Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 383-407).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, Vancouver, BC, 2001. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-156).

No description available.

This dissertation examines the lives and material production of the early modern women known as the Nuns of Little Gidding, Mary Collett Ferrar (1603-1680) and Anna Collett (1605-1639). The religious community at Little Gidding, Huntingsonshire (now Cambridgeshire), founded in 1626 by Mary Woodnoth Ferrar and her son Nicholas, housed forty-some members of the extended Ferrar, Collet, and Mapletoft family and their retainers. They devoted their lives to prayer, Bible study and memorization, contemplation, acts of charity, and the production of several unique Bible concordances or harmonies (as well as some Bible histories) of which fifteen are extant. Women were central to the spiritual life of the community, in particular, Mary and Anna who took vows of chastity. They were also the primary creators of the concordances, a task that entailed cutting up printed Bibles, reorganizing the text according to a complex scheme devised by Nicholas Ferrar. The resulting harmonized Gospel suppressed the discrepancies and differences in the four canonical accounts and produced a single, seamless narrative that preserved every detail of the originals. Close study of the relationship between image and text in the Gospel harmonies shows that the women sometimes chose particular images not to illustrate but rather to undermine the authority of the biblical narrative. Images might restore women to an account that minimizes, trivializes, or elides their importance in the life of Jesus. Thus, while their explicit task was to harmonize the Gospel accounts, the women were surreptitiously "deconstructing" them to reveal their discord.

This dissertation explores the relationship between faith and family, specifically French noble families in the sixteenth century and their members' decisions to remain in a community of faith or to join another. The nobility's relationship with religious pluralism is examined by focusing upon a great French noble family that was divided along confessional lines. The Mornay boasted a membership that included the Huguenot counselor, negotiator, and polemicist Philippe Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623) as well as multiple Catholic bishops; their extended network included several notable Catholic and Huguenot families. The rich collection of sources from the their kin and patronage networks is used as a lens with which the processes and mechanisms of religious selection and perseverance are viewed. Throughout the Middle Ages, family members cooperated in order to advance their fortunes. In the sixteenth century, however, religious division jeopardized this cooperation and threatened their success. Most members remained Catholic but enough converted so that the family was rendered spiritually bifurcated at every level. Members converted for multiple reasons ranging from the religious to rank opportunism. Family did not preserve religious unity but rather facilitated division as members acted as advocates, exploited their relationships, and attempted to win relatives to their communities. When members converted, they formed distinct religious communities within the family. Members of each religious community followed traditional strategies that had brought the family success but they restricted these in order to benefit only members of their own spiritual group. Each community faced particular challenges and achieved different degrees of success. Members of each spiritual group occasionally breeched the divide the confessional divide and cooperated with one another. They did so on a limited basis but in various situations for numerous reasons. Members negotiated the Edict of Nantes and created a national platform for co-confessional existence that reflected their experiences in the family. Members of the different religious communities continued to compete and collaborate with one another for generations within the domain of history. Family facilitated spiritual division, but the social structures of kinship proved flexible enough to accommodate religious pluralism.

This dissertation examines religious reform in the Pays de Vaud, Switzerland from 1526-1537. The author focuses on the reactions of rural common men and women who were forced to abandon their Catholic faith and traditions and accept the Reformation and evangelical pastors. The work demonstrates that many rural folk continued to participate in the rituals and celebrations of the "faith of the fathers" (Catholicism) long after the authorities had mandated the Reformation. The rural folk of the Pays de Vaud confronted religious change in a manner that allowed them to preserve their religious identity. It also reveals that people could act and behave in both Catholic and Reformed way.The dissertation considers how Bern introduced the Reformation in the francophone territories that it controlled. Preaching was the most important vehicle for spreading the new religious teaching. Bern relied on William Farel to give sermons and stir protest throughout the region of Vaud. He left both converts and controversy in his wake. The Bernese religious authorities were short on qualified, francophone pastors, thus they looked outside of Switzerland's borders to recruit men who were willing to preach the Gospel. New pastors were both strangers to the villages in Vaud and socially and economically removed from their rural parishioners. Bern also confiscated church wealth and punished the recalcitrant to implement the Reformation.

This thesis discusses the contribution of Richard Hooker to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in his magisterial work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker’s discussion of the Holy Spirit is unsystematic although his dependence on the Holy Spirit for his theology is extensive. The aim of the thesis is to assess the contribution of the Holy Spirit to Hooker’s theology as under-represented in current research. Hooker’s attitude to reform is explored in relation to contemporary and later Puritan writers, such as William Perkins, William Ames, Richard Baxter, and John Owen, and forms part of the overall evaluation of the importance of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for his theology. Four areas are investigated concerning the role Hooker assigned to the Holy Spirit in Christian theology. 1. The role of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of Scripture. 2. The nature and purpose of the sacraments in light of the Holy Spirit. 3. The place of the Holy Spirit in understanding Hooker’s view of the orders of ministry. 4. The centre of Hooker’s theology as the claim to "participation" in the life of God. The thesis concludes that Hooker remained generally consistent with Calvin’s understanding of the Holy Spirit, though he refined Calvin’s scriptural hermeneutic with special reference to the relationship between reason and the Holy Spirit. It is also contends that later Puritans such as Richard Baxter and John Owen, offered a perspective on the relationship between reason and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that was consistent with Calvin but also anticipated by Hooker. This suggests a strong measure of continuity between Hooker and Puritan thought that did not become apparent until after his death in 1600, and which contemporary scholarship has continued to debate. Hooker was an advocate of reform but with a characteristically independent grasp of what that entailed in the convergence of Thomistic and Calvinist thought. Hooker’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit was a consistent theme that was essential to his central motif of the believer’s participation in God. The final chapter shows that Hooker, in defending the Elizabethan Settlement, was able to avoid the entrapment of the Puritan charge of Pelagianism and sympathy towards Rome on the one hand, and the Roman charge of Scriptural insufficiency on the other, by positing a third pole in the debate. This required acceptance of the idea of foundational Christian truth whose goal was theosis, the union of the soul with God, whose agent was the secret operation of the Holy Spirit and instrumentality, the Scriptures and sacraments. As such, Hooker called for mature commitment to theological investigation that stood above partisan rancour.

