Lectures from experts in scientific research, law, insurance, philosophy, ethics, theology and public policy.

African biblical scholars postulate that biblical interpretation in Africa involves linking biblical texts to African contexts. This means that the African interpreter of a biblical text focuses on its possible relevance in an African context rather than on the socio-historical background of the community that produced the text or on its literary form. The primary task of the reader of the Bible is then to engage the biblical text with an African context in order to construct a meaning that by (...) Africans is perceived as life-affirming. This article considers the interpretation of Exodus 3.1-14 in the Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina in Zambia, showing how the African context shapes an understanding of the Bible. The Lumpa Church was an African Independent Church, founded by Alice Lenshina in opposition to the teachings of the Free Church of Scotland missionaries in North Eastern Zambia. (shrink)

This paper examines the reaction of Victorian Presbyterian culture to the theory of evolution in late nineteenth century Scotland. Focusing on the role played by the Free Church theologian, biblical critic and anthropological theorist, William Robertson Smith, it argues that, compared with Smith’s radical scholarship, evolutionary theories did little to disturb the Scottish Calvinist mind-set. After surveying the attitudes to evolution among a range of theological leaders, the paper examines Smith’s fundamentally threatening proposals and the circumstances that (...) led to the public spectacle of his dismissal from his Free Church professorship. It concludes by suggesting that, ironically, even while his fellow churchmen were making their peace with Darwin, Smith was mobilising an evolutionary outlook that challenged Scotland’s conservative religious culture to its very core. (shrink)

The year 2022 marks a century since the death of Reverend John Knox Bokwe, a minister of the United Free Church of Scotland Mission in South Africa. Although little known, Bokwe was an important member of the emerging African intellectual elite towards the end of the 19th century. He demonstrated the creative tension that arises when two cultures encounter each other as he confronted and made sense of the historical meaning of modernity. He emphasised the value of (...) his traditional culture in a context where western culture was making a significant transforming impact on African life, which produced a creative tension throughout his working life in various contexts. This paper analyses his particular contribution as an active committed Christian through a number of overlapping lenses – his life in clerical work, journalism, literature, theology, education, music and his involvement in social and political issues and ministry. In all this he operated with a holistic vision. The paper offers an assessment of his life’s work using a combination of primary and secondary sources. Contribution: This article adds to the growing body of work that is derived from studies on the emergence of indigenous leadership in South Africa by looking at the life, work and Christian witness of Rev John Knox Bokwe from the perspective of the creative tension that he experienced and navigated in the varied professional and vocational perspectives he engaged in during his life. (shrink)

This article explores the contribution of indigenous African women to the growth of Christianity in North Eastern Zambia. Using a socio-historical method, the article shows that the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland in North Eastern Zambia evangelized mainly through literacy training and preaching. The active involvement of indigenous ministers and teacher-evangelists was indispensable in this process. The article argues that omission of the contribution of indigenous African women who were teacher-evangelists in the standard literature relating to the (...) work of the Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland in North Eastern Zambia exposes a patriarchal bias in mission historiography. In an effort to redress this omission, the article explores and evaluates the contribution and experience of an indigenous African woman, Helen Nyirenda Kaunda. Based on relevant research the article concludes that indigenous African women were among the pioneers of mission work in North Eastern Zambia. (shrink)

The contemporary creation–evolution debate has become so polarized (over the issue of either Genesis or evolutionary science) as to obscure the more nuanced questions that have arisen in the historical and theological reception of Darwinism. Edinburgh's New College has been the academic home to some prominent scientists and theologians who have grappled with these questions since the early days of evolutionary science in the first half of the nineteenth century. Most obviously, this activity was focused on the decision to create (...) a Chair in Natural Science in 1845, which would be occupied by a recognized scientist. The Chair became “extinct” in the 1930s, but in between times, its holders made important theological assessments of evolution along the way. This article outlines the contributions made by the individuals who occupied this Chair, as well as more recent figures in the evolution of science and theology at New College. (shrink)

This paper offers a concise overview of the impact made by Scottish evangelicalism of the Free Church of Scotland on the theology, piety and practice of Hungarian Reformed faith within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They planted a kind of piety that was foreign, at least in its language and expressions, to most of the Hungarian Reformed people until the arrival of Scottish missionaries in 1841. Their conduct of practical Christianity, praxis pietatis materialised itself in Christian evangelism and social (...) action. In this paper the focus is on the period between 1865 and 1914. To demonstrate the nature and form of this impact, first the paper outlines some key features of Scottish evangelicalism. Then, it investigates the theological and ecclesiastical impact of Scottish evangelicalism made through the establishment of voluntary societies and examines influence on the piety and praxis of Reformed faith in Hungary. (shrink)

