A major study reevaluating the primary sources of the post-Reformation period to determine how consistent they are with the thinking of the Reformers on Scripture.

A major study reevaluating the primary sources of the post-Reformation period to determine how consistent they are with the thinking of the Reformers on Scripture.

In this book, Travis DeCook explores the theological and political innovations found in early modern accounts of the Bible's origins. In the charged climate produced by the Reformation and humanist historicism, writers grappled with the tension between the Bible's divine and human aspects, and they produced innovative narratives regarding the agencies and processes through which the Bible came into existence and was transmitted. DeCook investigates how these accounts of Scripture's production were taken up beyond the expected boundaries of biblical study, and were redeployed as the theological basis for wide-reaching arguments about the proper ordering of human life. DeCook provides a new, critical perspective on ideas regarding secularity, secularization, and modernity, challenging the dominant narratives regarding the Bible's role in these processes. He shows how these engagements with the Bible's origins prompt a rethinking of formulations of secularity and secularization in our own time.

Frederik A.V. Harms untersucht Calvins Ekklesiologie ausgehend von dessen Kommentar zu den Kleinen Propheten von 1557–1559. Harms stellt Calvins Sicht auf die Kirche aus historisch-systematischer Sicht dar. Seine Studie über die Ekklesiologie des großen Reformers wird begleitet von zwei historischen Teilen. Zum einen bietet Harms Calvins historischen Kontext aus den Jahren 1558 bis 1559, als dieser Vorlesungen zu den Kleinen Propheten hielt. Andererseits bietet Harms einen Überblick über die Auslegungsgeschichte der Kleinen Propheten von der Zeit der Frühen Kirche bis zur ersten Generation reformierter Orthodoxie.

This is a study of canon in the Christian tradition. Standard accounts locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology. The author explores the consquences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology.

Martin LutherÕs importance in the history of the doctrine of Scripture is universally acknowledged. However, many modern studies of this aspect of LutherÕs thought are colored by attempts to acquire him for one side or other of the contemporary theological debate. Luther has been variously painted as a fundamentalist, the forerunner of biblical criticism, a pragmatist, and even a proto-existentialist. Karl BarthÕs idiosyncratic appropriation of the reformer in the first volume of his Church Dogmatics has been particularly influential. This study attempts a fresh examination of the most significant of LutherÕs comments on the nature and use of Scripture, locating each in its literary and historical context. It explores a series of connections in LutherÕs thought, analyzing his scattered statements in terms of four categories reflected in his own terminology: inspiration (inspiratio), unity (tota scriptura), clarity (claritas scripturae), and sufficiency (sola scriptura). In particular, it seeks to identify those elements that enable Luther to move with confidence between his statements about the authority of Scripture and his interpretive method.

1.i THE HISTORY OF BRITISHAPOCALYPTICTHOUGHT The study of early modern Britain between the Reformation of the 1530s and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 1640s has undergone a series of historiographical revisions. The dramatic events during that century were marked by a religious struggle that produced a Protestant nation, divided internally, yet clearly opposed to Rome. Likewise the political environment instilled a sense of responsible awareness regarding the administration of the realm and the defense 1 of constitutional liberty. Whig Historians from the nineteenth century described 2 these changes as a “Puritan Revolution.” Essentially this was England’s inevitable 3 march towards enlightenment as a result t of religious and political maturation. Subsequent Marxist historians attributed these radical changes to socio-economic 4 factors. Britain was witnessing the decline of the medieval feudal system and the rise of a new capitalist class. Both of these early views claimed that brewing social, political and economic unrest culminated in extreme radical action. More recently, beginning in the 1980s, new studies appeared that began to challenge these old assumptions. Relying on careful archival research, many of these studies discarded the former conception of this period as “revolutionary”, instead 5 arguing that the Reformation was in fact a gradual and unpopular process. In 1 Margo Todd (ed.) Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England (London and New York, 1995), p. 1. 2 S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (London, 1876).