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A Helper Of Thy Faith And Joy: Elnathan Parr As A Pastoral Teacher Of Predestination In Early Stuart England., David H. Kranendonk

CTS Master of Theology (ThM) Theses

This thesis demonstrates that Elnathan Parr‟s (1577-1622) treatment of divine predestination in his homiletical commentary on Romans and in his catechism entitled Grounds of Divinity evidences a pastoral approach in which the scholastic precision characteristic of the era does not lead to speculative aridity but serves positive spiritual purposes. Parr was neither afraid of nor obsessed by this part of the “whole counsel of God.” While his popular teaching incorporated detailed theological argumentation, including an extended examination of the supralapsarian-infralapsarian issue, his concern was to apply this doctrine through multiple types of “uses” to his spiritually diverse readership with the …