Jeannine Olson

The Reformation and the Irrepressible Word of God

History & Biography

“Scott Manetsch and his contributors provide fresh and lively essays on Scripture and Reformation history, indispensable for the church today. Protestant reformers studied Scripture not simply as 'a collection of devotional insights,' and today, we should not view Scripture as a cudgel of first-century values over twenty-first-century ideas on issues such as the role of women's leadership in the church but rather as 'the very essence of the Christian gospel.' For example, Manetsch's essay on Jean Crespin's book of martyrs conveys the excitement that sixteenth-century Christians found in the Word and their tenacity until death. Likewise, Michael Haykin brings to life in a minibiography the great English preacher and martyr Bishop Hugh Latimer. And Timothy George uses nonevangelicals such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer to exhort evangelicals to hold on to their Reformation roots and the charisma of the Bible rather than that of individual preachers. As a Lutheran, I find this book attractive to evangelicals within denominations founded in the sixteenth century as well as to evangelical churches today.”