This article will investigate why Mission Councils continued to exist for so long after the so-called autonomous churches were established in South Africa following the upsurge ofEthiopian and other types of African initiated churches at the close of the 19th century inopposition to the European sending churches. It will also examine how the emergingPartnership in Mission policy affected the process of integration of church and mission. Usingthe closing years of the Church of Scotland South African Joint Council (...) as a casestudy, the author examines primary sources to uncover the exercise of power demonstratedthrough racism manifested in the disposition of personnel, property and finance to control thedevelopment of authentic autonomy. (shrink)

It is well known that the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century posed problems for Christian theology. Less well known is the fact that the new understanding of history, developed in the same period, also created a number of difficulties. The realization that Christianity possessed a history of its own, and had changed and developed, raised numerous important questions for theologians and Christians alike. Newman's revised Essay on the Development of Doctrine provides the starting-point for this new and comprehensive survey, (...) in which Peter Hinchliff discusses the ideas of a wide range of theologians from the full spectrum of British Christianity - from Roman Catholics through to theologians from the Churches of England and Scotland, and the Free Church - and their attempts to tackle these questions in the period leading up to the Great War. He proves that this hitherto little studied period in the development of theology is in fact an area of considerable interest and pertinence to historians as much as theologians. (shrink)

This is a steamer trunk of a book! Its chapters, like so many tightly stuffed drawers with their numerous partitions, are full of all the apparel needed for a five‐hundred‐plus‐page voyage across the thirty years of Victorian history that surround the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and its anonymous author, Robert Chambers. We find storage places for observations on the new steam presses, on the reading public—both high‐ and lowbrow—on phrenology, on Scottish science and the Free (...) class='Hi'>Church movement, on science in the great urban centers of England, on Von Baerian development, on a multitude of reviews, letters, personal journals, and salon gossip, on the contrasting styles of classical gentlemanly and the nouveau commercial science of industrial England, on the career of Chambers and many of his associates, and much more. A list of such static cubbyholes, however, fails to do justice to the unconventional and careful packing by the book's author, James Secord. More revealing is the hanging compartment of this steamer trunk, which meticulously folds the larger vestments against the pullout drawers. Here one finds the central themes that should concern all historians of science. These pertain to the varied recipients as well as the producers of science, publishers and illustrators as well as the technologies of elite and mass production, the nature of professional and amateur science at midcentury, and the clash between various ideologies, theologies, and politics as they bear on all of the above.With this extraordinary marshaling of historical material, backed by years of intensive sleuthing and broad reading, Secord dares to provide a near‐total history of and revision of a traditional minor affair in the history of science. He states one of his important goals at the outset in the form of a challenge: “What once made sense as the ‘Darwinian Revolution’ must be cast as an episode in the industrialization of communication and transformation of reading audiences” . Although the book is not focused on this challenge till the end of the last chapter and epilogue, Secord's endgame becomes clear when he revisits the question about the contrasting style, production, and reception of the Vestiges and the Origin of Species. He finishes with the provocative conclusion that “the Origin was important in resolving a crisis, not in creating one” . By this Secord means that the Origin forged a new alignment of professional and entrepreneurial biologists and the reading public around a new, often misunderstood developmental hypothesis; so “Darwinism” becomes “the science of the future” . It strikes me that the author's conclusions belie his initial claim. Without question Chambers and the Vestiges must now rank as major indicators and an episode of great importance in early Victorian culture. To me, however, Darwin and the Origin in its past, present, and future contexts—pace modern contextualists—still make sense as a broader, contentious episode known as “the Darwinian Revolution.”I profited particularly from Secord's discussions about the revisions and the target audiences of various editions of the Vestiges, his evidence that many professional scientists grew confident of Chambers's alleged authorship, and his demonstration that the evangelical Free Church in Scotland enabled a shift by the 1840s of the historical sciences from Edinburgh to the English urban centers. “From the Chamberses' perspective, the ‘Athens of the North’ had degenerated into a provincial backwater ruled by Calvinist fanatics” . My understanding of the history of science has been permanently altered by Secord's extended attention to communications and the reading public. I would have liked more reflection on the contemporaneous scientific and cultural scene in Germany and a deeper discussion of Herbert Spencer, but you cannot cram everything into a steamer trunk. This book is exhaustively illustrated, broadly researched, and well written. It contains a fine bibliography and index. I strongly recommend Victorian Sensation to anyone concerned about the twin processes of representation and communication in the history of science and for all interested in Victorian cultural history. (shrink)

