This book contributes to an extensive number of scholarly works produced in 2017 which commemorate the scientific revolution and paradigm shift that occurred in 1517. The year 2017 marks the 500th ...celebration of the Reformation actuated by Martin Luther when he published what later became known as the Ninety-Five Theses on indulgences. The Reformation was a religious, social, cultural and political event that reshaped the landscape of modern Europe and has had an influence on parts of the world far beyond. This includes the ‘far South’ such as South Africa where the legacy of the Reformers has moulded institutional and individual lives across boundaries of ethnicity and beliefs. Worldwide celebrations of this quincentenary anniversary provide scholars with an opportunity to reflect anew on the consequences and lasting import of the Reformation. This book provides one such a platform by discussing the scientific relevance of Reformed theology, specifically with regard to biblical, historical and systematic-theological themes. Comprising a collection of essays by scholars belonging to the Reformed tradition, it aims at examining the historical heritage of the Reformation, the current state of discourse in Reformed theology as well as the contemporary relevance of a Reformed approach to theology. It contains biblical, historical-theological and systematic-theological perspectives and addresses a variety of issues such as biblical interpretation, text-criticism, translation, constructive impulses emanating from classical Reformed thought, Christian freedom, anthropology and dialogue with non-Reformed traditions. Although the approaches followed are by no means exhaustive, they do provide the reader with some indication of approaches followed in Reformed discourse. Chapters 1–4 pertain to biblical interpretation. A variety of methods are discussed and employed, namely the grammatical-historical, text-immanent, socio-historical, redactional-historical, diachronic and synchronic approaches. These analyses confirm that biblical interpretation requires a multi-faceted approach to biblical texts. Chapters 5–9, conversely, discuss various historical and systematic-theological themes. Classical texts from the Reformation, specifically works by Calvin and Luther, are examined, and contemporary theological literature are analysed, compared and evaluated while innovative new ideas are proposed. This book is written in the reformed spirit of semper Reformanda. While it enters into dialogue with other traditions such as Pentecostal, Neo-Pentecostal, Roman Catholic and Lutheran theology, it also exhibits an attitude of self-reflection and self-correction. This contribution does not only affirm the Reformed heritage as a living tradition, but it also attempts to invigorate the tradition with innovating new ideas by drawing on classical and recent theological literature. The target audience is mainly Reformed theologians, but non- Reformed scholars, who are interested in engaging with the Reformed tradition, would find this book informative.
This article draws upon the correspondence of Heinrich Bullinger and the Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, in order to shine new light on the life of the German theologian Gerhard Westerburg ...(1486-1558) and his invention of a horse-drawn windmill in 1545. A short, fresh survey of the life of Westerburg, who had become notable as a leader of the Anabaptists in his native Cologne and ended his life as a reformed minister in Frisia, will provide the background for his engineering adventure. While on a trip to Zurich, intended to better acquaint himself with aspects of reformed theology, Westerburg showed off sketches and a model of his windmill in order to try to find funding for its development. Westerburg met with no success in Zurich, but his invention even reached the court of Henrician England, through Henry VIII's disgraced former engineer, Stephan von Haschenberg. Having been dismissed for fraud after more than a decade in the king's service, Haschenberg tried to convince Henry of the advantages of his reemployment with a list of useful inventions, including Westerburg's, who had apparently instructed Haschenberg in person how to build this wondrous windmill. Two different versions of Westerburg's anonymous windmill sketch survive by this unexpected author.
The article argues that the way Anabaptist history and theology is commonly narrated needs to be reshaped. A fundamental question is asked: Did women have positions of power in the early Anabaptist ...movement? Two points are considered: 1) How is power understood? and 2) On what premises can the history of Anabaptist women be written? These two points are put in relation to portraits of three women – Margret Hottinger, Helene von Freyberg, and Elisabeth Dirks – who represent three fundamental ways in which women related to power and authority in the early years of the movement. The article concludes that the way the stories of early Anabaptist women have usually been told are often both highly tendentious and failing to assess the authority of women on the basis of an Anabaptist theology of power. At the same time, the early movement employed a flat biblical hermeneutic that lead to a failure to process the subversive use of power and authority and the theological potential of the Anabaptist critique of the sword in relation to their own families and communities.
Niklaus Manuel, active in Bern, painter, playwright, and politician, wrote a carnival play in 1525 entitled the Der Ablasskrämer The Indulgence Seller, which stages seven women as rather aggressive ...propagators of the Reformation. The first case study examines this play and questions the predominant tendency among scholars to qualify Manuel's staging of women simply as a case of literary inversion. The second case study is concerned with sexual deviance among the Anabaptists of the St. Gall and Appenzell areas of eastern Switzerland in the mid-1520s. It interprets this, in line with other recent research, as an attempt to spiritualize sexuality.
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