Theodore had come from Tarsus via Rome to become archbishop of Canterbury in the 660s. Bringing a great deal of knowledge with him, he had a great influence on British culture and learning, particularly that of the Church, and on ecclesiastical matters, after the reintroduction of Christianity into southern Britain. Here an excerpt is taken from a set of notes on Biblical interpretation, together with a poem in octosyllabics written for a fellow bishop.

The mystic and hermit Richard Rolle (d. 1349) claimed the authority to interpret biblical texts, to add his understandings of their meanings to the received and authoritative interpretations of the Fathers of the Church. This chapter takes up the question of how Rolle understood his own authority as an exegete and how his various explorations of this topic, across his many writings, in Latin and Middle English, compare to the theories of his contemporaries in Oxford and Cambridge, their understandings of how scholastic exegetical authority relates to the inspiration enjoyed by patristic interpreters and, ultimately, to the authors of the Bible itself. Rolle’s theoretical musings have much more in common with this scholastic material than has previously been appreciated, putting pressure on unfortunately persistent binaries of the devotional, affective or mystical, on the one hand, and, on the other, the scholastic or intellectual traditions of medieval Christianity.

The chapter presents the two late religio-political works of Pufendorf in his role as lay theologian Pufendorf, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society (1687), and The Divine Feudal Law; or, Covenants with Mankind (1695). Both tracts consider the changes in religion and politics since the revocation of the tolerance edict of Nantes in 1685 and the acceptance of Huguenots in Protestant Brandenburg-Prussia. Pufendorf’s defence of Protestant positions and severe criticism of French expansionism and Papal supremacy are explained with reference to the respective political and ecclesial theological contexts that had developed since around 1600 (1). Pufendorf’s first tract argues for political toleration of more than one Christian confession and public worship in the state. This is possible because political sovereignty, based on natural law, and religious autonomy, based on the purely religious ends of churches, can and should coexist (2). The biblical reasoning behind this is intensified in the second tract, which argues for mutual appreciation and reconciliation of the Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) confessions. Here Pufendorf integrates his concept of natural law into a new, strictly biblical covenantal theology correlating God’s promises and men’s free obedience (3).

Grotius drew mainly upon the Catholic moral theologians, but his theory of contract law is set in the different perspective of his ‘secular’ natural law system.

David J. Brewer is famous for announcing in 1892 “this is a Christian nation” from the bench of the United States Supreme Court. He believed that Christianity justified an official separation of church and state while remaining the foundation of all human law. A liberal Congregationalist who was comfortable straying from literal readings of the Bible, Brewer spoke often in public on Christianity although his religious faith rarely surfaced in his judicial decisions. His many public speeches allow us to see how religion underlay his opposition to economics regulations as part of an influential conservative voting bloc on the Fuller Court at the turn of the century. Brewer’s stance against appeals in criminal trials relied upon his belief that flawed human justice and perfect divine justice played different roles. Brewer’s work in the peace movement was supported by a hope that it helped to hasten the Second Coming of Christ.