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This essay explores the gardenscapes that Thomas More inhabited, and how these locations defined his writing and the critical canon. Through a study of both More’s works and the earliest posthumous recollections of the author in Ellis Heywood’s $\textit{Il Moro}$, I consider how physical spaces and their respective environments of enclosure or exposure influenced More and posthumous remembrances of him.

There are many competent voices who estimate that in recent years ecumenism has been going through a crisis. Concern for ecumenical dialogue is becoming secondary for many theologians or members of the clergy, including hierarchs, who are preoccupied almost exclusively with addressing the problems facing their local and confessional communities. As a result, receptivity to ecumenical dialogue and cooperation is even lower among the faithful, who are preoccupied with assessing their own Christian identity in a socio-cultural context marked by rapid change and unprecedented challenges, of which secularism is only one of many. The disappointing assessment of the state of contemporary ecumenism, has led some ecumenists to an effort of identifying solutions for reimagining interconfessional dialogue in an ever-changing world. Theologians from all Christian traditions seek to contribute to identifying ways to unblock the current situation and to propose concrete approaches for rethinking ecumenism for future generations of believers. One of the ways suggested in the literature is to think of ecumenism less in terms of theological agreements, and more in terms of a process of mutual learning, considering that we can receive and offer our gifts in a mutual process, being aware of the need for each community to be open to such a perspective. In this paper, we argue that the constant receptivity to Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae’s theology, and to his anthropology in particular, that exists in Western traditions can be an opportunity for revitalising the ecumenical dialogue through the gift exchange model described above. We start from the premise that Fr. Stăniloae’s work represents an important gift not just for the Orthodox, but also for many Protestant and Catholic theologians, and we suggest that this direction can produce a reciprocal effect on Orthodox theologians to open up and receive the gifts of Western theology.

While the story of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio engaging in a friendly contest, at the behest of Pope Urban IV, to compose the Mass and Office of Corpus Christi is likely a pious fiction, one can still ponder the fascinating hypothetical scenario: had such a contest taken place, who might have won? To consider that question, this paper embarks on a close reading of Bonaventure s hymns in his Office of the Passion, comparing his poetic approaches to those of Aquinas in the hymns for Corpus Christi. After an introductory historical examination into the supposed involvement of both friars in the composition of the Corpus Christi liturgy, this article proceeds in three sections. First, a look into select excerpts from Bonaventure s Office of the Passion will establish his general poetic technique. In the transitional second section, a direct comparison between Bonaventure and Aquinas on the composition of the final doxological verses of their respective hymns will place their different poetic styles into greater relief. Third, a broader reading of Aquinas s Eucharistic hymns will highlight the unique qualities of his versified praises. Finally, in light of the foregoing analyses, a prospective winner of the hypothetical contest will be suggested.

Critical theory represents the dominant theoretical framework currently deployed in the humanities, yet it is a framework that many theologians have been slow to engage. The recent ‘postcritical’ turn in critical theory, however, has striking affinities with several key concerns of Christian theology, as is becoming increasingly recognised. This article suggests that dialogue between critical theory and theology can be mutually beneficial, particularly in relation to hamartiology. It argues that there is a strong parallel between Martin Luther's theology of the law and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's account of critical theory's ‘paranoid’ hermeneutics. It then draws on this parallel to diagnose a weakness in Sedgwick's ‘postcritical’ response to such paranoia, and suggests that this weakness can be repaired by a specifically theological approach to hermeneutics.

This essay will especially consider the role of the cogitative power and affectivity in the formation of vocal utterances, showing how the Thomistic account of the integration of passion with reason provides a fascinating apparatus for assessing different uses of language—from the Eucharistic hymns of Aquinas, to the poetry of his Franciscan contemporaries Bonaventure and Iacopone da Todi, and even live sports commentary. The insights developed here, moreover, are not stand‐alone reflections on language but hold consequences both for the moral life and for a proper construal of mystical union. By drawing out these further consequences of Aquinas's doctrine, we suggest the continuing relevance of Thomistic metaphysics and anthropology to concerns both contemporary and popular.

