This book examines the place of literature in the Reformation, considering both how arguments about biblical meaning and literary interpretation influenced the new theology, and how developments in ...theology in turn influenced literary practices. Part One focuses on Northern Europe, reconsidering the relationship between Renaissance humanism (especially Erasmus) and religious ideas (especially Luther). Parts Two and Three examine Tudor and early Stuart England. Part Two describes the rise of vernacular theology and Protestant culture in relation to fundamental changes in the understanding of the English language. Part Three studies English religious poetry (including Donne, Herbert, and, in an Epilogue, Milton) in the wake of these changes. Bringing together genres and styles of writing that are normally kept apart (poems, sermons, treatises, commentaries), the author offers a re-evaluation of the literary production of this intensely verbal and controversial period.
Athens and Wittenberg Kellerman, James A; Smith, R. Alden; Springer, Carl P. E
11/2022, Letnik:
234
eBook
Athens and Wittenberg explores how Luther and early Lutheranism did not neglect the classics of Greece and Rome, but continued to draw from the philosophy and poetry of antiquity in their quest to ...reform the church.
In this new account of the emergence of a distinctive territorial state in early modern Germany, Robert von Friedeburg examines how the modern notion of state does not rest on the experience of a ...bureaucratic state-apparatus. It emerged to stabilize monarchy from dynastic insecurity and constrain it to protect the rule of law, subjects, and their lives and property. Against this background, Lutheran and neo-Aristotelian notions on the spiritual and material welfare of subjects dominating German debate interacted with Western European arguments against 'despotism' to protect the lives and property of subjects. The combined result of this interaction under the impact of the Thirty Years War was Seckendorff's Der Deutsche Fürstenstaat (1656), constraining the evil machinations of princes and organizing the detailed administration of life in the tradition of German Policey, and which founded a specifically German notion of the modern state as comprehensive provision of services to its subjects.
Can comfort be found in understanding that God hides from us? Martin Luther, the protestant reformer, would say 'Yes'. Initially, the thought of God hiding Himself when He is most needed might be ...disconcerting. Still, Luther's concept of God's hiddenness has more in common with a fatherly game of hide-and-seek, rather than a divine attempt to startle us deviously. If this distinction can be grasped, a sense of Luther's benevolent purpose becomes clearer. After all, it was often in the context of trials and suffering that Luther turned to discuss and apply his concept of the hidden God.
