The gallery below offers serval introductions, surveys, and key reference materials to begin a study on the Reformation and its key theologians.
These websites and databases offer primary text digital materials from the Reformers and other various writings of the time period. Most materials are in English, but a few are in French, German, and Latin. Some Baptist materials are also included.
Extensive collection of digitized works from leading research libraries worldwide, providing access to rare, out-of-print, and public domain materials
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Encyclopedia of Protestantism
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Historical Dictionary of the Reformed Churches
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Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics
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Reformed Scholasticism
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Charts of Reformation and Enlightenment Church History
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A visual survey of a key part of our Christian heritage, Charts of Reformation and Enlightenment Church History covers the major events, movements, and people from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Perfect for enhancing every type of teaching and learning situation and style, including homeschooling curricula and tutoring, church classes and Sunday school. This volume of the ZondervanCharts series includes charts of ideas and trends as well as pertinent diagrams, divided into three primary sections: Early Modern Europe and the Reformation (1500 to 1650) The Rise of Religious Rationalism and the Enlightenment (1650 to 1750) The Period of British Settlement in North America: The Colonial Period of American Religious History (1600 to 1800) Within these sections, 90 charts, diagrams, and other visual learning tools are arranged under seventeen headings, including: Major Schisms in the First Sixteen Centuries Development of Church Government Orthodoxy and Unitarianism Compared Education in Puritan England Christianity and the American Revolution Origins of Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Lutherans ZondervanCharts are ready references for those who need the essential information at their fingertips. Accessible and highly useful, the books in this library offer clear organization and thorough summaries of issues, subjects, and topics that are key for Christian students and learners. The visuals and captions will cater to any teaching methodology, style, or program.
Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion
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This is the definitive English-language edition of one of the monumental works of the Christian church. All previous editions--in Latin, French, German, and English--have been collated; references and notes have been verified, corrected, and expanded; and new bibliographies have been added.The translation preserves the rugged strength and vividness of Calvin's writing, but also conforms to modern English and renders heavy theological terms in simple language. The result is a translation that achieves a high degree of accuracy and at the same time is eminently readable. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.
Calvin's Commentaries
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Calvin: Theological Treatises
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Here is a definative, readable translation of John Calvin's Theological Treatises. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.
The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin
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John Calvin (1509-64) stands with Martin Luther (1483-1546) as the premier theologian of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. Calvin's thought spread throughout Europe to the New World and later throughout the whole world. His insights and influence continue to endure today, presenting a model of theological scholarship grounded in Scripture as well as providing nurture for Christian believers within churches across the globe. Dr Donald K. McKim gathers together an international array of major Calvin scholars to consider phases of Calvin's theological thought and influence. Historians and theologians meet to present a full picture of Calvin's contexts, the major themes in Calvin's writings, and the ways in which his thought spread and has increasing importance. Chapters serve as guides to their topics and provide further readings for additional study. This is an accessible introduction to this significant Protestant reformer and will appeal to the specialist and non-specialist alike.
The Pietist Theologians
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These "Readers" offer access to key primary texts from the Reformation period. Consult the Table of Contents page in these various collections of texts to find English translations of major Reformation era documents. Try an ILL Chapter Request if you are only looking for a specific document.
This box offers some general reference introductions to Luther and some online resources for Lutheranism. There is also an index of Luther's Works.
Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings (3rd edition)
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The best one-volume reader of Luther's writingsnow revisedMartin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, a single-volume introduction to Luther's most influential, noted, and important writings in the modern translationsincluding excerpts of his sermons and letterspresents Luther the theologian "steeped in the word of God, speaking to the whole church," even as it takes the reader straight to Luther the man, to his controversial Reformation insights, to his strongest convictions about God and Scripture and the life of the church, and most importantly to his theologya still-exciting encounter with the meaning of Jesus Christ for each age. The third edition includes revised introductions, updated bibliography, index, and the addition of "A Meditation on Christ's Passion" (1519), "Treatise on the Blessed Sacrament" (1519), "Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of ChristAgainst the Fanatics" (1526), "Sermon in Castle Pleissenburg" (1539), and "Consolation to Women Whose Pregnancies Have Not Gone Well" (1542), as well as new translations of "A Practical Way to Pray" (1535) and "On the Freedom of a Christian" (1520).
