Was The Reformation A Mistake

Download or read book Was the Reformation a Mistake? written by Matthew Levering and published by Zondervan Academic. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was the Reformation a mistake? In its actual historical context, it hardly seems fair to call the Reformation a "mistake." In 1517, the Church was in need of a spiritual and theological reform. The issues raised by Renaissance humanism - and by the profound corruption of the Church's leaders, the Avignon papacy, and the Great Schism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - lingered unresolved. What were key theological problems that led to the Reformation? Theologian Matthew Levering helps readers see these questions from a Catholic perspective. Surveying nine key themes - Scripture, Mary, Eucharist, Monasticism, Justification and Merit, Saints Priesthood, and Scripture - he examines the positions of Martin Luther and makes a case that the Catholic position is biblically defensible once one allows for the variety of biblically warranted modes of interpreting Scripture. At the same time, Levering makes clear that he cannot "prove" the Catholic case. The book concludes with a spirited response by "mere Protestant" theologian Kevin J. Vanhoozer. X

Download or read book Reformation Myths written by Rodney Stark and published by SPCK. This book was released on 2017-08-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What has the Reformation ever done for us? A lot less than you might think, as Rodney Stark shows in this enlightening and entertaining antidote to recent books about the rise of Protestantism and its legacy. ‘Rodney Stark takes no prisoners as he charges through five hundred years of history, upsetting apple carts left and right. Almost everything you thought you knew about the Reformation turns out to be a false narrative. . . In future, anyone who makes sweeping claims about the benefits of Protestantism ought to check their assumptions against Stark’s research first.’ Clifford Longley, author and journalist ‘Stark brings the insights of a distinguished sociologist of religion to bear on a range of inherited assumptions about the impact of the Reformation . . . The result makes for salutary reading in this year of commemoration and (not always justified) celebration.’ Peter Marshall, Professor of History, University of Warwick ‘Stark changed the way we think about the early Church and this book may change the way you think about Protestantism . . . Reformation Myths cuts through pious certainties and challenges us to think again about our cultural history.’ Linda Woodhead MBE DD, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Lancaster University

Download or read book Confessions and Catechisms of the Reformation written by Mark A. Noll and published by Regent College Pub. This book was released on 2004 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Both by his choice of confessions and by his judicious and scholarly introductions, Mark Noll has made [the major Reformation confessions and catechisms] available in a form that is sure to deepen and enlighten doctrinal discussion and confessional awareness and that will therefore contribute to solidly evangelical and hence soundly ecumenical theology. I am delighted to see this book appear." - Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University "It is a delight to welcome Mark Noll's well-chosen, well-edited selection of key sixteenth-century statements of faith - Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Anabaptist, Roman Catholic. To have this significant material brought together in one book is a boon, for the enrichment that comes of studying it as a whole is very great. For anyone who would take the measure of the Reformation conflict, this collection is a 'must.'" - J.I. Packer, Regent College "Mark Noll has ably introduced these still living confessions to a modern audience more prone to forgetfulness than any since the sixteenth century. This collection will be useful not only for classes in historical and systematic theology, but also to pastors and lay readers who wish better to understand their Protestant heritage." - Thomas C. Oden, Drew University

Download or read book The Unintended Reformation written by Brad S. Gregory and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

Download or read book A New Perspective on Jesus written by James D. G. Dunn and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2005-03 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned scholar calls for a change of direction for the study of Jesus in the 21st century.

Download or read book The Last Reformation written by Torben Sondergaard and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of what we see expressed in the church today is built on more than just the New Testament. It's built mostly on the Old Testament, Church culture, and Paganism. If we are to succeed in making disciples of all nations then we must go back to the "template" we find in the Bible. Let the reformation begin!

Download or read book When Wright is Wrong written by Phillip D. R. Griffiths and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-01-14 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today's world the Christian is constantly being challenged with new teachings. Some of these are particularly dangerous because they are put forward by those with evangelical credentials. Tom Nicholas Wright is one of the leading proponents of the New Perspective on Paul. Wright sees himself as the new Luther, a discoverer of the true biblical understanding of key doctrines like that of justification by faith. According to him, the Reformation misunderstood the nature of justification by faith alone and the role of the law in the Old Testament. Wright maintains that this has continued to be the case for those of the Reformed Faith. He tells us that we are guilty of anachronism, whereby we interpret first-century Judaism in the light of medieval Roman Catholicism. In this work the writer not only defends the Reformed understanding of this vital doctrine but also seeks to show how Wright has misunderstood the nature of the new covenant and the place of ethnic Israel.