Peer reviewed: True, The Church of England’s historic buildings represent the single largest group of heritage sites in the UK, playing a key public-facing role in the church’s ‘cultural witness’. However, they are complex historic environments implicated in the recent focus on ‘contested heritage’ and imperial legacies. The wider heritage sector’s answer to the adversarial nature of this debate has been to turn contested histories into dialogical opportunities; participatory and collaborative approaches to interpretation and curation have become an important feature of much recent secular heritage work. Yet, the CofE has not yet articulated or embraced the value of similar initiatives for its own collections, with guidance at the institutional level aimed primarily at conservation and protection. This paper initiates a discussion about how engagement with sensitive memories enhances the importance of CofE’s cultural heritage. It offers a preliminary report of a research project led by the author titled ‘Inclusive Interpretations of Christian Heritage’, carried out between 2021 and 2022 at iconic churches in central London. After discussing the theoretical context, project rationale, and method, the paper discusses the connections which Christians from ethnic minority or immigrant backgrounds have to ecclesiastical spaces usually associated with national history. The perspectives of previously unrepresented groups can supplement expert assessments concerning a site’s significance, revealing important areas in which the CofE’s cultural assets hold meaning beyond national or aesthetic importance. The paper argues that widening community engagement represents a crucial task for accentuating the social and civic importance of the CofE’s cultural heritage.

Funder: British Academy; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000286, Genealogical writing has become influential in theology in the past decades. This article critically evaluates the use of the genre of ‘genealogy’ in theology, suggesting that theologians should employ genealogies in (1) an involved and (2) conjectural way. It argues that it generally benefits any genealogy to be involved and conjectural, before showing why there are genuinely theological reasons for taking such stances, making this approach particularly fitting for theologians who wish to employ genealogies.

Recent literary and theological accounts of forgiveness have appealed to the poetic as offering an ‘ambiguous’ space appropriate to the complex process of forgiving. In this article I will texture these accounts with a close reading of T.S. Eliot’s ‘Marina’, which is well-placed as an example of this style of poetics. Beyond ambiguity, however, ‘Marina’ communicates an account of forgiveness that can be read generatively alongside Sara Ahmed’s category of ‘queer use’. The poetics of ‘Marina’ will thereby provide a conceptual pattern for a movement towards healing, beyond painful histories, without erasing the past. This, in turn, will highlight the importance of Ahmed’s ‘queer use’ for contemporary theological accounts of forgiveness.

This article explores the pneumatological theme of the freedom of the Spirit from the perspective of experience. It deploys a recently developed methodology of attending to affective and experiential dynamics in pneumatology to identify two significant patterns or modalities of Christian life in the Spirit that are indexed to the Spirit's freedom: a pattern of divine resistance to human attempts to control God, characterized on the human side by experiences of disruption as well as dynamic creativity; and a pattern of life free from the tyranny of the law, characterized by a modality of play or playfulness, as explored in the work of Nimi Wariboko. In identifying and illuminating these patterns, this article extends a project of seeking to make explicit the connections between Christian doctrinal concepts and Christian experience into a new domain, and responds to a long‐standing concern that theologies of sanctification emphasizing freedom have little to say about the positive shape of Christian life in the Spirit.

In this essay, I argue that a comparison of Derrida’s “Faith and Knowledge” to the texts and thought of classical rabbinic Judaism can illuminate new conceptual connections among the different elements of Derrida’s thought. Both Derrida and the rabbinic texts can be viewed as affirming a type of “holding back” and “allowing the other to be,” stances which Derrida links to “religiosity” and to “messianicity beyond all messianism.” Moreover, the rabbinic texts appear to avoid the “autoimmune” reaction that Derrida sees as stemming from many sacrificial and self-sacrificial logics in which the self is problematically sacrificed in order to preserve the “unscathed” other. In addition, the rabbinic texts’ stance concerning divine authorization for war and capital punishment help to illuminate Derrida’s claim that the ostensibly “secular” wars of modern states are in fact better understood as “wars of religion.”

