Review of \u3ci\u3eJohannes Bugenhagen. Selected Writings,\u3c/i\u3e introduced and translated by Kurt K. Hendel

Johannes Bugenhagen is the third man of the Wittenberg Reformation, far less familiar to most people than Martin Luther or Philipp Melanchthon. Yet Bugenhagen was an influential reformer in his own right, influencing the shape of Lutheranism not only through his theological and pastoral works but also through his church ordinances, which institutionalized the Lutheran Reformation throughout northern Germany. As pastor of Wittenberg’s parish church, he was Luther’s spiritual advisor, while as a member of the theology faculty he helped train a generation of Lutheran pastors. Kurt Hendel, the Bernard, Fisher, Westburg Distinguished Professor of Reformation History at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, has translated a selection of works by Bugenhagen in order to introduce Luther’s close friend to an English-speaking audience. His endeavors are certainly to be welcomed, even if the volumes themselves could have benefited from a stronger editorial presence. ... The Selected Writings is the easiest way for English-speaking readers to become acquainted with the career and thought of this influential Wittenberg reformer

Review of \u3ci\u3eChurch robbers and reformers in Germany, 1525-1547. Confiscation and religious purpose in the Holy Roman Empire.\u3c/i\u3e by Christopher Ocker.

This study is valuable not only as an overview in English of a very complicated area of ecclesiastical law which had significant economic ramifications, but also for its implications for understanding the rise of the territorial state in early modern Germany

Basel’s Rural Pastors as Mediators of Confessional and Social Discipline

One aspect of the larger debate on the long-term consequences of the Reformation is the role played by the clergy as mediators of religious and social change. Proponents of confessionalization generally assume that the Protestant and Tridentine Catholic clergy played a prominent role in this process. As representatives of both church and state who lived in daily contact with their parishioners, the pastors were well situated to transmit official norms from those above to those below. As a consequence, the clergy are routinely regarded as willing agents of the secular authority who were largely successful in their efforts to turn their parishioners into obedient subjects. Until fairly recently, however, scholars have paid little attention to how the clergy actually functioned as mediators of official religious and moral norms. In fact, as Hans-Christoph Rublack has pointed out, Lutheran pastors faced many difficulties in their relations with their parishioners. Clergy frequently complained about the disrespect shown them by the peasants who comprised their congregations. The pastors’ need to accommodate themselves to village norms often limited their ability to act as the representatives of secular authority. Clearly, further case studies of the clergy at the local level are necessary in order to understand and to evaluate their role as mediators of confessional and social discipline. An examination of the Protestant pastors and their parishioners in the villages governed by Basel in the century after the Reformation illustrates the challenges faced by the clergy as mediators between the authorities and the peasants. Basel had a relatively small rural territory, which facilitated greater supervision of the rural church by both ecclesiastical and secular officials and closer ties between the urban and the rural clergy than was possible elsewhere in Switzerland. Here, if anywhere, the rural pastors should have functioned effectively as mediators of social and confessional discipline. Their successes and their failures lead us to a more nuanced view of the early modern Protestant clergy than does the traditional hierarchical and unidirectional model. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of Basel’s clergy, however, it is necessary to know something about them. Accordingly, in this paper I will look first at the formation of the rural pastoral corps. I will then describe their interactions with their parishioners, focusing particularly on how successful they were in persuading their parishioners to accept and to internalize the new standards of belief and behavior. On this basis I will be able to assess the role played by Basel’s rural pastors as mediators of confessionalization. Figures discussed include: Johannes Oecolampadius, Oswald Myconius, Martin Bucer, Johannes Gast, Simon Sulzer, Johann Jakob Grynaeus, Johann Tryphius, Amandus Polanus, Leonhard Strübin, Heinrich Strübin, and Leonhard Soerin

The Educational Roots of Reformed Scholasticism: Dialectic and Scriptural Exegesis in the Sixteenth Century

