Reformed theology

Forthcoming Books & Articles in 2019

February 18, 2019 by Frank Leave a Comment

First, to all of our readers and visitors, I wish you a blessed New Year.

Concerning books and articles to be published in 2019, this spring I look forward to the release of The Carolingian Commentaries on the Apocalypse by Theodulf and Smaragdus published by Medieval Institute Press. It will contain English translations of the Apocalypse commentary of Theodulf of Orleans from the year 810 and three homilies on the Apocalypse of Smaragdus from the year 812. Both served under King Charlemagne. Hopefully this year an essay I wrote on “Tenth-Century Exegesis of the Apocalypse” will be published in the Cambridge Companion to Apocalyptic Literature edited by Colin McAllister. It treats Arethas of Caesarea, the Catechesis Celtica, and an anonymous Gloss on the Apocalypse of John. These are discussed further under the “Forthcoming” tab on this site.

The “Current Projects” tab has also been updated. Concerning current writing projects, this year I look forward to finishing and submitting two books of translations of sixth and seventh-century writings on the Apocalypse. This spring I also plan to write three articles: “Spiritual Gifts: Patristics through Reformation Era,” “Predestination: Greek and Latin Patristics and Orthodox Churches,” and “Sin and Its Effects on the Human Will in Early Medieval pseudo-Augustinian Literature on Predestination.” All three of these I agreed to write for various books edited by others and they are due in June and July.

Finally, I would like to recommend a few books by others that I have read recently. On eschatology The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age by Jesse Hoover (Oxford, 2018), Robert Wilken’s The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (Yale University Press, 1992), and 40 Questions about the End Times by Eckhard Schnabel (Kregel, 2011). On the theology of grace and much more, there is the first English translation of Isidore of Seville’s Sententiae in the Ancient Christian Writers series, Vol. 73 (Newman, 2018), which I thoroughly enjoyed. Also the text “On the Hardening of Pharoah’s Heart,” probably written by Pelagius, came out in a first English translation by Bryn R. Rees in Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 6 (2012):1-54.

My prayer for myself and for you in 2019 is that in holiness and humility we would serve our King, the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved us and died for us. Frank

New Books on Eschatology & the Theology of Grace in Christian History

January 1, 2018 by Frank Leave a Comment

Happy New Year! In this post I want to inform our readers of some new books on eschatology and the theology of grace in early and medieval Christian history. On eschatology, they are:

T.C. Schmidt, transl., Hippolytus of Rome: Commentary on Daniel and ‘Chronicon’ (Georgias Press, 2017).

Peter of John Olivi, Commentary on the Apocalypse. Translation, Notes, and Introduction by Warren Lewis (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2017). This is a large commentary written in the year 1298.

On the theology of grace, most of which relate to the ninth-century controversy over divine predestination, are the following books:

Matthew Bryan Gillis, Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Rachel Stone and Charles West, eds., Hincmar of Rheims: Life and Work (Manchester University Press, 2015).

Jared G. Wielfaert, Prudentius of Troyes (d. 861) and the Reception of the Patristic Tradition in the Carolingian Era (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2015). Available from ProQuest.

Guido Stucco, The Doctrine of Predestination in Catholic Scholasticism (2017).

Also, the following articles on the Gottschalk controversy may be of interest:

Brian Matz, “Augustine in the Predestination Controversy of the Ninth Century, Part 1: The Double Predestinarians Gottschalk of Orbais and Ratramnus of Corbie,” Augustinian Studies 46:2 (2015):155-184.

Jenny Smith, “As if Augustine Had Said: Textual Interpretation and Augustinian Ambiguity in a Medieval Debate on Predestination,” Past Imperfect 19 (2016)

Jenny Smith, “The Rebellious Monk Gottschalk of Orbais: Defining Heresy in a Medieval Debate on Predestination.” Both of Ms. Smith’s articles can be found on line.

Happy reading and wishing all of our readers a blessed 2018.

Frank

New Books on the Theology of Grace

December 12, 2015 by Frank Leave a Comment

For our readers who are interested in the theology of grace in church history, this entry directs you to some new books and studies on the topic. First, there is a doctoral dissertation by Thomas L. Humphries, Jr. entitled “That They May Learn What They Desire: Latin Pneumatology from Cassian to Gregory the Great” (Emory University, 2011). Most dissertations are available for purchase by Proquest. This dissertation contains the most comprehensive study to date on the authorship of an ancient text which was used in the formation of the canons of the Council of Orange (529) called Chapters from Saint Augustine Transmitted Into the City of Rome. On pages 88-92 and 123-135 Humphries shows that this text was written by the Scythian monks led by John Maxentius.