A sympathetic study of the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition which attempts to clarify the nature of the Free Church heritage and show its contributions to religious and political freedom. Though well-documented and competent, it is episodic and somewhat disorganized; it dwells less on history than on the relevance of Free Church ideas to contemporary problems of religion and society.--F. M. S.

In the wake of populist challenges throughout the past decade in the U.S. and Europe, liberalism has been described as elitist and out of touch, concerned with protecting and promoting material interests with an orientation that is pragmatic, legalistic, and technocratic. Simultaneously, liberal governments have become increasingly detached from the middle class and its moral needs for purpose and belonging. If liberalism cannot provide spiritual sustenance, individuals will look elsewhere for it, especially in illiberal forms of populism. -/- In Kant, (...) Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life, Jeffrey Church addresses the "meaning deficit" in contemporary liberal societies. Focusing on Immanuel Kant's largely neglected early lectures on anthropology from the 1760s and 1770s, Church argues that Kant's work can serve as a basis for a more meaningful liberalism, one that conceives of freedom and equality for all as a moral vocation of citizens and institutions. Church also asserts that Kant's early view of the meaning of life has important implications for understanding his political theory. Kant saw liberal community as something that helps us realize our destiny on earth as the distinctively free creatures we are. Liberalism, then, is not elitist but a participatory project of all members of society. It is not concerned primarily with material things but with our moral destiny. It is not pragmatic but principled. -/- Church holds that Kant's liberalism rests on a view of the meaning of human existence, and so analyzes Kant's view of the meaning of life and its application to his politics. In particular, Church contends that a fundamental concern included in Kant's liberalism, largely unrecognized by scholars, is to foster the meaning of life for citizens of liberal republican orders. At the same time, Church applies Kant's views of the meaning of life to contemporary problems in liberalism. In particular, he argues that Kant's view of a meaningful liberalism can provide a counterweight to the recent rise of illiberal nationalist or religious forms of community that seem attractive to liberal citizens hungering for meaning in a disenchanted world. Compelling and ambitious, Jeffrey Church provides the first extended treatment of Kant's understanding of the meaning of life and a powerful alternative to procedural liberalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy by Donovan Miyasaki, and: Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left by Donovan MiyasakiJeffrey ChurchDonovan Miyasaki, Nietzsche's Immoralism: Politics as First Philosophy Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 292 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-11358-1. Cloth, $54.99.Donovan Miyasaki, Politics after Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. xv + 330 pp. isbn: 978-3-031-12227-9. Cloth, $54.99.Without a doubt, Nietzsche's political philosophy is one of (...) the most elusive and ambiguous features of his corpus. How else can we explain the dizzying, even contradictory, variety of interpretations of Nietzsche's politics? Some read him as anti-political or a liberal skeptical of state power. For others, he is an aristocratic radical, obsessed with using state power to entrench a new class of Übermenschen. For still others, his thought is most compatible with democracy, as his defenses of perspectivism and agonism are best realized within a democratic political system. Finally, some other scholars throw up their hands and say that Nietzsche's political thought is incoherent.In this two-volume work, Donovan Miyasaki enters this fray with a distinctive defense of the democratic Nietzsche. Two features distinguish his view from others. First, it provides a novel grounding of Nietzschean democracy—what Miyasaki calls Nietzsche's "metapolitics." This grounding is examined in the first volume, Nietzsche's Immoralism (hereafter NI). Second, it offers the most radical political vision of a left Nietzschean form of Nietzschean socialism. For Miyasaki, socialism follows from Nietzsche's fundamental commitments, rather than the aristocratic radicalism that Miyasaki sees Nietzsche inferring—wrongly—from his own commitments. [End Page 97] This extrapolation from Nietzsche's "metapolitics" is undertaken in the second volume, Politics after Morality (hereafter PM). I discuss each of these contributions in turn. In general, I found Miyasaki's work to be clear, perceptive, and bold in their interpretations. That said, with a book that critiques so much of the Nietzsche scholarship and offers such a radical take on Nietzsche's politics, I have some potential objections to raise.Nietzsche's MetapoliticsOther interpreters of a left Nietzsche ground their reading on what they take to be Nietzsche's radical epistemological views: either his perspectivism or his anti-essentialism. This was a popular approach for the postmodern and agonistic readings. By contrast, Miyasaki grounds Nietzschean democracy in a completely different way, on his metaphysics, particularly his determinism and "hard incompatibilism" (NI 25). On Miyasaki's view, Nietzsche denies that freedom and determinism are compatible and hence also that any kind of moral responsibility or moral agency is possible. This is the meaning of Nietzsche's "immoralism." For Miyasaki, Nietzsche's alternative ideal is to engender a particular feeling, namely, the love of this determinism or amor fati.This thesis of hard incompatibilism leads Miyasaki to some sweeping critiques of scholarship on Nietzsche's ethics. Against the many recent interpreters who develop a Nietzschean view of freedom, Miyasaki argues that freedom is impossible in a deterministic world. Against the perfectionist and constitutivist interpreters of Nietzsche's ethics, Miyasaki argues that ethics requires the freedom to improve or fail, and such freedom is impossible. At the same time, Miyasaki admits that Nietzsche at times appeals to and even defends freedom. Yet he explains that what Nietzsche is after in these passages is not freedom, but only the "feeling" of freedom (NI 49). Miyasaki is driven to some strained interpretive moves, such as when he argues that higher individuals' feeling of freedom is enhanced precisely to the degree to which they have abandoned the "illusion of freedom" (NI 49). How can I have the feeling of something I have come to see as an illusion?It is true that Nietzsche critiques the traditional metaphysical notion of the freedom of the will on the basis of his naturalism and determinism. Yet in recent years, scholars have argued that Nietzsche defends a novel conception of freedom that is compatible with determinism, akin to what we find in Spinoza. On this view, freedom is defined in terms of agency rather [End Page 98] than a power or faculty of choice. A free agent is... (shrink)

