The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications

Church History

This volume is quintessential Oberman. For those who have followed his work, there is nothing new here, but even they, and especially those less familiar with Oberman's body of scholarship, will welcome this collection in English. Every chapter engages the reader, convincing or raising questions that go to the roots of Reformation scholarship.

Dialog

"Despite disparate origins, the essays form a satisfying whole in their present format because they bristle with the intelligence of one of the premier Luther scholars of the twentieth century who not only knows his subject, but also loves to pick fights, often with his former students. The collection thus serves as a gold mine for the historiographer who loves to follow the scholarly wars of Luther research.... The book is to be recommended with enthusiasm. One learns on every page.... The Reformation: Roots and Ramifications is must reading."

Religious Studies Review

All are original and provocative, and many evince what veterans can already recognize as some of the hallmarks of Oberman's scholarship: an antipathy toward Reformation studies which are dominated by current ecumenical concerns.... One further distinctive feature of this scholar's work is evident throughout: Oberman the accomplished historian is also Oberman the perspicacious theologian, an increasingly rare combination, even among experts on a movement whose leaders understood themselves as theologians.

Toronto Journal of Theology

""Must reading" for students of the Reformation era. Oberman has the ability to identify crucial questions about this era—questions which must be engaged. The reader is confronted with questions of historical method as well as historical, theological, social and political concerns. Oberman has made available to non-German readers a good "starter book" for historical research on the Reformation."