The relationship among Clement of Alexandria's three major works, Protreptikos, Paidagōgos and Stromateis, has vexed scholars for almost a century. Present state of the question reflects the condition of Clement studies as a whole: a welter of promising insights, ingenious theories, many contradictions and frustrating confusion. Recent attempts to approach the Alexandrine through historical-exegetical procedures have reopened Clement studies and have suggested that re-examination and re-evaluation of his theology are in order.

It would be difficult to find an aspect of eighth-century papal history that has been more thoroughly studied than the early pontificate of Hadrian I (772–795). A host of scholars—among them Duchesne, Caspar, Kleinclausz, Kehr, Halphen and Hodgkin—have scrutinized each of the highly significant developments which unfolded between Hadrian's election on February 1, 772, and Charles the Great's assumption of the Lombard crown in June, 774: Hadrian's vigorous measures against the Roman supporters of the Lombard king, Desiderius (757–774); his appeal to Charles for Frankish military assistance to counter Desiderius' offensive in the papal duchy of Rome; and Hadrian's conference with Charles in Rome in April, 774, which resulted in Charles' donation of 774 and his subsequent deposition of Desiderius and installation of himself as rex Langobardorum.

In searching for the sources and origins of the liberal theology which toward the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century came to occupy an increasingly important position in English religious thought, historians invariably have turned their attention toward the Continent. Indeed, the impact of this approach suggested by the very label—“Arminianism”—which historically has attached itself to the new theological tendency. But in the preoccupation with continental influences some significant indigenous sources and precedents have been overlooked. The purpose of this article is to call attention to one such precedent—the activities and opinions of an obscure though important religious group which flourished during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I and which were known to their contemporaries as the “Freewillers.”

When South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was assassinated on September 6, 1966, a writer in the Cape Town Afrikaans newspaper, Die Burger, included an instructive comment. He said, “May the God in whom we believe make clear to us in His own good time what this terrible event is to signify to our country and her people.” This statement reminds us of a dimension in South African nationalism which goes beyond the normal interests of a nation. A theological motif is introduced which remains dominant in the South African mind. In the eyes of Afrikaners this theological concern lifts their problems out of the area of purely political and economic discussion for their whole cultural effort involves fulfilling a divine mission.2 Therefore, the death of Hendrik Verwoerd was more than a tragedy for the nation—it was a tragedy with divine implications.

“Prayer was offered by Father A. D. Merrill.…Letters were read from Fathers Tucker, Crandall, and Cox.”

“I assisted Father Craig at a communion there in the spring of 1836.…”

The image of the American Protestant minister in the American novel of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was, according to many scholars, predominantly a negative one. Conservative, steeped in outdated creeds, aloof from modern realities, and materialistic—these were some of the kinder descriptions of the much maligned Protestant clergyman which they find in the American novel of this period. But my own study of over one hundred Christian social novels, which reflect the rise of the social gospel in American Protestantism, leads me to urge a reassessment of this traditional view of the literary image of the Protestant minister. As propaganda for the emerging social gospel, the Christian social novel portrays not only the stereotyped picture of the clergyman, but more prominently a new kind of minister—physically rugged, intelligent, deeply religious, compassionate and above all a man concerned with the application of the gospel to economic and social problems. He was, in sum, an idealized image of the kind of heroic minister needed to take the gospel out of the sanctuary and into the slums and factories of modern urban America.