This paper advances a provisional case denying the attribution of the medieval liturgical sequence Sanctitatis nova signa, written in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi, to Thomas of Celano (died c. 1260), who is best known for writing the earliest biography of the saint. The Conventual Franciscan friar and bishop, Pietro Ridolfi, provides the oldest extant attribution of this sequence to Celano. Luke Wadding (died 1657) echoes this point in his Annales Minorum; several recent critical editions of early Franciscan texts, as well as countless secondary sources, cite Wadding for the attribution to Celano. This identification remains problematic, not only due to the lateness of the Ridolfi‐Wadding claim; the sequence's use of Dionysian mystical motifs and details unique to Bonaventure's Legenda Major (completed 1262) should exclude the possibility of Celano's authorship. Consequently this study tentatively dates the sequence to the latter part of the thirteenth century. Unlike the earlier sequences for Saint Francis attributed to Pope Gregory IX (died 1241) and Thomas of Capua (died 1243), Sanctitatis depicts Francis as a model Dionysian mystic. This mystical exemplarity becomes the image of unity advanced by the Franciscans to heal the internal crises plaguing the order in the later thirteenth century.

In this essay, I argue that ‘poetics’—defined as ‘poet-criticism’, a practitioner’s firsthand reflection on poetic composition (poiēsis) and verse technique (technē)—makes possible for philosophical theology something that has heretofore been overlooked. I contend that Martin Heidegger’s rendition of the poetic ‘afflatus’, which travesties technē variously as an eidetic, violent, and inauthentic aspect of poiēsis, has exerted an outsized influence on contemporary theology’s engagements with poetry. The upshot is a tendentious dualism between poiēsis and creatio, through which the interdisciplinary movement known as ‘theopoetics’ currently deconstructs the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. I show that the quietism of theopoetics is merely the reverse face of Heidegger’s residual voluntarism. The neglected late essays of the poet-critic Geoffrey Hill demonstrate that mastery in verse technique, far from conforming to Heidegger’s caricature, entails an erotically motivated co-operation between the poet and their medium. Hill’s poetics is shown to be consonant with the metaphysics of creation and theological anthropology expressed in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa. I ultimately defend the continued relevance of the analogy between human poiēsis and creatio ex nihilo by appealing to Cusanus’s exposition of technē as partaking in the triune co-inherence of God.

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital computer. It is essentially distinguished from all prior and analog computers by the transcription of the ‘mechanical notation’, the separation of the mnemonic ‘store’ from the cybernetic ‘mill’, and the infinite miniaturization of its component parts. This substitution of finite space for an accelerating singularity of time creates the essential rupture of the digital, in which a singular calculation of mechanical force stands opposed to the universal totality of space. Babbage’s criticism of Christian doctrine to preserve the mathematical consistency of mechanics and computing would result in the collapse of the Christian Trinity into a digital theology. This Arian subordinate difference of the Son to the Father would then be infinitely transcribed in a technical contradiction that would threaten to annul the metaphysical ground of any machine. Against digital and postdigital theologies alike, this rupture can only be repaired by a dialectical analysis of the digital into a hyperdigital grammar, which is created by Christ the Logos in a trinitarian ontology of computers. Digital computers can thus be vindicated from theological suspicion as incarnationally accelerated calculators of the sacraments, or ‘sacramental engines’ of the digital age.

This article examines an influential conceptual trope in theology and biblical studies: the distinction between ‘individualistic’ and ‘communal’ orientations as a typology for distinguishing soteriological frameworks. This distinction has been widely deployed in Paul studies, in particular, where for decades it has been invoked in order to illuminate problems with traditional Protestant soteriologies. The present article clarifies and extends recent critiques of the ‘individualism vs. communalism’ trope by drawing on conceptual tools from the fields of social cognition and social emotion. It argues that in appealing to the ‘individualism vs. communalism’ trope Paul scholars have often been operating with unarticulated assumptions about the shaping effects of soteriological frameworks on Christian experience that are subject to analysis and critique. After identifying four such assumptions, conceptual tools psychologists have developed for understanding the experience of social relation between human and human-like agents are explicated. It is argued that these psychological resources can augment and extend recent suggestions by Susan Eastman, Volker Rabens, and others that individuality and relationality are mutually entangled rather than opposed in Paul. Finally, it is suggested that analyzing Paul’s soteriology through the lens of relational experience and social emotion can open up new hermeneutical vistas for both theologians and biblical scholars.

