Continental Reformation Research Articles

John Williamson Nevin: American theologian

John WialsOn::Netmon Nevin, Am Theolon. By Richard E. Went. New York Oxford University Press, 1997. viii +169 pp. $35 (cloth) John Williamson Nevin (1803-1886) was professor of theology at the German Reformed Seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, founder of the Mercersburg Review, and leader in developing the Mercersburg theology. Despite Nevin's,in's doubts about Anglicanism, the Mercersburg theology deserves considerable interest and attention from Anglicans as catholic, sacramental, and historically grounded expression of faith in the Protestant tradition. Richard Wentz presents a postmodern portrait of Nevin's ideas (p. 8) that competently highlights both the major themes of Nevin's work and the historical context of his contribution. Wentz notes that Nevin contradicted much of the rampant individualism that characterized the revivalistic Evangelicalism of his day (p. 24). Nevin also resisted the history-less character of the sectarian mind, as well as the antiritualistic bias of Puritan assumptions and the spiritualistic impulses of the Continental reformation (pp. 88, 128). Wentz is at his best when he describes the forces and tendencies of American religion that Nevin countered. Wentz notes the Puritan legacy of iconoclastic spiritualism that prized subjective, internal devotion and tended to dismiss objective realities as inconsequential or even satanic temptations (p. 128). Nen,in upheld an theology of salvation and Church. Salvation in Christ is made available and lived through the outward and visible realities of life, including most especially the life of the Church. Nevin countered the widespread American emphasis on subjective judgment and interiorized devotion by appealing to the incarnational movement of (p. 94). He believed that history has been substantively altered in Christ's incarnation (p. 10). In Christ, God entered the world to raise the entire world process into fullness in the divine (p. 117). Nevin emphasized that inward and outward realities are not to be disjoined from one another. The natural order is more than just its visible appearance. It points beyond itself to the supernatural and participates in the supernatural, so that nature and supernature coinhere (p. 122). In this regard, Wentz could have given some profitable attention to Nevin relative to nineteenth-century romanticism. This relationship of inward and outward is also seen in Nevin's appreciation for the sacramentality of life, and the importance of the sacramental life of the Church. Outward forms can have no saving force without inward life, but inward life cannot be maintained if there are no outward forms (p. 21). Nevin likewise upheld the importance of the transcendent at time when the great temptation of the age was to assume that the natural order with its scientific, technological, industrial power could be sufficient to the task of human fulfillment (p. …

Geoffrey Keating’s Eochair Sgiath An Aifrinn and the Catholic Reformation in Ireland

The name of Geoffrey Keating is familiar to generations of students of Irish language and literature. His prose works are fine examples of seventeenth-century Irish writing. He was credited by scholars of Irish with having saved from oblivion many stories of the Gaelic heroes of old in his magnum opus, the Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, a compendium of knowledge on the history of Ireland. Writing in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the native Irish system of learning and patronage of scholars was disintegrating, Keating synopsized many manuscript sources for the history of Ireland into a flowing text full of stories and curiosities. His writings were frequently transcribed and are preserved in countless manuscript copies.Kearing’s literary stature has meant that his tracts were more read for their language and style than studied for their content and it may appear curious at first sight to discover that this father figure of early Irish history and the preserver of the Irish language also wrote two theological tracts, on a continental Catholic Reformation model. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Kearing’s background. Although subsequently hailed as a champion of Gaelic Ireland, Keating was not a product of that society. In fact he was of Anglo-Norman (Old English) descent. He was ordained as a secular priest and was educated at two of the continental colleges set up to train Irishmen for the priesthood, Bordeaux and Rheims, where he came under English Jesuit influence. The precise dates of his sojourn on the continent are not known, but pre-date 1619. It is thought he was born about 1570 and died about 1644, spending most of his life as a priest working in Munster.

Books-for-Laymen: The Demise of a Commonplace

The exact relationship between Lollardy and the sixteenth-century Reformation long has eluded students of English history. Recent detailed studies of Lollard texts have underlined a continuity of belief and polemic.1 One significant difference, however, is the way in which reformers in the two periods used the commonplace saying that images are “laymen's books.” The Lollards, even those who were the most outspoken critics of images, used Gregory the Great's metaphor to support their positions. In the I 530s the English reformers used the commonplace in similar ways, but by the 1540s they had rejected it altogether. The English reformers, however, did more than merely reject Gregory as an authority. Instead of dismissing the old justification of images as a false sophism, as the continental reformers had done in the 1520s, they appropriated the laymen's-book metaphor for their own polemic, turning it against the iconophiles. Furthermore, they developed the metaphor in a new way that provided a positive alternative for the illiterate, arguing that the simple and unlearned read not from the book of art but rather from the natural world around them.

