This chapter contends that in Romans 2, Paul argues that the prophetic promises to make Israel obedient via the “Torah written on the heart” and the “circumcision of the heart” and a “new heart and new spirit” are presently being fulfilled. But in a startling twist, he includes uncircumcised gentiles among those receiving these things promised to Israel, building on his case in Rom 1 that Israel’s historic idolatry and immorality opened the door for gentiles to be included due to God’s impartiality.

This chapter focuses upon the Holy Spirit’s renovating work in the heart of the individual believer. Wholly by grace, the Spirit turns sinful humanity from the love of nothingness to the love of God, creating in the hearts of those being redeemed Christ’s own human desires.

This chapter outlines the Laudian critique of puritan scripturalism, and the ways in which what the Laudians saw as the puritan insistence of the right of every Christian to a private judgement of what the scripture meant and a consequent duty, on the basis of that judgement, to hold the doings of their superiors in church and state to account. This, the Laudians claimed, undermined the authority of both the clergy and the church, not to mention order in church, state and society. At stake was not only a right to interpret scripture, but also claims to the testimony of the Holy Spirit. For the Laudians, such claims upset, indeed inverted, social and gender hierarchies, and utterly subverted the authority of the clergy. Again the result was a de facto, if not all too often, a de jure, separation.

Michael McClymond summarizes Jonathan Edwards’s theology of conscience. Edwards concedes that everyone has a conscience. Everyone’s “natural conscience” can perceive right and wrong, but only the converted conscience can fully apprehend God’s moral excellence and beauty. Further, the conscience operates on the principle of “reversibility”: the empathetic orientation of one’s actions considering their effects on others. However, the person with the converted conscience is constantly aware of his propensity to sin and that God’s moral demands are forever correct. Conscience gets stronger and more refined the more it is heeded; conversely, it gets duller the more it is resisted. The faith of true believers removes the stain of a guilty conscience. Even if not redeemed, however, that self-same natural conscience will agree entirely with the justness of God’s righteous punishment for him at the Last Judgment.

Jeffrey Hammond outlines a biblical theology of conscience. A Christian conscience is an ever-growing, recalibrating capacity of the regenerated (converted) person. Then, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, the Christian can seek to fulfill the great commands of the New Testament: to love God and love the neighbor. Working out these commands involves judgment of what to do in any given situation. However, in making any difficult judgment, the Christian is always aided by the “still, small” voice of the Holy Spirit, counselors, prayer, and the certain knowledge that the conscientious decision will always line up with the will of God as revealed in the Word of God. The redeemed conscience is one that is both bound and freed. The Christian is bound to follow the moral instruction in the New Testament, but at the same time, she is also freed to do it. The redeemed conscience is one that judges and will be judged by the God who perceives the deliberations of all consciences. The Christian, however, sensitive to the Spirit in both deciding and acting, can rest upon her decisions with a sense of equanimity and peace, knowing that she has faithfully exercised her conscience.

This chapter considers how the theological treatise De Doctrina Christiana, attributed to John Milton, portrays the Bible’s textual history in such a way as to underwrite the political agency of the Holy Spirit-filled Christian. In this work, which directly confronts the putatively corrosive findings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historical scholarship on the biblical text, Milton argues in strikingly unequivocal terms that the biblical text is utterly defenseless to corruption and loss in its passage through history. Paradoxically, however, he argues that this condition of total vulnerability to contingency is providentially ordained, and that it has the effect of emphasizing the preeminence of the Holy Spirit within the individual Christian over the external text. I contend that the challenges for the Christian presented by the corruption and loss of the sacred texts in Milton’s account correspond with his theological politics centered on the struggles and ultimate authority of the Spirit-guided, individual believer encountering the fallen world. This politics is given voice in his tracts Areopagitica and Of Civil Power, and most famously in his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Locke omitted the Trinitarian dogma from his elucidation of the Christian religion in "The Reasonableness of Christianity." This omission implicitly made belief in the Trinity unnecessary to salvation and attracted much criticism, leading John Edwards and others to accuse Locke of Socinianism. Locke refused to clarify his position on the Trinity even when Edwards and Stillingfleet pressured him to do so. His public silence on the Trinity was surprising to many, because the "Reasonableness" appeared in the middle of the heated Trinitarian controversy of the late seventeenth century. Locke actually expressed, unsystematically and at times ambiguously, his views on Christ’s nature and mission in his public writings on religion and in various manuscript notes, and he focused on Trinitarian issues in "Adversaria Theologica" and other manuscripts. His Christological reflections and his consideration of Trinitarian issues denote a heterodox, non-Trinitarian conception of the Godhead, which presents both Socinian and Arian elements, although he never expressly denied the Trinity. Irenic and prudential reasons contributed to his choice to avoid public discussion of the Trinitarian dogma.

This chapter reassesses the role of the divine and matter in Calcidius' commentary in comparison with views attested for Christian authors of this era, in order to highlight the incompatibility between the two worldviews.

This chapter first outlines the preconciliar, largely Christocentric perspective that formed the foundation for the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. As the Council proceeded it complemented this Christological understanding of the church with increasing awareness of the ecclesial role of the Holy Spirit. The eschatological framework of the final documents and the analogy made between ecclesial and Trinitarian koinonia are two notable effects of this rebalancing of Word and Spirit.