This thesis on Calvinist subjectivity within the work of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) explores how the dialectic of word and image, and subsequently the Word, Logos, and word as rhetoric constructs conceptions of selfhood necessarily associated with and bound by the rhetoric of sinfulness. In contrast to studies that synthesize Edwardsian, and, in turn, Calvinist schemas of sin and selfhood within religious doctrine and treatises, this project examines the experiential nature of sinfulness as expressed through language or poetics. Given such examination, this work posits three things. First, in general terms, it contends that, during the Reformation, the displacement of icons led the Word to acquire the positive and negative functions of religious imagery that it meant to displace: to lead persons to God and to lead them away from him. Second, the project finds that the work of Edwards, which emphasizes feeling and personal spiritual experience, signals another shift in the Calvinist dialectic of word and image, and, then heralds the possibility of a type of ecstatic or ‘sweet’ communion with God outside of sin and language itself. Third, and more particularly, this text argues that despite Edwards’ rhetoric of ‘sweetness’, the geography of sinfulness that both pervades and varies within Edwards’ language, creates a Calvinist subjectivity, as it filters through the word/image dialectic, that becomes trapped within Edwardsian rhetoric, and, in turn, encounters difficulty experiencing the salvation to which it portends. In the end, then, this project both challenges and expands the corpus of Edwards’ scholarship in two ways. First, it demonstrates that, although valuable, sole attention to historical and theological exegesis of Edwards’ texts does not adequately account for the paradoxical tensions and meaning of Calvinist selfhood posed by the Puritan’s work and evidenced by the word/image dialectic. Second, and most importantly, the project indicates that, in actuality, apart from what the majority of Edwardsian, particularly Evangelical, scholarship contends, the ‘sweetness’ and spiritual sensations Edwards speaks of selfhood only partially open to the divine and salvific assurance. True, Edwards can still be celebrated as the Father of American Evangelical thought and practice. This project, however, questions if Edwards’ interpreters have ignored the signposts of his language and created an icon(s) of himself, and, subsequently, of a type of Calvinist selfhood that figures the narrative of their own story. In the end, then, this thesis finds itself back at its beginning as it confronts the nature and work of icons and the possibilities and variances of language—as icon and idol itself—that lay in their wake.

Maude Petre is a somewhat neglected figure mentioned today chiefly in regard to her association with the Catholic Modernist, George Tyrrell. The aim of the thesis will be to strive to retrieve her from this neglect by showing that she was a significant figure in her own right with a substantial body of published work. Attention will be given in particular to her writings in the later years of her life in which little interest has hitherto been shown. The thesis will endeavour to trace her main ideas as expressed in her published works and see how they developed over the course of her long life. The issue of authority and liberty in Church and society will be highlighted as one of the dominant themes of her writing. Her life and thought will be placed in the context of her age and its many changes both in Church and society and her writings will be related to the events of her own life as recorded in her own diaries. An attempt will be made in conclusion to evaluate the wider significance of her life and thought.

This thesis aims to investigate the growth of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Korea, which has grown to be the largest single church in the world, and has attracted the attention of many scholars. Accordingly, much work has been done to find the reasons for its growth. However, most of them are one-sided in investigating the institutional factors of the church. These are limited and inadequate in terms of methodological appropriateness. This thesis grasps the intrinsic reasons for the growth of the church by overcoming such methodological problems. This study considers Han, the Korean people’s distinctive feeling, as the contextual factor and the Pentecostal experience of the Yoido Full Gospel Church as the institutional factor. This study investigates the growth of the church through these two factors. It shows that Han is associated with specific church growth concepts through the Pentecostal experience of the church. It also reveals that there are significant factors and processes by which Han is associated with church growth. As a result, as new findings this thesis shows how pentecostalism, a particular sect of Christianity, adapts concretely to the Korean context. It suggests some practical methods and strategies of mission for Korean Protestantism and beyond.

