In this excerpt from his catechism for children, Catholic theologian Juan de Valdés (1509-1541) takes an expansive view of the spiritual disciplines. The whole of the Christian life, he argues, should be characterized by prayer and fellowship, in all things seeking reconciliation with the Lord by fasting from the lusts of the flesh and feasting…

While the Reformers dismissed much of the Roman sacramental system as unbiblical, it was generally agreed that two sacraments remained essential for the Christian life: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. While baptism should only be undertaken once, most Reformers, such as Lutheran Tilemann Hesshus (1527-1588) argued that communion should be taken often and that the…

I teach theology at a Christian liberal arts college. My students often hear me long for those halcyon days when theology reigned as Queen of the Sciences. To have colleagues from non-theological disciplines bowing down and kissing my ring—ay, there’s tenure worth having! I crash-landed in reality, however, as I worked through these insightful essays…

The era of the Reformation is often seen as a watershed in the practice of personal Bible reading, as the invention of the printing press and new vernacular translations made the Scriptures more available and affordable to a wider audience. While the Reformers advocated for their adherents to read the Scriptures regularly for themselves, these…

It is a real pleasure to engage David Fergusson’s important new book The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach, not least because it is a (partial) answer to my ongoing prayers for doctrinal and spiritual renewal in the Church of Scotland. David arrived at New College (the faculty of Divinity of the University of Edinburgh)…

The relationship between grace and works was a particular flash point in the theological debates of the Reformation, and while Protestants have broadly adopted the reformers’ understanding of grace, the legacy of their thought on good works has been more ambiguous. In his commentary on Romans 6:3, however, Lutheran theologian and pastor Johannes Brenz sets…

Messianic expectation is a central aspect of Jewish eschatology, and throughout Jewish history, Psalm 95 has been seen as looking toward the reign of the coming king. It is not surprising, then, that Christian interpreters of the sixteenth century read these texts as clear references to Christ. Konrad Pellikan (1478-1556) argues here in reference to…

Reformed commentators tend to find Christ in the Psalms typologically, and that approach to the text is demonstrated in John Calvin’s (1509-1564) interpretation of Psalm 41:9. While Christ applied this text to Judas, Calvin finds a broader correspondence between David and Christ. David’s words concerning his own situation, Calvin argues, are representative of Christ, and…

When modern interpreters imagine the literal sense of Scripture, they tend to conceive it in terms of the historical, grammatical, and literary elements of the text. For sixteenth-century commentators, however, to observe this narrow definition would be to sever the letter of Scripture from the Spirit, its divine author. While Cardinal Cajetan’s (1469-1534) interpretation of…

In the prayer for deliverance in Psalm 122, Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), a reformer in Strasbourg, Augsburg, and Bern, finds much material for reflection. Pausing on verse 22, he looks towards the future age, where all of God’s people are gathered together to worship the Lord, all kingdoms and churches in perfect union. The Unity of…

The intimate relationship between the church and the kingdom presented in the Scriptures was a prominent theme in many sixteenth-century writings. In various ways, its final revelation was hoped and longed for, while its present, partial blessings were tasted and enjoyed. In this selection from her exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, German Reformed writer Katharina…

While the church exists in this world, its ultimate end is beyond the fallen world’s finite horizons. As Reformed theologian and pastor Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563) reflects on the text from John 6 about Christ sitting down with his disciples immediately before the feeding of the five thousand, he sees and image of the coming kingdom,…