To what extent can Aquinas' philosophy of truth accommodate ambiguity? If an ambiguous object is that which exhibits multiple conflicting meanings, and truth, as ‘the conformity of thing and intellect', has its source and purpose in the divine, does the ambiguous lead us away from God? If so, how do we square this with the experience of the ambiguous, such as in art, that appears to draw us towards the divine? The paper explores this aporia by an analysis of the first two questions of De Veritate in conversation with Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics and Pickstock's Truth in Aquinas. Drawing on these three sources, truth is posited as a translation of being. However, it becomes clear that any translation is imperfect, given the difference between the medium of the existence of the thing and the medium of truth in the intellect. Hence, multiple, sometimes contradictory, propositions are needed in order to express the being of the thing. Moreover, it is shown how the ambiguous can prompt recursive returning to the singular, drawing us beyond merely identifying ‘what' a thing is, and beyond propositions, to share in the divine actualization of existence.

Theological education—and society more broadly—stands critically ‘between the times’. Contemporary theological education exists between traditional modes of formation implicitly shaped by western colonialism and an uncertain future occasioned by seismic shifts around funding, admissions, ecologies of formation, and globalization. This ‘between the times’ moment both threatens the survival of theological education institutes and also unveils the historic and ongoing complicity of theological education in the wider racist colonial legacies of white privilege and hegemony. The same ‘in between’ moment also proffers to theological education the possibility to embrace diverse voices and transformative pedagogies within theological education as part of decolonization and decolonizing the curriculum. Embracing decolonizing theology will both save the soul of theological education and may help it survive through embracing collaborative, creative, and intersectional models of education that meet pragmatic needs as well as moral imperatives. This article explores three publications by Elizabeth Conde‐Frazier, Keri Day, and Chloe Sun that offer Latinx, womanist, and Asian theological perspectives on decolonizing theology in this ‘between the times’ moment of theological education. Setting out first the ecclesial and then the wider political contexts of these three works, the article examines how they imagine new decolonized possibilities for theological education. Following Graham Ward, the article develops how all three authors in their own ways argue that decolonizing theology and theological education entails ‘provincializing’ the (white) western context as normative, ‘translating’ or ‘transplanting’ theology back into culturally authentic discourses that contend meaning and deconstruct white power, and positively ‘affirming’ the varied cultural identities in which theological meaning is located.

The Chinese rites controversy (c.1582–1742) is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia.

In this article, the author sheds light on some of the methodological challenges that currently face scholars in world Christianity by mapping out genealogically how ontology has come to be a concern for those pursuing social scientific approaches to the study of Christianity in particular. By unraveling some of the guiding theoretical principles of the study of religions more generally, the author reveals the conditions that have ultimately rendered the “problem of belief” in fact a “problem” for (purportedly) secular explorations of Christian cultures. The author reflects upon the theoretical principles of an emerging group of anthropologists of Christianity who are seeking to address the problems raised by their secular orientations and cultivating what is fast becoming known as a “theologically engaged anthropology.” From there, she offers some of her own solutions to these predicaments and suggests some useful theoretical approaches for those scholars working in world Christianity going forward.

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of the Holy Trinity in a Trinitarian Ontology, in which the originary difference of the Son from the Father is related through the Holy Spirit, and given again in accelerating gratuity—like the light of the leaf that shines forth from any flower.

Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with faith leaders in the UK (including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Sikhism), we examine the diverse ways religious groups reorient religious life during COVID-19. Analysing the shift to virtual and home-based worship, we show the creative ways religious communities altered their customs, rituals, and practices to fit a new virtual reality amidst rigid social distancing guidelines. This study offers a distinctive comparative perspective into religious creativity amidst acute social change, allowing us to showcase notable differences, especially in terms of the possibility to fully perform worship online. We found that whilst all faith communities faced the same challenge of ministering and supporting their communities online, some were able to deliver services and perform worship online but others, for theological reasons, could not offer communal prayer. These differences existed within each religion rather than across religious boundaries, representing intra-faith divergence at the same time as cross-faith convergence. This analysis allows us to go beyond common socio-religious categories of religion, while showcasing the diverse forms of religious life amidst COVID-19. This study also offers a diverse case study of the relationship between religions as well as between religion, state, and society amidst COVID-19.

