Overview: This collection of essays examines important twentieth-century Lutheran theologians, including European and North American voices. Each essays provides an overview of the life and thought of important confenssional Lutherans who shaped theology with an ecumenical, world-wide impact. The focus here is on earlier twentieth-century figures. The essays composed over the last five years w…
Overview: On June 8 - 10, the first conference of RefoRC, the Reformation Research Consortium (www.reforc.com), was held at the Institute of Swiss Reformation Studies at the Theological Faculty of the University of Zurich. The overall title "The Myth of the Reformation" encouraged critical perspectives on traditional beliefs about the sixteenth century Reformation(s). The editor provides a se…
Overview: Der autor blickt im Zusammenhang mit dem Lutherjubilaum 2017 zuruck auf die Lutherjubilaen der vergangenen zwei Jahrhunderte und stellt fest: Jede triumphalistische Vereinnahmung Luthers durch eine Richtung schloss in der Vergangenheit andere aus, die auch an Luthers erbe ein vitales Interesse hatten. Jede allzu popularisierende Luthervermarktung endete in der Asammlung von Anekdoten…
Overview: Twelve essays investigate Melanchthon's theological activities as teacher, confessor of the faith, and defender of his doctrine and ecclesiastical policies as they developed within the context of his service to society and church. In the past quarter century Melanchthon researchers have scrutinized older, most negative, interpretations of the Preceptor Germaniae. This volume presents …
Overview: Die Autorin stellt die Geschichte der Gattung theoloischer Schriften uber die Vorbereitung fur das Sterben durch das 16. Jahrhundret hindurch dar. Die vorreformatorischen Schriften zur Sterbekunst ("Ars moriendi") waren durch ihre Bilder und kurzen Texte bereits sehr verbreitet. Martin Luther fuhrte diese Gattung in seimen "Sermon von der Bereitung zum Sterben" (1519) fort. Er verwend…
Overview: Daniel Kalaj was a Polish Reformer of Hungarian background, born in Little Poland and trained in Franeker, Friesland, under some of the most brilliant Reformed theologians of seventeenth-century Europe. The author shows that Kalaj, in contrast to many Reformed thinkers of his day, was capable of communicating Reformed doctrine in a friendly and peaceful manner. Kalaj places special …
Overview: The author takes his point of departure in the doctrine of the covenant as it appears in the theology of the prominent second-generation reformer, Wolfgang Musculus (1497 - 1563). Musculus is perhaps the earliest reformed theologian to give the topic of the covenant a separate and distinct treatment in a collection of theological commonplaces. The author then traces developments in …
Overview: The author traces the Lutheran doctrine of communicatio idiomatum, the exchange of properties between the natures of Christ, as it developed in the 16th and the early 17th Century. Regarding it as the nerve of his soteriology, Luther stressed the intimacy of the two natures in Christ to such a degree that it threatened to end the peaceful relationship between theology and philosophy.…
Overview: It has often been noted that the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century witnessed a revived interest in the scriptural notions of prophets and prophecy. Drawing from both late medieval apocalyptic expectations of the immanent end of the world and from a humanist revival of biblical studies, the prophet appeared many as a suitable role model for the Protestant preacher. …
Overview: The free offer of the gospel has been a matter of significant debate within Reformed Theology. However, despite this controversy, Reformed theologians such as James Durham preached a gospel offer which was a sincere and free invitation from God to all, to embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour. This gospel offer expressed God's grac and goodness to all. The author argues that Durham's doct…
Overview: A growing body of historical literature reflects the importance of John Owen. The author seeks to reassess Owen's theology in light of the way in which he connected his trinitarian piety to his views of public worship. He argues that his teaching on communion with God as triune was the foundation of his views of public worship and that he regarded public worship as the highest expre…
Overview: The author examines British participation in the Dutch religious and political disputes of the early 17th century (the Bestandstwisten) its significant impact on both countries. Although the disputes began over predestination, they quickly took on political overtones as the two sides, the Remonstrants (Arminians) and Contra-Remonstrants, vehemently debated propower church-state relati…
Overview: The thirteen essays in this volume were all originally presented at international conferences or in public lectures. They address three main areas of inquiry, all of which, in one way or another, are of key importance in early modern historical discourse and theological thinking: (1) the theological diversity and debates within the reformed tradition in the sixteenth century and beyo…
Overview: Personal renewal or sanctification belongs to the heart of the Christian life and is becoming more important in our present-day culture. Listening to Scripture and in conversation with a variety of theologians from the protestant tradition, the author presents an up-to-date concept for a theology of personal renewal. In this concept the spiritual union with Christ considers the way i…
