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.
First released in 1988, this 25th Anniversary Edition of Timothy George’s Theology of the Reformers includes a new chapter and bibliography on William Tyndale, the reformer who courageously stood at the headwaters of the English Reformation. Also included are expanded opening and concluding chapters and updated bibliographies on each reformer. Theology of the Reformers articulates the theological self-understanding of five principal figures from the period of the Reformation: Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Menno Simons, and William Tyndale. George establishes the context for their work by describing the spiritual climate of their time. Then he profiles each reformer, providing a picture of their theology that does justice to the scope of their involvement in the reforming effort. George details the valuable contributions these men made to issues historically considered pillars of the Christian faith: Scripture, Jesus Christ, salvation, the church, and last things. The intent is not just to document the theology of these reformers, but also to help the church of today better understand and more faithfully live its calling as followers of the one true God. Through and through, George’s work provides a truly integrated and comprehensive picture of Christian theology at the time of the Reformation.
Today Christians think of the Roman Catholic church as the oldest, most ancient form of Christianity. Evangelicals are often apathetic about their Christian heritage, and see little difference between themselves and Roman Catholics. In Reformed Catholic Puritan theologian William Perkins both shows that it is possible to genuinely respect Christian tradition and to disagree with the errors of Roman Catholicism. This book is not a debate over subtle points of doctrine, but over issues that continue to divide Christians to this day. These are truths worth fighting for. Book jacket.
Heaven's Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. D. L. Noorlander argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences across the seventeenth century. Noorlander questions the core assumptions about why the Dutch failed to establish a durable empire in America. He downplays the usual commercial explanations and places the focus instead on the tremendous expenses incurred in the Calvinist-backed war and the Reformed Church's meticulous, worried management of colonial affairs. By pinpointing the issues that hampered the size and import of the Dutch Atlantic world, Noorlander revises core notions about the organization and aims of the Dutch empire, the culture of the West India Company, and the very shape of Dutch society.
It's not always easy to find the human Martin Luther underneath the centuries of accumulated myth. A World Ablaze focuses on the drama and uncertainty of the first few critical years of Luther's rise, when his personal struggles with salvation were transformed into a crisis of Christendom.
The first of a two-volume project delving into the doctrine of justification. Michael Horton seeks not simply to recover a clear message of its role in modern Reformed theology, but also to bring a fresh discovery of the gospel in a time when contemporary debates around justification have reignited. The doctrine of justification stands at the center of our systematic reflection on the meaning of salvation and grace as well as our piety, mission, and life together. And yet, within mainline Protestant and evangelical theology, it's often taken for granted or left to gather dust in favor of modern concerns and self-renewal. Volume 1 is an exercise in historical theology, exploring the doctrine of justification from the patristic era to the Reformation. This book: Provides a map for contemporary discussions of justification, identifying and engaging principal sources: Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Gabriel Biel, and the magisterial reformers. Studies the transformations of the doctrine through Aquinas, Scotus and the nominalists leading up to the era of the Reformation and the Council of Trent. Concludes by examining the hermeneutical and theological significance of the Reformers' understanding of the law and the gospel and the resultant covenantal scheme that became formative in Reformed theology. Engaging and thorough, Justification will not only reenergize the reader—whether Protestant or Catholic—with a passion for understanding this essential and long-running doctrinal conversation, but also challenge anyone to engage critically with the history of the Church and the heart of the gospel.
This brief, accessible invitation to the historic creeds and confessions makes a biblical and historical case for their necessity and shows why they are essential for Christian faith and practice today. J. V. Fesko, a leading Reformed theologian with a broad readership in the academy and the church, demonstrates that creeds are not just any human documents but biblically commended resources for the well-being of the church, as long as they remain subordinate to biblical authority. He also explains how the current skepticism and even hostility toward creeds and confessions came about.
Singing the Gospel offers a new appraisal of the Reformation and its popular appeal, based on the place of German hymns in the sixteenth-century press and in the lives of early Lutherans. The Bohemian mining town of Joachimsthal--where pastors, musicians, and laity forged an enduring and influential union of Lutheranism, music, and culture--is at the center of the story. The Lutheran hymns, sung in the streets and homes as well as in the churches and schools of Joachimsthal, were central instruments of a Lutheran pedagogy that sought to convey the Gospel to lay men and women in a form that they could remember and apply for themselves. Townspeople and miners sang the hymns at home, as they taught their children, counseled one another, and consoled themselves when death came near. Shaped and nourished by the theology of the hymns, the laity of Joachimsthal maintained this Lutheran piety in their homes for a generation after Evangelical pastors had been expelled, finally choosing emigration over submission to the Counter-Reformation. Singing the Gospel challenges the prevailing view that Lutheranism failed to transform the homes and hearts of sixteenth-century Germany.
The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy takes up the words, 'this is my body', 'this do', and 'remembrance of me' that divided Christendom in the sixteenth century. It traces the different understandings of these simple words and the consequences of those divergent understandings in the delineation of the Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic traditions: the different formulations of liturgy with their different conceptualizations of the cognitive and collective function of ritual; the different conceptualizations of the relationship between Christ and the living body of the faithful; the different articulations of the relationship between the world of matter and divinity; and the different epistemologies. It argues that the incarnation is at the center of the story of the Reformation and suggests how divergent religious identities were formed.