Everyone knows that Wales is a land of scenery. It is also known to have local customs and usages, and a peculiar language; in fact it has also its own history and historical memories. By virtue of these things Wales is a nation with its own life and culture, which merits study and demands respect.

Conflict is inevitable within congregations and can contribute to their growth or decline, depending on how the leadership in a congregation handles a conflict. The Dutch Reformed Church in Africa, Orange Free State (DRCA OFS) has, for over a decade, experienced growing internal conflicts within its leadership in the various structures of the church. Some of these conflicts have culminated in physical violence and litigations. This article aims to analyse the emerging conflict situations within the leadership in (...) the various structures of the DRCA OFS. The leading research question is: What are the dynamics of conflict situations of the leadership in the various structures of the DRCA OFS? (shrink)

Anti-realist epistemic conceptions of truth imply what is called the knowability principle: All truths are possibly known. The principle can be formalized in a bimodal propositional logic, with an alethic modality ${\diamondsuit}$ and an epistemic modality ${\mathcal{K}}$, by the axiom scheme ${A \supset \diamondsuit \mathcal{K} A}$. The use of classical logic and minimal assumptions about the two modalities lead to the paradoxical conclusion that all truths are known, ${A \supset \mathcal{K} A}$. A Gentzen-style reconstruction of the Church–Fitch paradox is (...) presented following a labelled approach to sequent calculi. First, a cut-free system for classical bimodal logic is introduced as the logical basis for the Church–Fitch paradox and the relationships between ${\mathcal {K}}$ and ${\diamondsuit}$ are taken into account. Afterwards, by exploiting the structural properties of the system, in particular cut elimination, the semantic frame conditions that correspond to KP are determined and added in the form of a block of nonlogical inference rules. Within this new system for classical and intuitionistic “knowability logic”, it is possible to give a satisfactory cut-free reconstruction of the Church–Fitch derivation and to confirm that OP is only classically derivable, but neither intuitionistically derivable nor intuitionistically admissible. Finally, it is shown that in classical knowability logic, the Church–Fitch derivation is nothing else but a fallacy and does not represent a real threat for anti-realism. (shrink)

