Gender, Divorce, Milton, and the Contexts of WCF 24

What hath John Milton to do with the Westminster Confession of Faith on Gender, Marriage, and Divorce?

This module explores specific aspects of the historical, theological, and political “intellectual biography” of, and contexts for, the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith on marriage and divorce (WCF 24, esp. sect. 6). This module focuses on the Westminster Assembly’s complicated relationship to the Augustinian and canon law traditions on gender and marriage, and to the writings of contemporary divorce polemicist, John Milton, who dedicated the first of his divorce treatises to the Assembly. The textual center of this module is the Anonymous Answer (pamphlet) to Milton, published within the context of the Assembly but not as an official Assembly document. Examining and interpreting this document in its entirety in context, this module is designed as a lecture and seminar exercise in close reading of one text with a view to the expanding circle of its important contexts. It is a case study in the interpretation, personal and ecclesiastical, of an early modern, historically significant, and theologically complicated text touching on topics of immense classical and current interest. This course module is part of the Greystone postgraduate module series Studies in the Reformed Confessions.

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