This chapter treats liturgical experience. It finds that there are few textual sources for the study of this experience and that instead practices, postures, gestures, and other elements of lived ritual experience must be considered. Liturgical experience is characterized by structures of repetition and predictability that enable participants to integrate their own experiences and to feel that they belong to something that has preceded them, thus providing a sense of stability and meaningful identity. Liturgy features cycles of confession and celebration that in their back-and-forth movements allow people to process their emotions and to participate in bodily practices that express their convictions and deepest concerns. Liturgical participants are thus shaped in their identity within communities of belonging that provide meaning to their daily experience, both regular and extraordinary.

This chapter considers ascetic experience. It provides historical background for the ascetic movement in the early centuries of Christianity and highlights the texts that can serve as sources for the examination of this type of experience. It shows that ascetic experience is characterized by processes of withdrawal and repentance, both physical and emotional, which try to eliminate temptation, combat passions, and purify the heart. This is achieved through practices of vigilance and discernment that involve a close monitoring of emotions and patterns of thought and action. Such practices result in a purification and reorientation of the self that move through self-denial and self-control to transformation. Ascetic experience thus emerges as a way of grappling with the deeply experienced shortcomings of the human condition through processes of abnegation and a radical break with “ordinary” life.

This chapter works through Romans 10 and Galatians 3:10–14 in conversation with other early Jewish evidence, arguing that Paul is participating in a long-standing Jewish debate about the relationship between repentance and Israel’s redemption. Specifically, will Israel’s repentance initiate the restoration or will God’s redemptive intervention produce Israel’s repentance? Paul comes down squarely on the latter side, arguing for a divinely-initiated redemption through the obedient fidelity of Jesus, whose status and authority as “the just one”—the figure divinely appointed to bring about redemption—was validated by the resurrection. In the process, this chapter provides an elegant solution for the longstanding problem of how to understand Paul’s citations of Lev 18:5 and Deut 30:12–14 in these passages.

The Laudians attempted to strike a balance between human free will and divine grace, as opposed to what they presented as the brutal determinism of the Calvinists and puritans. Their position stressed the role of human effort, whilst attempting to leave no room for any ‘popish’ notions of merit. This chapter describes how some Laudian authors did just that, by concentrating on repentance, amendment and works of penitence. The question of reprobation, and in particular of when even hardened sinners like Judas and Pharaoh could be said to have become reprobate, that is, doomed to damnation, is addressed through the treatment of the former by Edward Kellett, and of the latter by Thomas Jackson. The chapter charts a distinctively Laudian/Arminian route to assurance through works of charity, piety and penance. It concludes with a re-evaluation of the relationship between Arminianism and Laudianism, as the latter has emerged in and through the argument of this book.

This chapter deals with the positive content of Andrewes’ divinity and the ways in which, through the practice of repentance and of good works, the Christian believer could achieve some sense of his or her own salvation. The works involved were organised under three headings: those of charity, which were directed towards fellow Christians; of piety, directed towards God through divine worship; and of chastisement, directed towards the self in response to sin, of which fasting was the leading example. Thus, in spite of what Andrewes insisted were puritan claims to the contrary, not merely faith but also works, not merely the gospel but also the law, were necessary if salvation were to be achieved. In this way something like a sense of assurance could be achieved, composed in equal parts of fear and security, anxiety and comfort. This was a position constructed (once again) against what Andrewes presented as a false (puritan) assurance, indeed a presumption, based on the false assumption that one was one of the elect.

This chapter examines the cutting edge of Laudian theological, ecclesiological and liturgical experiment in Cambridge University during the 1630s. The protagonists here were mostly young men, anxious to push the envelope of the doable and the sayable, and in the process attract the approval of their superiors in the university and church. Moving on from the further reaches of Arminian theology they toyed with notions like justification by works and the necessity of confession to a priest, more and more elaborate decorations of college chapels, and more and more florid performances of what they took to be ceremonial decorum and their critics took to be popish superstition and idolatry. These antics attracted the opprobrium of the old university Calvinist establishment and the support of an emerging clique of Laudian heads of house. A dynamic emerged through which the Laudian agenda was pushed further and faster than some its leading lights, up to and including Laud himself, might have liked. This was a syndrome that continued to operate right up until the collapse of the personal rule in 1640/1.

