This dissertation examines the doctrine of the active obedience of Christ. Chapter 1 defines the doctrine, surveys previous literature, offers warrant for the work, and previews the argument of the work. In short, the thesis of this work is that the active obedience of Christ is a biblical doctrine. Chapter 2 presents a historical survey, tracing theologians from the early church up to the present time to see the development of the doctrine. Special attention is given to the Reformation and Post-Reformation eras, during which the doctrine received its primary development. Chapter 3 examines God's original arrangement with Adam. This chapter argues that God established a covenant with Adam, and that had Adam obeyed instead of disobeying, all mankind would have been confirmed in eternal life. Chapter 4 examines human obedience after the Fall. Looking especially at the "do this and live" passages, this chapter argues that God requires perfect obedience from humans in order to gain eternal life. Chapter 5 traces the OT's presentation of the need for a Messiah to come who would represent his people in perfect obedience. This chapter moves through the OT covenants, the wisdom literature, and the prophets. Chapter 6 demonstrates the fulfillment of this movement of thought in the person of Christ. Beginning with the Gospels and moving on to the rest of the NT, this chapter shows that Christ represented his people in perfect obedience throughout the whole course of his earthly mediation. Chapter 7 first offers a systematic formulation of the doctinre. This chapter then answers some of the major objections put to the doctrine of Christ's active obedience, examining the views of opponents both ancient and contemporary. Chapter 8 summarizes the work. This chapter restates the conclusions of the other chapters, and it also suggests some possible avenues for further research. Finally, this chapter addresses the question of the relative importance of the doctrine.

This dissertation argues that the new perspective on Paul rests on a faulty heremeneutical presupposition. This presupposition is that covenantal nomism (as advocated by E. P. Sanders as a proper conception of Second Temple Judaism) could not have served as a foil for Paul in the development of a doctrine of justification that resembles that of the Reformation. The presupposition is faulty because Sanders's portrayal of Judaism as grace-based has no bearing on the categories that defined the shape of the doctrine of justification during the Reformation period and beyond. The study neither accepts nor rejects Sanders's portrayal of Judaism. Instead, it accepts Sanders's claim for the sake of argument and then demonstrates that his claim does not warrant a radical revision of the Reformation approach to the Pauline writings. Chapter 1 demonstrates the strong dependence of the new perspective on Sanders's work and the hermeneutical presupposition that his work Paul and Palestinian Judaism has generated. Chapter 2 sets the historical-theological background for the thesis by surveying important works in the pre-Reformation Catholic scholastic period, as well as the decree of the Council of Trent on justification, in order to demonstrate that, much like covenantal nomism, the emerging Roman Catholicism of the late medieval and Reformation periods was a grace-based, yet monocovenantal, religion. Chapter 3 surveys the works of three prominent Reformers-Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and John Calvin-in order to demonstrate that what defines the Reformation doctrine of justification is not grace per se but rather a doctrine of alien righteousness, situated within a bicovenantal framework, in which there is an uncompromising divine demand for perfect obedience. Chapter 4 traces the same themes-perfect obedience, bicovenantalism, and alien righteousness-into the post-Reformation period in order to demonstrate that these are the categories that define the "old perspective" on Paul. Chapter 5 summarizes the foregoing observations, argues that the new perspective's hermeneutical presupposition is unwarranted, and then concludes with exegetical observations that demonstrate a bicovenantal theology in Paul that is similar to that of the Reformation doctrine of justification, one that could have easily arisen in the context of a prevailing covenantal nomism.

