Most of the fourteen chapters in this volume have their origins with an Evangelical Theological Society conference in 2012. The pieces are divided into four sections: Doctrine, Exegesis, Social/Pastoral Matters, and History. In this they witness to the breadth of engagement of reforming protestantism across theological, ecclesiastical, and social landscapes.
This panoramic view is helpful to set main trajectories, specific contexts, and responses by reformers including Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Jewel; to discussing debates at Marburg and over the Eucharist in seventeenth-century France; and for considering issues of marriage, preaching, and letters to martyrs. The volume examines these kinds of issues to provide instruction, correction of scholarly perceptions, and core protestant convictions arising from biblical exegesis and theological understandings.
An example of a “corrective nudge” is from Derek J. Brown in “‘A prison house of riches’: Calvin's theology of the human body.” After discussing Calvin's image of “the prison house of the body” (cf. Plato) with which humans constantly contend and from which they anticipate deliverance in resurrection, Brown interprets Paul in Romans as not advocating “the mere sloughing off of the body in order to remedy his fallen condition and his struggle with sin” but rather as grounding “his hope of deliverance in the redemption of his body” (36). Paul then, says Brown, “is not looking for escape from the ‘prison house of his body,’ but for the redemption of his body through the resurrection.” This leads to Brown's comment that “Calvin would have been better served to place the resolution of this tension more squarely in the resurrection of the body, rather than in an escape from the body as such.” Brown's warning is that “although this oversight is far from rendering Calvin's theology of the body useless, it could serve to perpetuate an unhealthy disjunction between the body and the soul already apparent in some corners of evangelicalism” (36).
A critique of Luther and his attitudes at the Colloquy of Marburg (1529) is lodged by Matthew J. Kasper in “Returning to Marburg to rethink Martin Luther.” He faults the reformer, saying, “Luther entered Marburg having made up his mind regarding the spiritual state of his rivals, and during the meeting he demonstrated no intention to modify that opinion” (184). Kasper goes on to say that “Luther is often quoted by modern scholars with uncontested authority and venerated as the wise and gentle sage of the Reformation, who epitomizes homologous Protestant thought as the seminal theologian of this period” (188). Yet “Luther also stood out among the reformers for his verbal venom amidst theological discourse, often providing an example that should be neither honored nor emulated” (188). This leads to Kasper's lament that “the Marburg Colloquy represents a moment when Protestantism could have grasped profound unity even in the midst of peripheral theological disagreement. Instead, Marburg entombs one of the greatest ironies of church history, namely, that Luther, one of the key individuals who instigated the Protestant Reformation was also one of the prime figures who shattered it” (189).
An interesting study is Lloyd A. Harsch's “Contributions of the Brethren of the Common Life to the Reformation.” The movement that emerged from the work of Gerhard (Greete) Groote (1340–1384) in the Netherlands developed the Devotio moderna (“new devotion”), a movement for church renewal based primarily on the New Testament and the early church theologians, especially Augustine and Jerome (163). Its four emphases were living for Christ, studying scripture, progressing in holiness and growing spiritually (163). Harsch points out that “every major Reformer crossed paths with the Brethren” (170). The Brethren contributed a focus on personal piety, seeing the life of faith as “not a one-time event that resided solely in a mystical, internal plane, but a life-long journey” (163). A major contribution was educational reform, fostered by the establishment of schools operated by brethren-houses, but separate from them. Teaching laity to read so they could learn for themselves how to live holy lives was a goal. A third contribution was monastic reform where the Brethren desired a more disciplined lifestyle and independent organization. Women who wanted to live in community were called the Sisters of the Common Life. Eventually the Brethren of the Common Life became part of the ecclesiastical structure of the Roman church. But, as Harsch concludes, the most important impact of the Brethren was in “the spiritual impact they had on both commoner and cleric alike” (172). The Brethren, while not active during the Reformation period, did “provide the tools of scholarship, the training in their use and the personnel to carry out its aim of producing authentic Christianity.” Their ministry, says Harsch, “reminds modern church leaders of the importance and vitality of an educated, empowered laity” (172).
The two essays in the exegesis section concern “Medieval and Reformation interpretations of the Psalms quoted in Hebrews 1–2” (Jeff Fisher) and “Luther and Calvin's understanding of Isaiah 53” (Suk-il-Ahn). Both deal with topics that concern the relation of the Old Testament and New Testament. Both are interesting comparative studies that convey hermeneutical practices of Luther and Calvin but also other protestant reformers including Oecolampadius, Zwingli, and Bullinger.
This volume is a helpful resource for the topics it covers. It provides scholarly discussions of important subjects that emerge out of biblical exegesis and theology but which branch out into a diversity of themes and issues reflecting a fullness of Reformation concerns. In the Preface, editor Parsons quotes Timothy George that “the sovereign God of the Reformation was concerned with the whole human being, body, soul, mind, instincts, social relations, and political affiliations” (ix). This volume is a beneficial witness to this insight and will repay attentive study.
