Erasmus and Calvin on the Foolishness of God: Reason and Emotion in the Christian Philosophy (Erasmus Studies) - Hardcover

Kirk Essary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1487501889 ISBN 13: 9781487501884

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2017

Synopsis

What did Paul mean when he wrote that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom? Through close analysis of the sixteenth-century reception of Paul's discourses of folly, this book examines the role of the New Testament in the development of what Erasmus and John Calvin refer to as the "Christian philosophy."

Erasmus and Calvin on the Foolishness of God reveals the importance of Pauline rhetoric in the development of humanist critiques of scholasticism while charting the formation of a specifically affective approach to religious epistemology and theological method. As the first book-length examination of Calvin's indebtedness to Erasmus, which also considers the participation of Bullinger, Pellikan, and Melanchthon in an Erasmian exegetical milieu, it is a case study in the complicated cross-confessional exchange of ideas in the sixteenth century. Kirk Essary examines assumptions about the very nature of theology in the sixteenth century, how it was understood by leading humanist reformers, and how ideas about philosophy and rhetoric were received, appropriated, and shared in a complex intellectual and religious context.

About this title

About the Author

Kirk Essary is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe, 1100-1800).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1487501889
• ISBN 13: 9781487501884
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304