Orientador: Wilton Carlos Lima da Silva / Banca: Milton Carlos Costa / Banca: Lucia Helena Oliveira Silva / Banca: Lyndon de Araújo Santos / Banca: Tiago Hideo Barbosa Watanabe / Resumo: Esta pesquisa trata da trajetória e da memória de George William Butler (1853[?]-1919), médico e missionário protestante que viveu no Nordeste do Brasil em fins do século XIX e início do XX, período de transformações como a crise da influência da Igreja Católica, crise da Monarquia e a implantação do regime republicano. Privilegia-se o biográfico como meio de interpretação da realidade social e histórica, cujo objetivo foi compreender como um indivíduo, agente de uma religião minoritária, vivenciou as transformações macrossociais da secularização da sociedade, percebendo o seu papel neste processo que desembocou na separação Igreja e Estado e na legitimação da pluralidade religiosa, bem como a importância dos protestantes no processo de reconfiguração do espaço público. Por se tratar de uma trajetória permeada por uma memória institucional, empreende-se um estudo sobre a memória deste personagem, procurando compreender suas lógicas, coerções e esquecimentos; os processos de construção, reconstrução, disputas e reprodução da memória de George Butler, com diferentes usos em projetos de intervenção no espaço público por grupos protestantes política e ideologicamente diferentes. Utiliza-se diversos tipos de fontes: os relatórios de George Butler, de sua esposa, Rena Butler, e de seus aliados; os jornais das cidades de São Luís, Recife, Garanhuns e Canhotinho, além de jornais eclesiásticos, atas de reuniões eclesiásticas e as biografias sobre George Butler; imagens e fotografias... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research deals with the trajectory and memory of George William Butler (1853[?]-1919), a physician and protestant missionary who lived in Northeast Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period of transformations such as the crisis of influence of the Catholic Church, crisis of the Monarchy and the implementation of the republican regime. The biographical is taken as a means of interpreting social and historical reality, whose purpose was to understand how an individual, an agent of a minority religion, experienced the macrossocial transformations of the secularization of society, perceiving his role in this process that led to the separation of Church and State and the legitimation of religious plurality, as well as the importance of protestants in the process of reconfiguration of the public space. Since such a trajectory permeated by an institutional memory, a research on the memory of this personage is undertaken by trying to understand its logics, coercion and forgetfulness; the processes of construction, reconstruction, disputes, and reproduction of George Butler's memory, with different uses in projects of intervention in the public space by politically and ideologically different protestant groups. Various sources are used: reports of George Butler, his wife, Rena Butler, and his allies, newspapers of the cities of São Luís, Recife, Garanhuns and Canhotinho, as well as ecclesiastical journals, minutes of ecclesiastical meetings, and biographies about George Butler; images and photographs released by the missionaries, especially those released by Mr. and Mrs. Butler; sources of material culture such as the mausoleum built in honor of George Butler and the architecture of the Presbyterian churches built by him in São Luís, Recife and Canhotinho; oral sources through... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Doutor

Thesis advisor: Stephen Pfohl / This thesis further explores the relationship between capitalism and Christianity by examining current changes to the style in which Evangelical Protestantism is practiced within the context of America's transition to consumer society. Using a theoretical framework of the marketplace theory of religious change and critical cultural studies, I argue that by displacing religion as the dominant mediator of ultimate meaning, the pressure consumer society places on religious content and practices to adapt may be part of a process of colonization through which the alignment between capitalism and Christianity is continued and its potential to be a critical cultural resource is reduced. To this end, I employ a mixed methodology of participant observation, unstructured interviews and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine the cultural content of Lakewood Church in Houston, TX, America's largest Protestant church. