Theology Archive
-
Civic and Religious Understanding of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled of Medieval England
Posted on May 20, 2013 | No CommentsThis brief summary covered the fourth paper given at KZOO's Mental Health in Non-medical Terms. It covered ways in which theologians, like Thomas Aquinas, tried to categorize mental disability. Aquinas also tried to prove that the mentally impaired were able to receive sacraments depending their lucidity and where they fit in his four categories. It was an interesting and enjoyable paper. -
Penance and Peter Abelard’s Move Within
Posted on April 21, 2013 | No CommentsOf the many individuals in the twelfth century whose fame in their own time has reached down to ours, figures like Thomas Becket, Frederick Barbarossa and Bernard of Clairvaux, there is no one whose fame surpassed that of Master Peter Abelard and no figure more public. Indeed, fame was something Abelard coveted, something he consciously built. -
Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: Lateran IV to Ignorantia sacerdotum
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction. -
A question of time or a question of theology: A study of the Easter controversy in the Insular Church
Posted on March 31, 2013 | No CommentsTo date scholarly research has approached this topic from a medieval historical perspective. It has, however, never been approached from a purely theological stance. Questions regarding the Insular 84-year cycle have occupied scholars over the past one hundred years or so. A review of the literature reveals an advance in understanding the techniques of the computus of the Insular church. -
Samuel and Saul in Medieval Political Thought
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsThis article traces the history of a medieval struggle for supremacy between spiritual and temporal authority, between pope or church and monarch, following the employment of the aforementioned Old Testament narrative -
The Metaphysics of Peter Abelard
Posted on March 24, 2013 | No CommentsI’ll begin with Abelard’s antirealism about universals, since it is the key to his irrealism. It provides the foundation for his conviction that only individuals exist, a thesis that calls for further analysis of the nature of individuals -
Abelard’s Legacy: Why Theology is not Faith Seeking Understanding
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsIn this paper I will challenge the common definition of the theological task as faith seeking understanding, where the faith of a tradition commandeers the critical enquiry of the theologian. -
What was the Investiture Controversy a Controversy About?
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis will aim to demonstrate that the Investiture Controversy was primarily a clash originating from fifth century ideas which were put into practice and developed by an eleventh century papacy. -
Historical Thought and the Reform Crisis of the Early Sixteenth Century
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsI shall follow what I feel to be the methodologically sound procedure of examining one case in some detail, while at the same time producing evidence to suggest that elements which are operative in this instance may be operative in others as well. What I should like to focus attention upon are certain ideas of history which were current in the early sixteenth century.  -
Picturing Gregory: The Evolving Imagery of Canon Law
Posted on February 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper surveys images created for the opening of the Liber extra between around 1240 and 1350, from a variety of standpoints: iconography, page layout, patrons and readers - and also suggests possible ideological agendas that might be embedded in the illustrations. -
The Eternity of the World and Renaissance Historical Thought
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsMedieval and Renaissance controversies over the Aristotelian doctrine of “the eternity of the world” have hitherto been treated as disputes restricted to natural philosophers and theologians. -
Lay Writers and the Politics of Theology in Medieval England From the Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsMy intention is not to continue the discourse on such practices but to analyze narrative content in relation to the politics of theology that had an impact on lay writers and their artistic creativity concerning the search for selfhood from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. -
The Cross as Tree: The Wood-of-the-Cross Legends in Middle English and Latin Texts in Medieval England
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe wood-of-the-cross legend is actually a group of narratives that trace the pre- history of the wood used to make Christ's cross back to Old Testament figures, or in some cases back to paradise itself. -
Origins of the Medieval Theory That Sensation Is an Immaterial Reception of a Form
Posted on December 26, 2012 | No CommentsLet me begin my own discussion of Aquinas by saying that it seems to me that Cohen adequately proved that it was a mistake to view the sensible form as existing in the soul rather than the organ, and that Aquinas is not denying to the sensible form as received by the sensor a place in the physical world, or indeed physical existence, when he says it exists immaterially or spiritually. -
New Testament from the oldest complete Bible available online for the first time
Posted on December 18, 2012 | No CommentsThe New Testament volume from one of the British Library’s most valuable treasures, Codex Alexandrinus, has been made available online for the first time on the British Library’s website. -
Church Wall Paintings and Mosaics: Principles of their arrangement and relationship to church architecture
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe history of Orthodox church wall-painting and mosaics, East and West, is a very rich one. On the one hand it reveals tremendous creativity in the Church’s response to architectural and pastoral changes. On the other hand it shows how consistently it has been faithful to unchanging spiritual principles. -
Exegesis According to the Rules of Philosophy or the Rule of Faith?: Methodological Conflict in the Ninth-Century Predestination Controversy
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe development of biblical exegesis, as Contreni shows, was rapid, but not homogeneous. On the one hand, one of the main ways to acquire biblical wisdom was to rely on the interpretations and teaching of the Holy Fathers, whose texts were studied, assimilated, simplified, collected, and taught. On the other hand, Alcuin’s revival of the liberal arts6 paved the way for the rise of another method of biblical exegesis. -
The Hobbit; an unexpected theological journey
Posted on December 13, 2012 | No CommentsDr Alison Milbank of the University of Nottingham's Department of Theology and Religious Studies, offers her insights into J.R.R.Tolkien and his famous novel. -
Why Study J.R.R. Tolkien?
Posted on December 13, 2012 | No CommentsIn order to write a fantasy novel you have to commit to metaphysics - you have to create a world, that world has to have a certain consistency, it has to have ontology, what is being in that world, what is it ethics in that world - and Tolkien is particular interested in these metaphysical questions. -
Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861–882
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe Histories and Chronicles Hincmar had in mind were presumably Frankish ones; and Lothar II, succeeding his father, thus clearly came into this section of Hincmar's third category. But of the timing or form of Lothar's becoming king, Hincmar said not a word, preferring, instead, to spell out the Biblical lesson that a bad king (and he hastily disclaimed any allegation that Lothar's father had been a bad king) would see the succession depart from his line. -
Love and Saint Francis of Assisi: A Performer in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsIn “spending most of his life out of doors, in all seasons” Francis defies the basis of what we call civilized existence; if history is about progress in terms of making human life secure from nature’s vagaries, Francis rejects such a conception of history, along with its false sense of security, in order to situate human life in and as the natural world. -
Exploring the Connections between Metaphysics and Political Thought in the Age of Wyclif and Gerson
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsRussell focuses on how important late medieval thinkers such as John Wyclif (c. 1320 – 1384) and Jean Gerson (1363–1429) understood metaphysics and how this had an instrumental effect on their political thought. -
The Passion of Peter Abelard
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsIn the philosophical part of the project we chose not to use Abelardís work Dialogue of the Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian, which explains his views on different religions. Since we decided to use the Letters of Direction in order to get an overview about Abelardís view on Christianity, there appeared to be little need for the aforementioned book. -
The Law’s Violence against Medieval and Early Modern Jews
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsKen Pennington examines the issue of forced baptism of Jewish children in the legal literature from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. -
The Doctrine of Active Resistance in the Sixteenth Century
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsThis article will explore the late medieval sources and the sixteenth century context of Continental Reformation theologians’ response to that agony of conscience.
