The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols.

Over thirty years ago, John Macquarrie tells us, he wrote that Christian theologians should learn from other religious traditions and not proselytize among them. Now retired from his chair at Oxford, Macquarrie has not repented of that youthful conviction. This slender book is his attempt to learn from other traditions by providing a series of portraits of great religious leaders who, to use his term (which he borrows from Schleiermacher), are "mediators" of the divine. Macquarrie likes that phrase both because he sees such persons as conduits of the transcendent and because it seems more inclusive (and less given to misunderstanding) than "savior" or "prophet" or "sage."

Macquarrie provides nine such portraits (Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Krishna, Lao-tzu, Moses, Muhammad, Socrates, and Zoroaster) by extending the so-called time frame of the axial period described by Karl Jaspers to the rise of Islam. He has also chosen these figures on the grounds that even when they wrote little or nothing at all, a body of Scripture rose in association with their persons and teaching.

The basic presupposition in writing these portraits is to "put forward as faithfully and impartially as I can accounts of nine great mediators of the spiritual life, and in order to do this, I try to confine myself to facts and hypotheses which are open to my readers...." While Macquarrie lets each tradition speak for itself, he also judiciously interprets similarities (or dissimilarities) of insights or positions. His basic intention is to show that each of these mediators in his own fashion brought "to a group of human beings a new or renewed sense of holy Being." Macquarrie says "holy Being" intentionally since he knows fully well that the word "God" does not do justice to other designations such as the One or the Absolute.

Macquarrie is a graceful writer, widely read in the sources, with an approach that is neither mindlessly syncretistic nor triumphalistic. Those who would like an intelligible account of some of the great world religious figures will find this a helpful and readable work. The material is interesting in its own right, and made more instructive by a deeply committed Christian theologian and Anglican priest reading sympathetically the traditions of others with openness and respect.

Cullmann's book on prayer in the New Testament appeared in German when the distinguished Swiss theologian and exegete was in his ninety-second year. His landmark works on Peter in the New Testament and his studies in Christology were models of ecumenical sensitivity and high learning appreciated both in Reformed and Catholic circles.

This current work treats a somewhat under-researched topic. Even though Joachim Jeremias's The Prayers of Jesus is justly famous, it is wonderful to have a new study which treats the subject of prayer from the Gospels through the Pauline literature and the other books of the New Testament. Cullmann surveys all of the instances where prayer is a feature of the New Testament text while drawing on his vast learning to elucidate what those texts mean. Needless to say, he devotes a number of keen pages to the Lord's Prayer and summarizes much of the research which has been done on that locus classicus. In his discussion of Paul, he sorts out the Pauline vocabulary in order to provide further nuance for his own reflections. He is particularly good on the role of the Spirit in Paul's theology of prayer. However, Cullmann does not deal at any length with the liturgical underpinnings of various Gospel pericopes, and his reflections on New Testament texts other than the Gospels and Paul are rather perfunctory.

The whole work is framed by an introductory chapter on prayer as a problem and a final chapter in which Cullmann reflects on the place and pertinence of prayer in the contemporary world, especially from the perspective of theological problems. The text is fully annotated and there is an index of scriptural citations and of names but, alas, no subject index. This book is too brief to be anything like definitive, but what is here is rich and its very existence is a tribute to the energy and dedication of this world-class twentieth-century scholar.

The fat tomes of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation landed on my desk some months ago, and I have been contentedly browsing in them in my spare moments ever since. The editor notes that his vision of this handsomely produced work (wonderful clear printing, excellent indices, useful maps, but no illustrations) was to understand the term "reformation" within the broader religious culture of sixteenth-century Europe. Indeed, the reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement suggested that a better title for the work might have been Encyclopedia of the Age of the Reformation.

I think the present title is quite serviceable. For a long time now, scholars have made much of the larger issues that made the Reformation possible. Thus, a goodly amount of attention is rightly given to Catholic issues since the reforming impulses in Catholicism go back deeply into the Middle Ages.

This more contextualized and ecumenical understanding of the Reformation explains why, for instance, the entry on John Calvin was done by the German Catholic scholar, Alexandre Ganoczy, and why the entry on catechisms takes issue with the older view that catechisms were a new literary form "springing ex nihilo out of the supposed 'catechetical vacuum' of the late Middle Ages." The entry on Luther was written by Martin Brecht whose three-volume life of the reformer has been available in English for some years. That biographical entry is then followed by lengthy articles on Lutheranism, Lutheran theology, a wonderfully interesting article on Lutheran historiography, and a separate entry on Luther's catechisms. Each of these short essays has a separate and rather complete bibliography of sources for further reading.

An attempt at comprehensiveness is evident in many of the entries. "Preaching and Sermons," for example, has separate commentaries on the four major regions of Europe. Articles like those on the liturgy and on sacraments cover all the denominational bases. In the generic article on Protestantism there is also an entry on the history of the use of the word "Protestant." After "Reformation" there is a very useful long entry on "Reformation Studies" that might well be read as a kind of prologomenon to the encyclopedia itself. Finally, I would like to single out the four excellent articles on the Bible which treat seriatim, theories of hermeneutics and exegesis, editions, translations, and biblical commentaries. These long entries, with their extremely useful bibliographies, provide an excellent overview of both historical and theological issues.

Along with these extensive essays on major figures or topics there are also excellent shorter articles on other historical figures, geographical sites important for the Reformation, general cultural topics (art, architecture, music, the role of pamphlets and printing, etc.), and fine entries on popular religion in general (again subdivided by country) and subsets of this topic (for example, magic).

Of course, one of the best things about reference books of this sort is running across things which one had never heard of before. I read with some mild interest of the "Gnesio-Lutherans" which led me to look up "Flaccus Illyricus" as well as "Andreas Osiander," which led me to "Nicholas von Amsdorf," when, I must confess, attention flagged and "Weddings" and "Witchcraft" caught my attention. You get the idea.

Apart from my casual browsing, I have reached for these volumes frequently to look up something pertinent for class or to track down a reference in my reading. In my estimate, this project is a great success. The volumes need to be in every decent college or university reference library. Those individuals who can afford it should consider purchasing the encyclopedia. Professor Hillerbrand and his collaborators deserve plaudits for executing what must have been a Herculean task of assigning and checking the articles (a number were penned by continental scholars and then translated into English), while Oxford University Press should be equally praised for the beauty and care with which it has brought this work to the reading public.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology and chairs the department at the University of Notre Dame.