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Esta tese tem por tema as relações entre protestantismo e modernidade no Brasil. O objetivo primordial é a compreensão das transformações nas relações entre o protestantismo e a modernidade no Brasil. Para alcançar o objetivo, utilizamos, no exame do tema, a sociologia compreensiva de matriz weberiana. A investigação sociológica, que reservou lugar de destaque para o protestantismo na emergência da modernidade ocidental, passou, de um lado, a interessar-se pela compreensão e explicação do declínio da religião protestante na sociedade moderna e, de outro, se as religiões pentecostais na América Latina mantinham ainda afinidades com o protestantismo e com a modernidade. O protestantismo valeu-se, para sua inserção no Brasil, a partir de meados do século XIX, de sua afinidade com a modernidade representada pelos Estados Unidos. Todavia, o significado da modernidade para o protestantismo foi sendo alterado ao longo do século XX. A primeira transformação nas relações entre protestantismo e modernidade no Brasil ocorreu quando a identificação com a herança moderna norte-americana passou do questionamento, nas primeiras décadas do século XX, à rejeição completa, na década de sessenta, por setores enraizados no liberalismo teológico. A segunda transformação nas relações do protestantismo com a modernidade no Brasil é encontrada na introdução da reflexividade no campo do conhecimento teológico. No esforço de apresentar-se como religião moderna, o protestantismo de inspiração liberal utilizou a reflexividade para reinterpretar a Bíblia à luz da cultura e da razão e para redefinir suas relações com o catolicismo romano. De tempos em tempos, ao longo do século XX, assistiram-se polarizações no interior do campo protestante brasileiro em torno de esforços de acomodação e de rejeição dos pressupostos cognitivos da modernidade, representados pela reflexividade. A sociologia do protestantismo brasileiro privilegiou a análise dos grupos protestantes, reunidos em torno da rejeição da reflexividade, usualmente denominados como fundamentalistas. Demonstramos que a atitude de acomodação aos pressupostos cognitivos da modernidade tem tido presença constante no protestantismo brasileiro, e a sua condição minoritária no campo religioso protestante não se explica apenas por meio da repressão sofrida por parte dos setores conservadores, mas levando-se em conta também a própria natureza das crenças liberais. A repressão conservadora oferece aos setores liberais a oportunidade para realização de rituais de ruptura, que, no caso do protestantismo, consistem basicamente nalguma transgressão no campo das idéias e das palavras. A particularidade do protestantismo reside na construção de sua identidade em relação íntima com a modernidade, seja de rejeição, seja de acomodação. / The theme of this thesis is the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil. The primary goal is the understanding of the transformations in the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil. In order to achieve the objective we used in the examination of the theme, the sociology of the comprehensive Weberian matrix. The sociological research that reserved a place of prominence for Protestantism in the emergence of a western modernity, has become, on one hand, interested in the understanding and explanation of the decline of Protestant religion in modern society and, on the other hand, if the Pentecostal religions in Latin America still maintained affinities with Protestantism and with modernity. Due to its affinity with the modernity represented by the United States, the Protestantism was inserted in Brazil in the mid-nineteenth century. However, the meaning of modernity for Protestantism changed over the twentieth century. The first transformation in the relations between Protestantism and modernity in Brazil occurred when the identification with the modern legacy of the North American, changed from questioning, in the first decades of the twentieth century, to the complete rejection in the sixties by the theological liberalism. The second transformation in the relations of Protestantism with modernity in Brazil was found in the introduction of reflexivity in the field of theological knowledge. In the effort to present as a modern religion, the Protestantism of a liberal inspiration used the reflexivity to reinterpret the Bible in the light of culture and reason and to redefine its relations with Roman Catholicism. From time to time, throughout the twentieth century, we saw a polarization within the Protestant Brazilian field around efforts of accommodation and rejection of cognitive assumptions of modernity, represented by the reflexivity. The sociology of the Brazilian Protestantism focused on the analysis of the Protestant groups gathered around the rejection of reflection, usually called fundamentalists. We demonstrate that the attitude of accommodation to the cognitive assumptions of modernity has constant presence in the Brazilian Protestantism and its minority condition in the Protestant religious field can not be explained only by means of repression suffered by the conservative sectors, but taking into account also the very nature of liberal beliefs. The conservative repression offers to the liberal sectors the opportunity to conduct rituals of disruption, which in the case of Protestantism, basically consists in some transgression in the field of ideas and words. The particularity of Protestantism lies in the construction of their identity in intimate relation with modernity, whether rejection or accommodation.