Overview: The author's work remains the only monograph-length study that offers a new, comprehensive perspective on Calvin's ecclesiological ideal in terms of the church's relationship to the government. Different from what many have argued, this ideal did not lie in a vision of the church as completely independent of the government or that had its own power of excommunication. Instead, Calvin …
Overview: The author explores the relationship between morality and God's free choices in the thought of Francis Turretin (1623 - 1687). Turretin introduces a threefold scheme of right into Thomas Aquinas's natural law theory in order to explain how change within the law is possible. This volume is the first book-length treatment of Turretin's natural law theory, and it provides an important th…
Overview: Das Calvin-Jahr 2009 gehorte zu den wichtigsten Ereignissen im Vorfeld des groben Reformationsjubilaums: Eindrucklich wies es darauf hin, was die Reformation alles ist: international, okumenisch, facettenreich - und mehr als nur ein Martin Luther mit Umfeld. In den Beitragen dieses Bandes steht das Moment der Auseinandersetzung des Luthertums mit dem entstenhenden Calvinismus im Vorde…
Overview: Filing the historiographical gap, the author raises a fundamental question concerning the criticism of the Reformed doctrine of free choice in relationship of divine necessity as determinism. Unlike the deterministic interpretation of traditional Reformed thought on free choice, the substantive and careful study of John Edward's writings on free choice in the intellectual context of t…
Overview: Historical investigation of union with Christ and justification have been dominated by the figure of John Calvin. Calvin's influence, however, has been exaggerated in our own day when many other theologians within the Early Modern Reformed Tradition contributed to the developments of these doctrines. J.V. Fesko, therefore, goes beyond Calvin and explores union with Christ and justif…
Overview: Der Autor untersucht die Abendmahlslehre von Johannes Calvin aus romisch-katholischer Perspektive. Im Zentrum des Interesses steht die Frage nach der wahren Gegenwart Jesu Christi unter Brot und Wein. Zunachst interpretiert der Autor Calvins Position hinsichtlich dieser Frage im Kontext der innerreformatorischen Kontroverse um das Abendmahl. Bei kritischer Betrachtung wird deutlich, …
Overview: The contributes in this volume contain the papers of the 10th International Congress on Calvin research that took place in Bloemfontein 2010 and represents the latest in Research on Calvin. The first part of the book consists of the plenary papers presented by leading scholars in Reformation history and theology and focussed on the topic of reconciliation. In the second part a select…
Overview: In the areas of the Reformation and of Reformed orthodoxy there was intense theological debate, leading to confessional identity and confenssional boundaries; hence the Remonstrant controversy in the early seventeenth century. These essays document the ongoing concern among Reformed theologians to further the Reformation cause. In this pursuit, Reformed theologians, as they did during…
Overview: The author analyses and assesses John Calvin's idea of divine accomodation. The roots of this idea are traced back to Erasmus' terminology and partristic theology. The idea is analyzed from two perspectives: pedagofy and revelation. At the hand of I.A. Dorner's, K. Barth's, and H.M. Kuitert's respective theologies and critique of the accommodation idea, the author indicates weaker po…
Overview: The author pays closer attention to different areas: The connection of The Holy War to Bunyan's other writings, especially those expressing his millenial convictions that then inform the presence of them in the allegory; The importance of interpretative keys for the allegory such as Bunyan's covenant theology and pneumatology; and finally, the observation that the allegory unfolds on …
Overview: The present study offers new insights to the understanding of Arminius's theoloy by identifying Jacob Arminius (1559-1609) as a theologian of the justice of God, or more precisely, as a theologian of God's twofold love. The author illustrates how these two characterizations are both valid, and whey they do not exclude but include all other characterizations that have been offered, by …
Overview: The author argues that the Christology of the prominent Reformed theologian, Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680) is grounded in, and flows out of, the eternal intra-trinitarian covenant of redemption. In order to understand the dynamics of Goodwin's Christology, his trinitarianism must be appreciated in the context of his covenant theology. At the heart of Goodwin's theology is his robust tri…
Overview: The author explores the ecclesiology of John Calvin based upon his commentary on the Minor Prophets (1557-1559). The author takes a historical-systematic approach in presenting Calvin's view of the church. The systematic study of the reformer's ecclesiology in the Minor Prophets commentary (Part Two) is embedded between two historical. Part One offers Calvin's historical context wh…
Overview: John Calvin had a keen interest in what the Scripture teach about the nature and faculties, as well as the role and responsibilities, of human beings. For him, the proper way to understand human beings way by considering them as they were created: in the image and likeness of God. The author examines Calvin's explanation of the image Dei within the times and ecclesiastical circumsta…