In the midst of the earth’s pressing climate catastrophe, the nexus between ecology and religion merits further investigation. In this article, I attempt to illuminate certain important aspects of this nexus by analyzing various Hindu eco-theological motifs, with a particular focus on those of the Hindu religious tradition known as Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism. I will compare and contrast the eco-theological motifs of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism with those of other notable Hindu religious traditions and texts. Ultimately, I attempt to demonstrate that certain Caitanya Vaiṣṇava eco-theological motifs can, when properly interpreted and applied, serve as valuable environmentally oriented conceptual resources. I also argue that these eco-theological motifs can offset some of the conceptual pitfalls that limit the effectiveness of various pan-Hindu eco-theological motifs as conceptual resources for environmental amelioration. Although the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava eco-theological framework is not without conceptual hurdles, I nevertheless maintain that Caitanya Vaiṣṇava eco-theological motifs are worthy of further reflection.

The past months of pandemic have laid down a number of challenges to both the practices of the Christian faith and the theology that underpins many of these practices. This article seeks to discern a method of doing theology that can be responsive to these changed circumstances and which might help cast new light on entrenched positions in the Church. Such a theology takes experienced phenomena seriously, recognizing the key role a lived reality plays in a sacramental faith. It situates the importance of this experience in the biblical mandate to the Christian to be a witness, albeit one grounded in and inhabiting the community of the faithful. This grounding tests experience in the fire of Scripture and living tradition to continually refine the essential nature of what can be said to be. In doing so, we enter ever more into the mystery of a God made incarnate and of God’s created order.

The monastic tradition has its roots in the New Testament practices of withdrawing into the desert, following a celibate lifestyle and disciplines of fasting. After the empire became Christian in the 4th century these ascetic disciplines evolved into monastic communities. While these took various forms, they developed a shared literature, gained a recognised place in the church, while taking different ways of life in the various settings in the life of the church. Western and Eastern traditions of monastic life developed their own styles of life. However, these should be recognised as being formed by and belonging to the same tradition, and showing how it can adapt to specific social and ecclesiastical conditions. In the modern world, this monastic way of life continues to bring renewal to the church in the ‘new monasticism’ which adapts traditional monastic practices to contemporary life. New monastic communities engage in evangelism, serve and identify with the marginalised, offer hospitality, and commit themselves to follow rules of life and prayer. Their radical forms of discipleship and obedience to the gospel place them clearly within the continuing monastic tradition.

This article presents a theological–literary response to a concern in contemporary theory with heeding and articulating the speech of nonhuman things. Drawing from Rowan Williams’ metaphysics of poetic addition, I argue that an ‘ecotheological’ literary practice challenges us to become attentive and responsive to the language of the nonhuman, by creatively performing the co-mingling of nonhuman and human language. Drawing from Jean-Louis Chrétien’s phenomenology of the voice, I propose a theological conception of language as a gift of hospitality to the voice of nonhuman things that is also a gift of poetic addition—a ‘saying more’ which, adding being to the world, also manifests its gift-like nature. In contrast to recent critical approaches, I argue for the qualified retrieval of ‘nature’ as a figure both literary and theological, a voice that gives voice to things and speaks by means of human literary production. Through a reading of Shakespeare’s King Lear, I show that the paradoxical and poetic ambiguities of the literary sense of ‘nature’ serve precisely to shed light on its suspect modern iteration, while at the same time taking us beyond critique to enable a cautious yet attentive retrieval of its poetic and symbolic scope.

