Miracles And The Protestant Imagination

Generations of scholars have assumed that the Reformation represented a vital step on the way to the "disenchantment of the world." Philip Soergel's groundbreaking study on wonder books reveals that German evangelical Reformers were themselves active enchanters.

The Reformation's war against the saints and their miracles is well known. The story of the Protestant Reformers' embrace of natural wonders as miracles that could similarly spur piety and moral discipline is much less familiar. In Miracles and the Protestant Imagination, Philip M. Soergel examines the sixteenth-century Lutheran wonder books, works filled with accounts of monstrous births, celestial apparitions, natural disasters, plagues, and other seemingly aberrant events occurring in the natural world. Soergel traces the inspiration behind these books to a widespread appropriation of wonders that was taking place throughout late-medieval and early-modern Europe. As sixteenth-century rulers stocked their curiosity cabinets with all manner of strange and confounding bits of nature collected from the far corners of the globe, evangelical theologians, too, compiled enormous compendia filled with accounts of fantastic events long recorded in the natural world. Many embraced such tales to satisfy an innate curiosity about nature and its often incomprehensible processes, but Germany's devout evangelicals relied upon them to warn of imminent Apocalypse, to drive home the full scope of human depravity, and to encourage the repentant to keep the Law of an angry, Deuteronomic God. Luther had dismissed natural signs as inferior when compared against the testimony of the scriptures. Nevertheless, inspired by Melanchthon and other contemporaries who embraced history, natural philosophy, and rhetoric as proofs for Christian doctrine, the authors of late-Reformation wonder books fashioned natural signs into powerful defenses of treasured evangelical principles. In so doing, their works revealed the tensions as well as fears at play within a maturing Reformation movement as it faced mounting internal dissension and external pressures from Calvinism and resurgent Catholicism.

According to surveys, most Americans today believe in miracles. For many others, however, a belief in miracles seems incompatible with a modern world view. Why does interest in miracles persist even in a secular era? Why are miracles such a controversial part of Western religious thinking? In this fascinating book, Robert Bruce Mullin traces the debate about miracles from the Reformation to the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the years from 1860 to 1930. He examines the way preachers, faith healers, psychic researchers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and literary figures have grappled with issues of the miraculous. Before the mid-1800s, the author contends, Catholics had defended post-biblical miracles, while Protestants insisted true miracles were limited to the biblical era. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Protestant position had largely collapsed, and two opposing views emerged in its wake. Some Protestants wished to jettison all miracles - even those recorded in the Bible. Others took a new interest in modern miracles, believing that the presence of miracles could help ground contemporary religious faith. This transformation in attitudes toward miracles not only changed the Anglo-American religious landscape and created a new focus of debate, Mullin says, it also opened up a new basis for accord between Protestants and Catholics.

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe brings together a rich selection of essays which represent the most important historical research on religion, magic and superstition in early modern Europe. Each essay makes a significant contribution to the history of magic and religion in its own right, while together they demonstrate how debates over the topic have evolved over time, providing invaluable intellectual, historical, and socio-political context for readers approaching the subject for the first time. The essays are organised around five key themes and areas of controversy. Part One tackles superstition; Part Two, the tension between miracles and magic; Part Three, ghosts and apparitions; Part Four, witchcraft and witch trials; and Part Five, the gradual disintegration of the 'magical universe' in the face of scientific, religious and practical opposition. Each part is prefaced by an introduction that provides an outline of the historiography and engages with recent scholarship and debate, setting the context for the essays that follow and providing a foundation for further study. This collection is an invaluable toolkit for students of early modern Europe, providing both a focused overview and a springboard for broader thinking about the underlying continuities and discontinuities that make the study of magic and superstition a perennially fascinating topic.

The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online

The world stands before a landmark date: October 31, 2017, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation. Countries, social movements, churches, universities, seminaries, and other institutions shaped by Protestantism face a daunting question: how should the Reformation be commemorated 500 years after the fact? In this volume, leading historians and theologians, Protestant and Catholic, come together to grapple with this question and examine the historical significance of the Reformation. Protestantism has been credited for restoring essential Christian truth, blamed for disastrous church divisions, and invoked as the cause of modern liberalism, capitalism, democracy, individualism, modern science, secularism, and so much else. This book examines the historical significance of the Reformation and considers how we might expand and enrich the ongoing conversation about Protestantism's impact. The contributors conclude that we must remember the Reformation not only because of the enduring, sometimes painful religious divisions that emerged from this era, but also because a historical understanding of the Reformation is necessary for promoting ecumenical understanding and thinking wisely about the future of Christianity.