" The contributions in this volume deal with influences of Reformators and of the Reformation as a whole on the contemporary and following intellectual-cultural and especially pedagogical developments in selected countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The issues of which way pedagogical ideas of the Reformation spread internationally are questioned and problematised, and the people who played a role in this process are addressed. It also investigates which Protestant educational institutions, foundations, etc. exist today, and whether lines of tradition go back to the origins, or were re-animated in the last years. Additionally, it deals with aspects of the reception of Luther and Melanchthon in international pedagogical historiography. The contributions of the 30 authors from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Hungary, and Germany are connected to the discussion of the relationship of tradition and innovation in times of social upheaval. Reinhard Golz ist Professor an der Universität Magdeburg. Wolfgang Mayrhofer ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der Universität Magdeburg. "

The Lutheran Reformation of the early sixteenth century brought about immense and far-reaching change in the structures of both church and state, and in both religious and secular ideas. This book investigates the relationship between the law and religious ideology in Luther's Germany, showing how they developed in response to the momentum of Lutheran teachings and influence. Profound changes in the areas of education, politics and marriage were to have long-lasting effects on the Protestant world, inscribed in the legal systems inherited from that period. John Witte, Jr. argues that it is not enough to understand the Reformation either in theological or in legal terms alone but that a perspective is required which takes proper account of both. His book should be essential reading for scholars and students of church history, legal history, Reformation history, and in adjacent areas such as theology, ethics, the law, and history of ideas.

Christianity must be understood not as a religion of private salvation, but as a gospel movement of universal compassion, which transforms the world in the power of God's truth. Amid several major global crises, including the rise of terrorism and religious fundamentalism and a sudden resurgence of political extremism, Christians must now face up fearlessly to the challenges of living in a "post-truth" age in which deceitful politicians present their media-spun fabrications as "alternative facts." This book is an attempt to enact a transformative theology for these changing times that will equip the global Christian community to take a stand for the gospel in an age of cultural despair and moral fragmentation. The emerging post-Christendom era calls for a new vision of Christianity that has come of age and connects with the spiritual crisis of our times. In helping to make this vision a reality, Searle insists that theology is not merely an academic discipline, but a transformative enterprise that changes the world. Theology is to be experienced not just behind a desk, in an armchair, or in a church, but also in hospitals, in foodbanks, in workplaces, and on the streets. Theology is to be lived as well as read.

In 2017 Christians around the world will mark the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. In the midst of many appeals for reformation today, a growing number of theologians, scholars, and activists around the world believe Reformation celebrations in 2017 and beyond need to focus now on the urgent need for an Eco-Reformation. The rise of industrial, fossil fuel-driven capitalism and the explosive growth in human population endanger the fundamental planetary life-support systems on which life as we know it has evolved. The collective impact of human production, consumption, and reproduction is undermining the ecological systems that support human life on Earth. If human beings do not reform their relationship with God's creation, unspeakable suffering will befall many--especially the weakest and most vulnerable among all species. The conviction at the heart of this collection of essays is that a gospel call for ecological justice belongs at the heart of the five hundredth anniversary observance of the Reformation in 2017 and as a--if not the--central dimension of Christian conversion, faith, and practice into the foreseeable future. Like Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, this volume brings together critical biblical, pastoral, theological, historical, and ethical perspectives that constructively advance the vision of a socially and ecologically flourishing Earth.

Celebrations of literary fictions as autonomous worlds appeared first in the Renaissance and were occasioned, paradoxically, by their power to remedy the ills of history. Robert E. Stillman explores this paradox in relation to Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy, the first Renaissance text to argue for the preeminence of poetry as an autonomous form of knowledge in the public domain. Offering a fresh interpretation of Sidney's celebration of fiction-making, Stillman locates the origins of his poetics inside a neglected historical community: the intellectual elite associated with Philip Melanchthon (leader of the German Reformation after Luther), the so-called Philippists. As a challenge to traditional Anglo-centric scholarship, his study demonstrates how Sidney's education by Continental Philippists enabled him to dignify fiction-making as a compelling form of public discourse-compelling because of its promotion of powerful new concepts about reading and writing, its ecumenical piety, and its political ambition to secure through natural law (from universal 'Ideas') freedom from the tyranny of confessional warfare. Intellectually ambitious and wide-ranging, this study draws together various elements of contemporary scholarship in literary, religious, and political history in order to afford a broader understanding of the Defence and the cultural context inside which Sidney produced both his poetry and his poetics.

Jordan J. Ballor takes as his point of departure the doctrine of the covenant as it appears in the theology of the prominent second-generation reformer, Wolfgang Musculus (1497–1563), who is perhaps the earliest Reformed theologian to give the topic of the covenant a separate and distinct treatment in a collection of theological commonplaces. Musculus' teaching on the covenant is characterized by the important distinction he makes between general and special covenants, and it is rooted in his exegetical work on the book of Genesis. Where Musculus' Loci communes demonstrate his antispeculative, soteriologically focused and pastorally driven approach, his exegesis provides fulsome guidance in the study of Scripture. This examination of Musculus' views on covenant and related doctrines is followed by explorations concerning causality and metaphysics. It concludes with considerations on law and social order. This book is the first full-scale study to place Musculus' theology within its broader intellectual context and to focus on Musculus' theology as found both in his Loci communes and in his extensive and voluminous exegetical work. Musculus' positions on doctrines related to covenant, causality and law reveal the eclecticism of Reformed reception of medieval traditions. The final section of this study places Musculus within the later development of Reformed orthodoxy in the 16th and 17th centuries, concluding that Wolfgang Musculus is a significant and often-overlooked figure worthy of further consideration.