Protestantism after 500 Years

The world stands before a landmark date: October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation. Countries, social movements, churches, universities, seminaries, and other institutions shaped by Protestantism face a daunting question: how should the Reformation be commemorated 500 years after the fact? Protestantism has been credited for restoring essential Christian truth, blamed for disastrous church divisions, and invoked as the cause of modern liberalism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, modern science, secularism, and so much else.

In this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines come together to answer the question of commemoration and put some of the Reformation's larger themes and trajectories of influence into historical and theological perspective. Protestantism after 500 Years? examines the historical significance of the Reformation and considers how we might expand and enrich the ongoing conversation about Protestantism's impact. The contributors to this volume conclude that we must remember the Reformation not only because of the enduring, sometimes painful religious divisions that emerged from this era, but also because a historical understanding of the Reformation has been a key factor towards promoting ecumenical progress through communication and mutual understanding.

Thomas Albert Howard is Professor of History and the Humanities and Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University.

Mark A. Noll is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

Introduction (The Editors)

Part I: Looking Back
1 -Thomas Albert Howard, "Remembering the Reformation,
1617, 1817 and 1883: Commemoration as an Agent of Continuity and Change"
2 - John Witte, Jr., "From Gospel to Law: The Lutheran Reformation and its Impact on Legal Culture"
3 - Carlos Eire, "Redefining the Sacred and the Supernatural: How the Protestant Reformation Really Did Disenchant the World"
4 - Peter Harrison, "Protestantism and the Making of Modern Science"
5 - Karin Maag, "The Reformation and Higher Education"
6 - Brad S. Gregory, "The Reformation and Modernity: Explaining the Causal Nexus"

Part II: The Present
7 - Matthew Lundin, "Myth and History in Interpreting Protestantism: Recent Historiographical Trends"
8 - Herman J. Selderhuis, "How to Commemorate the Reformation in Post-Christian Europe"
9 - Philip Jenkins, "What hath Wittenberg to do with Lagos? Sixteenth-Century Protestantism and 'Global South' Christianity Today"
10- Sung-Deuk Oak, "Protestantism Comes East: The Case of Korea"
11 - Mark A. Noll, "Chaotic Coherence: Sola Scriptura and the Twentieth-Century Expansion of Christianity"

Part III: Theological Considerations
12 - Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, "Martin Luther at 500 and the State of Global Lutheranism"
13 - Matthew Levering, "Looking Forward by Glancing Back: Calvin and Aquinas on the Holiness of the Church"
14 - Timothy George, "The Reformation and the New Ecumenism"

Afterword by Ronald K. Rittgers