The belief that God eternally and unalterably decrees the election of one part of humankind and the reprobation of the rest has not aged well, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the doctrine of predestination was publicised and popularised to an extent unparalleled in the history of Christianity. Why was this? How successfully was the doctrine able to mix with other ideas, and to what effect? And did belief in predestination encourage confidence or despair? Practical Predestinarians is a study of the ways in which the doctrine of predestination was understood and communicated by churchmen in late Tudor and early Stuart England. It connects with debates about the 'popularity' of Protestantism during England's 'long reformation', as well as with the question of whether predestination tended toward inclusive or divisive, and conformist or subversive, applications. Intersecting with recent debates about the popular reception of Protestant preaching, this book focusses upon the pastoral message itself - it is therefore an investigation into the public face of English Calvinism.
Dixon
Practical Predestinarians in England, c. 1590-1640 jetzt bestellen!
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Contents: Introduction; Predestination in early modern culture: contexts and concepts; William Perkins and the search for certainty; God and Godliness in the thought of Richard Greenham and Richard Rogers; Thomas Wilson: an impractical predestinarian?; Robert Sanderson and the politics of predestination; Preaching predestination, c.1603-c.1625; The theology of death and dying: predestination versus the ars moriendi?; Bibliography; Index.
Leif Dixon was a British Academy postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Cambridge, and has been a lecturer in early modern history at the University of Oxford.
