Reformation Thought, 4th edition offers an ideal introduction to the central ideas of the European reformations for students of theology and history. Written by the bestselling author and renowned theologian, Alister McGrath, this engaging guide is accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Christian theology. This new edition of a classic text has been updated throughout with the very latest scholarship Includes greater coverage of the Catholic reformation, the counter-reformation, and the impact of women on the reformation Explores the core ideas and issues of the reformation in terms that can be easily understood by those new to the field Student-friendly features include images, updated bibliographies, a glossary, and a chronology of political and historical ideas This latest edition retains all the features which made the previous editions so popular with readers, while McGrath's revisions have ensured it remains the essential student guide to the subject.
"A superb anthology of primary sources relating most directly to sixteenth-century Reformation movements. The initial selection is from the late fourteenth century and the final two from the mid-eighteenth century. The fifty texts here are wide and well focused. They are drawn from forty-one authors with diversities across many categories— birth, occupation, gender, religious orders, and 'the rest married women of middling and noble rank.' Fifteen are Roman Catholic with twenty-six coming from Lutheran, Reformed, and radical movements. King notes that genres include 'treatise, lecture, pamphlet, letter, speech, devotional work, martyr testament, diary, memoir, and autobiography.' So this is as representative a group of documents as one can imagine, spanning 400 years and conveying essential insights that fueled Reformation thought. "In addition to the judicious selection of pieces, the book is clearly organized. It features perceptive, focused descriptions of each selection conveying its backgrounds and contexts, and providing insights for readers to help in understanding and comprehending the content and importance of the piece. This is an immense benefit. King gives true texture and brings her masterful teaching instincts to bear on the selections. Her annotations in themselves are an instructive guide through Reformation movements. The selections are short but well-focused. They are accessible in form, and thirty-eight of the fifty pieces have been newly translated by King from a number of languages. Spelling, punctuation, and diction of pieces that have appeared in earlier English editions (sixteenth through nineteenth centuries) have been modernized. The New International Version (NIV) has been used for biblical quotations in the narratives. In short, every effort has been made—and has succeeded—in providing a reliable, accessible, and truly useful anthology to serve a number of functions. "This book has many excellencies. It can be highly recommended as a well-conceived collection of well-constructed presentations and as an eminently useful textbook." —Donald K. McKim, in Renaissance Quarterly
The question of why people act against their better judgment has always been prominent in philosophy. Risto Saarinen presents the first study of ideas about weakness of the will between 1350 and 1650. He shows how the understanding of human conduct and free will changed in this formative period between medieval times and modernity.
In this intriguing book, Herman Selderhuis argues that John Calvin's biblical interpretation of the Psalms is fundamentally shaped by his doctrine of God. Selderhuis minimizes references to other Calvin studies and other works by Calvin, thus allowing Calvin's theology on the Psalms to speak for itself. The book is organized thematically according to divine attributes. Reformation and Calvin scholars as well as interested Reformed readers will value this resource.
The idea that history repeats itself has a long and intriguing history. This volume is concerned with the period of time in the Western tradition when its expressions were most numerous and fervent. The author shows that this idea should not be confined to its cyclical version, for such notions as reenactment, retribution, and renaissance also belong under the wide umbrella of "recurrence." He argues, moreover, that not only the Greco-Roman but also the biblical tradition contributed to the history of this idea. The old contrast between Judeo-Christian linear views of history and Greco-Roman cyclical views is brought into question. Beginning with Polybius, Trompf examines the manifold forms of recurrence thinking in Greek and Roman historiography, then turns his attention to biblical views of historical change, arguing that in Luke-Acts and in earlier Jewish writings an interest in the idea of history repeating itself was clearly demonstrated. Jewish and early Christian writers initiated and foreshadowed an extensive synthesizing of recurrence notions and models from both traditions, although the syntheses could vary with the context and dogmatic considerations. The Renaissance and Reformation intertwine classical and biblical notions of recurrence most closely, yet even in the sixteenth century some ideas distinct to each tradition, such as the Polybian conception of a "cycle of governments" and hte biblical notion of the "reenactment of significant events," were revived in stark separation from each other. The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought deals with a continuing but not always fruitful "dialogue" between the two great traditions of Western thought, a dialogue that did not stop short in the days of Machiavelli, but has been carried on to the present day. This study is the first half of a long story to be continued in a second volume on the idea of historical recurrence from Giambattista Vico to Arnold Toynbee. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.
In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.
In Law and Gospel, Timothy Wengert, one of the world's leading Melancthon scholars, explores the relationship between poenitentia and law in his theology during the time he was opposed by another of Luther's disciples, John Agricola.0
A major new introduction to the global history of Christianity, written by one of the world’s leading theologians and author of numerous bestselling textbooks. Provides a truly global review by exploring the development of Christianity and related issues in Asia, Latin America and Africa, and not just focusing on Western concerns Spanning more than two millennia and combining elements of theology, history, and culture, it traces the development of all three branches of Christianity – Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox – providing context to Christianity’s origins and its links to Judaism Looks beyond denominational history at Christianity’s impact on individuals, society, politics, and intellectual thought, as well as on art, architecture, and the natural sciences Combines McGrath’s acute historical sensibility with formidable organizational skill, breaking the material down into accessible, self-contained historical periods Offers an accessible and student-oriented text, assuming little or no advance theological or historical knowledge on the part of the reader
It has been five-hundred years since Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door at Wittenberg, fanning the flames of the Protestant Reformation. Forged from the fires of the Reformation's heightened attention to the Bible and its details, a more refined and systematic dispensational understanding has developed and continues to be shaped. This book, written by a diverse and accomplished group of dispensational scholars, articulates in each and every chapter how, five-hundred years later, dispensational thought upholds and advances the legacy of the Reformation unlike any other theological system in Christian tradition.
