Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions

Few episodes in Western history have so shaped our world as the Protestant Reformation and the counter-Reformations which accompanied it. The Reformation tore the seamless garment of Western Christendom in two, pitting king and pope, laity and clergy, Protestant and Catholic against one another. But it was also a firestorm tearing through an old, stagnant, and dying forest, sowing the seeds for a burst of new and newly diverse life.To understand why the Reformation unfolded as it did, we must understand the ideas that were so forcefully articulated, opposed, and debated by Protestants and Catholics. For Protestant or Catholic believers in our own forgetful age, the need to understand these disputed doctrines, and the logic and coherence that linked them together, is all the more imperative. This is what this volume seeks to offer for the first time: a primary source reader focused squarely on the theological questions that drove the Reformation.Beginning with the first rumblings of conflict in the late medieval period and continuing until the solidification of Protestant confessions in the early 17th century, this collection of thirty-two texts brings the modern reader face-to-face with the key men whose convictions helped shape the course of history. Concise historical introductions accompanying each text bring these writings to life by recounting the stories and conflicts that gave birth to these texts, and highlighting the enduring themes that we can glean from them.KEY TOPICS INCLUDE The doctrine of the church, and its relation to the state; the doctrine of the eucharist, and transubstantiation in particular; the doctrine of justification sola fide and the place of works; the meaning of the Protestant commitment to sola Scriptura; and others.KEY AUTHORS INCLUDE Marsilius of Padua, John Wycliffe, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, Thomas More, John Calvin, The Council of Trent, Thomas Cranmer, Richard Hooker, Robert Belllarmine, and many more.

Religion & Spirituality

Roberts, Jonathan

Littlejohn, Bradford

Christian Books & Bibles

Davenant Press, The

Protestantism today has an idolatry problem. Not merely in the sense of worshipping false gods—of pleasure, wealth, or politics—but in the sense of worshipping the Triune God of Scripture according to images and ideas of our own devising. Whether it’s a God who suffers and changes alongside his creatures, or a “Trinitarian circle dance” of divine personalities, or a hierarchically-arranged Trinity that serves as a blueprint for gender relations, modern evangelical theology has strayed far from historic Christian orthodoxy. Needing a God that can be put on a greeting card or in a praise song, our idolatrous hearts shrink the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob down to size, and make him more like us.
Amidst this scramble to make God more relevant, we seem to have forgotten that the only God truly capable of saving us is a God who is radically other and transcendent, far above our imaginings. This incomprehensible God is not the God of the philosophers, as modern revisionists frequently charge, but the God of the Bible. The essays in this volume, written by scholars and pastors deeply concerned for the life of the church, seek to retrieve and defend the tradition of classical theism as the historic Protestant faith, rooted in Scripture, philosophically coherent, and still relevant to the needs of the church today.

God of Our Fathers: Classical Theism for the Contemporary Church

Davenant Institute, The

“If we are to witness moral renewal in our societies, Protestants will have a major role to play, and I say that as a convicted Catholic. This volume, Protestant Social Teaching, comes as a revelation—a revelation that there is a coherent tradition of Protestant moral theology that can still offer concrete guidance to doctors and nurses, statesmen and judges, soldiers and policemen today. The essays on marriage, sexuality, life, dying, work, and the home are particularly insightful. Only by looking backward can we gain the perspective needed to move forward, and these essays offer a model of retrieval in service of practical discipleship. The result is a book that will benefit both Catholic and Protestant readers.” 
– Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment 
For over one hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church has steadily curated a body of papal encyclicals, classic texts, and go-to answers on pressing moral issues of the day, that has come to be known as “Catholic Social Teaching.” Meanwhile, in Protestantism, mainline churches have steadily jettisoned nearly every historic Christian moral teaching in an effort to make the faith more “relevant” and progressive, while evangelicals, though still committed to Scripture, have often done little better in holding fast to the norms that used to guide faithful Christian discipleship when it came to love, war, and everything in between. However, Protestants too have a rich heritage of social teaching, if only they knew their own tradition, a heritage that dovetails on many points with Roman Catholic teaching, but is also inflected by the Reformation’s emphasis on the goods of the family and the nation. 
Now, for the first time, we are planting a flag for “Protestant social teaching,” a coherent, catholic, biblical set of convictions about what it means to love one’s neighbor in both personal and political life. The essays in this volume span the breadth of human life, from birth to death, from work to welfare, while providing a clear moral compass on hot-button issues like abortion, just war, and environmental care. This volume brings together contributions from a dozen authors who have deeply studied these diverse moral issues from a classical Protestant standpoint, distilling their biblical and historical insights into short, accessible chapters that can guide the reflections of every pastor or Christian leader.

Protestant Social Teaching: An Introduction

Meador, Jake

Wyatt, John

Minich, Joseph

Roberts, Alastair

Hutchinson, E.J.

Moots, Glenn

LiVecche, Marc

Kamel, Onsi Aaron

Redemer, Colin

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