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

$199.00

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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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.

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.

Full Course | 19 Hours

1. Orientation
1.2 What Hath Milton to do with Westminster?
1.3 Contexts
1.4 The Anthropological Dimension
1.5 Milton’s Eve and the Missing Adam, Part 1
1.6 Milton’s Eve and the Missing Adam, Part 2
1.7 The Porous Self

2. Milton and the Puritan Domestic Manuals
2.1 Cleaver and Dod; the Puritan Manuals
2.2 Puritan Love and Milton’s Revolution
2.3 William Gouge
2.4 Milton’s Marriage Companion, Part 1
2.5 Milton’s Marriage Companion, Part 2
2.6 Milton’s Marriage Companion, Part 3

3. The Assembly’s Ordinance, Heresiography, and the Presbyterian Mobilization
3.1 The "Presbyterian Mobilization"
3.2 Milton, the Opportunity, and Polemical Heresiography
3.3 Milton and the Polemical Persona(s)
3.4 Surveying Milton’s Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (DDD) (1)
3.5 Surveying DDD (2); Judgement of Martin Bucer, Tetrachordon (1)
3.6 Surveying Tetrachordon (2), Colasterion, and Christian Doctrine

4. The Meaning of “Conversation”
4.1 Colasterion as Dramatized Divorce of Unfit Partner
4.2 Milton and the Sex-Preoccupied “Pork”
4.3 Identifying the Printer “G.M.”
4.4 Introducing the Answer
4.5 The Opening of Colasterion

5. The Ten Arguments
5.1 Arguments 1-2: How Biblical Commands Work; Mixed Marriage in 1 Corinthians 7
5.2 Arguments 3-5: Deuteronomy 22; Bearing Infirmities; Christ and the Church
5.3 Arguments 6-10: Universal Words; One Flesh; Ordinary Troubles; Soul-Body; Women and Children
5.4 Diane Purkiss on Milton and Women and Children
5.5 The Prospect of Dispositional Change (Introduction)

6. Contrariety of Mind or Disposition
6.1 Balancing the Humors
6.2 Why Woman? The Augustinian Complication
6.3 Changeable vs. Unchangeable Nature
6.4 Adam and Eve Again
6.5 Milton’s Narcissism? The Milton-like Ideal Wife

7. Divorce, Women, and Law/Gospel Orders
7.1 Identifying the “Disfavor” and Deuteronomy 24 as Milton’s “Main Pillar”
7.2 A Law to Protect the Woman
7.3 The New and Higher Ethic of the Gospel
7.4 The “Fit Conversing Soul”
7.5 Protecting the Woman Again: Divorce in Malachi; The Answer’s Ironic Conclusion

8. Milton, the Assembly, and the Confession
8.1 Colasterion’s Conclusion
8.2 WCF 24 on Marriage
8.3 WCF 24 on Divorce