Over the last twenty years research on later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theology has led to a reappraisal or Protestant scholasticism and its relation to the Reformation. Earlier historians of doctrine viewed Protestant scholasticism as overly rationalistic at the expense of Reformation biblicism, heavily dependent on Aristotelian philosophy, and organized around a central doctrine such as predestination. The current consensus is that Protestant scholasticism reflected the Orthodox theologians’ deep familiarity with and commitment to the scriptural text; that if it did appropriate Aristotle, such appropriation was eclectic rather than slavish; and that the idea of a central dogma organizing all of theology is the creation of the nineteenth, not the sixteenth century. Rather than concentrating on specific content, contemporary discussions emphasize that Protestant scholasticism was at base a method of teaching that was intimately linked to the university lecture hall and given its characteristic “shape” by the use of theological topics or loci arranged in a coherent order. Just as recent research has transformed the characterization of Protestant scholasticism, so it has also raised new questions about its origins. In his recent overview of “the Problem of Protestant Scholasticism,” Richard Muller has called it “the result of the educational as well as the ideological-confessional institutionalization of the Reformation.” Here he points specifically to the impact of both Agricolan dialectic and the Renaissance Aristotelianism of Zabarella and Suarez. This paper elaborates on Muller’s insight, making more clear the nature of the relationship between the revolution in dialectic and the evolution of Reformed scholasticism in the sixteenth century. Although it owed much to the contributions of Reformers educated in the traditions of late medieval logic (Bucer and Beza) or Italian Renaissance Aristotelianism (Vermigli and Zanchi), Reformed scholasticism was also the unintentional by-product of the German humanists’ enthusiastic embrace of Agricolan topical dialectic and its application to scriptural exegesis. By the last quarter of the sixteenth century dialectic had re-emerged as an essential tool for theologians. Dialectic’s reappearance in theology was due to a transformation of the discipline itself, a process that occurred in four stages. The first stage, from the end of the fifteenth century into the first two decades of the sixteenth, witnessed the transformation of late medieval logic from a technical discipline concerned with linguistic analysis into a methodology to be applied more generally to the analysis of texts. The second stage, extending from the 1520s through the 1540s, was a time of transition as new textbooks were written and German universities re-organized to teach this new humanist dialectic. These efforts bore fruit during the third stage, extending through the 1550s and 1560s, when a new generation of future pastors and theologians received ever more intense training in the application of dialectic to the explication of texts. At the same time, future theologians were given more advanced training in dialectic, which increased their proficiency in Aristotelian dialectic far beyond that of the previous generation. These developments paved the way for the fourth and final stage, apparent by the 1570s, when there was a shift away from the more philological and rhetorical exegesis typical of the first generation of the Reformation to a method of exegesis shaped by a dialectic increasingly influenced by direct study of Aristotle’s logical works. A survey of the changes made to instruction in dialectic over the course of the sixteenth century makes the differences between each of these phases clear. Topics or figures discussed include: Lorenzo Valla, Rudolf Agricola, Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Caesarius, Johann Gut, Bonifacius Amerbach, Heinrich Pantaleon, Johann Jakob Amman, Johann Sturm, Justus Velsius, Jodocus Willichius, Jodocus Perionius, Johann Hospinian, Martin Borrhaus, Johann Jakob Grynaeus, Simon Sulzer, Lambert Daneau, Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, and Aristotle’s Organon

Book Review: Lee Palmer Wandel, ed. A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation may have begun with a controversy over indulgences, but as the sixteenth century wore on, it was disagreement over the Eucharist that made divisions among Christians most visible. This volume provides an introduction to competing understandings of the Eucharist and the consequences for liturgical practice and the arts extending into the eighteenth century. It is self-consciously interdisciplinary, with contributions by theologians, historians, art historians, musicologists, and literary scholars. The volume invites comparison among the Christian traditions, with articles devoted not only to the Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed churches, but also to Anglicans and Anabaptists. The most traditional part of the book is the first section, devoted to theology. Gary Macy ably sums up the medieval inheritance, while John D. Rempel, James F. Turrell, and Robert J. Daly, SJ, describe Anabaptist, Anglican, and Catholic theologies, respectively. Because they discuss a number of thinkers, these authors can convey the variation within each confessional position. In contrast, the Lutheran Church is represented only by an essay on Martin Luther (Volker Leppin); there is no mention of Philipp Melanchthon or of the struggles among Lutherans as they tried to reconcile the theological legacy of the two Wittenbergers and that eventually led to the confessional position contained in the Book of Concord. The Reformed church is more fully represented by essays on Zwingli and Bullinger (Carrie Euler), Martin Bucer (Nicholas Thompson), and John Calvin (Nicholas Wolterstorff), but aside from a few references to the Consensus Tigurinus and the Second Helvetic Confession, there is also little sense of how a relatively unified Reformed position was articulated in polemical debate with Lutherans and Catholics through the later sixteenth century