This chapter explores the history of the Hebrew Bible from the point of view of its layout on the two main material forms of the Jewish book: scroll and codex. It examines several of the fundamental ways in which Jews (and a few Christians) have organized the Hebrew Bible visually, from the earliest surviving witnesses among the so-called Dead Sea Scrolls (third century BCE) to the printed editions of Early Modern Europe. It pays special attention to the way the material and spatial limitations of a writing support spurred various kinds of scribal creativity; and it traces the way practices that began by chance become ritually, legally or exegetically meaningful in the process of transmission across centuries. The chapter explores book-historical evidence internal to the biblical corpus and considers possible models for scribal practices among other, non-Jewish and non-Hebrew cultures of the book in the Ancient Near East. It explores the development of scribal law in early Rabbinic literature, in which ancient textual accidents and idiosyncrasies are reinterpreted as meaningful, visual expressions of a perfect, sacred text. It then considers the dynamic relationship between scroll and codex in the Medieval period, focusing both on the transformative emergence of the Masoretic codex and on the iconography of the Temple therein, as expression of the idea of the Hebrew Bible as portable Temple and a visual response to exile. The chapter then considers various ways in which Jewish and Christian editors and printers adopted and adapted these ancient and medieval visual practices of textual distribution in the early years of print. Finally, it looks at the paratextual superimposition of Christian and Jewish reading traditions onto the text, and therewith, the origin of the shape of the Hebrew Bible as commonly printed to this day.

The emphasis in recent years on contemplation, prayer and ritual has raised new questions about the ‘site’ of theological reflection: is an inhabited the- ology newly disclosive? What are the implications of such an appreciation of the role of the body – of language, gesture, posture, sound, variations of light and space, the passage of time – for theological understanding? The attentiveness to physical and temporal mediations of theological truth goes hand in hand with an appreciation of participatory metaphysical frame- works, and a renewed interest in pre-modern resources in which modes of contemplation and devotion were not held in a hostile relation to the- oretical reasoning. These modes of enactment – contemplation, prayer and ritual – entail an integrative stance which brings together active and passive modes or dispositions, a radicalization of subject and object, and a subversion of our usual kinds of knowing and doing: they entail a per- ception of reality which is conscious of its own part in that reality; in con- templation, we move towards an object and yet already rest in it; human spiritual perception is realized not by a refusal of the body and time, but by their drawing in through ritual bodily practice, a drawing-in which reaches its apotheosis in liturgical activity which one might see as an outward and inward ‘common-sensing’, and the synaesthetic mingling of the different physical and spiritual senses which such activity involves.

What is the role of the image in faith? How should we relate to Abraham and Christ? Through new readings of two of Kierkegaard’s rarely compared texts, this article locates the religious power of the image in its ability to cleanse the subject of received mis-images of Christianity, and suggests that Kierkegaard was here inspired by elements of Rheno-Flemish mysticism. Kierkegaard not only identifies this inward existential kenosis as the correct form of imitation, he narratively induces this in his reader. As well as examining this textual performativity and the imagination’s role of kenotically preparing the subject for her subsequent upbuilding, this article identifies the movement of kenosis as constitutive of faith – a task that involves suffering, but a suffering that is always accompanied and tempered by love.

Right-wing populists across many western countries have markedly intensified their references to Christianity in recent years. However, Christian communities’ reactions to such developments often vary significantly, ranging from disproportionate support in some countries to outspoken opposition in others. This paper explores the role of structural factors, and in particular of Church–State relations, in accounting for some of these differences. Specifically, this article explores how Church–State relations in Germany and the United States have produced different incentives and opportunity structures for faith leaders when facing right-wing populism. Based on quantitative studies, survey data, and 31 in-depth elite interviews, this research suggests that whereas Germany’s system of “benevolent neutrality” encourages highly centralised churches whose leaders perceive themselves as integral part and defenders of the current system, and are therefore both willing and able to create social taboos against right-wing populism, America’s “Wall of separation” favours a de-centralised religious marketplace, in which church leaders are more prone to agree with populists’ anti-elitist rhetoric, and face higher costs and barriers against publicly condemning right-wing populism. Taking such structural factors into greater account when analysing Christian responses to right-wing populism is central to understanding current and future dynamics between politics and religion in western democracies.

This article presents a reassessment of the seventeenth-century debate over the origin of the Hebrew vowel points. Previous accounts have treated this debate from the perspective of Protestant scholarship, with the reception of Louis Cappel's Arcanum punctationis revelatum (1624) used to measure progress or reaction according to how far scholars accepted or rejected-the latter for theological reasons-the critical advance his work has been taken to represent. The article argues this mischaracterizes the issue, showing why the question only became especially pressing in the mid-1640s in the context of broader developments in Catholic and Protestant biblical criticism.