Here I Stand
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"I cannot.. I will not... recant Here I stand." This authoritative and inspiring story paints a vivid portrait of the crusader who spearheaded the Reformation. Considered one of the most readable biographies of Martin Luther, this volume is an illustrated look at the German religious reformer and his influence on Western civilization. Martin Luther entered a monastery as a youth and as a man shattered the structure of the medieval church. Luther spoke out against the corrupt religious practices that then existed. His demand that the authority for doctrine and practice be Scriptures, rather than Popes or Councils, echoed around the world and ignited the Great Reformation. Accused of heresy and threatened with excommunication and death, Luther maintained his bold stand and refused to recant. In his crusade to eliminate religious abuses, he did more than any other man to establish the Protestant faith. With sound historical scholarship and penetrating insight, Roland Bainton examines Luther's widespread influence. He re-creates the spiritual setting of the sixteenth century, showing Luther's place within it and influence upon it. Richly illustrated with more than 100 woodcuts and engravings from Luther's own time, Here I Stand dramatically brings to life Martin Luther, the great reformer. Bainton published Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther in 1950. As of 2008, it is still in print. Kenneth Scott Latourette, in the chapter notes for "Luther and the Rise and Spread of Lutheranism" in his History of Christianity, lauds Bainton's biography of Luther as "A superb combination of accurate scholarship based upon a thorough knowledge of the sources and secondary works with insight, vivid, readable literary style, and reproductions of contemporary illustrations. It also contains so valuable a bibliography as to render needless an extended one in this chapter." In his chapter on Luther's writings in Invitation to the Classics, Mark A. Noll singles out Bainton's biography: "Of the many superlative treatments, a half-century old study by Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, has justly won a reputation as a classic work on a classic subject."
Martin Luther in Context
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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.
The Theology of Martin Luther
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This is a comprehensive and systematic survey of Martin Luther's entire thought by an internationally recognized authority in the field of Reformation research. The main theological questions which engaged the Reformer's attention are set forth in clear and simple fashion, along with a host of quotations from this own writings to illumine the presentation. Scholars and laypersons alike will appreciate the more than a thousand instances in which the author allows Luther to speak forcefully and directly for himself.
The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther's Theology
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As celebrations of the five-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther's initiation of the most dramatic reform movement in the history of Christianity approach, 47 essays by historians and theologians from 15 countries provide insight into the background and context, the content, and the impact of his way of thought. Nineteenth-century Chinese educational reformers, twentieth-century African and Indian social reformers, German philosophers and Christians of many traditions on every continent have found in Luther's writings stimulation and provocation for addressing modern problems. This volume offers studies of the late medieval intellectual milieus in which his thought was formed, the hermeneutical principles that guided his reading and application of the Bible, the content of his formulations of Christian teaching on specific topics, his social and ethic thought, the ways in which his contemporaries, both supporters and opponents, helped shape his ideas, the role of specific genre in developing his positions on issues of the day, and the influences he has exercised in the past and continues to exercise today in various parts of the world and the Christian church. Authors synthesize the scholarly debates and analysis of Luther's thinking and point to future areas of research and exploration of his thought.
The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther
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Martin Luther (1483-1546) stands as one of the giant figures in history. His activities, writings, and legacy have had a huge effect on the western world. This Cambridge Companion provides an accessible introduction to Martin Luther for students of theology and history and for others interested in the life, work and thought of the first great Protestant reformer. The book contains eighteen chapters by an international array of major Luther scholars. Historians and theologians join here to present a full picture of Luther's contexts, the major themes in his writings, and the ways in which his ideas spread and have continuing importance today. Each chapter serves as a guide to its topic and provides further reading for additional study. The Companion will assist those with little or no background in Luther studies, while teachers and Luther specialists will find this accessible volume an invaluable aid to their work.
