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Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

University of Richmond

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Christianity

Augustine's Dystopia, Peter Iver Kaufman Jan 2012

Augustine's Dystopia, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

By discussing several of the issues that complicated the Christian's cohabitation and political participation in "this wicked world," as Augustine saw them, the remainder of this contribution will garrison the ground we have gained collecting the bad news he conveyed in his city. We shall inquire whether the assorted "consolations" he enumerated compensated for the corruption. And we shall consider one reason he might have had for composing his tome as a massive disorienting device. Of course, certainty about authorial intent is impossible to pocket, yet one can make the case that Augustine dropped City of God into the post-410 …

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Christian Realism And Augustinian (?) Liberalism, Peter Iver Kaufman Dec 2010

Christian Realism And Augustinian (?) Liberalism, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Surely there is enough kindling lying about in the Bible and in subsequent moral theology to fire up love for neighbors and compassion for countless “friends” in foreign parts--and in crisis. And, surely, the momentum of love’s labor for the just redistribution of resources, fueled by activists’ appeals for solidarity, should be sustained by stressing that we are creatures made for affection, not for aggression. Yet experience, plus the history of the Christian traditions, taught Reinhold Niebuhr, who memorably reminded Christian realists, how often love was “defeated,” how a “strategy of brotherhood . . . degenerates from mutuality to a …

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Patience And/Or Politics: Augustine And The Crisis At Calama, 408-409, Peter Iver Kaufman Feb 2003

Patience And/Or Politics: Augustine And The Crisis At Calama, 408-409, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Few scholars would quarrel with Ernst Dassman's observation that early Christian "reserve" toward the political cultures of antiquity--a mixture of difference and indifference, which only occasionally gave way to hostility--turned Christians' outcast status into something of a virtue.Still fewer are likely to dispute the assertion that influential fourth-century Christians unreservedly welcomed the changes that came with Constantine and anticipated the "Christianization" of imperial, if not also local, politics. But evaluations of Augustine's enthusiasm later that century and early the next never fail now to elicit disagreement

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Prophesying Again, Peter Iver Kaufman Jun 1999

Prophesying Again, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Discusses the lay involvement in the prophecies or exercises devised by Elizabethan reformers in England as in-service training during the 16th century. Attitude toward prophesying during the period; Exercises of the refugee churches; Efforts to suppress the prophesying.

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How Socially Conservative Were The Elizabethan Religious Radicals?, Peter Iver Kaufman Apr 1998

How Socially Conservative Were The Elizabethan Religious Radicals?, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Social historians have long suspected that religious convictions made a difference in the sixteenth century, and historians of the late Tudor religious and political settlements have recently emphasized the differences that advanced forms of Calvinism are alleged to have made. They say that religious radicals--puritans and precisianists, to their contemporary critics--were social conservatives who thought wealth was a blessing and poverty a curse. According to Keith Wrightson and David Levine, the "firmly committed Puritans among the yeomen of the parish" promoted a "sense of social distance" between themselves ("the better sort") and the less respectable. The 1995 republication of Wrightson's …

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Much In Prayer: The Inward Researches Of Elizabethan Protestants, Peter Iver Kaufman Apr 1993

Much In Prayer: The Inward Researches Of Elizabethan Protestants, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Examines some Elizabethan Protestants' reasons for praying and the controversy over forms of prayer during the period. Calvinists' rejection of prescribing times for prayer; Premium on feeling of misery in prayer; Godly sorrow; Suppression of rational judgment; Debate on fixed and impromptu prayers; Prayer as art.

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Foscolo, Dante And The Papacy, Peter Iver Kaufman Jan 1990

Foscolo, Dante And The Papacy, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Of the many interpretations of cantos and characters in Dante's Divine Comedy, few rival the wordplay in Gabriele Rossetti's commentary (1826-27). None that I know rivals its imaginative recreation of fourteenth-century literary and political history. According to Rossetti, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and a nest of Cathari were members of an underground network. Dissident poets, politicians, and church reformers therein camouflaged their attacks against the papacy to prevent detection and reprisal.

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Social History, Psychohistory, And The Prehistory Of Swiss Anabaptism, Peter Iver Kaufman Oct 1988

Social History, Psychohistory, And The Prehistory Of Swiss Anabaptism, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The article discusses a variety of issues concerning social history, psychohistory and the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism. It explores the contextualist approach to the history and practice of Anabaptism. It traces the prehistory of Swiss Anabaptism and the normative vision of Anabaptist origins. The article also examines the theology of martyrdom according to Conrad Grebel, father of Anabaptist.

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