On Gottschalk of Orbais and the controversy over predestination in the ninth-century, Jenny C. Smith, now studying at the University of Notre Dame, wrote a master’s thesis on Gottschalk when she was attending Valdosta State University in Georgia. It can be read on line at https://vtext.valdosta.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10428/1929/smith-jenny_thesis.pdf?sequence+1&isAllowed=y Jonathan Dixon at the Queen’s University in Belfast has been working on a dissertation on John Scottus Eriugena’s Treatise on Divine Predestination. I am not sure if his has been completed. Connie L. Meyer’s Gottschalk: Servant of God (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2015) was recently published. It provides English translations of two of Gottschalk’s poems that have not before appeared in publication.

On predestination in the late medieval and early modern periods, I recently came upon James L. Halverson’s Peter Aureol on Predestination, although it was published by Brill in 1998. Guido Stucco’s The Catholic Doctrine of Predestination from Luther to Jansenius (Xlibris, 2014) presents the thoughts of obscure figures like Agostino Mainardi (c 1532) and Domingo Banez. The book also provides a 35-page English translation of the table of contents of Cornelius Jansen’s massive treatise Augustinus. William of Auvergne’s Selected Spiritual Writings translated by the late Roland Teske and published by Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto contains his treatise “On Grace.” It was written to “destroy the error of Pelagius who said…that the powers of our nature and our free choice were sufficient.” (p.63)

Several ancient and medieval Commentaries on Romans have recently appeared in English translations. They include that of Origen translated by Thomas P. Scheck in Fathers of the Church Volume 103 & 104. A two-volume English translation of Theodoret of Cyrus’s Commentary on the Letters of St. Paul was published in 2001 by Holy Cross Orthodox Press. The translator was the late Robert Charles Hill. Peter Abelard’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans was published in 2011 in the Fathers of the Church, Mediaeval Continuation series. That same year Michael Scott Woodward’s translation of The Glossa Ordinaria on Romans was published in the TEAMS Commentary Series. I was pleasantly surprised by the commentary on Romans 8 & 9 by Abelard and the Ordinary Gloss.

My hope is that in these you will find insights regarding the history of the theology of grace and hopefully also some food for the soul.

Merry Christmas 2015

Frank

Grace for Grace, a new book on the Semi-Pelagian debate

August 21, 2014 by Frank Leave a Comment

The debates in Christian history on the theology of grace have intrigued me for many years. I was recently asked to contribute a chapter in a new book about the debates that happened after Augustine over his theology of grace. The book is entitled Grace for Grace: The Debates After Augustine and Pelagius and was published by Catholic University of America Press.
The Semi-Pelagian debates were a series of discussions on the dynamics of salvation between the years 426 and 529. They include many issues and many players. My chapter is on one episode in the early sixth century which involved bishops including Possessor, John Maxentius, and Fulgentius of Ruspe and of which even the emperor Justinian was well aware.

Around 518 John Maxentius and his Scythian monks found that some in Constantinople, led by Possessor, were teaching that personal faith and a good will have their origin in humans, and that when people exercise faith and a choice for Christ, God then rewards them with grace. They had a slogan, “It is of us to choose, but of God to help.” Maxentius believed that they had the cart before the horse. Faith, he taught, is a divine gift (Phil 1:29). Concerning the choice to come to Christ, that too is done only because God’s grace precedes, enabling the person to choose rightly; for as the Apostle said, “It is God who works in you to do and to will of His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13).

Possessor, to support his view of how individual salvation works, used 1 Timothy 2:4 which says that God “wills that all men be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Through letters, Maxentius appealed to Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe in North Africa; and Fulgentius responded at length, supporting Maxentius’ view. This is the subject of my chapter entitled “Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God.”

Those interested in patristics, North African exegesis, the employment of classical rhetoric in early Christianity, church-state relations, Justinian, the Semi-Pelagian controversy, the extent of God’s saving will, and the doctrine of salvation, will find Grace for Grace a helpful tool containing the latest scholarship from a variety of experts in the field of early Christian studies.

See the Table of Contents.

To order a copy from Amazon, click here.

Fulgentius of Ruspe & Newly Translated Texts

June 28, 2014 by Frank Leave a Comment

I am elated to announce the forthcoming publication in Fathers of the Church of important writings of Fulgentius of Ruspe (d. 533) never before published in English. The translators are Donald Fairbairn, professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his colleague Rob Roy McGregor.