Anglican Foundations
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Anglicans across the globe place a great deal of importance on the Reformation texts that were prepared for their churches as England broke free from Roman Catholic control in the sixteenth century. The most well known of these texts are the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, both of which are still used extensively throughout the Anglican Communion. However, these were only two of the documents that served the wide, and carefully integrated, program of religious reform in the Reformation years. Alongside them were other equally authoritative texts prepared to form children in the basics of the faith, guide ongoing patterns of private devotion, model healthy biblical interpretation, expound core doctrines, and much more. This handbook offers an introduction to the full suite of doctrinally determinative documents of the English Reformation. It supplies an orientation to each family of documents, as well as to the individual texts that were sanctioned by the church, state and crown. In addition to descriptions of the texts, there is also a brief history of each type of formulary, discussions of their varied purposes, and lists of key references for further reading. The Anglican Church can only benefit from a fuller understanding of its own documentary heritage. Anglican Foundations is an unparalleled resource that offers students, ordinands, and all committed Anglicans the ideal orientation to the doctrinal texts of the English Reformation. REV. DR TIM PATRICK is Principal of the Bible College of South Australia, an affiliated college of the Australian College of Theology, where he teaches systematic theology and practical ministry. He served in pastoral ministry for ten years before moving into theological education and ministry training. His research interests are at the intersection of biblical studies, theology and Anglican ministry.
Heretics and Believers
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Centuries on, what the Reformation was and what it accomplished remain deeply contentious. Peter Marshall’s sweeping new history—the first major overview for general readers in a generation—argues that sixteenth-century England was a society neither desperate for nor allergic to change, but one open to ideas of “reform” in various competing guises. King Henry VIII wanted an orderly, uniform Reformation, but his actions opened a Pandora’s Box from which pluralism and diversity flowed and rooted themselves in English life.
With sensitivity to individual experience as well as masterfully synthesizing historical and institutional developments, Marshall frames the perceptions and actions of people great and small, from monarchs and bishops to ordinary families and ecclesiastics, against a backdrop of profound change that altered the meanings of “religion” itself. This engaging history reveals what was really at stake in the overthrow of Catholic culture and the reshaping of the English Church.
Reformation Divided
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Published to mark the 500th anniversary of the events of 1517, Reformation Divided explores the impact in England of the cataclysmic transformations of European Christianity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The religious revolution initiated by Martin Luther is usually referred to as 'The Reformation', a tendentious description implying that the shattering of the medieval religious foundations of Europe was a single process, in which a defective form of Christianity was replaced by one that was unequivocally benign, 'the midwife of the modern world'. The book challenges these assumptions by tracing the ways in which the project of reforming Christendom from within, initiated by Christian 'humanists' like Erasmus and Thomas More, broke apart into conflicting and often murderous energies and ideologies, dividing not only Catholic from Protestant, but creating deep internal rifts within all the churches which emerged from Europe's religious conflicts. The book is in three parts: In 'Thomas More and Heresy', Duffy examines how and why England's greatest humanist apparently abandoned the tolerant humanism of his youthful masterpiece Utopia, and became the bitterest opponent of the early Protestant movement. 'Counter-Reformation England' explores the ways in which post-Reformation English Catholics accommodated themselves to a complex new identity as persecuted religious dissidents within their own country, but in a European context, active participants in the global renewal of the Catholic Church. The book's final section 'The Godly and the Conversion of England' considers the ideals and difficulties of radical reformers attempting to transform the conventional Protestantism of post-Reformation England into something more ardent and committed. In addressing these subjects, Duffy shines new light on the fratricidal ideological conflicts which lasted for more than a century, and whose legacy continues to shape the modern world.
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Other Interesting Webpages and Resources
