American Opinion of German Unification, 1848-1871

by John Gerow Gazley

1926

Discusses the American public's opinion on the struggle for German unification from 1848 until the formation of the German Empire in 1871. In addition, looking at the contrasting opinions of Hungary and France.

Criticism and Confession

by Nicholas Hardy

2017 · Oxford University Press

The period between the late Renaissance and the early Enlightenment has long been regarded as the zenith of the "republic of letters", a pan-European community of like-minded scholars and intellectuals who fostered critical approaches to the study of the Bible and other ancient texts, while renouncing the brutal religio-political disputes that were tearing their continent apart at the same time. Criticism and Confession offers an unprecedentedly comprehensive challenge to this account. Throughout this period, all forms of biblical scholarship were intended to contribute to theological debates, rather than defusing or transcending them, and meaningful collaboration between scholars of different confessions was an exception, rather than the norm. "Neutrality" was a fiction that obscured the ways in which scholarship served the interests of ecclesiastical and political institutions. Scholarly practices varied from one confessional context to another, and the progress of 'criticism' was never straightforward. The study demonstrates this by placing scholarly works in dialogue with works of dogmatic theology, and comparing examples from multiple confessional and national contexts. It offers major revisionist treatments of canonical figures in the history of scholarship, such as Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon, John Selden, Hugo Grotius, and Louis Cappel, based on unstudied archival as well as printed sources; and it places those figures alongside their more marginal, overlooked counterparts. It also contextualizes scholarly correspondence and other forms of intellectual exchange by considering them alongside the records of political and ecclesiastical bodies. Throughout, the study combines the methods of the history of scholarship with techniques drawn from other fields, including literary, political, and religious history. As well as presenting a new history of seventeenth-century biblical criticism, it also critiques modern scholarly assumptions about the relationships between erudition, humanistic culture, political activism, and religious identity.

Light in a Dark Place

by John S. Feinberg

2018 · Crossway

What we believe about the Bible is foundational to every part of life. Scripture is the very Word of God, the final authority for all of theology, the governing source of all other doctrines. In the latest volume of the Foundations of Evangelical Theology series, theology professor John S. Feinberg has written a landmark work on the doctrine of Scripture, offering a robust, serious treatment of topics such as revelation, the canon, inerrancy, infallibility, sufficiency, preservation, and more—all with the goal of helping readers cherish, obey, and be transformed by what God has spoken in his Word.

Has God Said?

by John Douglas Morrison

2006 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

Has God said? Has God actually spoken, declared himself and his purposes to us? Historically the Christian faith has affirmed God's redemptive, revelatory speaking as historical, contentful, redemptive, centrally in Jesus Christ and, under Christ and by the Spirit, in the text of Holy Scripture. But in the past three centuries developments in Western culture have created a crisis in relation to historical, divine authority. The modern reintroduction of destructive dualisms, cosmological and epistemological, via Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, and Kant have injured not only the physical sciences (e.g., positivism) but Christian theology as well. The resulting "eclipse of God" has permeated Western culture. In terms of the Christian understanding of revelation, it has meant the separation of God from historical action, the rejection of God's actual self-declaration, and especially in textual form, Holy Scripture. After critical analysis of these dualistic developments, this book presents the problematic effects in both Protestant (Schleiermacher, Bultmann, Tillich) and Roman Catholic (Rahner, Dulles) theology. The thought and influence of Karl Barth on the nature of Scripture is examined and distinguished from most "Barthian approaches." The effects of dualistic "Barthian" thought on contemporary evangelical views of Scripture (Pinnock, Fackre, Bloesch) are also critically analyzed and responses made (Helm, Wolterstorff, Packer). The final chapter is a christocentric, multileveled reformulation of the classical Scripture Principle, via Einstein, Torrance, and Calvin, that reaffirms the church's historical "identity thesis," that Holy Scripture is the written Word of God, a crucial aspect of God's larger redemptive-revelatory purpose in Christ.