The Popular party in the eighteenth century Church of Scotland has received little attention from historians and there has never been a comprehensive analysis of its nature and ideology. This dissertation is an attempt to remedy that defect. It commences by surveying the nineteenth and twentieth century literature which has dealt with the ecclesiastical history of eighteenth century Scotland and identifies the deficiencies in this as they affect the Popular party. It is suggested that an analysis of the theological writings of members is a prerequisite for understanding the nature of the party. Prior to providing this, however, the results of an attempt to identify members of the party are analysed. It is suggested that the most workable method of identification is one based on preparedness to dissent from pro-patronage measures and decisions at the General Assembly. This provides a means of identification of the most committed members of the party. Its geographical spread is then delineated, as are the theological, ecclesiastical and secular interests of its members, and the effects of party dominance on them. The dissertation then analyses Popular theology in the areas of the premises of theology, the nature of sin and salvation, and the practical implications of theology. The picture which emerges is one of considerable theological complexity which calls in question the assumption of doctrinal unity within the party. Popular thought on secular issues is then analysed in the areas of the nature of society, government, poverty and wealth, and culture. The interplay of liberal and conservative political impetuses is examined and the theological bases of the party's secular thought elicited. The patronage dispute is analysed and an interpretation is offered, based on both the published works of the party and proceedings at the General Assembly, which argues that the fundamental religious or spiritual motivation of Popular opposition to the patronage system has not been appreciated, and that therefore the evolution of the Popular response to patronage as revealed at the General Assembly has been misconstrued. The Popular party in the Church of Scotland between 1740 and 1800 emerges as a doctrinally complex party, including within its membership the full range of doctrinal opinion from Moderatism to traditional orthodoxy. The most influential section within the party, however, was an evangelical grouping which combined doctrinal orthodoxy with an Enlightened learning. It is suggested, finally, that preoccupation with the patronage dispute had led historians to misunderstand the Church of Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century and to underestimate the complexity and significance of the evolving theological alignment which was the key development in the period

The Westminster Assembly is a useful starting point for detailed discussions of the development of covenantal thought, particularly in view of the direction taken by recent studies which place a strong dichotomy between the early Reformers and their seventeenth-century successors, notably between John Calvin and those who have traditionally been designated 'Calvinists'. The most extreme, or virulent, of these is an unsparing attack upon the Westminster Confession as one of the principal reservoirs of 'a plague that had long infected the Reformed churches'. In seeking to overthrow what he described as 'the treasured confession of my mother church', the author made the astonishing claim, which puts this basic issue in a curious nutshell: 'It was Calvin who rescued me from the Calvinists". And the deadly virus identified as the cause of this plague was the Confession's covenantal statements, of which it was said, 'Calvin knew nothing, for these theological innovations were the work of his successors'. In order to set the scene, therefore, Part One of the thesis has been devoted to a consideration of the background to the Westminster Assembly and its documents, and examination of the sources and content of the theology of the covenant expressed in the standards, and also a critical survey of the historiography of the covenant from around the middle of the last century to the present time. The historical background to the Assembly as it relates to both the English and Scottish churches is designed to get the feel of the general ecclesiastical climate and theological orientation in which the divines and their immediate predecessors lived and moved, while the examination of sources and content more particularly indentifies the direction from which the doctrine of the covenant came to be embodied in the Confession and Catechisms, and also the issues which are emphasized in, and immediately related to, the chapters dealing specifically with the covenant. The scriptural origin of the Reformed doctrine of the covenant is indisputable , so that serious research in this area has never been considered necessary. The temptation to include a section on Scripture in this study has likewise been resisted, but its importance has been kept in mind throughout. In order to demonstrate that the idea of the covenant as held by the Reformed church, even in many of its particular aspects, was no new thing, Part Two picks up some of the threads offered by forerunners in the field. These include several of the church fathers, notably Augustine. The survival and use of the idea in both its political and theological applications during the medieval period has not been overlooked. It was found that the idea of the covenant had specific government, hermeneutical and sotcriological functions in medieval thought which were by no means despised or abandoned in the reaction of the Reformation against medieval scholasticism. Among the early reformers, Luther's theology held firmly to the basic concepts underlying covenantal theology, but it was in the Reformed camp that the importance of the doctrine was chiefly recognized and utilized in the controversies of the tome, first by Occolampadius and Zwingli and then more distinctly by Bullinger, whose little monograph De Testamento seu fordere tlei unico el aelerno was the first to appear on the subject. The findings of this research into Bullingcr's work interact strongly with those studies which regard Bullingcr's view of the covenant as strictly bilateral and consequently portray him as the founder of a separate Reformed tradition, distinct from that which emanated from Calvin and the Genevan school. Part Three is devoted entirely to Geneva, showing the seminal influence of Calvin's work in the development and transmission of covenantal though. In demonstrating that the covenant in both its unilateral and bilateral aspects was an essential part of Calvin's overall theological structure, the disputed questions as to whether Calvin was a 'convenant theologian', and whether he taught a covenant of works is carefully considered in its proper theological context and not merely with respect to the use of terms. For the first lime in any study of covenantal thought, detailed sttention has been given in this research to the work of Theodore Beza. Beza has been consistently singled out by those who oppose the Calvinists to Calvin, supralapsarian, scholastic orthodoxy which diverged manifestly from Calvin's warm, christocentric, humanistic, biblical theology. Just as consistently he has been denied any interest in the theology of the covencnt, with the result that 'covenant theology' has been interpreted as a reaction against Bezcan orthodoxy in an effort to recover a place for responsible man in the economy of salvation. The evidence, however, supplied by a wider consultation of Beza's works than his merely controversial writings, supports a contrary argument. Beza's basic fidelity to Calvin becomes apparent in controverted areas and the warm heart of a concerned pastor is heard to beat in his sermonic material. More importantly for this research Beza is found to have a keen interest in the covenant both unilaterally and bilaterally, particularly in relation to the doctrine of the union between Christ and his church, just as Calvin had before him and the Calvinists after him. In the final part of the thesis the issues and arguments already raised are followed through in representative writers from three main interrelated locations of post-reformation development in Reformed theology. One is the influence of the Heidelberg theologians, Ursinus and Olevianus, in the Palatinate Church of Germany. The others arc the English Puritan movement, dominated mainly by the influence of Willian Perkins, and the Scottish connection in the writings of Knox, Rollock anf Howie. It is the conclusion of this research that while covenantal theology inevitably underwent a process of refining and expansion, and was given fuller defination and varying emphases by later writers, that it nevertheless remained true to the central idea or ideas of the covenant as taught by the Reformers. Such a process cannot be constructed as constituting a fundamental shift or departure from the theology of the early Reformers. Rather there is a general agreement, a unity which makes the Westminster divines in this respect the worthy successors of Calvin and his colleagues.