As the work of Sergii Bulgakov has become more widely available in English, his Trinitarian theology has become a subject of particular interest. This article analyses his less well‐known works on the Trinity from the 1920s, arguing that the understanding of Trinitarian doctrine developed there is inseparable from Bulgakov’s analyses of language and consciousness. By analysing Bulgakov’s approach to the Trinity via language, this article will draw particular attention to his negotiation of the notion of divine transcendence. We will see that Bulgakov’s writings on the Trinity display, contrary to received opinion, a deep apophatic tendency, or recognition of divine transcendence. But we will also see that his more thoroughly linguistic approach to the Trinity, in which divine transcendence flows from what it means for God to be Love, contradicts his explicit discussion of divine transcendence elsewhere as a transcendence of the Father alone.

Theologians are used to thinking about how words stretch across different uses, not least across the widest of all differences, between creature and creator. They must consider how words such as ‘merciful’ or ‘wise’ can be used to speak both of God and creatures. Theological traditions therefore offer a good deal for addressing the more mundane case of the maker and the made under consideration here, involving human beings and their computer systems.

Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theological reflection. At the same time, a number of areas of suffering traditionally associated with the experience of sin have come to be reinterpreted, for good reasons, as medical disorders without moral valence. The result is that the doctrine of sin has become increasingly dissociated from the body in contemporary theology. This article addresses this dissociation by exploring the difficulty posed to interpreters by the correlation in Psalms 32 and 38 between unforgiven sin and bodily suffering and dysfunction. After showing that this correlation has been a source of significant difficulties for modern interpreters, the essay concludes by examining the potential of an Augustinian reading of these Psalms in terms of the relationship between mortality and original sin.

The fate of a &lsquo, correlational&rsquo, approach to truth, which defines contemporary epistemological theories of knowledge, is described as inescapable by Quentin Meillasoux. If Meillasoux is right, then we are far from being able to hope in truth, if we are to follow the philosopher, Andrea Bellantone&rsquo, s identification of correlation with narcissism and melancholia in La m&eacute, taphysique possible. In order to understand correlation as narcissism and melancholy, one needs to reconsider the ineluctability of a metaphysical perspective, which pivots around the ultimacy of both being or reality, and the disclosive power of mind. According to Bellantone, human existence is faced with the overwhelming, superabundant and inexhaustible circumstance of being and its multiplicity. In the face of this multiple donation, one cannot avoid offering a joyous response, an appropriate counter-gift. As to what this gift is to be, this depends upon one&rsquo, s intuitive and interpretative understanding of the import of being as such. Although this question is unanswerable, one cannot avoid it. Even a single being presents a saturated presence to one: a stone does not disclose all of itself, or all of its infinitely ramifying connections with other entities. A metaphysical answer to reality, a certain &lsquo, taking&rsquo, of the real, even though one must ceaselessly modify this taking, is unavoidable.

In the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a large number of copies of the Provinciale Romanum – a list of all the dioceses in Christendom – were made. Many of these manuscripts include a list of how frequently prelates from different parts of Roman Christianity should visit the papal curia. Over the course of the later Middle Ages this list adapted to become a description of how frequently tribute should be paid to the pope, and how frequently archbishops and other exempt clergy should undertake ad limina visitations to Rome. This article examines the development of this list, and what it can tell us about papal relations with the localities. It is clear that, following the lead of other scholars, much work remains to be done on the Provinciale Romanum.

Children will face many hidden negative effects from the new coronavirus- it's not too late to avert them, says Paul Ramchandani.

The devotional literatures across the Hindu bhakti traditions of medieval India are shaped by distinctive styles of affective responses to the divine reality. A theme which recurs in several layers of their songs is a theological dialectic between divine majesty and divine accessibility; the divine is not only simply transcendent in the sense of being a distant deity but is also immanently present in and through a range of human sensitivities, emotions, and affectivities. We will highlight the dialectic in the devotional songs of three medieval figures, Tulsīdās (c. 1600), Sūrdās (c. 1600), and Mādhavadeva (1489–1596), which are structured primarily by the devotional attitude of a servant (dāsa) towards the Lord. As we will see, this theological servitude is not to be understood as a form of abject servility, for the three poets, in their somewhat distinctive ways, can not only speak of the Lord as a friend and as a lover, but can even level various kinds of complaints, challenges, and accusations at the Lord. Thus, if the Lord’s transcendental sovereignty is emphasised by the devotee through the modes of self-censure, the Lord’s immanent availability is also highlighted through the protests that the devotee fervently makes to the seemingly uncaring Lord.

