Abraham Kuyper was raised in a nineteenth century Dutch Reformed environment deeply influenced by the Enlightenment which concentrated civic power in the state which dominanted civic life, the church included. In response, Kuyper re-articulated the power of the institutional church to address the resultant ills perceived in church, state, and society. This dissertation analyzes the power of the institutional church in Kuyper's ecclesiology through an investigation of his primary works, historical cultural context, and comparison with other theologians and philosophers of ecclesial power. For Kuyper, the institutional church is structurally grounded in creation, emerging after the Fall as an institution of human society. It occupies an essential place as a sphere with its own direct accountability to Christ, independent from other spheres. The church exists bi-modally: as institution and organism. In both modes, the church is the bearer of the salt and light of the Gospel to the world. But the institutional church does not accomplish its task with the same means or power as other cultural institutions. It is a unique sphere of public life with a unique form of power. The unique power of the institutional church emerges from Kuyper's comprehensive Calvinist worldview . The power of the institutional church is its unique vocation, in vital union with Christ, to proclaim the comprehensive Word of God (through proclaimed Word, celebrated sacraments, discipleship, and diaconal acts of justice and mercy). This proclamation is oriented toward personal and public conversion, not directly through ecclesial cultural dominance but indirectly through public Christian witness. This analysis is then brought into critical dialogue with others to highlight and clarify it for application to the church today. It is argued that Kuyper's insight has not been fully received, that it is deeply resonant with Scripture, and that it remains rich with potential for the contemporary world.

The main aim of the study is to narrate and critically analyse for the first time the theological history of "the good news of adoption" in the Calvinistic tradition - from John Calvin to nineteenth-century Scottish and American Calvinism. The history reveals not only the importance of adoption for Calvin but also its overwhelming neglect among later Calvinists. Not only so, it also reveals that even when adoption was expounded by later Calvinists their treatments were characterised by historical and methodological detachment from Calvin's more biblical-theological approach. In the first of two parts, the study establishes the evidence of adoption in the annals of Reformed theology. In Section One of the first part there is provided the most substantive treatment to date of Calvin's theology of adoption. Although not exhaustive, it begins with an investigation into the origin of the reformer's use of the motif, but concentrates in chapters two to four on the salient features of Calvin's understanding, which embrace the entire scope of redemptive-history from protology to eschatology, and includes themes such as the Fatherhood of God, predestination, covenant, union with Christ and duplex gratia, the Christian life and the church. In Section Two there is an investigation of the other main source of adoption in the Calvinistic tradition, namely, the Westminster Standards (ch. 5). While acknowledging the Westminster commissioners' differing approach to the doctrine, notice is nevertheless taken of the fact that the Westminster Confession of Faith was the first confession in the church's history to include a distinct locus on adoption. Moreover, the methodological discontinuity notwithstanding, the statements on adoption in the Standards mirror in embryonic fashion much of what Calvin says of the doctrine. In Part Two the study examines the legacy of Calvin and the commissioners by uncovering first the decline and then the stillborn revival of adoption in later Calvinism. The sixth chapter accounts for the reasons why adoption faded from theological discourse among Westminster Calvinists, and how the increasingly lopsided juridical emphasis of orthodox Calvinism eventually gave rise to the birth of revisionist Calvinism in Scotland through the influence of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen and John McLeod Campbell (ch. 7). Faced with the paradigm shift towards a more familial expression of the gospel, Robert S Candlish sought to counter the sentimental universalising tendencies characteristic of Victorian liberalism by addressing the new familial focus from within the framework of Reformed orthodoxy. While ignored by the Broad Church movement he was seeking to rebuff, Candlish was challenged ironically from within his own Calvinistic constituency by Thomas J Crawford who took umbrage with his positions on Adam's status in Eden and the connection between adoptive sonship and Christ's sonship (ch. 8). While such issues were left unresolved in Scotland, across the Atlantic they were taken up by the Southern Presbyterians John L Girardeau and Robert A Webb (ch. 9). Webb in fact remains the only Reformed author of an explicitly doctrinal monograph on adoption (Girardeau's short treatment aside), yet his claim that Calvin made "no allusion whatever to adoption" concludes the history, thereby demonstrating the extent to which Calvin's rich theology of adoption had been left to languish unknown of even in that wing of the post-Reformation church that gave greater theological consideration to the doctrine than any other. The thesis ends, therefore, not only with an appeal for the recovery of the doctrine in the Calvinistic tradition, but with a discussion of the implications of its recovery for Westminster Calvinism, and a suggestion that the retrieval of adoption be shaped by a biblically regulated synthesis of historia (Calvin) and ordo salutis (later Calvinism) approaches to the doctrine. In short, the study claims that the doctrine of adoption is crucial to the constructive revamping of Westminster Calvinism.

