Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt played a key role in the development of the evangelical understanding of the Lord's Supper. In 1521 he wrote several pamphlets urging a reform of the Mass. In 1524 he broke with Martin Luther and published a second group of pamphlets rejecting the traditional belief in Christ's corporeal presence in the Eucharist. Despite the importance of Karlstadt's tracts, they are little known today, and his understanding of the Lord's Supper is often reduced to a caricature. For the first time, Amy Nelson Burnett translates his thirteen pamphlets into English, illuminating Karlstadt's importance for the Reformation debate over the Eucharist and his contribution to what would become Reformed sacramental theology.

The debate over the Lord's Supper had momentous consequences for the Reformation, causing the division of the evangelical movement, influencing the formation of political alliances, and contributing to cultural differences among the Protestant territories of Germany and Switzerland. Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy is the first full-length study of the beginning of that debate. Going beyond the traditional focus on Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, it emphasizes the diversity of the "sacramentarian" challenge to traditional belief in Christ's corporeal presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and it re-evaluates the significance of Luther's colleague, Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, for the debate. Burnett describes Luther's earliest criticisms of the mass and the efforts in Wittenberg to reform liturgical praxis to correspond with his ideas. She then looks at pamphlets written by other reformers to show how Luther's understanding of the sacrament was adapted and modified outside of Wittenberg. Ultimately, Burnett shows how Karlstadt's eucharistic pamphlets introduced into the public debate arguments that would become standard Reformed criticisms of the Lutheran position. The book also demonstrates the influence not only of Erasmus but also of John Wyclif and the Hussites for discussions of the sacrament, highlights the role of the reformers of Basel and Strasbourg for developing the "Zwinglian" understanding of the Lord's Supper, and draws attention to the early eucharistic theology of the Silesians Kaspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Krautwald. This book will be an indispensable guide for readers seeking to understand the issues surrounding the outbreak of the eucharistic controversy in the sixteenth century.

Edited by Ronald K. Rittgers and Vincent Evener, Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe offers an expansive view of the Protestant reception of medieval mysticism, from the beginnings of the Reformation through the mid-seventeenth century. Providing a foundation and impetus for future research, the chapters in this handbook cover diverse figures from across the Protestant traditions (Lutheran, Reformed, Radical), summarizing existing research, analysing relevant sources, and proposing new directions for study. Each chapter is authored by a leading scholar in the field. Collectively, Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe calls for a comprehensive reassessment of the relationship of Protestantism to its medieval past, to Roman Catholicism, and to the enduring mystical element of Christianity.

The book honours the Rev. Dr. Robert A Kolb, retired Director of the Institute for Mission Studies and Missions Professor in systematic theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and perhaps the leading authority on the development of "Wittenberg Theology" in the English-speaking world. At the same time, his teaching and writing, which continues without flagging, has emphasized the importance of translating and retranslating the historic Lutheran faith in terms that address contemporary issues and contemporary people. In this volume, colleagues and co-workers address and push forward Kolb insights into the history of the Reformation era and on the impact of those Reformation issues (and quarrels) on the life of the church in the world today. With contributions by Charles Arand, L'ubomir Batka, Amy Nelson Burnett, Irene Dingel, Mary Jane Haemig, Scott Hendrix, Erik Herrmann, Werner Klän, David Lumpp, Mark Mattes, Daniel Mattson, Richard Muller, Paul Robinson, Robert Rosin, and Timothy Wengert.

"The present book argues that Martin Luther and his first allies and intra-Reformation critics (Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Thomas Müntzer) appealed to suffering to teach Christians to distinguish between true and false doctrine, teachers, and experiences. In so doing, they developed and deployed categories of false suffering, in which suffering was received or simply feigned in ways that hardened rather than demolished self-assertion. These ideas were nourished by the reception of teachings about annihilation of the self and union with God received from post-Eckhartian mysticism. Luther, Karlstadt, and Müntzer developed this mystical inheritance in different directions, each of which intended to shape Christians for differing forms of ecclesial-political dissent: Luther redefined union with God as a union through faith and the Word, and he counselled Christians to endure persecution as divine work under contraries; Karlstadt described union with God as "sinking into the divine will," and he upheld this union as a post-mortem goal that required, here and now, constant self-accusation and improvement on the part of the individual and the community; Müntzer looked for God to possess souls according to the created order, making Christians into actors for the execution of God's will on the earthly plane. The democratization of mysticism that so many scholars have attributed to these reformers' teachings involved a delimitation: mysticism joined to Reformation teaching was used to identify false experiences, false teachers, and ultimately false Christianity"--

Martin Luther remains a popular, oft-quoted, referenced, lauded historical figure. He is often seen as the fulcrum upon which the medieval turned into the modern, the last great medieval or the first great modern; or, he is the Protestant hero, the virulent anti-Semite; the destroyer of Catholic decadence, or the betrayer of the peasant cause. An important but contested figure, he was all of these things. Understanding Luther's context helps us to comprehend how a single man could be so many seemingly contradictory things simultaneously. Martin Luther in Context explores the world around Luther in order to make the man and the Reformation movement more understandable. Written by an international team of leading scholars, it includes over forty short, accessible essays, all specially commissioned for this volume, which reconstruct the life and world of Martin Luther. The volume also contextualizes the scholarship and reception of Luther in the popular mind.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the Eucharist had come to encompass theology, liturgy, art, architecture, and music. In the sixteenth century, each of these dimensions was questioned, challenged, rethought, as western European Christians divided over their central act of worship. This volume offers an introduction to early modern thinking on the Eucharist—as theology, as Christology, as a moment of human and divine communion, as that which the faithful do, as taking place, and as visible and audible. The scholars gathered in this volume speak from a range of disciplines—liturgics, history, history of art, history of theology, philosophy, musicology, and literary theory. The volume thus also brings different methods and approaches, as well as confessional orientations to a consideration of the Eucharist in the Reformation. Contributors include: Gary Macy, Volker Leppin, Carrie Euler, Nicholas Thompson, Nicholas Wolterstorff, John D. Rempel, James F. Turrell, Robert J. Daly, Isabelle Brian, Thomas Schattauer, Raymond A. Mentzer, Michele Zelinsky Hanson, Jaime Lara, Andrew Spicer, Achim Timmermann, Birgit Ulrike Münch, Andreas Gormans, Alexander J. Fisher, Regina M. Schwartz, and Christopher Wild.