.... Even if the pagan discourse of virtue had been adopted by Christianity in its earliest centuries, both medieval and early modern European thinkers continued to wrestle with the interface between divine formation and social formation and their implications for the character of human moral agency. ©...

... habitual, agential understandings of language. [email protected] © 2022 by Duke University Press 2022 evangelical theology Calvinism predestination human virtue early modern elegy Any historian of the virtues and salvation within Christian histories might reasonably expect...

..., that brings a person to the God who has established God as the beatifying end of the human person; and, the virtues that are most conducive to that life with God are, radically, the gift of God, due to divine initiative. Although less immediately obvious, Aquinas’s virtue ethics is also thoroughly...

.... This essay supplements Renaissance humanism with Rabbinic and post-Rabbinic readings of Genesis in order to construe the virtue of magnanimity as a hospitable stance toward different wisdom traditions. [email protected] © 2022 by Duke University Press 2022 Shakespeare Erasmus magnanimity...

...Stephen M. Fallon In a famous passage, the Son of God in Paradise Regained dismisses classical philosophers for their ignorance of “how man fell” and for their confidence in human sufficiency to attain virtue. “In themselves,” the Son says dismissively, they “seek virtue.” By putting this argument...

...Terence Irwin Luther’s denials (in his Commentary on Romans ) of the natural capacity to acquire moral virtues rest on three assumptions. (1) Virtue requires the pursuit of virtuous action for its own sake. (2) In the state of sin, human aims and motives are all controlled by self-love. (3) Insofar...

... childe” strives to understand sin, guilt, and culpability within the constraints of humanity’s limited self- knowledge. Julian both works within and transcends established scriptural and penitential traditions of representing childhood, childlikeness, and the related quality of meekness, a key virtue...

... cockfighting texts (one that promotes the virtues of cockfighting as a sport and another that figures cockfighting as an extension of animal husbandry), the essay maps the range of cultural and behavioral practices that early modern cockfighting discourse makes possible. Located in allegories of the cockfight...

..., yet for lacke of the spirituall receving by clennes of sp[i]rite, he attayneth not the fruitefull thing of the sacrament . (176, my emphasis) Thomas More theology of transubstantiation body of Christ human virtue translation of scripture © 2022 by Duke University Press 2022...

...,” affirming that he would be “an unkynde kynge” if this were not so. The dazzling passage plays on the homophony of the words kyn , kynde (natural), and kynde (kind), confirming the version of the virtues and human salvation taught in passus XIX by Christ as the Good Samaritan. 30 There Christ...

... pertained to character: it framed a picture of reason, the ends of action, and of human agency all at once. The tradition of the virtues encompassed practices of living well in relation to visions of the good, and in its later Christian version, of God. One became good through practice, just as a harpist...

... of the Duke, his actions nevertheless expose a starkly different vision of the world — one in which the role and capacity of intercessory speech has been tremendously diminished. If intercession envisions a world of transferrable, shareable human virtue, Angelo instead sees a world that is totally...

...Markku Peltonen This article examines the role and place of virtues in early modern English grammar schools (ca. 1558 – 1640). It argues that schoolboys were exposed to the questions of moral philosophy and virtues throughout their time in the grammar school. From their elementary classes in Latin...

... to concupiscence derived by human ingenuity” is a specific understanding of “natural” that Aquinas shares with Aristotle: what is natural for humans is to act according to reason and virtue. This does not mean that humans will act virtuously without training. Comus’s untrained “fancy” is not a suf- ficient...

... in the sixteenth century “differed from inherited Christian virtue ethics in cru- cial ways.” For “salvation had nothing to do with the virtues because it had nothing to do with human freedom or the human will. Virtuous Christian behavior did not contribute to one’s eternal salvation but was a sanctifying...

... lead to major and unpredictable historical transformations. Contributors should be familiar with an earlier JMEMS special issue edited by Jennifer Herdt on the virtues (vol. 42, no. 1, 2012). We hope to build on work by John Bossy, Eamon Duffy, James Simpson, Thomas Pfau ( Minding the Modern: Human...

..., Bradstreet blurs the distinction between human and divine. As we will see, she imagines both in terms of a relational virtue that involves duty as well as affective responses and a vision of unity that does not negate difference. The psalm, “Upon My Dear and Loving Husband,” for example, is addressed...

... of the chain of virtue in her work of mysticism, The Dialogue, written in the form of a dialogue between the Eternal Father and the human soul (Catherine’s own). There Catherine repeatedly describes the chain of virtue as a God-­given means for the bind- ing of Satan (whose destructive works are thereby...

..., in a broad sense virtue denotes whatever is good and praiseworthy in human acts or passions; and in this way shame is sometimes called a virtue, since it is a praiseworthy passion. 99 The inherent moral value of shame is evident, since shame is an incentive to deliberate thoughtfully, and this is important...

... or as achieved. Theological contributions could examine special features surrounding the imi- tation of Christ or the saints, or examine how human efforts to acquire virtue were understood in relation to the sacraments, the church, and more generally the workings of divine grace in infusing virtue...