The purpose of this essay is to bring another candle to an understanding of John Calvin as a theologian, by way of a look at some rhetorical traits in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. That Calvin was an eminent theologian or that the Institutes is a classic of theological literature is not examined, for neither is generally disputed. Our specific concern is with the question of what happens to theological subject matter when it is put in rhetorical form. Accordingly, this essay is divided into three parts: I—The proper marks of a style suitable to theology, and how the humanists, including Calvin, felt about this; II—A look at some rhetorical traits in the Institutes; and III—Some conclusions.

Within the past thirty years a painstaking literature has been produced by the descendants of the sixteenth century Anabaptists, mostly Mennonites, in an effort to replace the traditional European interpretation of Anabaptism as fanaticism beginning with the revolutionary mystic, Thomas Muentzer, and ending with the revolutionary polygamous debacle at Muenster in Westphalia ten years later. Thus were the Anabaptists discredited for centuries by Lutheran and Reformed theologians within the majority churches of Europe, the American Anabaptist historians say.

The free church form which much of British and American Protestantism has assumed stems primarily from the shaping of Nonconformity in seventeenth-century England. Yet the uniqueness and significance of this origin have not always been appreciated. These English and American churches have a basis distinct from that of the free churches which arose on the Continent in the nineteenth century. For unlike the latter, the free churches of Nonconformity developed within the fabric of Christian state and society and not out of any fundamental ideological conflict with secularized authority. Again, in England and America the free church form was molded in the unique environment of religious multiplicity which Puritan divisions produced. Consequently, it was as difficult for any religious group to respond to this environment in the classical sectarian pattern as for churchly institutions to maintain pretensions to uniformity—a fact which even church historians, impressed by Troeltsch's church-sect dichotomy, have been slow to recognize. And lastly, in both England and America the free church would seem to have been shaped by certain axioms of Puritan thought and piety. Indeed, this essay seeks to show that Puritanism both produced the problem and suggested the alternatives out of which the final free church concepts emerged.

Those conversant with the history of mediaeval education are generally aware of the fact that clerks studying in a theological faculty were permitted, during the thirteenth century, to enjoy their ecclesiastical rents in absentia1. The Super Speculam of Honorius III is often cited as the basis of this practice, although many scholars also know that the custom was in use, on a local scale, before 1219. The present writer does not wish, at the moment, to inquire into the origins of the practice, nor does he intend to offer any new interpretation of Honorius' famous bull.

Nationalism in the Orient came into being as a reaction to Western and Japanese political, military, economic, and cultural imperialism. It still has this character in countries remaining under colonial rule. This nationalism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, although arising somewhat earlier in certain countries. Anti-western movements before this time were manifestations of cultural resistance to European penetration rather than truly nationalistic expressions. The Boxer Uprising of 1900 in China is the last major example of such a cultural reaction. Thereafter love and pride of ancient culture became increasingly only one ingredient in patriotic loyalty and devotion. Intensified during World War I, this earlier type of nationalism reached its climax in Asia in the period of World War II, and came to fruition in the independence of eight nations in East and Southern Asia. Since then this earlier type of nationalism has been replaced by a religious statism, to which many Western nations had already succumbed and which had led Japan to disaster. The entire Orient is far too vast an area for treatment in a brief paper, and this survey is limited to a mere outline of the relation of nationalism to the Christian mission as illustrated by events in some countries of East Asia, where along with India the issues were most sharply raised.

The Popes of Rome ruled as both temporal and spiritual sovereigns for more than one thousand years, but historians have been little concerned with the former aspect of their sovereignty except as a factor in international politics and diplomacy and for its effect upon their status as heads of Catholic Christendom. Details of the internal administration of the States of the Church have been largely neglected. This state of affairs is particularly true with respect to the modern and recent periods of European history, during which the rise of great national states eclipsed the tiny temporal domain of the Pope. There is a substantial literature on the finances of the Papacy in the later Middle Ages, when finance is recognized as having played an important part in political affairs, but a survey of the literature for the modern period fails to reveal any systematic treatment of the subject. There is reason to believe, however, as this brief note indicates, that there is a significant connection between the financial situation of the States of the Church and the loss of the temporal power. It is even possible that this connection extends to matters of Church doctrine.

Any study of France's political history since the Liberation must inevitably attempt to explain the sudden emergence in 1944 of that somewhat unconventional and ambiguous political grouping known as the Mouvement Républicain Populaire. Almost overnight the new party, despite its obscure origins and unfamiliar program, succeeded in winning the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly and in the years since the war has provided France with some of her most prominent leaders. Although the M. R. P. has declined in parliamentary strength in recent years, it seems probable that the party of Robert Schuman and Georges Bidault will continue to play an important role in French politics.