This thesis. looks at a group of texts, that it has identified as English Protestant~ antI-epIscopal martyrologies, in their social context. It examines the dIalogue In print and manuscript between Protestant reformers in Tudor England and the bishops who opposed them. I argue that an analysis of the polemlical texts which contributed to this dialogue demonstrates the strongly antI-epIscopal stance adopted by English Protestants from the early sixteenth century to the accession of Elizabeth I. The texts I probe have been little studled eIther by historians or literary critics, and this has resulted in their literary discourses, as well as their importance as contributions to the development of the English Reformation, being overlooked. The reason for this neglect is that commentators have failed to identify the way in which they limned Protestant martyrological stances for their characters. Furthermore the context common to all these texts - a systematic opposition to the judicial, economic and political powers of the bishops in England, which was being carefully developed by Protestant propagandists from as early as 1520 - has not previously been discussed. The thesis makes equal use of historical and literary sources in order to make sense of otherwise oblique references and rhetorical techniques in both well-known and more obscure pieces of Protestant doctrinal writing and ecclesiastical satire produced between 1520 and 1560. By paying attention to episcopal archives and modern research on English bishops of the sixteenth century, the thesis identifies the fundamental importance of English episcopal administration for Henrician, Edwardian, and Marian ecclesiology. It shows that the Tudor ecclesiastical polity created a culture that fostered a martyrological consciousness, which was ultimately the only form of justification for opponents of the established church. Such a consciousness was exploited by anti-episcopal apologists for propaganda purposes. My study identifies the formation of this martyrological consciousness by early writers such as William Tyndale, William Barlow and George Joye, whose writing has hitherto not been discussed in such terms. It then looks at the way in which this early martyrological writing was tailored into more specialised anti-episcopal martyrology, such as those pieces which satirised episcopal visitation and examination or those which analysed the significance of last wills and testaments in the context of an episcopal administration. From this the thesis concludes that anti-episcopal martyrology heavily informed the thinking behind the later debates over the social and political position of the church within the state, such as in the Admonition Crisis of the 1570s and the Marprelate Controversy of the late 1580s and early 1590s. There is also strong evidence to suggest that, rather ironically, the literary creation of a Protestant martyrological posture made between 1520 and 156~ was adopted by Catholic apologists in the 1570~ and 1580s In theIr confrontation with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ellzabetian Settlement. It Iso argues that further work should be done on the borrowIng of notions of martyrology from the early propagandists by later more well-known authors such as John Foxe, Edmund Spenser, John Milton and John Bunyan. I have consulted collections of MSS and early printed sources in The British Library, Cambridge University libraries, Lambeth Palace Library, Dr Williams' Library and Winchester Cathedral library.

This thesis is a study of the religious culture of the market-town parish of Wimborne Minster, Dorset, from c.1403-1640. Broadly, it is a contribution to the history of the English Reformation (or Reformations, as the historian pleases; capital 'R' or lower-case). Religious change is the most significant focus, but over a longer period of time than is usually allowed for. Such themes as lay control, tithe controversies, relations with the ordinary, and popular support for preaching and church music are considered, as well as theological issues about the nature of English and European Protestantism. The thesis includes quantitative evidence drawn from the parish churchwardens' accounts and also wills. The date range was chosen for a number of reasons. First, because the available evidence for the parish is unusually rich, and allows for a kind of sustained attention that cannot be directed towards other such parishes: Wimborne has among the earliest and most complete surviving churchwardens' accounts in England (beginning in 1403), as well as myriad other sources, including hundreds of wills, and corporation and church-court records. Secondly, as a means of pursuing Alexandra Walsham's 'migrations of the holy' agenda. Walsham believes that investigation of religious change in the late medieval and early modern periods is hindered by those very periodisations, which are in fact products of the changes in question; how, then, to study religious change without presupposing too much? To that end, the structure of this thesis is both chronological and thematic; and an attempt has been made to preserve what was unique and so important about the changes of the mid-sixteenth century, during the reigns of Henry VIII and his progeny, at the same time as revealing deeper structural changes - and continuities too. The broad division of the thesis is into two parts. This first three chapters, part one, establish the early religious scene in the parish, examining the legacy of the Minster's place as a mother church in the Anglo-Saxon landscape of east Dorset, and how parish identity and forms of self-organisation were put to the test during the reigns of Henry VIII and his son, Edward VI. In part two, the focus is the interaction between the parishioners and the parish's new governing structure, a closed corporation of 12 lay worthies; in particular, the governors' attempts to provide regular preaching of the most sophisticated kind, as well as elaborate polyphonic music, and disputes arising from their management of the tithes and the divisive behaviour of one preacher in particular.

