies are instrumental in providing funding and influencing government support for land acquisition. The National Lottery, for example, affects greatly the ability of charities to acquire land. New charities have been formed with a specific focus on trees and wild land but conservation charities have been criticised for aspects of their land management. These charities continue to attract funding from people with a deep belief that their activities are for the benefit of the people of Scotland.     

The Basis of Union: New Zealand Baptists forge a Denomination in the 1940s

This essay examines a crucial period in New Zealand Baptist life. During the 1940s Baptist leaders sought to establish a more centrally organised denomination than had previously existed. Motivated by a desire to position Baptists closer to the mainstream of Protestant religious life, this centripetal dynamic was tested by a cluster of crises and debates. Some of these reflected theological tensions that had been present in the denomination for decades. Others, more immediate and linked to particular personalities, exposed key issues of control and authority. The leadership of the largest church, Baptist involvement in the Ecumenical movement, and the principalship of the theological college were contested. Despite the considerable potential for division, the outcome was a more connectional denomination, able to maintain unity under stress, though one not as centrally driven as some in the Executive desired.     

Against (White) Redemption: James Cone and the Christological Disruption of Racial Discourse and White Solidarity

In the early 1970s, James Cone delivered a profound Christological critique of whiteness as a project of redemption. This critique has often been missed because of the confusion regarding Cone's theological account of race. Drawing especially on the recent work of Nahum Chandler, this article develops the way African diasporic identity becomes “a problem for theological thought.” By way of conversation with Chandler, the article shows how Cone's deliberately ambiguous use of racial language effectively disrupts standard discourses on race and theology, which come to be seen as projects to regulate and control human life. White efforts at solidarity – asking how to help, seeking to a good ally or destroying their own whiteness – often become subtle quests to regain control over white identity and thereby contain or incorporate this disruption, this freedom as “revolt” (Cone). Against these projects of white redemption, James Cone offers a deeply Christological critique, pointing to the way they refuse to linger within movements they cannot control, particularly the movement “between,” the appositional or side-by-side joining of the particular God, Jesus of Nazareth, and particular contemporary struggles for black survival and freedom.     

Irrational Exuberance: Hope,Expectation, and Cool Market Logic

This article examines expectation, optimism, and future-oriented affective postures in financial markets in conversation with theological debates about hope, fanaticism, and enthusiasm. I identify a tendency in economic discourse to valorize calculative and calm rationality over against emotive enthusiasm in market behavior. In recalling the theological debates over passions and interests that proved influential at the inception of capitalism, I argue that the denigration of exuberance in economics bears genealogical links to theological condemnation of the fanatic and enthusiast in early modernity. Retrieving this theological precursor provides an analytical lens for considering the ongoing traction of the language of rationality in economics.     

Discreet Proto‐Pentecostals: The Catholic Apostolic Church in North America

Much recent work has been undertaken on the beginnings of Pentecostalism in North America, and its antecedents in the nineteenth century. These efforts have outlined the theological contributions of the Holiness movement, revivalism, and nineteenth‐century healing movements. One group that has been largely overlooked is the Edward Irving influenced Catholic Apostolic Church, which has been seen as making a minimal contribution as a precursor to Pentecostalism in general; it has especially been seen as peripheral in the Americas. This article will use contemporary newspapers and recently digitised primary sources to argue that the Catholic Apostolic Church was a significant force in the pre‐history of American and Canadian Pentecostalism, with hundreds of followers in key cities, regularly exhibiting prophecy and glossolalia throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.