Protestantism after 500 Years ed. by Thomas Albert Howard and Mark A. Noll (review)

The quincentenary of the Reformation is upon us, and accordingly a stream of publications investigating this major event have appeared. This book is an excellent example of this trend. Originating in a conference at Gordon College in 2013, its fourteen essays, divided into three sections, cover a wide range of topics, and its contributors come from a variety of Christian denominations.

The first section explores questions of causation: What impacts did the Reformation have upon the present? Howard opens this section with an essay investigating previous commemorations of the Reformation, concisely summarizing his recent book Remembering the Reformation (2016). Thereafter, John Witte, Jr., Peter Harrison, and Karin Maag trace changes which the Reformation wrought in law, science, and higher education, respectively. Carlos Eire and Brad Gregory both explore how the Reformation led to secularization, the former by examining the Protestant rejection of miracles, the latter by compendiously reprising his book, The Unintended Reformation (2015). What unites all of these contributions is the premise that the Reformation did indeed mark a significant rupture in Western Christianity; as a rule, all the authors tend to argue that the Reformation is directly, if distantly, ancestral to modernity.

The second section examines how the Reformation is understood in the present. Matthew Lundin discusses the salient trends in Reformation historiography since the 1960s, while Herman Selderhuis explores commemorating the Reformation in contemporary Europe, noting striking parallels between the sixteenth century and the present day; he concludes that the Reformation remains relevant to contemporary Europeans, whether secularized or religious. Philip Jenkins examines parallels between the Reformation and Protestantism in the modern “Global South,” thus revealing that the Reformation’s relevance extends far beyond the Western world—an issue Sung-Deuk Oak investigates in greater depth in his essay, which details the history of Protestantism in Korea. Finally, Mark Noll carefully considers the concept of sola scriptura, contending that, while it has undeniably led to great division amongst Protestants, it has nevertheless also yielded a real coherence amongst them. The focus on the non-Western world is especially welcome. Westerners are often unaware that an increasingly large number of Protestants live in the non-Western world; these essays remind us that we must include them in a discussion of Christian history.

The third section shifts from a historical to a theological perspective, with the contributors squarely confronting the thorny topic of ecumenism. After five hunded years of bitter and sometimes bloody division, is there any prospect of reconciliation for Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox? The three contributors, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Matthew Levering, and Timothy George, all agree that Christians can ultimately achieve an ecumenism based not merely on tactical compromise, but rather on a true appreciation of each other’s theological insights; this approach is especially evident in George’s contribution, where he offers examples from his own personal experience suggesting the possibility of rapprochement.

In this book, two features are especially notable: First, the contributors do not limit themselves to discussing the Reformation as a strictly historical phenomenon, but also indicate its relevance to Christian faith today—and these theological reflections appear throughout the collection, not only in the third section. Second, the authors are willing to grapple with the question of how we ought to commemorate the Reformation; their thoughtful reflections are useful in avoiding the tendency to reflexive celebration or condemnation.

The essays are well-written and accessible, though intended for an audience of primarily ministers and professors. The former will benefit by discovering the historical context that produced much of their theology, while the latter will profit by realizing that studying the Reformation has implications beyond scholarship, as it continues to affect the lives of millions of believers around the globe. This book is itself a worthy commemoration of the quincentenary of the Reformation.