The ecumenical movement was the major international expression of organized Protestantism in the first half of the twentieth-century. This dissertation reconstructs the intellectual origins of the movement and its principal institutions, showing how ecumenical ideas and practices were transformed in response to geopolitical cataclysms, such as World War I, the collapse of European order in the 1930s, the Cold War, and decolonization, that divided international Protestant and Orthodox elites in the North Atlantic and Asia. Focusing on church leaders and lay intellectuals like John Mott, Joseph Oldham, Emil Brunner, Karl Barth, Willem A. Visser’t Hooft, John Foster Dulles, and M. M. Thomas, the project shows how a new relation between Christian faith and politics emerged from Protestant-led efforts to internationalize religious authority. Seeking to manifest world unity through common faith, ecumenists successively redefined the meaning of Christianity in their efforts to secure international consensus on the public role of the church among a politically polyglot constituency that included liberals, conservatives, communists, and fascists. This dissertation argues that the ecumenical movement went through three stages between 1900 and 1952: the first oriented around building the Kingdom of God on earth (1900-1925), the second seeking the realize the worldwide church as the basis of universal community (1930-1950), and the third mobilizing Christians for political revolution (1946-1952). The focus of the dissertation – chapters 2 through 5 – concerns the rise and decline of the ecumenical project to realize the church, which I argue was the first systematic and internationally successfully effort to articulate “ecumenicity” as a form of Christian pluralism. I show how this project was grounded in a missionary theology of anti-secularism that attributed a breakdown of social and international order to modern civilization’s repudiation of God. First defined at a conference of the International Missionary Conference in 1928 as a new “system of life and thought” that had displaced other religions as Christianity’s chief global rival, “secularism” identified an enemy that Allied and German Protestants, estranged since World War I, could unite in opposing. Mobilizing dialectical theology against the “totalitarian” claims of the state and the cogito alike, ecumenical anti-secularists jettisoned the historicist theological liberalism on which earlier forms of Protestant internationalism was based. In the 1930s, organizations like the Universal Christian Council of Life and Work and the World Council of Churches institutionalized theological dialogue as a mode of submission to God’s sovereignty; for the architects of these bodies, Christian faith was the only possible basis of community life in an age of global fracture. A strategy of international consolidation that ascribed political polarization to spiritual alienation, the ascendant anti-secularism of the 1930s did not anathematize the Nazi-sympathizing Reich church but sought to incorporate it into a world Christian community prioritizing the subordination of “political” to religious loyalties. After 1948, however, the ecumenical program to realize the church collapsed as its leaders struggled to surmount the ideological divisions of the Cold War. While Eastern European church leaders attacked the World Council as a mask for Western imperialism, critics in the West attacked the Council as an agent or stooge of world Communism. To escape the ideological impasse of East and West, the movement turned to the Third World in search of a new basis of global Christian unity. Reinventing the ecumenical project in the postwar world, a younger generation of theologians from the global South argued that the universal fellowship of the church would be actualized not by overcoming politics, but by specifying political commitments in solidarity with the liberation struggles of the poor, the non-white, and the colonized. In this paradoxical denouement, those struggling to surmount internal political divisions embraced political action as the essential expression of religious faith, and Christianity, long declared to be the basis of social order, came to be seen as its revolutionary solvent. By locating the ecumenical movement within a history of the ideas that made its institutional functioning possible, this project breaks from common narratives that lodge the movement within trajectories of secularization that rely on problematic attempts to adjudicate the boundaries between theological and non-theological thought and practice.

This study focuses on “critical insiders” of Korean Protestantism in the twenty first century, namely those who are committed to their Protestant faiths yet are highly critical of the ways in which Protestant Christianity is taught, believed, and practiced in South Korea. Particular emphasis is given to the question of how they resist/challenge dominant institutions and popular beliefs – especially on religious authority and various moral and monetary implications of such beliefs – as well as alternative visions they offer, through media. Scholars today acknowledge the centrality of media in various religious practices. I show that the role of media is no less important for religious critical insiders, albeit in somewhat different ways; in the South Korean case, I argue that they resist dominant voices by multi-mediatizing theology. Simply put, multi-mediatizing theology is making religiously normative (i.e. theological) discourses available through multiple outlets and voices and rendering informed theological judgments dependent upon such plurality and diversity of mediated sources. I analyze Korean Protestant critical insiders’ various media movements to illustrate this point and also to explore some ramifications of this kind of resistance taking place in the South Korean context. I also incorporate into my analyses the interviews I conducted with key individuals involved in the production of two Protestant TV shows that attempted at consolidating critical insider voices. I conclude with a theoretical and theological reflection upon the media/communication aspect of the entire phenomenon of Korean Protestantism and critical insiders.

Proefschrift--Groningen. / "Stellingen": 1 leaf (laid in). "Bibliographie": p. [238]-247.