Books about the "reformers"

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Is there a book out there that covers Martin Luther, Huss, Calvin, Zinglwi, etc.

I would like to read about these people and I was wondering if there was a book that cover all of the major players? thanks
 
The great Catholic historian, Hillaire Belloc (1870-1953), wrote a few well known books regarding the Protestant Reformation.

How the Reformation Happened
Characters of the Reformation
The Great Heresies (this book includes the generals of Protestantism, as well as Islam, Arianism, Albigensianism, and Modernism)

Hillaire Belloc wrote without the worry of modern political correctness, hence you might often notice his vigor in language (and Catholic identity), but his research work is quite incredible to say the least, and widely acclaimed by non-Catholics alike.
 
TAN Books offers THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER,
available at amazon.com

This book is very informative, but very disturbing, because it documents Luther’s unbelievably filthy mouth and blasphemous attitudes toward authority, all at the time he was supposed to be a Reformer filled with the Spirit of the Lord.

Jaypeeto4 (aka Jaypeeto3)
 
Jaypeeto3 said:
TAN Books offers THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER,
available at amazon.com

This book is very informative, but very disturbing, because it documents Luther’s unbelievably filthy mouth and blasphemous attitudes toward authority, all at the time he was supposed to be a Reformer filled with the Spirit of the Lord.

Jaypeeto4 (aka Jaypeeto3)
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I heard somewhere that this book was not very accurate. Does anyone know if this is an accurate book?
 
One of the best I’ve read (or, to be honest, I read about half of it… 😃 ) is *The Reformation *by Diarmaid MacCulloch. Thick, but very well written, easy to read, and quite interesting. Of particular interest to Catholics may be one of his key premises…that the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation had its problems, yes, but that generally it served the religious needs of its parishisoners quite well. He states that in that regard the Reformers overstated the problems that they saw within the Church.

Amazon.com link:

amazon.com/Reformation-Diarmaid-MacCulloch/dp/014303538X/sr=8-1/qid=1162575594/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3755471-1199229?ie=UTF8&s=books
 
Boxerdog said:
Is there a book out there that covers Martin Luther, Huss, Calvin, Zinglwi, etc.

I would like to read about these people and I was wondering if there was a book that cover all of the major players? thanks
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Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book is exellent, though not primarily concerning theology. If you really want a thorough book covering the major theologians, the Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology would be your best bet. But books like that are very expensive, and you’d be better off trying to find it in a library or ordering it through InterLibrary Loan.

On Luther the best brief biography is Roland Bainton, *Here I Stand. *Martin Brecht’s three-volume work is more thorough, and IMHO Heiko Oberman’s *Luther: Man between God and the Devil *gives you a better understanding of what Luther was all about. But Bainton is the place to start.

There’s a fairly recent biography of Calvin by Bernard Cottret.

For Zwingli the work of W. P. Stephens is good.

Most of the books folks on here are recommending are propaganda, pure and simple. Belloc is always entertaining, and was very smart, but he is not in fact a great historian, or even a very good one. He was a brilliant essayist and propagandist with considerable knowledge of history (which he had studied at Oxford).

As far as I can tell from the things people cite from it, O’Hare’s book is a work of malicious slander that makes no effort to give the context for his citations.

Edwin
 
As far as I can tell from the things people cite from it, O’Hare’s book is a work of malicious slander that makes no effort to give the context for his citations.

O’Hare’s book is THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER.
Context?
Many quotes are taken from unedited editions of Luther’s TABLE TALK.
Regardless of context, Luther habitually used FILTHY language, even when talking about sacred things. That alone is proof enough to me that the man was not authorized by the Holy Spirit to reform God’s Church, all other considerations notwithstanding.
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
As far as I can tell from the things people cite from it, O’Hare’s book is a work of malicious slander that makes no effort to give the context for his citations.

O’Hare’s book is THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER.
Click to expand...
That’s what it’s called. Books that really give reliable facts do not usually have titles like that.
Context?
Many quotes are taken from unedited editions of Luther’s TABLE TALK.
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Luther scholars do not rely heavily on the Table Talk. These are sayings jotted down by students at the dinner table. We don’t know if they all are things Luther actually said; we don’t know if they are worded as Luther worded them; and in many cases we don’t have an adequate understanding of the content. The Table Talk is a goldmine for people who want to tear Luther down. The fact that O’Hare relies heavily on it is not in his favor.

Mind you, the Table Talk is fascinating and is valuable if used carefully.

Frankly, I don’t understand the Catholic obsession with Luther’s “filthy language.” As a convert to Catholicism pointed out recently on this forum, Catholics habitually use what most evangelical Protestants find to be very bad language. Furthermore, Luther’s use of “bad” language often had a theological point–and the use of such language to expose the deceits of the Devil has medieval roots. The *Little Flowers of St. Francis, *for instance, describe Francis telling a friar to use scatological language to an apparent apparition of Christ crucified, revealing the apparition to be in fact the Devil. This is the sort of thing Luther was doing. He saw his mission as revealing the true face of the Papacy and of late medieval scholasticism, and he didn’t think this could be done in polite language.

