In this quincentennial year, marking Martin Luther’s memorable act of defiance in Wittenberg, much has been said regarding his famous dictum about ‘the Word doing its work’. Far from attributing the impact and success of the Reformation on his own…
Heinrich Bullinger’s early life was studded with dangers. At the time of his birth, July 18, 1504, his family was still frequently on the move to escape the wrath of his uncles (his mother’s brothers), who were bent on killing…
Marie Durand was born on July 15, 1711 in in the French village of Bouschet de Pranles. Largely unknown outside of France, she is remembered for her faithfulness to her faith while imprisoned for thirty-eight years in the Tower of…
The debate over worship and liturgy has been both long running and many faceted. Its spectrum ranges from the ultra-free self-expression of certain types of contemporary worship through to the high liturgies of traditional Roman Catholicism and its Episcopalian counterparts.…
In thinking through the pastoral implications of the Marrow Controversy, you could probably not do better than reading through Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ. I can not emphasize that enough. It is an outstanding exposition of the cultural, theological, and…
On June 28, 1586, the Slovenian Reformer Primož Trubar died in Derendingen, in the Holy Roman Empire. Almost unknown in the US, he is a national hero in Slovenia. His portrait has appeared on banknotes, coins, and postage stamps,…
Luther’s recovery of a Bible-centered Christianity led him to revise the worship liturgy to reflect this new theological orientation. His reordering of worship services gives us a glimpse of his theology of music, and from his own words, we see…
In occasion of Father’s Day, I diverge from the usual mini-bios to peek into the lives of some fathers who lived during the Reformation, with all the struggles and joys this task embraced. Busy Homes Moving from the peaceful,…
The name evangelical was early on attributed to the Reformers and to Luther himself, and it was of course a fitting title as it not only grasped their recovery of the gospel, but also their emphasis upon it and the…
Three countries claim Anselm as their own. To the Italians, he is Anselmo d’Aosta (of Aosta, the Alpine city where he was born around 1033). To the French, he is Anselme du Bec (of Bec, where he first entered monastic…