The Educational Roots of Reformed Scholasticism: Dialectic and Scriptural Exegesis in the Sixteenth Century

Over the last twenty years research on later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theology has led to a reappraisal or Protestant scholasticism and its relation to the Reformation. Earlier historians of doctrine viewed Protestant scholasticism as overly rationalistic at the expense of Reformation biblicism, heavily dependent on Aristotelian philosophy, and organized around a central doctrine such as predestination. The current consensus is that Protestant scholasticism reflected the Orthodox theologians’ deep familiarity with and commitment to the scriptural text; that if it did appropriate Aristotle, such appropriation was eclectic rather than slavish; and that the idea of a central dogma organizing all of theology is the creation of the nineteenth, not the sixteenth century. Rather than concentrating on specific content, contemporary discussions emphasize that Protestant scholasticism was at base a method of teaching that was intimately linked to the university lecture hall and given its characteristic “shape” by the use of theological topics or loci arranged in a coherent order. Just as recent research has transformed the characterization of Protestant scholasticism, so it has also raised new questions about its origins. In his recent overview of “the Problem of Protestant Scholasticism,” Richard Muller has called it “the result of the educational as well as the ideological-confessional institutionalization of the Reformation.” Here he points specifically to the impact of both Agricolan dialectic and the Renaissance Aristotelianism of Zabarella and Suarez. This paper elaborates on Muller’s insight, making more clear the nature of the relationship between the revolution in dialectic and the evolution of Reformed scholasticism in the sixteenth century. Although it owed much to the contributions of Reformers educated in the traditions of late medieval logic (Bucer and Beza) or Italian Renaissance Aristotelianism (Vermigli and Zanchi), Reformed scholasticism was also the unintentional by-product of the German humanists’ enthusiastic embrace of Agricolan topical dialectic and its application to scriptural exegesis. By the last quarter of the sixteenth century dialectic had re-emerged as an essential tool for theologians. Dialectic’s reappearance in theology was due to a transformation of the discipline itself, a process that occurred in four stages. The first stage, from the end of the fifteenth century into the first two decades of the sixteenth, witnessed the transformation of late medieval logic from a technical discipline concerned with linguistic analysis into a methodology to be applied more generally to the analysis of texts. The second stage, extending from the 1520s through the 1540s, was a time of transition as new textbooks were written and German universities re-organized to teach this new humanist dialectic. These efforts bore fruit during the third stage, extending through the 1550s and 1560s, when a new generation of future pastors and theologians received ever more intense training in the application of dialectic to the explication of texts. At the same time, future theologians were given more advanced training in dialectic, which increased their proficiency in Aristotelian dialectic far beyond that of the previous generation. These developments paved the way for the fourth and final stage, apparent by the 1570s, when there was a shift away from the more philological and rhetorical exegesis typical of the first generation of the Reformation to a method of exegesis shaped by a dialectic increasingly influenced by direct study of Aristotle’s logical works. A survey of the changes made to instruction in dialectic over the course of the sixteenth century makes the differences between each of these phases clear. Topics or figures discussed include: Lorenzo Valla, Rudolf Agricola, Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Caesarius, Johann Gut, Bonifacius Amerbach, Heinrich Pantaleon, Johann Jakob Amman, Johann Sturm, Justus Velsius, Jodocus Willichius, Jodocus Perionius, Johann Hospinian, Martin Borrhaus, Johann Jakob Grynaeus, Simon Sulzer, Lambert Daneau, Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, and Aristotle’s Organon

Heinrich Bullinger: De scripturae sanctae authoritate, 2009

No abstract availabl