English Protestant casuistry: With special emphasis on conscience and oath -taking.
Item
-
Title
-
English Protestant casuistry: With special emphasis on conscience and oath -taking.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3187368
-
identifier
-
3187368
-
Creator
-
Witchel, Lawrence.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Randolph Trumbach
-
Date
-
2005
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
History, European | History, Church
-
Abstract
-
The purpose of "English Protestant Casuistry: with Special Emphasis on Conscience and Oath-taking" is to examine the institution of Protestant casuistry and assess its effect on the religious and political directives that produced moral conflict.;The study focuses on six prominent clergymen who practiced casuistry: William Perkins, Joseph Hall, William Ames, Robert Sanderson, Jeremy Taylor and Richard Baxter, plus a lesser group of clergy and laymen, John Dury, Thomas Hobbes, John Donne and John Sharp. The dissertation supports the thesis that English Protestant casuistry was almost entirely grounded in Puritan anxiety over election and salvation. Therefore, it is written with predestinarian concerns in mind, particularly those of grace, ecclesiology and scriptural authority. It argues against the notion that casuistry was a kind of rationale developed for the purpose of avoiding moral obligation and, instead, holds that it favored the prevailing intellectual precepts of right reason, biblical precedent, and the moral ordering of conscience. The claim is made that all casuistry is indivisible in context from conscience which is a Christian construction with antecedents in Aristotelian and Roman Stoic thought.;This study shows the influence of casuistry in the playhouses, in the pulpits, on the agendas of religious meetings and in one-on-one practice among clergy and laymen. It also investigates the relationship between the moral perplexities of oath-taking and the need for Protestant casuistry. Additionally, it argues that the decline of casuistry, after the Restoration was due to an Arminian-influenced Church of England theology that believed God's grace was available to all, as opposed to a Calvinist-centered theology of a humankind born into sin.;An important part of this dissertation is the section, "Casuistic Uses of Biblical and Secular Authorities." It is the first time that a historian has attempted to measure the degree to which casuistry used biblical and secular authority to support moral debate.;The demands of allegiance to the state versus allegiance to conscience created conflicts that called for a functional theology with a consistent codified body of principles. This thesis argues that casuistry fulfilled that need.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