The study of intellectual humility is still in its early stages and issues of definition and measurement are only now being explored. To inform and guide the process of defining and measuring this important intellectual virtue, we conducted a series of studies into the implicit theory – or ‘folk’ understanding – of an intellectually humble person, a wise person, and an intellectually arrogant person. In Study 1, 350 adults used a free-listing procedure to generate a list of descriptors, one (...) for each person-concept. In Study 2, 335 adults rated the previously generated descriptors by how characteristic each was of the target person-concept. In Study 3, 344 adults sorted the descriptors by similarity for each person-concept. By comparing and contrasting the three person-concepts, a complex portrait of an intellectually humble person emerges with particular epistemic, self-oriented, and other-oriented dimensions. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville was best known for The Fable of the Bees, in which he demolishes the supposed moral basis of society by a Hobbesian demonstration that civilization depends on vice. Today Mandeville is seen as a trenchant satirist of the manners and foibles of his age. He is also seen as a precursor of some of Adam Smith's doctrines, a forerunner in the field of sociology. A prescient analyst of the dynamics of our modern consumer society, Mandeville is author of (...) a striking naturalistic account of the gradual evolution of modern society from its primitive antecedents. His literary signature, in a manner of speaking, is his famous paradox, "private vices, public benefits." This new edition of Free Thoughts is prefaced by a lengthy and informative introduction by Irwin Primer, who recreates not only the literary, political, and religious atmosphere surrounding Mandeville, but also the controversies that surrounded his writing in mid-eighteenth-century England. Primer includes textual notes on the first and second editions of this classic work. To understand Mandeville's Free Thoughts, one needs to situate it within the context of the religious and political controversies, ongoing subversion, fear and dormant warfare of his times. Those would eventually erupt again and for the last time in the bloody Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46. The first five chapters of the book explore religious and theological issues including the nature of belief and knowledge, the significance of rites and ceremonies, and controversies about Christian mysteries such as the Trinity and free will and predestination. The next five chapters explore controversial issues of church politics, including persecution and toleration across the centuries, the basis of Mandeville's anticlericalism. In the eleventh chapter, he turns aside from matters of religion to review the balance of powers in Britain's government, a mixed or limited monarchy. The final chapter is essentially a repetition of Mandeville's pleas for civil and religious peace through mutual toleration by opposing religious parties. Mandeville's work is of continuing interest to students of culture and history, religion and theology, and political science. Irwin Primer is professor emeritus at Rutgers University who has written widely on Mandeville and the Scottish tradition in philosophy. (shrink)

In 1940, John and Morag Aitkenhead set up Kilquhanity School in rural Galloway, inspired by the writings of A.S. Neill and the practices at Summerhill School. In 1962, Aitkenhead wrote that he had swallowed ‘hook, line and sinker’ Neill's theories and that ‘but for him and his example, there could never have been this free school in Scotland’. Historians and commentators have tended to share his view, for example, describing Aitkenhead as a ‘disciple’ of Neill and Kilquhanity as (...) an ‘approximate’ of Summerhill with its weekly meeting, informality of relations between adults and children and a valuing of freedom and happiness over academic achievement.However, this article, drawing on primary research with ex-pupils and staff, uncovers significant differences of philosophy and practice between the two schools, particularly in relation to pupils’ contribution to the Kilquhanity School community through the daily practice of ‘useful work’. These differences raise questions about the positioning of Kilquhanity as simply a less well-known and less radical ‘Summerhill in Scotland’ and expose an often neglected fault line within the progressive and radical movements with which both schools are associated. (shrink)

At the end of the second Christian millennium, Christians united in the church of different denominations and ceremonies. The most devoted ones are looking for ecumenical paths, "that all be one." However, every person is free in his own way to build ties with the Lord. But, as emphasized by the first Metropolitan Rusich Ilarion in the "Word of Law and Grace," every person and the whole people are responsible before God. This statement is based on the authority (...) of biblical texts. Therefore, Christians must worry not only about their own salvation, but also about the best, most natural and most useful arrangement of the Christian life of their nation. (shrink)

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses were meant to guarantee freedom of religion for all persons living in the United States. This was to be done by ensuring that government could not establish a state religion nor interfere with individual practices and beliefs so long as they did not violate public morals. The idea was to have the two clauses operate together to ensure state separation in matters of religion. However, recent caselaw involving government accommodations to religious (...) organizations has emphasized the Free Exercise Clause with little or no attention afforded the Establishment Clause. As a result, intermediate factors like entanglement, endorsement, general applicability, and neutrality, that previously were used to assist the separation of church and state, are now called into question. This Article attempts to rekindle these factors by attaching a public/private distinction to the way the two clauses are understood, to ensure a more certain and clearer basis for the separation of church and state. (shrink)