This chapter examines the Laudian account of the relation between faith, hope and charity, and thus of that between faith and works. The Laudian answer to the question of how far, in this life, fallen humanity could fulfil the law of God is addressed.

Chapter 11 concludes the book by arguing that absent consideration of structural injustice, power, and emotions, transitional justice may be used to legitimate structures of power and emotional narratives that continue to subordinate and marginalise historically abused groups and individuals. It concludes that a different conception of progress and transition is required to navigate the meaning of historical abuses for the legitimacy of Western liberal democracies and Christian churches. On this account, the book concludes, transition and transformation are matters of the character of progress itself, progress that lives in the tension between wrongs that ‘can never be repaired and must never be forgotten’.

In Purgatory where Dante learns how all the purposes of the journey thus far which had progressed from the terrifying dark mountainside, through Hell and into Purgatory, are achieved in his finally passing beyond the whole purgatorial mentality itself into a place of the recovery of the original innocence of Eden. Here Dante learns from Beatrice that the burdens of sin can be finally laid down in the Earthly Paradise, and that he should now have learned, at last, how to smile. For here, she says, sin no longer has any place on the agenda of Dante’s recovery, which takes the form of a redemptive act of memory, recalling the innocence lost in Eden; and now, with the recovery of that true memory, he is now able truly to narrate the journey thus far. Now he can write the Comedy.

Locke regarded the Law of Nature as divinely given and, hence, inherently rational, universally binding, and eternally valid. This view of the Law of Nature informs his natural law theory, which presents both biblical and natural theological arguments. Yet, he believed in the superiority of the Law of Faith, delivered by Christ, over both the Law of Nature and the Law of Moses. To Locke, Christ not only affirmed the Law of Nature completely and unambiguously, but also assured humanity of otherworldly rewards and sanctions and of God’s forgiveness of the repentant faithful. Thus, the Law of Faith effectively promotes the practice of morality and the development of moral character and enables human beings to pursue salvation. Maintaining the necessity both of good works and of acceptance of God’s assisting grace for salvation, Locke rejected predestination, denied original sin, and excluded the satisfaction theory of atonement, which he described as a disputed doctrine, from his account of Christianity in his public writings. However, some of his manuscripts demonstrate his dislike for the satisfaction theory, to which he preferred the Arminians’ governmental theory of atonement.

This chapter examines the compunctious hymns of Romanos the Melodist. It explores the genre of his compositions (kontakion) and their liturgical context, reimagining the performance of his hymns during the Lenten period. It does so according to three themes: compunction and repentance; biblical exemplars of compunction; and compunction in the face of eschatological judgment. By framing the approach of this chapter with these three themes, the most relevant elements of compunction in Romanos’ oeuvre are examined. The chapter shows how Romanos’ kontakia, by retelling and amplifying the sacred stories that defined the Byzantines, sought to frame and shape an emotional and liturgical community in Constantinople.

This chapter moves to ninth-century Byzantium and the hymnographer Kassia, who is the only known female author of hymns appearing in the liturgical books of the Byzantine tradition. Exploring the liturgical performance of Kassia’s hymn On the Sinful Woman during Holy Week, this chapter examines the genre of this hymn (sticheron idiomelon) and its manuscript tradition. The tears of Kassia’s protagonist and how they evoke the mystery of compunction and repentance in Byzantium are investigated. On the Sinful Woman was chanted a few days before Christ’s Passion, evoking the existential abyss created by the absence of the divine from the life of the faithful and unveiling how tears of compunction could bridge this chasm. This chapter concludes with a few brief remarks on the sacred music of Kassia’s hymn and reflections on the relationship between chant and compunction.

This chapter explores the liturgical performance of Andrew of Crete’s Great Kanon. It examines the genre of this hymn (kanon), its liturgical context and its manuscript tradition, investigating how its performance sought to arouse compunction in the faithful. Given there is no critical edition of the Great Kanon currently available, three of the earliest manuscripts of the Triodion where this hymn appears are cited: Sinai Graecus 734–735, Vaticanus Graecus 771 and Grottaferrata Δβ I.This approach, together with an examination of rubrics and other relevant sources, assists in reimagining how the Great Kanon was performed in Byzantium. For the Byzantines, the singing of the Great Kanon became a liturgical act that could mirror, shape and transform the passions of the singer’s soul.