Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. For this edition, Duffy has written a new Preface reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period.From reviews of the first edition:“A magnificent scholarly achievement [and] a compelling read.”—Patricia Morrison, Financial Times“Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated. . . . Duffy’s analysis . . . carries conviction.”—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books“This book will afford enjoyment and enlightenment to layman and specialist alike.”—Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement“[An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal

    All but unknown outside the Syrian tradition, Ephrem's rich theology of symbol, asceticism, and prayer amply deserves to stand beside his more famous Greek contemporaries.

    This does not constitute an abstract, emotional or intellectual spirituality. The bearer of Orthodox spirituality par excellence is the Saint who is revealed through his teaching and his relics. The non-spiritual individual, who is deprived of the Holy Spirit, is the psychological and carnal person.It is precisely the above distinction which points out the differences between Orthodox spirituality and other "spiritualities". Orthodox spirituality differs markedly from the "spiritualities" of the East and West. The difference in the dogma generates the difference in ethos as well. The essence of Orthodox spirituality lies in its therapeutic effects. It cures a person's infirmities and renders him an integrated person.

    More than a century and a half later that organization, now known as the Relief Society of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has more than four million members in 165 countries and territories, uniting women all over the world. Women of the Covenant traces the rich history of the Relief Society, but its scope is much broader than that. As the authors write, it is "the story of women of the Church and the sacred promises that bind them to God and to the community of his saints." In 1842, Emma Hale Smith, the first president of the Relief Society, declared, "We are going to do something extraordinary." Women of the Covenant shows the extraordinary accomplishments of this unique sisterhood.

    

    The first of a two-volume history documenting the spread of Christianity to southern Asia, India, and China.

    This meticulously researched book recounts how the early sixteenth-century Reformers, steering a course between the old Latin rites on the one hand and the Anabaptist movement on the other, developed a baptismal service that they understood to be reformed according to Scripture. Hughes Oliphant Old's study shows the Reformed baptismal rite to be well thought out, pastorally sensitive, and theologically profound.

    Charles Hill traces Christian views of the soul's fate in Jewish texts, the New Testament, and in early Christian writers through the mid-third century A.D. His findings lead to a provocative new assessment of the development of Christian eschatology that corrects many misconceptions of earlier scholarly research. This second edition updates and substantially expands Hill's highly respected original work published by Oxford.

    At the start of the twenty-first century, in the pontificate of Benedict XVI, a papal visit to Russia—at the symbolic level, a major step forward in the ‘healing of memories’— appears at last a realistic hope.In addition, the schisms separating Rome from the two lesser, but no less interesting, Christian families, the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) Churches, are examined. The book also contains an account of the origins and present condition of the Eastern Catholic Churches—a deeper knowledge of which, by their Western brethren, was called for at the Second Vatican Council as well as by subsequent synods and popes.Providing both historical and theological explanations of these divisions, this illuminating and thought-provoking book chronicles the recent steps taken to mend them in the Ecumenical Movement and offers a realistic assessment of the difficulties (theological and political) which any reunion would experience.

    He finds the case for dependence in the strong sense tenuous.

    Father Hardon, with his unique spiritual insight, examines Columbus’ life and writings to discover what secular historians and others hostile to the Catholic Church have utterly failed to grasp! Namely, that Columbus, in Divine Providence, 'was the instrument of extraordinary grace … the destined herald of the true faith to half the human race.'

    And although orthodoxy was more narrowly defined by that era than during Origen's lifetime in the third century, his speculative, Platonizing theology was not the only issue at stake in the Origenist controversy: "Origen" became a code word for nontheological complaints as well. Elizabeth Clark explores the theological and extra-theological implications of the dispute, uses social network analysis to explain the personal alliances and enmities of its participants, and suggests how it prefigured modern concerns with the status of representation, the social construction of the body, and praxis vis-à-vis theory. Shaped by the Trinitarian and ascetic debates, and later to influence clashes between Augustine and the Pelagians, the Origenist controversy intersected with patristic campaigns against pagan "idolatry" and Manichean and astrological determinism. Discussing Evagrius Ponticus, Epiphanius, Theophilus, Jerome, Shenute, and Rufinus in turn, Clark concludes by showing how Augustine's theory of original sin reconstructed the Origenist theory of the soul's pre-existence and "fall" into the body.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    For this remarkable story, Barnett interviewed more than sixty Germans who were active in the Confessing Church, asking them to reflect on their personal experiences under Hitler and how they see themselves, morally and politically, today. She provides a haunting glimpse of the German experience under Hitler, but also gives a provocative look into what it has meant to be a German in the twentieth century.