During the second half of the fourteenth century Jan Milíč of Kroměříž became an active and popular preacher in Prague. The sermons which he delivered focused primarily on themes of reform, and called for a renewal within the Church. Despite a sustained popularity with the lay populace of Prague, Milíč faced opposition to his practice from many individual members of the city’s clergy. Eventually he was the subject of twelve articles of accusation sent to the papal court of Avignon. Because of the hostility which Milíč faced, historians have most often written of him as a precursor to the Hussites. As a result he has been identified as an anti-establishment rabble-rouser and it has been assumed that he conducted his career in opposition to the court of the Emperor Charles IV. This thesis, over four body chapters, examines the careers of both Milíč and Charles and argues that instead of being enemies, the two men shared an amicable relationship. The first chapter examines Milíč’s career and will prove that he was well-connected to Charles and several members of his court. It will also examine the most common reasons given to argue that Charles and Milíč were at odds, and disprove them. The second chapter focuses on Milíč’s work in the city of Prague and shows that the preacher was of assistance to the emperor in his quest to remake the city as a new spiritual capital of the Holy Roman Empire. The third chapter examines the concept of the ‘Church of Prague’ championed by both Milíč and Charles, and the efforts of both men to promote it throughout the Empire. The fourth chapter discusses Milíč’s ability to assist Charles in the acquisition of power in Bohemia, the Empire, and away from the Church.

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This thesis examines the reasons why England became Reformed rather than Lutheran at the Reformation. When King Henry divorced his Catholic Queen, Catherine of Aragon, and defied the Roman See, Lutheranism seemed the natural religion for his realm. Henry authorised and supported dialogue with the Germans, hoping for a religious and political settlement, and the Lutheran message was winning English converts. Yet despite all this, both Henry and his son Edward rejected Lutheranism, though for widely different reasons. The thesis focuses on the religious beliefs and motives of Henry and his chief minister Thomas Cromwell, and studies the religious legislation of Henry's reign. It seeks to explain why, after an apparently promising start, Henry's Lutheran policy first stalled then suddenly collapsed. It also compares the English experience with that in Germany and Scandinavia, where Lutheranism succeeded. Finally it considers why the religious settlement of Edward VI, though owing much to Luther, was nonetheless decisively Reformed.

The main purpose of this study is to show that any disconnect between the doctrines of revelation and redemption is unwarranted. Divine communicative action is to enable personal knowledge of God, and this has not only epistemological but also soteriological implications. A survey of Calvin‘s understanding concerning the activity of speech, both human and divine, is undertaken first. The role of Scripture in conveying divine speech is discussed and Calvin‘s concept of accommodation is reviewed. As communication can only function in particular contexts, it is argued that an appropriate context for divine-human communication is provided in the doctrine of the imago Dei. The main contemporary views are considered and a recent major statement of the functional view is summarised and an initial critique offered. Further objections are then raised to the primacy (or exclusivity) of the consensus view. Also the imago is located in the wider framework of biblical theology and Calvin‘s concept of the imago is also examined. The identity of the covenant-making God is considered and this is done with particular reference to the experience and testimony of Israel. The significance of the notions ‗experience‘ and ‗testimony‘ are examined especially in their relation to knowledge. The Exodus texts concerning the ―revelation of the divine name‖ are then analysed, which opens up questions about the identity of YHWH, his action and the links with his speech. Some contemporary thinking on the Epistle to the Hebrews is surveyed and this leads to the conclusion that to ignore the speech of YHWH is to render both his identity and action opaque at the very least. In the context of God‘s ―design plan‖, human beings are made for relationship with him and divine communicative action is necessary to effect that relationship – bringing both revelation and redemption together.

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A.D. Berk. / "February 11, 1955." / Bibliography: p. 59. / Army Signal Corps Contract DA36-039 SC-64637 Project 102B Dept. of the Army Project 3-99-10-022

Evaluations of John Howard Yoder’s legacy have proliferated since his death in 1997. Although there is much disagreement, a broad consensus is forming that his theology was, on the one hand, focused on the social and political meaning of the New Testament accounts of Jesus Christ and, on the other hand, sociologically reductive, hermeneutically tendentious, and ecclesiologically ambiguous. This thesis proposes a revision of Yoder’s theology that maintains its broadly sociological emphasis but corrects for its apparent problems. In specific, adjustments are made to his social theory to open it to spiritual reality, to hone its analytical approach, and to clarify its political import. To do so his preferred framework for social criticism, the theology of the principalities and powers, is examined in the context of his wider work and its critics, and then synthesized with concepts from Pierre Bourdieu’s influential reflexive sociology. Yoder maintains that the powers, understood as social structures, are part of God’s good creation, fallen, and now being redeemed through their subjection to the risen Lord Christ. Bourdieu’s fundamental sociological concepts--habitus, capital, and field--enable an interpretation of the powers as dynamically constituted by their relations to the triune God and to personal dispositions. His treatment of social reproduction and freedom furthermore facilitate a construal of choice as a divinely gifted, sociologically mediated freedom for obedience to God. The sinful restriction of this freedom is read in light of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, which recognizes the ambiguity of violence without thereby identifying any form of killing as nonviolent. Violence and other phenomena can be investigated by a reflexive, dialogical, and empirically rigorous comparison with the life of Christ. The church’s spiritual participation in the redemption of the violent powers is conceptualized in Bourdieusian terms as a critical legitimation of other political and cultural fields made possible through autonomy from those fields. Christian social distinctiveness moreover has universal meaning because it is oriented towards the worship of God and so radically welcoming of others; and this sociological universality is distinctive because it is the result of a particular history of social struggles with and for God. These revisions to Yoder’s theology of the principalities and powers produce a sociological theology that is material and spiritual, critical and dialogical, and particular and universal. By incorporating these revisions, Yoder’s work can continue to support those who seek peace in a world riven by violence.

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