Shaping the Bible in the Reformation


Book Description

This volume presents significant new research on several key aspects of the late mediaeval and early modern Bible. The essays in this collection deal with Bible scholarship and translation, illustration and production, Bible uses for lay devotion, and the role of Bibles in theological controversy. Inquiring into the ways in which scholars gave new forms to their Bibles and how their readers received their work, this book considers the contribution of key figures such as Castellio, Bibliander, Tremellius, Piscator and Calov. In addition, it examines the exegetical controversies between several centres of Reformed learning as well as among the theologians of Louvain. It encompasses biblical illustration in the Low Countries and the use of maps in the Geneva Bible, and considers the practice of Bible translation, and the strategies by which new versions were justified.




Shaping the Bible in the Reformation


Book Description

This volume collects significant new scholarship on the late mediaeval and early modern Bible, engaging with the work of theologians, the devotional needs of the laity and the shape their concerns gave to the most important book of the age.




The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture


Book Description

In 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg's castle church. Luther's seemingly inconsequential act ultimately launched the Reformation, a movement that forever transformed both the Church and Western culture. The repositioning of the Bible as beginning, middle, and end of Christian faith was crucial to the Reformation. Two words alone captured this emphasis on the Bible's divine inspiration, its abiding authority, and its clarity, efficacy, and sufficiency: sola scriptura. In the five centuries since the Reformation, the confidence Luther and the Reformers placed in the Bible has slowly eroded. Enlightened modernity came to treat the Bible like any other text, subjecting it to a near endless array of historical-critical methods derived from the sciences and philosophy. The result is that in many quarters of Protestantism today the Bible as word has ceased to be the Word. In The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture, Iain Provan aims to restore a Reformation-like confidence in the Bible by recovering a Reformation-like reading strategy. To accomplish these aims Provan first acknowledges the value in the Church's precritical appropriation of the Bible and, then, in a chastened use of modern and postmodern critical methods. But Provan resolutely returns to the Reformers' affirmation of the centrality of the literal sense of the text, in the Bible's original languages, for a right-minded biblical interpretation. In the end the volume shows that it is possible to arrive at an approach to biblical interpretation for the twenty-first century that does not simply replicate the Protestant hermeneutics of the sixteenth, but stands in fundamental continuity with them. Such lavish attention to, and importance placed upon, a seriously literal interpretation of Scripture is appropriate to the Christian confession of the word as Word--the one God's Word for the one world.




Turning Back the Darkness


Book Description

This exploration of the biblical pattern and mandate for reformation challenges the church to be more confident in the application of principles that can change not only the church, but also the world.




The Renaissance Bible


Book Description

The book treats the Protestant cultures of northern Europe, particularly England, examining biblical commentaries, plays, poems, sermons, and treatises, as well as the often startling negotiations between these texts and other cultural discourses. In Shuger's hands, these biblical materials serve to illuminate, and often radically reinterpret, the dominant issues in contemporary Renaissance studies: gender, the body, colonialism, subjectivity, desire, law, and history. Her work forcefully demonstrates the cultural centrality of Renaissance religion.




Reformation 500


Book Description

In a church rocked by controversies over vernacular Scripture, iconoclasm, and the power of clergy, men and women arose in protest. Today we call this protest movement the Protestant Reformation. At its heart, the Reformation was a great revival of the church centered on the recovery of biblical truth and the gospel of free grace. This movement continues to instruct and inspire believers even into the present day. Reformation 500 celebrates the Reformation and probes the ways it has shaped our world for the better. With essays from an array of disciplines, this book explores the impact of the Reformation across a wide range of human experience. Literature, education, visual art, culture, politics, music, theology, church life, and Baptist history all provide prisms through which the Reformation legacy is viewed. From Augustine to Zwingli, historical figures like Luther, Calvin, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Rembrandt, Bach, Bunyan, and Wycliffe all find their way into this amazing 500-year story. From Anglicans to Baptists, scientists to poets, Reformation 500 weaves these many historical threads into a modern-day tapestry.




The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation


Book Description

During the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the role of the Bible in both Protestant and Roman Catholic branches of western Christianity was vital and complex. Drawing on new technologies such as movable type, this period saw extraordinary energy and enterprise put into the translation, interpretation, and publication of Christianity's sacred text. As a result, an increasingly broad section of the population, from scholars and clergy to laity and children, came to be involved in the reception of the Bible and its position in early modern religious expression. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation provides readers with a deeper understanding of the expansive history of the Bible as it was shaped, shared, and received across Christian traditions. Chapters explore the biblical canon, translation and print, the development of Reformation hermeneutics, the history of Bible commentators, and exegesis relating to key texts and theological themes of Reformation writing and discourse. Engaging the subject broadly, intricately, and robustly, the expertise of over fifty leading experts illuminates the early modern Bible's composition and position as scripture and, from the Renaissance era on, as a printed book. By including the contributions of radical reformers, Catholics, and women scholars, the Handbook presents a deep and wide-ranging account of the importance of the Bible's reach and authority among all western Christians.




A Letter from Origen to Africanus


Book Description

Origen to Africanus, a beloved brother in God the Father, through Jesus Christ, His holy Child, greeting. Your letter, from which I learn what you think of the Susanna in the Book of Daniel, which is used in the Churches, although apparently somewhat short, presents in its few words many problems, each of which demands no common treatment, but such as oversteps the character of a letter, and reaches the limits of a discourse. And I, when I consider, as best I can, the measure of my intellect, that I may know myself, am aware that I am wanting in the accuracy necessary to reply to your letter; and that the more, that the few days I have spent in Nicomedia have been far from sufficient to send you an answer to all your demands and queries even after the fashion of the present epistle. Wherefore pardon my little ability, and the little time I had, and read this letter with all indulgence, supplying anything I may omit.




Celebrating the Legacy of the Reformation


Book Description

In this compilation of essays, experts in the field provide an in-depth look at the long-lasting impact of the Protestant Reformation. Readers will gain new insights into the legacies of theology, spiritual formation and personal worship, catechism and preaching, and the missions and martyrs of the Reformation. Celebrating the Legacy of the Reformation will inspire and challenge readers to learn from the past for the sake of the future.




The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship


Book Description

The first part of this work describes the development of Reformed Worship from 1500-1542. The story begins with liturgical reforms of the Christian Humanists in Alsace, continues through the establishment of the first Protestant worship services in the Swiss cities of Zurich and Basel, joins with the currents of French evangelical thought flowing from Meaux, and finally reaches Geneva with the publication of Calvin's first psalter. Reformed worship is presented as the fruit of an inner-church liturgical renewal movement begun well before the Reformation which was then cultivated by the Rhineland Protestant Reformers. In order that we might be clear about how patristic literature affected this process, we turn next to discover what the Reformers knew about the church fathers. We show evidence of the impressive patristic knowledge of such men as Zwingli, Brucer, Hedio, Oecolampadius, and Calvin. An extensive bibliography of patristic editions known and used by the Reformers concludes the second part of the book. Finally we analyze each element of Reformed worship to show its development and to indicate its scriptural and particularly its patristic roots. The Prayer of Confession, the Prayer of Intercession, the Communion Invocation, and the Benediction are studied to show their liturgical purpose. How the Reformers understood their use of the lectionary, the sermon, psalmody, and hymnody is presented in the light of their understanding of the practice of the ancient church.