A recent article on tyrannicide in an authoritative Catholic reference work states that there exist few official pronouncements of the Church on this controversial subject2. The only ruling on the legitimacy of putting to death a tyrannical ruler mentioned is the highly ambiguous decree of the Council of Constance in 1415. In the interest of greater accuracy and fuller historical knowledge it may be in place to bring to light a secret brief on tyrannicide issued in 1615 by Pope Paul V in which he approved and renewed the decree of Constance. This brief assumes special significance in view of the fact that until then the earlier decree had never been explicitly confirmed by any pope and thus could be considered as not binding. Moreover, the circumstances under which the brief was issued have received inadequate, and sometimes deliberately distorted, treatment that calls for clarification and correction.

With justification American historians emphasize the rise of democratic government during the Colonial Period. The will of the colonists to determine their own affairs grew with greater force after their departure from the mother country. Within the colonies themselves they successfully demanded greater liberty in their political institutions.1 Free representation was strengthened by the plea for free conscience in a common effort to transform the outward political forms which they had left behind in seventeenth century England. In this process new understanding of the State was developing.

The completion of F. S. Schmitt's critical edition of the Opera omnia of St. Anselm of Canterbury, with its elimination of a good many spurious meditations and prayers and with its recalendaring of the old and the newly identified correspondence, has stimulated widespread interest in the father of scholasticism. In the present study I wish to show that Anseim's Cur Deus Homo is a “penitential-eucharistic,” as distinguished from a “baptismal,” theory of the atonement. This is a terminology which must be explained at once.

The decades of the 1870's and 1880's were times of increasing social consciousness on the part of the churches of the United States. The Civil War had been concluded, and the expansion of the nation within its own borders was resumed. All of the religious bodies— Protestant, Jewish, and Roman Catholic—were called upon to perform a task which neither the government nor any organized secular group was prepared to do: integrate literally millions of immigrants into the American way of life.

“… non estimemus fabulam illam quasi veram, quam quidam dicunt, quod instabit seculum bonum, in quo nullus erit malorum, et quod nihil paciantur, sed gaudio ineffabili sint prediti.” (From a Taborite commentary on Apocalypse, c. 1425.)

In the years following John Hus' martyrdom the movement he had led developed from a Prague University reform movement into a national reformation. Ideas that had formerly existed as topics for discussion among university intellectuals were established as actual religious practice among large groups of people, of all estates and with widely varying interests and viewpoints. As each such group entered the national movement it necessarily contributed its own viewpoint, with the result that every extension of the reform involved almost as many difficulties for the Hussites as for the Catholics. Of course there had always been differences among the university masters themselves, the inevitable conservative-radical dichotomy based ultimately on differences of spiritual temperament that exist within any group. But far more significant was the social polarization that took form as the concept of reform held by the upper estates was opposed by programs deriving from the point of view of artisans, peasants, and “the poor.”

Harry Austryn Wolfson declared in an earlier volume that it was the purpose of Philo “not to teach true philosophy to students of Scripture, but to show the truth of Scripture to students of philosophy.” Wolfson, in his comprehensive series of which the present study is an integral part, likewise seeks to show, if not the truth, at least the comprehensiveness, of “scriptural philosophy” to contemporary students of philosophy.

The many aspects of Catholic activity during the sixteenth century make it difficult to present a systematic bibliography for that period. Interest in the Reformation era has considerably increased among Catholic scholars during the last decades. We must therefore proceed to a severe selection. Only studies that deal with the most significant topics will be included. No breakdown of the material can be completely satifactory. As the main point, however, is to give as clear a picture as possible, one must distinguish three broad periods: before, during and after the Council of Trent. Subdivisions of the subject matter in each period will necessarily overlap. But we will reduce this to a minimum.

Many students of John Wesley have examined his economic ideas;2 few have appreciated their range. At least three sources molded the economic thought of the founder of Methodism. Only one of them, the Christian ethical tradition, has been studied with sufficient care. It was, to be sure, the first and most prominent source. But it was followed, first by Wesley's reaction to certain acute social problems which forced themselves on his attention during the 1770's, then by the thought of one of the most prominent economists of that day, the Rev. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester. These later stimuli led Wesley to consider a problem which disturbed many of his contemporaries, the problem of the extent to which a government should be allowed to control commerce and industry. His thinking on this problem is important, not because of its sophistication, but because of the tremendous influence Wesley exerted on public opinion, through his uncommonly effective preaching, organizing, and writing.3

In an essay written in 19291 Professor Tillich concluded that the sacraments continue to exist in modern Protestantism largely through historical impetus. The conservatism of custom and a vague awareness that their observance is somehow due to our Lord are apparently sufficient to prevent their total extinction. The last generation has of course witnessed a liturgical revival in our churches; but this new interest is by no means universal and appears on the whole to be superficial. It is less devoted to an understanding of Christian faith which might require liturgical expression than to the ornamentation of the places and procedures of worship. Its activity is rooted less in theology than in aesthetics and psychology, being perhaps more often an expression of cultural sophistication than of any serious appreciation of the sacramental quality of Christian life.