The Doctrine of Justification and Merit in Roman Catholic with Anglicans and in the Light of Luther's 'Theological Grammar' of 'Incarnate Faith'

At its fourth plenary meeting in the Summer of 1986, the Second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission completed work on a statement entitled Salvation and the Church. The statement was published during Church Unity Week in January, 1987. A reading of the document bears out the claim made in the press release at the end of the Llandaff meeting that the participants in the dialogue 'have reached agreement on those issues of salvation and justification which gave rise to deep divisions between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century'. The agreed statement recognizes that 'the extent to which Anglicans and Roman Catholics have actually been in disagreement on this topic is itself a matter of debate' . This alludes, at least in part, to the fact that some Anglicans have not found serious difficulty with the doctrine of justification as expounded by the Council of Trent, while others, Evangelical Anglicans in particular, having identified themselves with the exposition of that doctrine by the Continental Reformers, share the widespread perception of both Protestants and Roman Catholics that Trent's teaching is antithetical to that of the Reformers. Whichever side of the debate one defends, the debate's very existence required that ARCIC-II address the topics of salvation and justification 'in response to the conviction that it is necessary for the two Communions to be in agreement on this issue as they make further progress towards full communion of faith and sacramental life'.

‘For Children in Yeeres and Children in Understanding‘: The Emergence of the English Catechism under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts

When Immanuel Bourne published his larger catechism in 1646, he prefaced it with an unusually full account of the history of catechising. He was not the first author of the period to trace the practice back to the examples of religious instruction in both Old and New Testaments, or to cite the works of Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen as proof of the existence of religious education in the early Church. Nor was he alone in praising the efforts of those continental reformers of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries who thought they had revived the characteristic form of instruction of the early Church after centuries of neglect, though it may be added that Bourne's list of contemporary European catechists was longer and more cosmopolitan than others'.

Continental Students and the Protestant Reformation in England in the Sixteenth Century

Recent studies have demonstrated the insularity of Oxford and, by inference, Cambridge in the later middle ages; far from the two universities being regarded as centres of international scholarship the presence there of students from the continent seems to have been something of a rarity. In the sixteenth century a series of only loosely connected events, Henry VIII’s break with the papacy, and, somewhat later, the explicitly protestant government of Edward VI which happened to coincide with the victory of the imperial forces in Germany brought about a major change in the university world: continental protestant theologians now looked at England with new eyes, seeing it not only, as is well known, as a haven for persecuted protestant leaders, but also as a suitable centre of education for their young men. The first English exiles who went abroad for the sake of their religion in the reign of Henry VIII reinforced by the far greater number who fled from the Marian persecution made no secret of their belief in the vast superiority for the advancement of protestantism of the continental schools, especially those of Strassburg, Zurich and Geneva, but a group of contemporary Swiss, German, and French students adopted a rather different attitude. To them the English universities offered opportunities they did not have at home. One or two aspired to even higher realms and nourished ambitions of influencing thecourseof the religious settlement in England. A fresh account of their experiences in England from the later years of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I may reveal new information on a rather less familiar aspect of the relationship between the great continental reformers and the English reformation.

Luther and the right of resistance to the emperor

Like most problems connected with Luther, the question of his attitude to the right of resistance to the emperor is one that has attracted a great deal of attention from german scholars. Sixty years ago, at the height of the first world war, Karl Müller published his pioneering essay,Luthers Äusserungen über das Recht des bewaffneten Widerstands gegen den Kaiser,in which he provided the first detailed analysis of the development of Luther’s views: since then the problem has been extensively debated by a succession of german historians and theologians. Yet it is perhaps typical of the insularity of so much english historical writing on the continental reformation that these debates have largely been ignored on this side of the Channel. Even to-day there is no adequate study of the problem in english.

Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English. Second edition, revised and enlarged. By Roland H. Bainton and Eric W. Gritsch. Hamden, Connecticut: The Shoe String Press, Inc., 1972. 19 + 220 pp. $10.00.

Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English. Second edition, revised and enlarged. By Roland H. Bainton and Eric W. Gritsch. Hamden, Connecticut: The Shoe String Press, Inc., 1972. 19 + 220 pp. $10.00. - Volume 43 Issue 4

:Bibliography of the Continental Reformation. Materials Available in English

:<i>Bibliography of the Continental Reformation. Materials Available in English</i>

Tudor Translations of Continental Reformers in Toronto Libraries

Tudor Translations of Continental Reformers in Toronto Libraries

Continental Reformation: Works of General Interest. Studies in Calvin and Calvinism Since 1955

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Book Review: II. Historical — Theological Studies: The Nature of the Church According to the Radical Continental Reformation

Book Review: II. Historical — Theological Studies: The Nature of the Church According to the Radical Continental Reformation

Biblical Authority and the Continental Reformation

That the distinctively ‘Protestant’ understanding of biblical authority can be grasped only by seeing it against its medieval background, may appear to be a truism. But the affirmation is necessary, if for no other reason, at least because the relationship of Protestantism to Catholicism has too often been interpreted as one of simple opposition in every respect. In part, however, the Reformers' understanding of biblical authority arises directly out of scholasticism, not by conscious opposition, but by unquestioning acceptance. The differentia of Protestantism cannot be defined simply by appeal to the so-called ‘formal’ and ‘material’ principles, unless the twin principles be themselves carefully defined. There was nothing new in the mere fact that the Reformers resorted to the Bible for verification of their theological convictions, nor even in their affirmation of the necessity of grace for salvation. The medieval Church had a rigorous doctrine of biblical inspiration, and it found grace as indispensable for justification as did the Reformers themselves.No doubt the earliest disciples took their view of inspiration and authority from Judaism. To begin with, their Scriptures were the Jewish Scriptures, and they themselves were all Jews. But it was natural enough that the Jewish doctrine of ‘verbal inspiration’ should persist even after the Church had become predominantly Gentile. The authority of Scripture is made to rest upon a theory of inspiration: the words of Scripture are binding because, in the last analysis, they are the Words of God.

Continental Reformation: Works of General Interest, Studies in Calvin and Calvinism Since 1948

Continental Reformation: Works of General Interest, Studies in Calvin and Calvinism Since 1948

The Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos: A Chapter in the Struggle for Religious Freedom in France

One of the most significant documents in the literature of the Continental Reformation is that bearing the title The Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants. Its significance rests upon a basis of historical importance far exceeding that of its inclusion in the body of Huguenot writings which illumines the religious life of sixteenth and seventeenth century France. It is important because, as Mr. Harold Laski indicates, it is “a brilliant summary of ideas already adumbrated by the Huguenot party,” and it “surpassed all other essays of the time in the vigor and lucidity with which it restates these ideas.” It is a work which is regarded as embodying the best Huguenot thinking, and it records a memorable protest against tyranny that has renewed poignancy at every crisis in the age-long struggle for human freedom. It asked, and in its own fashion answered, questions having wide political significance because of the inextricable union of political with religious problems of the time.

Movement in the Church of England

To ensure a full understanding of the situation to which the publication of the Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine has given rise, it must be viewed against the background of Anglican history. The upheaval of the Reformation tore the Church of England violently out of the living tradition of Latin Catholicism, but it did not place it completely in either of the main streams of continental Protestantism. From the moment of its final separation, it stood in isolation—with a heritage from the Catholic past, and a considerable infiltration of contemporary Protestantism. It appealed, not as did Catholicism, to a living voice, nor to a great interpreter of God’s revelation, as did Calvinism and Lutheranism, but to the primitive Church of the early centuries. Thus, while Catholicism invoked a living continuous tradition as final witness to the faith, and Protestantism, tending to ignore the interval between the Apostles and its own second founders, presented a new interpretation, Anglicanism, rejecting both, based itself upon an appeal to the earliest ages of Christianity, and created a tradition orthodox, sacramental, sober and learned, biblical, patristic and historical in approach, but dogmatic only where the primitive Church seemed plainly to have given its decision. Scholasticism, with its tradition of close theological thinking, was set aside, and so in the main were the systems of the continental reformers, and thus grew into being the characteristics of the Anglican ethos.

Monographs in Church History, No. 1: Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English. Roland H. Bainton

<i>Monographs in Church History, No. 1: Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English</i>. Roland H. Bainton

Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English By Roland H. Bainton. Chicago: The American Society of Church History, 1935. 54 pages. $1.00.

Bibliography of the Continental Reformation: Materials Available in English By Roland H. Bainton. Chicago: The American Society of Church History, 1935. 54 pages. $1.00.

Reviews of Books

Journal Article Reviews of Books Get access Documents illustrative of the Continental Reformation. Edited by the REV. B. J. KIDD , (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911.) J. P. WHITNEY J. P. WHITNEY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume XXXI, Issue CXXIV, October 1916, Pages 644–645, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/XXXI.CXXIV.644 Published: 01 October 1916

THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION

Journal Article THE CONTINENTAL REFORMATION Get access Job and the Problem of Suffering By T. F. ROYDS, Curate of the Priory Church, Malvern ( Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1911 ) H. K. ARCHDALL H. K. ARCHDALL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume os-XV, Issue 58, January 1913, Pages 284–285, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/os-XV.58.284 Published: 01 January 1913