In this article, I analyse some pre-Humean arguments for and against tolerance by early eighteenth-century Scottish philosophers and theologians. I present these in dialogue with the Confession of Faith, which constituted the central doctrinal pillar of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Kirk viewed tolerance rather suspiciously as a danger for its unity, and if the Confession asserted liberty of conscience against the Catholics, it insisted nevertheless on rigid boundaries. This created tensions which the theologians John Simson and (...) Archibald Campbell sought to exploit when they were attacked by Committees for Purity of Doctrine for suspicion of heresy. Simson’s and Campbell’s arguments for toleration revolved around issues of liberty of conscience, scripture interpretation and the necessity of open debate for the moral progress of mankind. George Turnbull and Francis Hutcheson, then, insisted on a moral core of religion and on limitations of the Church’s power. They showed more optimism than David Hume regarding our moral resources to overcome religion’s corruptive potential, under the condition that we are properly guided. (shrink)

Under normal circumstances the church would function as an agent of change and transformation, but this article focuses on the church herself that needs radical change if she is to remain relevant in mission and ministry in this current era. Clericalism and the centralisation of hierarchical control can be identified as the root causes of institutional pathology and weakening collegiality. To address clericalism may require the adjustment of seminary training, as in the current system seminarians are nurtured in (...) a sense of separateness, promoting male-ego and feed gender exclusivity and doctrinal self-righteousness. While the seminary was once an instrument of reform in the Catholic Church, established to counter problems such as clerical concubinage and illiteracy, but now it is no longer suitable as it has become the forum that breeds other problems. Priority attention should be paid to purge the church of rampant clericalism, discriminatory scapegoating of gay persons, marginalisation of free thinkers, exclusion of women priests, the perceived moral laxity of family life issues and reception of communion by divorced Catholics without the benefits of annulment. Discrediting the personal authority of the pope is hardly an enlightened option. What ought to be transformed is the centralisation of control and allowing increased localised dominion whereby crises such as sexual abuse scandals could be addressed and solved more speedily and liberally, and limit the need to go to the top for solutions. To wait for centralised, hierarchal structures to deal with urgent issues is not desirable, as speedy accountability is needed to address issues that hurt the church in its entirety. (shrink)

Recognition of the narrative character of Christian convictions for the formation of the character of community and individuals is crucial for understanding how such convictions can be said to be true or false. In particular the truth of Christian convictions is revealed by their power to form and sustain a community capable of witnessing to the God of heaven and earth in a divided and violent world. The ethics of such a community contrasts sharply with those moral theories that ignore (...) or deny the narrative nature of morality by seeking to free ethics from the traditions of historic communities. The recognition of the narrative quality of moral reflection does not destroy the possibility of moral confrontation between different sets of convictions. The church serves the world best by providing categories of interpretation that help us understand the often tragic but hopeful character of our existence. (shrink)

All the major sixteenth-century Reformers knew something about the early church and used the early Fathers. As an Augustinian monk and professor of theology, however, Luther’s knowledge and use of the great Father was both deeper and more nuanced. While indebted to Augustine, Luther went further in defining what it meant for theology to be ‘scriptural’. He saw history as the interaction of God’s two regimes, and the church of every age as weak and flawed but conquering through (...) the cross of Christ. This led him to a free use of the Fathers without being constrained to always agree with or imitate them. The comfort he received from the Apostles’ Creed in particular led him to appreciate the early creedal statements, and so it was natural for him to use them as models when formulating the new confessions required in his own day. The sixteenth-century heritage of written confessions of faith is a heritage under-appreciated but still vital for church bodies today.1. (shrink)

In a lengthy review article, C. Anthony Anderson criticizes the approach to property theory developed in Quality and Concept (1982). That approach is first-order, type-free, and broadly Russellian. Anderson favors Alonzo Church’s higher-order, type-theoretic, broadly Fregean approach. His worries concern the way in which the theory of intensional entities is developed. It is shown that the worries can be handled within the approach developed in the book but they remain serious obstacles for the Church approach. The discussion (...) focuses on: (1) the fine-grained/coarse-grained distinction, (2) proper names and definite descriptions, (3) the paradox of analysis and Mates’ puzzle, and (4) the logical, semantical, and intentional paradoxes. (shrink)