On October 31st, The Davenant Institute published Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions. Edited by Bradford Littlejohn and Jonathan Roberts, this work reflects the clarion call of the Protestant Reformers, “Ad fontes!—Back to the sources!” for our own generation. Just as they recognized that renewal of the church in their era depended upon a clearer understanding of the church’s past through the writings of its greatest early theologians, so renewal of the church in our era depends on grasping anew what the Reformation was all about, why it happened, and why it still matters. The best way to achieve that, we believe, is through reading the primary sources.
Surprisingly, no good resource exists in English to this end, providing a broad and deep primary source anthology of Reformation theology. Our volume aims to fill that gap for pastors, teachers, undergraduates, seminarians, and theologically-concerned laypeople. Formatted with readability above all in mind, the volume contains 32 texts averaging 20 pages or so in length, with lively historical introductions to contextualize each one. The texts chosen include not just the writings that set the stage for the Reformation, and treatises by the leading Protestant Reformers, but also those by their Roman Catholic critics, and snapshots from the Radical Reformation as well.
This volume is the fruit of a co-venture with Roman Roads Media.
Reformation Theology: A Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions
Edited by Bradford Littlejohn and Jonathan Roberts.
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.