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Letters

I don’t suppose it will be easy for Carl Trueman (“Turning Inward,” December 2019) and me to avoid talking past each other, but let’s give it a try. My book, The Meaning of Protestant Theology, is not an effort to engage with secondary literature. (Gerhard Forde? Never read him; don’t . . . . Continue Reading »

Briefly Noted

In 1901, Rev. Maltbie Babcock wrote in a well-known hymn that God “shines in all that’s fair.” Like Calvin, Edwards, and Babcock before her, Marilynne Robinson presents in her writings a world suffused with theological significance. Robinson is known primarily as a novelist, but anyone who has . . . . Continue Reading »

Turning Inward

The most immediate and pressing ecumenical question for Protestants is not their relationship to Rome but their relationship to one another. From the moment Luther refused to accept Zwingli’s memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper at Marburg in 1529, the history of Protestantism has followed the . . . . Continue Reading »

Marcion on the Elbe

Accusations of anti-Judaism are flying in Germany. In a 2013 essay, “Die Kirche und das Alte Testament” (The Church and the Old Testament), Notger Slenczka, a Protestant theologian at the Humboldt University of Berlin, argued that the Old Testament “should not have canonical validity in the . . . . Continue Reading »

The Monster's Servant

Thomas Cromwell:  A Revolutionary Life by diarmaid macculloch viking, 752 pages, $40 They said it could not be done. At least Sir Geoffrey Elton, to whose memory his former doctoral student has dedicated this book, said it could not be done. According to him, as Diarmaid MacCulloch reminds us, . . . . Continue Reading »

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