This thesis develops a pentecostal ecclesiology using the structure of networks that leads to a fresh approach to contextualisation. It addresses the neglect in pentecostal scholarship of church structures beyond the congregation and of critical approaches to contextualisation. The pentecostal systematic methodology of Amos Yong is utilized, based on the synthesis of discerned experience (Spirit), biblical studies (Word) and the traditions of systematic and mission theology (Community). A trinitarian understanding of networks is developed and linked with an approach to the catholicity of the church that has a common essence and mission movement. This is shaped by the missionary nature of pentecostalism and rooted in an understanding of a church marked by Spirit baptism. The character of networks is defined in terms of partnership, a term with a rich mission understanding and seen also in the pentecostal tradition. A three-fold approach to contextualisation arises from the overlap between networks within and outside the church which is based on hospitality. Significantly, this thesis is the first in pentecostal ecclesiology to utilise a pentecostal methodology, to focus on structural and contextual issues and to develop a trinitarian network ecclesiology. It provides a fresh approach to catholicity, Spirit baptism, partnership and contextualisation.

This thesis is an investigation into the nature of Christology among ordinary Pentecostals in India. Pentecostalism is growing rapidly among Tribal-groups, Dalits, lower castes and ordinary people. However, the movement has not articulated its theological identity in order to consolidate and further its development. Therefore, this study aims to analyse the ordinary Christology using qualitative research methods such as interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. It is argued that their Christological understandings have been formed and expressed in challenging circumstances and given extraordinary energy through Pentecostal phenomena associated with revivalism. Ordinary Indian Pentecostals understand Jesus as the healer, exorcist, provider and protector in the context of poor health-care, a spirit worldview, extreme poverty, caste-system and religious persecution. Their Christian experience enables them to acknowledge Jesus as the Saviour, Lord and supreme God. These Christological themes are consonant with the larger Pentecostal tradition, theology and indeed the New Testament testimony. The argument critically engages with scholarship in Pentecostalism and the broader Christian tradition to propose a modification of these Christological categories.