    Samuel Prime's work gives a first-hand record of the year which saw America's last national awakening - a revival which was in striking contrast with the idea that evangelism is primarily a case of human effort.

    This fascinating, fast-moving overview of contemporary events shows why the Temple is significant in Bible prophecy and how, more than ever, Israel is ready to rebuild.

    H. Spurgeon personally prepared for the press before his death at the age of fifty-seven on January 31, 1892. From the best unpublished sermons of the closing years of Spurgeon's life, J.W. Harrald (his faithful assistant) put the rest of this volume together.

    He recaptures the sixteenth-century political debates--where priests and theologians are both voices of dissent against the Spanish military conquest and fervent defenders of it. Rivera contrasts discovery and conquest and examines the tragic outcome: demographic collapse--from the islands Columbus first sighted to the Inca empire in Peru.

    The sixteenth century was a period of fierce theological controversy and no doctrine concerned contemporaries more than the vexed issue of the Eucharist. Scholars have always found it notoriously difficult to determine Cranmer's conviction on this central matter of the Christian faith. This and many other questions that have long troubled Cranmer scholars receive fair and full treatment in this absorbing study. This book re-establishes itself as the definitive exposition of Cranmer's doctrine of the Eucharist.

    

    The essays collected here accentuate the peculiarly political character of Protestantism within Communist systems. With few identifiable leaders, a multiplicity of denominations, and a tendency away from hierarchical structures, the Protestant churches presents a remarkably diverse pattern of church-state relations. Consequently, the longtime coexistence of Protestantism and Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union affords numerous examples of political accommodation and theological adaption that both reflect and foreshadow the dramatic changes of the 1990s.Based on extensive field research, including interviews with notable figures in the Protestant churches in the region, the essays in this volume address broad topics such as the church's involvment in environmentalism, pacifism, and other dissident movements, as well as issues particular to Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, (1949–1989), Hungary, Yugoslavia (1945-1991), Bulgaria, and Romania. The final volume in the three-volume work "Christianity Under Stress," Protestantism and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia will prove invaluable to anyone hoping to understand not only the workings of religion under Communism, but the historical and contemporary interactions of church and state in general.Contributors. Paul Bock, Lawrence Klippenstein, Paul Mojzes, Earl A. Pope, Joseph Pungur, Sabrina Petra Ramet, Walter Sawatsky, N. Gerald Shenk, Gerd Stricker, Sape A. Zylstra

    She analyzes their participation in social reform, and looks at their relationship to the feminist movement in China. Compared to their Chinese sisters, Christian women had more prolonged exposure to Western civilization through the Christian Church, mission schools, and Christian benevolence. Their responses, shows Kwok, provide rare information on how Chinese women reacted to foreign influences and religion in particular. At the same time, Kwok's study broadens our understanding of how Christianity adapts to and functions in a totally new cultural context.

    The Latitudinarians were so named by contemporary critics for their willingness to accept the political and religious changes imposed during the Interregnum, a period of extremely factious religious debate. Modern scholars have closely identified the practical theology of these moderate churchmen with the rise of Deism and religious rationalism after the Glorious Revolution. W. M. Spellman challenges that association by focusing on several aspects of faith important to an understanding of the Latitudinarian movement: the Latitudinarian estimate of human nature and the impact of original sin; the place of reason, grace, and divine providence in the process of salvation; and the purpose of moral reform in a theological system where works were without merit. In each of these areas, Spellman shows how the Latitudinarians maintained positions indistinguishable from those championed by their supposedly more orthodox peers within the restored Church of England. Rather than associating the Latitudinarians with later, and often independent, developments in the life of the Church, Spellman returns the moderate divines to the unique seventeenth-century historical context in which the movement originated. Spellman explores the basis of the Latitudinarian search for a more reasonable faith and a comprehensive Church of England in light of the experience of civil war, sectarian violence, and the rebirth of academic skepticism, and he concludes with an analysis of the fundamental issues that divided the moderates from their younger Deist admirers. A substantial addition to our knowledge of the religious and intellectual life of Restoration England, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660-1700 enriches