The legislation relating to this penalty was in fact only changed in , after which those convicted on a heresy charge would suffer at most excommunication. At the same time as the judicial pursuit of heresy became less severe, interest in demonology was intense in many European countries.
The sceptical arguments against the existence of witchcraft and demonic possession were still contested into the s by theologians. The Gangraena by Thomas Edwards used a framework equating heresy and possession to draw attention to the variety of radical Protestant views current in the s.
In , Galileo Galilei published his Sidereus Nuncius , describing observations that he had made with the new telescope. These and other discoveries exposed difficulties with the understanding of the heavens current since antiquity and raised interest in teachings such as the heliocentric theory of Copernicus.
In reaction, scholars such as Cosimo Boscaglia [6] maintained that the motion of the Earth and immobility of the Sun were heretical, as they contradicted some accounts given in the Bible as understood at that time. Galileo's part in the controversies over theology , astronomy and philosophy culminated in his trial and sentencing in , on a suspicion of heresy. The Galileo affair —the process by which Galileo came into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church over his support of Copernican astronomy—has often been considered a defining moment in the history of the relationship between religion and science.
Heavy fighting, in some cases a continuation of the religious conflicts of the previous centuries, was seen, particularly in the Low Countries and the Electorate of the Palatinate which saw the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. In Ireland there was a concerted attempt to create "plantations" of Protestant settlers in what was a predominantly Catholic country, and fighting with a religious dimension was serious in the s and s. In France the settlement proposed by the Edict of Nantes was whittled away, to the disadvantage of the Huguenot population, and the edict was revoked in Protestant Europe was largely divided into Lutheran and Reformed Calvinist areas, with the Church of England maintaining a separate position.
Efforts to unify Lutherans and Calvinists had little success; and the ecumenical ambition to overcome the schism of the Protestant Reformation remained almost entirely theoretical. The Church of England under William Laud made serious approaches to figures in the Orthodox Church, looking for common ground. Within Calvinism an important split occurred with the rise of Arminianism ; the Synod of Dort of was a national gathering but with international repercussions, as the teaching of Arminius was firmly rejected at a meeting to which Protestant theologians from outside the Netherlands were invited.
Hindus and Christians: A Century of Protestant Ecumenical Thought. - Free Online Library
The Westminster Assembly of the s was another major council dealing with Reformed theology, and some of its works continue to be important to Protestant denominations. In the s England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland underwent religious strife comparable to that which its neighbours had suffered some generations before.
The rancour associated with these wars is partly attributed to the nature of the Puritan movement, a description admitted to be unsatisfactory by many historians. In its early stages the Puritan movement late 16thth centuries stood for reform in the Church of England, within the Calvinist tradition, aiming to make the Church of England resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially Geneva. The Puritans refused to endorse completely all of the ritual directions and formulas of the Book of Common Prayer ; the imposition of its liturgical order by legal force and inspection sharpened Puritanism into a definite opposition movement.
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists. The first —46 and second —49 civil wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament , while the third war —51 saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The wars ended with the Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September The war led to the trial and execution of Charles I , the exile of his son, Charles II, and replacement of English monarchy with first, the Commonwealth of England —53 , and then with a Protectorate —59 under Oliver Cromwell 's personal rule.
In Ireland military victory for the Parliamentarian forces established the Protestant Ascendancy. After coming to political power as a result of the First English Civil War, the Puritan clergy had an opportunity to set up a national church along Presbyterian lines; for reasons that were also largely political, they failed to do so effectively. After the English Restoration of the Church of England was purged within a few years of its Puritan elements. The successors of the Puritans, in terms of their belies, are referred to as Dissenters and Nonconformists , and included those who formed various Reformed denominations.
Emigration to North America of Protestants, in what became New England , was led by a group of Puritan separatists based in the Netherlands " the pilgrims ". Establishing a colony at Plymouth in , they received a charter from the King of England. This successful, though initially quite difficult, colony marked the beginning of the Protestant presence in America the earlier French, Spanish and Portuguese settlements were Catholic.
Unlike the Spanish or French, the English colonists made little initial effort to evangelise the native peoples. Alexander VII declared in that the soul of Mary was free from original sin. Popular Marian piety was even more colourful and varied than ever before: Jones asserted that Christ was already incarnate in India and drew the inference that the Christian missionary task was to discover the Christ who is indigenous to India, rather than import the Christ of the West to India.
This incarnational model is valuable and is still useful to help Christians get to the first stage of relating with people of other faiths. In my own ministry in an inner city Baptist Church in Chicago, I used this model effectively to move middle-class, highly educated, Caucasian church members to engage with people who are low-income, African American and living in inner-city neighborhoods by urging them to see the risen Christ incarnate in those communities. However this model is not without its difficulties.
Andrews sees incarnation even in the Hindu scriptures that provide such meaning to the people of India.
Christianity in the 17th century
The problem, of course, is that this scripture is not Christian. Even if Christians may speak among themselves of Christ incarnate in a culture or within a religious tradition or scripture, as Catholic scholar Raimundo Panikkar learned when he attempted to locate the Christ incognito in Hinduism, in his Unknown Christ of Hinduism, this is problematic.
Although Panikkar made a vigorous defense of in a later edition, suggesting that only problem with his Christology is the title of the book, he has remained unconvincing. A pivotal event in the Christian efforts to deal with pluralism was the International Missionary Conference held at Tambaram, South India in This he maintained is the only point of contact between the Christian and the Hindu. Wesley Ariyarajah, in his Hindus and Christians: A Century of Protestant Ecumenical Thought, on the history of the ecumenical attempts at relating to people of other faiths, concludes that Tambaram resulted in dividing the ecumenical movement.
Western Christians worried about sacrificing fundamentals of the faith, watering-down evangelical passions and engaging in syncretism. Additionally, western theology based largely on the work of theologians such as Karl Barth had no handles to deal with the interfaith reality.
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However, to Asian Christians who had grown up in religiously diverse contexts it was an exciting and necessary adventure of faith. During the decades of the 50s and 60s many Asian countries having just gained independence from the colonial empires and its missionary movement, began to formulate what might become their indigenous theologies.
Choan Seng Song, a Taiwanese theologian in proposed a celebration of the end of western missions that would at last pave the way for an indigenous Asian theology to emerge. He is still one of the foremost proponents of a dialogical theology. More recently, Wesley Ariarajah picked up the argument. The history of Israel begins at the Exodus event.
They want to reach further back to the patriarchs — to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Perhaps the biblical authors reached back to Abraham because they wanted to broaden the tent. They reached back even further — to the story of Noah, where the covenant was with all living beings. And with that they included all of creation. Christopher Duraisingh writes of M. He has insisted that it is the collective struggles of human beings for their humanization that provides an adequate point of departure and ground for our rethinking mission and dialogue.
In that same article, Duraisingh proposes yet another shift from the Christo-centric and theo-centric models to a soteriological model. Such a salvation-centered starting point would call on different religious believers to share…. Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality. Gort , Henry Jansen and W. Nelly van Doorn-Harder and Lourens Minnema. Reckoning with God in a World of Conflicts. Multireligious Views and Case Studies.
Gort , Henry Jansen and Hendrik M. Theology in Global Dialogue. The Critique of the Enlightenment Revisited.
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