McGregor and Fairbairn’s translation of Fulgentius’ Letter 17 is most welcome. This letter is really a treatise, sixty-seven chapters in length, on Christology and the theology of grace.

Also included in the forthcoming volume are Fulgentius’ three books On the Truth of Predestination and Grace. These were very influential upon early medieval authors like Isidore of Seville and Gottschalk of Orbais. In fact in the late 700s Pope Hadrian was trying to settle a dispute in Spain about predestination, and said the problem would be solved if they just understood the views of Fulgentius.

McGregor and Fairbairn’s volume of translated texts of Fulgentius was published in 2013 in the Fathers of the Church series of Catholic University of America Press. For my review of their book, published in Augustinian Studies in 2014, go to the sidebar of this website, scroll down to the bottom and look for it under “Books Reviewed by the Author.”

For more information about Fulgentius’ theology of grace, see my Fulgentius of Ruspe on the Saving Will of God now available in paperback from Mellen Press for half the price of the hardcover.

Best,
Frank

More Ancient Apocalypse Commentaries in Translation

February 2, 2011 by Frank Leave a Comment

Below are some announcements of ancient commentaries on the Apocalypse in English translation that either have been published recently or are scheduled to appear soon.

Nerses of Lambron. Commentary on the Revelation of Saint John. Translation of the Armenian Text, Notes, and Introduction by Robert W. Thomson (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Nerses, archbishop of Tarsus, wrote this commentary in 1180 AD in the Armenian language. It is an adaptation of the Apocalypse commentary on Andrew of Caesarea from the seventh century. Thomson’s translated text is excellent reading. A full review of it by me appears in the May 2011 issue of Kerux journal. Click here to read my review of Nerses of Lambron-Commentary on the Revelation of St. John.)

An English translation of the aforementioned Greek commentary on Revelation composed by Andrew of Caesarea in Cappadocia, from 609-614 AD, appeared in Part 2 of the 2008 doctoral dissertation of Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou at the Universite Laval in Quebec entitled “Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East.” It is available for free download at www.revelation-resources.com. Constantinou’s translation of the commentary is scheduled to appear soon in the Fathers of the Church series from Catholic University of America Press. Another English translation of Andrew’s commentary completed by Dr. William Weinrich is scheduled for publication in InterVarsity’s new series Ancient Christian Texts.

The Turin fragments of Tyconius of Carthage’s lost Apocalypse commentary are translated in an excellent dissertation completed in 2010 by David Charles Robinson at the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto entitled “The Mystic Rules of Scripture: Tyconius of Carthage’s Keys and Windows to the Apocalypse.”

An English translation of the massive Commentary on the Apocalypse of Peter John Olivi, composed in 1297, is scheduled for release this summer by Franciscan Institute Publications.

The Apocalypse commentaries of Victorinus, Apringius, Caesarius of Arles, and Bede, translated by William Weinrich, are projected for publication in a volume of the Ancient Christian Texts series by InterVarsity.

Bede’s Apocalypse commentary from the early middle ages was translated into English by Edward Marshall in the 1800s in England and for years it was difficult to obtain in the States because so few libraries carried it. But it has now been reprinted in paperback and is available for purchase at www.fledby.com or www.whitcoulls.co.nz. The commentary is also available in electronic version on line at www.apocalyptic-theories.com and at the medieval sourcebook webpage at www.fordham.edu. Besides the aforementioned translation of Bede’s Apocalypse commentary by Weinrich, a new translation by Faith Wallis of McGill University is scheduled to appear in the Translated Texts for Historians series published by Liverpool University Press.

Two other items not related to Apocalypse commentaries, but that may be of interest to our readers:

Steven Cartwright’s English translation of Peter Abelard’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans is scheduled for release this April in the Mediaeval Continuation Series of Fathers of the Church from Catholic University of America Press. Abelard wrote the commentary in the mid 1130s.

Probably the most comprehensive book on Gottschalk of Orbais in English is the 2009 dissertation of Matthew Bryan Gillis entitled “Gottschalk of Orbais: A Study of Power and Spirituality in a Ninth-Century Life.” I read it last summer. It was one of those books you never want to be over. Gottschalk’s views on predestination sparked a heated controversy in Europe in the mid-ninth century. Most American doctoral dissertations can be purchased from proquest.com.

I would encourage institutional libraries, those who wish to learn more about how the Scriptures have been interpreted throughout Christian history, those interested in the Book of Revelation, and those who work with medieval texts, to add the aforementioned titles to their stacks as they become available.

Have a great day.
Frank