In the Middle Ages the Karaite Jews in the Islamic world used both Arabic and Hebrew script in their writings. They wrote not only Arabic texts in Arabic script but also many of their Hebrew Bibles in Arabic transcription. The Rabbanites, by contrast, used Hebrew script for writing both Arabic and Hebrew. This paper examines the association of the Karaites with the Masoretic transmission of the Hebrew Bible and the motivation for their transcribing the Bible into Arabic script. It is argued that the Arabic transcriptions reflect the polemical stance of the Karaites against the bases of scriptural authority of the Rabbinites and an advanced degree of rapprochement of the Karaites with the Muslim environment. They represent a convergence with the external form of the Muslim Arabic Qurʾān and also with the concepts of authority associated with the transmission of Muslim scripture.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant missionaries considered themselves exemplars of the Christian home. They devoted considerable energy to writing about domesticity and to constructing model homes in the mission field. In spite of their good intentions there was often a large gap between their ideals and the realities of life on mission stations. By means of a case study of a Pentecostal faith mission in Katanga, Belgian Congo, this essay demonstrates how models of the Western Christian home were unsustainable and examines the manner in which missionaries coped with unfulfilled domestic dreams. It shows how Western notions of the Christian home were undermined by the harshness of the tropical environment, the disparity in numbers between male and female missionary vocations and the persistence of African notions of domesticity. The missionaries endured the material and emotional deprivations of life in the bush through faith in a providential God and by constructing intimate but tense relationships with African Christians. The essay begins with a discussion of some of the most pertinent scholarship on missionaries and domesticity.

This article examines the relationship between the theological concept of grace and the effects of grace on human beings in bodies and in time, in critical engagement with John Barclay’s account of Paul’s theology of grace in Paul and the Gift. It begins by showing how one of the book’s most significant contributions is its ‘thick’ description of the effects of incongruous grace in the world in terms of its socially transformative power in the formation of communities. It then argues that Barclay’s account is substantially less successful at giving a compelling account of the more rapid and immediate changes that Paul also associates with encounter with divine grace in the lives of Christians. The article concludes by showing how Barclay’s picture can be expanded and improved by examining how the ‘incongruity’ of grace functions to pattern experience in relatively sudden, emotionally immediate ways rather than just through the long-term formation of a Christian habitus.

This article uses the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricœur to contribute to a Protestant‐ecumenical understanding of doctrinal development, construed as the growth of the meaning of Scripture. Ricœur’s hermeneutics differ from those of Gadamer, structuralism, and authorial intention in ways that, unlike these, show how doctrinal development is not only possible but necessary. With a Ricœurian approach to biblical interpretation, I argue that doctrinal and even dogmatic development is fully compatible with a Protestant commitment to sola scriptura.

The aim of this article is to reassess the similarity between Kripke’s metaphysics and Aquinas’ thought on truth, a similarity affirmed in Schultz-Aldrich’s Heythrop Journal article from 2009 and denied by Klima and Kerr in their analysis of Kripkean and Thomist accounts of essence. My claim is that this similarity has been insufficiently understood and its misunderstanding has closed off ways by means of which Aquinas’ thought can provide Kripkean epistemology with a component that it lacks.

Since at least the time of Albert Schweitzer's attempt to move justification fromdie Mitteto the margins, the question of the centre of Paul's theology has included a criticism of the Reformation's classification of justification as ‘the lord, ruler, and judge’ of theology. For the reformers, however, this designation is not so much a claim about the centrality of the vocabulary of justification as it is a claim about the grammar of the gospel: justification, because it is articulated as an antithesis, says both what the gospel is not and what the gospel is. With this understanding of the theological function of justification in view, the role of justification in Paul's letter to the Galatians can be reconsidered: the antithetical grammar of justification is a critical and hermeneutical criterion in Galatians, both identifying and negating the ‘other gospel’ even as it picks out and proclaims ‘the gospel of Christ’.