Francis Gumerlock

Books and Articles on the Theology of Grace and Eschatology

Theology of Grace

Forthcoming Books & Articles in 2019

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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

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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

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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