Overview: Johannes Calvin und der sogenannte Calvinismus inspirieren bis heute das gesellschaftliche, kulturelle, politische und wirtschfatliche Leben auf verschiedeneste Weise, wobei die Beurteilung dieses Einfl usses haufi g umstritten ist. Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Bandes untersuchen, wie die Gedanken Calvins im west-europischen und nordamerikanischen Kontext von geistes-geschichtli…
Overview: For centuries prior to the Reformation, Christian theologians identified Adam's natural relationship to humankind as the basis for its participation in his own guilt and corruption. Beginning in 1532, the Dominican theologian Ambrogio Catarino challenged the validity of this dogma, arguing that humankind's solidarity with Adam stemmed immediately from divine volition and ordination. …
Overview: This book fills a void in the literature on covenant theology in the sixteenth century by exploring the exegetical debates and technical terminology underlying the crucial dogmatic developments of the period. It also provides important new insight into the thought of Johannes Cocceius by expoloring his exegetical writings and grounding them in earlier federal thought. The author's s…
Overview: This important volume for Reformation Studies presents manifold and rather novel aspects of John Calvin's life and work. The contributions analyse - among other themes - Calvin's eucharistic theology, his christological understanding of law, the relation between baptism and the means of grace, Calvin's "imago dei", his teaching on the Trinity, his ecclesiology and his Catechism. The…
Overview: In all his thought Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) sought to steer the middle course betweeen theological extremes in taking what was good and rejecting what was bad from each. Typical of this tendency to steer the middle course are his insights into the outward instruments of divine grace. According to Vermigli such instruments - the human nature of Christ, the audible words of Sc…
Overview: Francisculs Junius d.A. (1545 - 1602) was einer der fuhrenden Vertreter der dritten Generation reformierter Theologen. Autor zeigt, dass ein entschiedenes Eintreten fur den reformierter Glauben nicht unbedingt verbunden war mit Polemik gegenuber anderen Konfessionen. Eine bislang fehlende, chronologisch gegliederte Ubersicht uber das theologische Gesamtwerk des Junius demonstriet di…
Overview: The subject of this book is the understanding of the gospel in the theology of the Protestant Reformer John Calvin. Specifically, it deals with what Calvin terms the "twofold grace of God", the justification and sanctification of believers on the basis of the redemptive work of Christ. The author's study also addresses several controversial questions in Calvin studies. These includ…
Overview: Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars - many commissioned especially for this volume - are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essays, the editor gives an account of his presentation of these works, discusses questions surrounding the chronology of their co…
Overview: This book takes readers through a full range of approaches - analytic versus continental, scientistic versus humanistic, 'pure' versus applied - enabling them to locate and understand these different ways of doing philosphy. Clearly and accessibly written, it will stimulate reflection on philosophical practice and will be invaluable for students of philosophy and other philosophicall…
Overview: This book and its companion volume Moral Theory provide a much-needed alternative to consequentialist orthodoxy. This book focuses the central concepts of traditional morality - rights, justice, the good, virtue and the fundamental value of human life - on a number of pressing contemporary problems: abortion, euthanasia, animals, capital punishment and war. By challenging contempora…
Outline: This book and its companion volume Applied Ethics provide a much-needed alternative to consequentialist orthodoxy. This book set out the basic system used to solve problems, the system that consequentialist deride as "traditional morality" and which they believe is 'dead". The central concepts, principles and distinction or traditional morality are explained and defended: rights, jus…
Overview: In this book, the author offer a comprehensive introduction to philosophy from a Christian perspective. In their broad sweep they seek to introduce readers to the principal subdisciplines of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics and philosophy of religion. They do so with characteristic clarity and incisivenss. Arguments are clearly presented, …
Overview: David Kelsey's two-volume masterwork, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, has been recognized as a major achievement, the culmination of decades of probing theological thought about what is means to be a human being in relationship with God. Ten distinguished scholars respond to and interact with Eccentric Existence in this book, celebrating both Kelsey and his landmark …
Overview: "American Christians are going to have to come to terms with the brute fact that we live in a secular culture, one in which our beliefs make increasingly little sense. We speak a language that the world more and more either cannot hear or finds offensive to its ears." From the inside, American churches are hollowed out by the departure of young people and by an insipid pseude-Christ…
Outline: This book offers a comprehensive and authoritative introduction to Christian theological writing in Western Europe from, roughly, the end of the French Wars of Religion (1598) to the Congress of Vienna (1815). Over the course of more than forty wide-ranging essays, employing a variety of approaches, the authors examine theology from Bellarmine to Johann Semler. They review the major …