RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Kendall Renewal
Rente's longing to return home was not satisfied until a year following the death of her husband on Oct. 3, 1559. In France she found her eldest daughter's husband, Francois de Guise, at the head of the Roman Catholic party. His power, indeed, was broken by the death of Francis II., in Dec, 1560, so that Renee became enabled not only to provide Evangelical worship at her estate, Morntargis, engaging a capable preacher by application to Calvin, but also generally to minister as benefactress of the surrounding Evangelicals. In fact, she made her castle a refuge for them, when her son-in-law once again lighted the torch of war. This time her conduct won Calvin's praise (May 10, 1563), and she is one of the frequently recurring figures in his correspondence of that period; he repeatedly shows recognition of her intervention in behalf of the Evangelical cause; and one of his last writings in the French tongue, despatched from his deathbed (Apr. 4, 1564), is addressed to her. While Renee continued unmolested in the second religious war (1567), in the third (1568-70) her castle was no longer respected as an asylum for her fellow believers. On the other hand, she succeeded in rescuing a number of them from the massacre of St. Bartholomew's night, when she happened to be in Paris. They left her personally undisturbed at that time; though Catherine de'Medici still sought to move her to retract. But she died in the Evangelical faith. In consonance with Renee's last fifteen years, her will (given by Bonet-Maury in the Revue historique, 1894) bears witness of her Evangelical goodness.
K. Benrath.
Bibliography: J. Bonnet long collected materials for a biography which he put into form in Bulletin de la society de Vhist. du protestant francais, 1866, 1869, 1877—81; very rich sources are tapped in B. Fontana, Renata di Francia, 3 vols., Rome, 1889-99, and in the same author's Documenti Vaticani, ib. 1892 (in Archivio della Soc. Romana di Storia patria); the material accumulated by Bonnet (ut sup.) was worked over by E. Rodocanacchi, Une protectrice de la reformee en Italie et en France, Paris, 1896; G. Bonet-Maury, Besprechung von Fontana, in Revue historique, 1894. Biographies were written also by J. P. G. Catteau-Colleville, Berlin, 1781; E. J. H. Munch, Aachen, 1831; I. M. B., London, 1859; anonymous, Gotha, 1869; F. Bliimmer, Frankfort, 1870; S. W. Weitzel, New York, 1883; and literature under Morata, Olimpia. Consult also: A. F. Girardot, Proces de Renee de France . . contre Charles IX., Nancy, 1858 (?); L. Jarry, Mai, 1562. Renee de France a Montargis. Episode des guerres religeuses, Orleans, 1868. There are letters to her from Calvin, dated Oct., 1541, Aug. 6, 1554, May 10, 1563, in the Eng. transl. of Bonnet's ed. of Calvin, i. 295- 306, iii. 50-52, iv. 313-316; and a letter from her to Bullinger, dated Oct. 24, 1542, in A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance des reformateurs, viii. 161-163, Paris, 1893.
RENEWAL: The terms " renew," " renewing " occur in the English New Testament only in the epistles (Paul and Hebrews) where they give expression to a wide conception which embraces the entire subjective side of salvation. This they represent as a work of God issuing in a wholly new creation (II Cor. v. 17; Gal. vi. 15; Eph. ii. 10). The absence of these terms from the Gospels does not argue the absence of the thing expressed by them. In point of fact it is taught throughout Scripture that man has by his sin not merely incurred the Divine condemnation but also corrupted his own heart, and needs therefore for his recovery not merely, object-
ively, pardon, but, subjectively, purification; neither of which can he have except by a work of God. In the Old Testament the sin of our first parents is represented as no more inculpating than corrupting, and all that are born of woman are declared to be corrupt from the womb (Job xv. 14-16; Ps. Ii. 5). It is God alone who can " turn " a man " a new heart " (I Sam. x. 9; Ps. Ii. 10) and the saints rest on the divine promise that he will do so (Deut. xxx. 6; Jer. xxxi. 33; Ezek. xxxvi. 26). Jesus began his ministry as the dispenser of the Spirit, and his distinction lay precisely in the fact that his baptism with the Spirit works the inner purification which the baptism of John only symbolized. Accordingly he teaches expressly that the kingdom of God is not for the children of the flesh but the children of the Spirit (John iii. 3), and everywhere he presupposes that the corrupt tree of human nature must be first cleansed before good fruit can be expected of it (Matt. vii. 17). The broad treatment of such a theme characteristic of the Gospels gives way measurably in the epistles, where discriminations of aspects and stages begin to show themselves. The stress continues to be laid, however, on the main points, that man is dead in sin and is vitalized to righteousness only by a creative work of the Holy Spirit in his heart.
The church has retained, on the whole, with considerable constancy the essential elements of this Biblical teaching. In all types of historical Christianity the teaching is persistent that salvation consists in its substance of a radical subjective change wrought by the Holy Spirit. By virtue of this change, the tendencies to evil native to man as fallen are progressively eradicated and holy dispositions are implanted, nourished, and perfected. The most direct contradiction which this teaching has received in the history of Christian thought was that given it by Pelagius at the opening of the fifth century. Asserting the inalienable ability of the will to do all righteousness, Pelagius necessarily denied that man had been subjectively injured by sin or needed subjective divine operations for his perfecting. The vigorous reassertion by Augustine of the necessity of subjective grace for the doing of good put pure Pelagianism once for all outside the pale of recognized Christian teaching. In more or less modified forms, however, it has persisted as a wide-spread tendency conditioning the purity of the supernaturalism of salvation which is confessed.
The strong emphasis laid by the Reformers on the fundamental doctrine of justification threw the objective side of salvation into such prominence that its subjective side, which was not in dispute between them and their most immediate opponents, seemed to pass temporarily out of sight. Occasion was taken, if not given, to represent it as neglected if not denied. In the first generation of the Reformation movement, men of mystical tendency like Osiander reproached the Protestant teaching as if it recognized only an external salvation. The reproach was eminently unjust. With all the emphasis which Protestant theology lays on justification by faith as the central fact of salvation, it has never failed to lay equal stress on regeneration as its root and sanctification as its crown. Least of all
Renewal Repentance