It is increasingly recognised that the Scottish Reformation was a diverse movement. Different regions of the country displayed a considerable variety of responses to protestantism. The gentlemen of Angus and the Mearns were credited by John Knox with playing a leading role in the Reformation crisis of 1559-60; and their shires, situated on Scotland's east coast, had been exposed to infiltration by protestant doctrines and literature from an early period. This thesis examines the origins of the Reformation in Angus and the Mearns from c.1530; and traces the implementation of reformed ideals from 1560 to c.1585. Initial research concentrated on establishing the names, life-spans and successions of the significant lairds and magnates, and also for both pre- and post-Reformation clergy from c.1530 to 1590. The factual material thus discovered is presented as appendices by which it is possible to trace the personal careers of individuals, the disposition of specific benefices, and the service and administration of parishes by reformed clergy. The apparent paradox of a pre-1560 protestant heartland becoming by the 1580s part of "Scotland's conservative north" is examined and found to be linked with the leading role of lairds in establishing and maintaining the new church. Throughout the thesis a particular focus of interest is the interrelationship between personal faith and practical politics in a largely kin-based society. Emphasis is placed on the element of choice available to lairds of Angus and the Mearns in determining the value of the competing claims- whether spiritual, personal or political - upon their loyalty. By examining the impact of ecclesiastical developments on the local factions of the shires, it is concluded that a distinction must be drawn between the enthusiastic protestantism of that circle of Mearns' lairds involved with John Erskine of Dun, and the less spiritually-committed acceptance of the Reform in mid- and southern Angus. In thus attempting an integrated political and religious study, the general conceptual framework developed by sociologists of religion has been born in mind; interaction of culture and doctrine is, where possible, demonstrated. It is demonstrated that, at a parochial level, the new kirk harmonised with the wider Scottish culture - and, indeed, was integrative of its host society. Particular attention has been paid to various private family muniments relating to the area. Much use was made of the Crawford papers at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, by which an important division separating the Lindsays of Edzell from the Lindsay earls of Crawford has been established. Other important sources have been the few surviving literary works, examined for evidence of their underlying theological affinities, and the national Register of assignation and modification of stipends by which the careers of ministers and readers are traced.

No description available.

This thesis discusses the contribution of Richard Hooker to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in his magisterial work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker’s discussion of the Holy Spirit is unsystematic although his dependence on the Holy Spirit for his theology is extensive. The aim of the thesis is to assess the contribution of the Holy Spirit to Hooker’s theology as under-represented in current research. Hooker’s attitude to reform is explored in relation to contemporary and later Puritan writers, such as William Perkins, William Ames, Richard Baxter, and John Owen, and forms part of the overall evaluation of the importance of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for his theology. Four areas are investigated concerning the role Hooker assigned to the Holy Spirit in Christian theology. 1. The role of the Holy Spirit in the interpretation of Scripture. 2. The nature and purpose of the sacraments in light of the Holy Spirit. 3. The place of the Holy Spirit in understanding Hooker’s view of the orders of ministry. 4. The centre of Hooker’s theology as the claim to "participation" in the life of God. The thesis concludes that Hooker remained generally consistent with Calvin’s understanding of the Holy Spirit, though he refined Calvin’s scriptural hermeneutic with special reference to the relationship between reason and the Holy Spirit. It is also contends that later Puritans such as Richard Baxter and John Owen, offered a perspective on the relationship between reason and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that was consistent with Calvin but also anticipated by Hooker. This suggests a strong measure of continuity between Hooker and Puritan thought that did not become apparent until after his death in 1600, and which contemporary scholarship has continued to debate. Hooker was an advocate of reform but with a characteristically independent grasp of what that entailed in the convergence of Thomistic and Calvinist thought. Hooker’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit was a consistent theme that was essential to his central motif of the believer’s participation in God. The final chapter shows that Hooker, in defending the Elizabethan Settlement, was able to avoid the entrapment of the Puritan charge of Pelagianism and sympathy towards Rome on the one hand, and the Roman charge of Scriptural insufficiency on the other, by positing a third pole in the debate. This required acceptance of the idea of foundational Christian truth whose goal was theosis, the union of the soul with God, whose agent was the secret operation of the Holy Spirit and instrumentality, the Scriptures and sacraments. As such, Hooker called for mature commitment to theological investigation that stood above partisan rancour.