The anonymous tract Disputatio nova contra mulieres, qua probatur eas hominess non esse (A new argument against women, in which it is demonstrated that they are not human beings), first published in 1595, rapidly grew notorious, and was reprinted many times during the 17th and 18th centuries. By selectively quoting scriptural passages, along with a few references to other works, the author attempted to prove that women have no souls, and, being little better than higher animals, will have no afterlife. Although a degree of anti-feminine spite is evident, he was less intent to denigrate women that to advance an absurd argument parallel to what he took to be the equally absurd theological propositions of the Socinian sect, that Christ was not divine. It was nevertheless inevitable that most readers would take the tract at face value. Many refutations appeared. This new edition, with complete translation, collated text, and copious quotations from many references to it, ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries, offers the first full assessment of its impact on early modern feminist thought.

A pioneering study of the origins of feminist thought in late seventeenth-century England.

Intelligent Souls? offers a new understanding of Islam in eighteenth-century British culture. Samara Anne Cahill's ambitious study explores two separate but overlapping strands of thinking about women and Islam in the eighteenth century which produce the phenomenon of "feminist orientalism." One strand describes seventeenth-century ideas about the nature of the soul used to denigrate religio-political opponents, and the other tracks the transference of these ideas to Islam during the Glorious Revolution and the Trinitarian controversy of the 1690s.

Women of Will is a fierce and funny exploration of Shakespeare’s understanding of the feminine. Tina Packer, one of our foremost Shakespeare experts, shows that Shakespeare began, in his early comedies, by writing women as shrews to be tamed or as sweet little things with no independence of thought. The women of the history plays are much more interesting, beginning with Joan of Arc. Then, with the extraordinary Juliet, there is a dramatic shift: suddenly Shakespeare’s women have depth, motivation, and understanding of life more than equal to that of the men. As Shakespeare ceases to write women as predictable caricatures and starts writing them from the inside, his women become as dimensional, spirited, spiritual, active, and sexual as any of his male characters. Wondering if Shakespeare had fallen in love (Packer considers with whom, and what she may have been like), the author observes that from Juliet on, Shakespeare’s characters demonstrate that when women and men are equal in status and passion, they can—and do—change the world.

The call for gender equity in leadership has become a global concern. From a Christian perspective, all forms of gender prejudice are sinful because they violate God's intention for creating both men and women in God's image. Although many Christian authors have published books and journal articles to address gender-based injustice, very few publications have approached the subject from an African perspective. This book is meant to fill the existing gap. With a specific reference to the African context, this book explores the phenomenon of equity in leadership from various dimensions, such as African culture and traditional religion, church tradition, biblical interpretation, as well as from the perspective of contemporary socio-economic and political realities in Africa. By giving vivid examples of success stories of men and women working together, the authors have demythologized the view that women cannot be leaders. In addition, this book is intended for general readership by Christian men and women throughout the globe. For universities and colleges that teach gender studies as a subject, the book can serve as a class text or reference resource. Seminaries and theological institutions will also find it handy for training and mentoring Christians to promote equity in the church, ministry, business, and family.

Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, schoolman, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full.

Accompanying commentary examines questions in relation to early modern feminism, Catholic/Protestant theological debate of the 16th century, relevant literary texts, and popular belief. Includes a translation of an essay on related themes published two and a half centuries later as an addendum to Anne Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon's French version of the tract. An Appendix includes the Latin text of the Disputatio, edited from a copy of the first edition collated with the only surviving manuscript.

Tertullian, a native of Carthage in North Africa, was an Early Church writer who lived between 155 and 240 A.D. A Treatise on the Soul is a fascinating, philosophical work which reads much like Plato or Greek philosophers of antiquity.

Analyzes John Calvin's doctrine of Christian freedom, describes his teachings about women's public role, and examines its pertinence to women's ordination

The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavor to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Aeterna Press