Has anyone read through The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation?


Or purchased the work? Would like to get some thoughts on the encyclopedia before I purchase it.

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John J.
Member Christ Prebyterian Church (OPC)
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.christpres.net

I believe Chris Rhoades has it and has spoken highly of it.

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Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"On land, at sea, at home, abroad, / I smoke my pipe and worship God." -- J.S. Bach

Gratzi!

I've used it in my doctoral research. I would highly recommend it as a helpful compendium of recent Reformation studies. The only downside is the price. I think I'll just keep using the copy from a local library.

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Wes Bredenhof
Co-pastor, Langley Canadian Reformed Church
Langley, British Columbia
www.bredenhof.ca

It's wonderful. The articles are thorough with decent bibliographies. I have learned a lot from them. I have found myself as of late gravitating to works like this with self-contained articles instead of plowing through whole books. You can sit down and within 10-15 minutes learn something interesting and it also allows you to A.D.D. onto another topic without the guilt of not finishing yet another book!

There are a ton of biographies of reformers that are not known as well. Information about the locations of the reformation are interesting.

Here is a set for $295. Keep on the lookout at Abebooks...I found a used set from a library for $250...still expensive but definitely worth it. If you purchase any amount of books, you realize how quickly you can add up to 300 bucks. I would forego a few books here and there and invest in this set.
AbeBooks: Search Results - oxford encyclopedia reformation

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Chris Rhoades -33
Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church (PCA) Nashville, TN-Under Care

Vera theologia non theoretica, sed practica est; Finis siquidem eius agere est hoc est vitam vivere deiformem. - Martin Bucer
""True theology is not theoretical, but practical. The end of it is living, that is to live a godly life."

I had very high hopes for this series and, perhaps because I had such high hopes, was disappointed in it. Many of the articles reflect dated (40-year old) scholarship. Perhaps the best example of the worst of the Encyclopedia is the entry on Zanchi which was written by Otto Gruendler, whose work on Zanchi has been subject to scathing and justifiable criticism, and it reflected none of the more modern scholarship on Zanchi that radically revises the picture Gruendler painted in the early 60s.

The entry on the Luther Renaissance is much better, but over all the quality of the entries is uneven. This is true to some degree with every such series but I have found several entries (another example: the entry on Olevianus is by someone with whose work I am completely unfamliar and is not entirely correct) to be disappointing.

An encyclopedia of this sort should provide an academically reliable, relatively neutral, or at least fair, introduction to a field/topic/subject and to the primary and secondary literature in that field. Such a large project will not likely be undertaken again for some time and such a project will color the way students look at the Reformation for a long time, until the next such Encyclopedia is done.

In general I think the Cambridge series of "Handbook to" has done a better, if less comprehensive, job of introducing readers to modern Reformation scholarship.

It's worth consulting but it is (or was) a very expensive series running several hundred American dollars. We have it our reference room but, if it means anything, I have not purchased it and would have done had they done a better job with it.

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R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

"For Christ, His Gospel, and His Church"
Associate Pastor
Oceanside URC
The Heidelblog