Paul C. H. Lim

Martyrdom and literature in early modern England

Introduction Part I. Non poena sed causa: Martyrdom and the Hermeneutics of Controversy: 1. Controverting consciences 2. Too many brides: the interpretive community and ecclesiological controversy 3. Material witnesses Part II. Conflicting Testimonies in the English Literary Imagination 4. En route to the New Jerusalem: martyrdom and religious allegory 5. When the truth hurts: suffering and religious confidence in Robert Southwell and John Donne 6. The polemics of conscience in the history play 7. Martyrdom, nostalgia, and political engagement Conclusion: admiration and fear.

Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England

Paul Lims study presents an erudite analysis of the Trinitarian controversies in 17th-century England. In addition to grappling with the large number of contemporary texts, the book also delves into the patristic texts employed to defend the various positions they set forth. While addressing the expected salvos unleashed by the leading English Socinians Paul Best and John Biddle, as well as the vigorous defences of the doctrine of the Trinity by orthodox defenders, Lim establishes that the matter was not a mere sideshow to the major ecclesiological disputes of mid 17th-century England. Instead, the book demonstrates ? as the title suggests ? that the doctrine of the Trinity represented one front in a broader contest over the issue of mystery in the Christian faith and the extent to which authority over admittedly incomprehensible matters could be demanded by ecclesiastical authorities.

Practical divinity and spirituality

Puritans from the latter decades of the sixteenth through to the early seventeenth centuries dedicated themselves to the theological and spiritual renewal of the church in England. While Puritanism was rooted in traditional strains of English and Catholic piety, its theological shape was influenced early in the Reformation by published works of Reformed theologians on the continent and by the presence of Martin Bucer (1491-1551), a leading Reformer in Switzerland and southern Germany following the death of Ulrich Zwingli, as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University from 1549 until his death. The essential Calvinism of the Puritan movement was reinforced by the memory, kept alive by John Foxes Actes and Monuments , of martyrdom under the Roman Catholic Queen Mary (reigned 1553-8) and exile in Frankfurt, Strasbourg and Calvins Geneva. The English Bible translated while in exile, known as the Geneva Bible, was published (1560) with verse numbers and marginal notes that made it the most widely used Bible among Puritans even after the appearance of the Authorised Version in 1611. Fellowship with Reformed theologians in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, throughout the reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) further ensured that members of this English branch of the Reformed family participated fully in the international Reformed movement, intent on moving the Church of England in Calvinist directions in every way possible.

An Asian-American Renewal Historical Theologian’s Response to the Duke African-American Nouvelle Théologie of Race

In this article I critically engage the Duke theologians of race—Carter, Jennings, and Bantam—devoting attention especially to Jennings. While appreciating and acknowledging the significance of these projects, I critique Jennings’s selective historiography and suggest that engaging the Anglo-American early modern supersessionist theologies of culture and race would have benefitted Jennings’ project. Then I trace out some implications of Jennings’s call to re-engage Israel and examine how his idealized vision of “submersion and in submission to another’s cultural realities” affects the notion of conversion theologically. As an Asian-American historical theologian, I argue that race is not and should no longer be looked upon as a black-white binary reality. In conclusion, I call for a historiographical fine-tuning of these theologies of race.