I don’t defend Luther’s language because I don’t defend Luther’s ideas with regard to late medieval Catholicism, though I do think his error was understandable. But if he had been right, then his language would have been justified.

It boils down to this: you need to debate Luther’s ideas instead of trying to discredit him personally.

Edwin
 
Well, I for one don’t believe filthy language has any place in discussions of sacred things, especially.
And what kind of Catholics do you know who “habitually” use what Protestants would consider filthy language ???
Certainly DEVOUT Catholics do not habitually use filth in the speech. I take my Catholic faith seriously and have strived hard to overcome the habit of using nasty language, which I had acquired and practiced in my antiCatholic and nonCatholic days. I know many Catholics who take their faith seriously, and I almost never hear them use inappropriate language, let alone filthy talk.

Debate Luther’s ideas?
I once read his 95 Theses, and burst out laughing because some of them were so infantile that I couldn’t believe a grown man wrote them. Many of Luther’s ideas contradicted the historic magisterium of the Catholic Church, hence, no debate necessary because THAT is Heresy.
 
Contarini-

Trying to make a point yet interjecting an insult is not the way someone intelligent makes a point. I take offense to your statement “Catholics habitually use … very bad language” and by pinning it on a poster does not make it a fact. :mad:

As a Catholic I do not use bad language nor am I going into the kindergarten yard and yell that prostestants or lutherans have a filthier mouth. Juvenile.
 
I don’t think that Contarini was saying that all Catholics always use improper language, just that it is no uncommon for them to do so. (Frankly, from my experience, in today’s increasingly vulgar society, it is not uncommon to hear Protestants use such language either). It might be worth taking a look at this thread if you have not done so yet.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=115859
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
Well, I for one don’t believe filthy language has any place in discussions of sacred things, especially.
And what kind of Catholics do you know who “habitually” use what Protestants would consider filthy language ???
Certainly DEVOUT Catholics do not habitually use filth in the speech. I take my Catholic faith seriously and have strived hard to overcome the habit of using nasty language, which I had acquired and practiced in my antiCatholic and nonCatholic days. I know many Catholics who take their faith seriously, and I almost never hear them use inappropriate language, let alone filthy talk.
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Unfortunately, filthy language was normal in 16th-century controversy - including religious controversy. Luther used it, St. Thomas More used it, the Popes used it, Johann Eck (one of Luther’s principal adversaries) used it. They could point to the demeaning & insulting language used in the the OT & NT, and by certain Fathers - some of whom had a talent for abusive language.​

This doesn’t perhaps excuse Luther (or anyone else); & it doesn’t make his own practice good - but it does put his use of language in context. At least in this respect, most Christians have got beyond this regrettable habit - it is no longer usually considered proper to refer to one’s opponents as vipers, filthy swine, limbs of antichrist, or the like. And that is definitely a change for the better.

It’s important not to read our own sensibilities about language back into the past - when Dante, writing in 1314 or so, says at the end of canto 21 of the Inferno that a demon “made a trumpet of his arse” (i.e., broke wind; the word translates his, & it’s not for a translator to make him “politer” than he is in this passage), he is not being vulgar for the sake of it; though that line gave more than one of his 19th-century translators some difficulty. ##
Debate Luther’s ideas?
I once read his 95 Theses, and burst out laughing because some of them were so infantile that I couldn’t believe a grown man wrote them. Many of Luther’s ideas contradicted the historic magisterium of the Catholic Church, hence, no debate necessary because THAT is Heresy.
Click to expand...

But where is the heresy ? What is “infantile” about the theses ?​

 
jaypeeto and sorrows,

I’m sorry for the generalization. I did not mean that all Catholics spoke this way, and coming from a very strict evangelical background I’m sure I have a different set of standards than the average “mainline” Protestant.

I will stand by the statement that in my experience Catholics as a whole don’t seem to worry that much about “bad language,” and that this is much more of an evangelical Protestant concern.

Of course, it depends what you mean by bad language. Genuinely obscene or blasphemous language is of course condemned by devout Catholics.

Also, jaypeeto, if the 95 Theses are so absurd, why not give some examples? Bear in mind, of course, that this is very early Luther–in fact most of the theses aren’t necessarily contradicting Catholic doctrine, IMHO. Some of them are repeating basic maxims of Christian piety–such as that our whole life ought to be one of penance. Others are refuting silly statements made by some of the indulgence sellers. However, the Theses do reflect theological convictions Luther had come to that do/did, in part, contradict Catholic doctrine. For instance, he seems already to have denied the doctrine that the Pope’s power of the keys extends to the next life; he also denied the “treasury of merit”; and he had a rather odd theology of Purgatory (which he later dropped, along with the doctrine of Purgatory as a whole) which taught that Purgatory was the fear of being condemned for your sins, and could be overcome only when you accepted that you deserved damnation and threw yourself on the mercy of God.

Edwin
 
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