UNION WITH CHRIST Calvin and the Later Reformation International Reformed Evangelical Seminary Westminster Theological Seminary Philadelphia uniocc.com Vol. 3, No. 2 / October 2017 242 UNIO CUM CHRISTO ›› UNIOCC.COM sounds more Erasmian than Lutheran. Is not pluralism the only dogma remaining for adventurist Christianity, a dogma that transcends all the articles of the creed and that risks sliding subtly towards new forms of intolerance? Some members of the present Anglican community may well feel that that is the danger today, and not just in the church but in the post-truth West at large. PAUL WELLS Emeritus Professor Faculté Jean Calvin Aix-en-Provence Ashley Null and John W. Yates III, eds. Reformation Anglicanism: A Vision for Today’s Global Communion. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017. Pp. 220. The essays of this collection work together to make the point that the Anglican Communion has deep roots in the tradition of the Reformation. As the first in a new series, the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, it is a valuable volume in that it goes a long way to correct many assumptions, and possibly stereotypes, about what it means to be Anglican. For many who do not have much contact with Anglicans, the perception is often that the Anglican Church is the “middle way” between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The essays of this book, however, dismantle that as a serious misunderstanding of how the Anglican Communion began. Each of the seven essays is historical in nature, and each intends to show how a specific feature of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation is native to the origins of Anglicanism. Yet, even though each essay has an historical point to make, each one also issues a challenge for Anglicans to return to their Reformed heritage. Michael Nazir-Ali’s essay tells the story of how Anglicanism became a truly global communion. One of the crucial features of this chapter is the depiction of the Anglican Church as missional. It makes the case that far from an isolated, national church, the Anglican Church has long had zeal to take the gospel to the nations, and it provides a helpful description and history of major mission organizations within the Anglican fold. The second chapter, “The Power of Unconditional Love in the Anglican Reformation” by Ashley Null, gives a more general theological history of the English Reformation. He presents a long view of the English Reformation, which began prior to Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Church and had roots in medieval developments. John Wycliffe worked to get the Bible into English. Others promoted serious versions of personal piety. The humanist reforms OCTOBER 2017 ›› BOOK REVIEWS 243 of Erasmus of Rotterdam had significant influence on the English clergy. With the event of Henry VIII’s divorce, new opportunity rose for reform of the English church. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was influenced by Martin Luther and worked to shape the English Church in a truly Protestant direction, even though this met with fierce resistance. Although “Bloody Mary,” Mary Tudor, violently opposed Protestantism, under Elizabeth I, Protestantism was restored and flourished in England. The next four chapters address the role of specific Reformation tenets in Anglicanism: sola Scriptura by John W. Yates III, sola gratia by Null, sola fide by Michael Jensen, and soli Deo gloria by Ben Kwashi. There is some repetition within these chapters, most of them covering the same figures and events in the English Reformation, but with emphasis on the different Reformation slogans. Each essay provides a helpful overview of how the theology of the Reformation played a large role in reshaping the English Church. Although the repetition is in some ways a downside of the book, it also helps reinforce the point that the Anglican Communion has its beginnings in the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. In this way, the repetition underlines the point the book intends to make. The last chapter, “A Manifesto for Reformation Anglicanism,” issues a challenge to those in the Anglican Communion to return to their Reformation heritage. This essay by Null and Yates makes the case that Anglicanism is supposed to be biblically grounded in doctrine and ethics and is connected to the catholic tradition of the church. It is supposed to be focused on the gospel of justification by faith alone and is supposed to call people to grow in godliness. It is supposed to be engaged in the active mission of the church to spread the word of Christ, and to be episcopal and liturgical, two things to which the authors call special attention. The latter are likely to be the aspects that give trouble to many of the Reformed readers of this volume. Yet, Reformed people, at least in the opinion of this reviewer, should actually rejoice that the commitments of Reformed Protestantism are gaining ground across lines of church polity and liturgical practice. This, however, also makes the unstated point that there is significant diversity within the Reformed tradition, which is able to encompass those with varying ecclesiological and liturgical commitments. The challenge for Anglicans to return to the Reformation heritage is an important one for those in the communion and is encouraging in as much as it is an indicator of a growing presence of Reformed thinking within the Anglican Church. The book as a whole is an informative look at the history of Anglicanism and its foundational theology. It effectively sidesteps debate about controversial issues in the church’s history and presents a clear, focused argument that no matter what else Anglicanism 244 UNIO CUM CHRISTO ›› UNIOCC.COM may be, it is a movement born out of the Reformation, and it should be as committed to Reformation ideals as its first shapers were. I look forward to further volumes in the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library series, as well as to the impact they will have for the Anglican Communion. HARRISON PERKINS Queen’s University Belfast Lyle D. Bierma. The Theology of the Heidelberg Catechism: A Reformation Synthesis. Columbia Series in Reformed Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013. Pp. ix + 249. Lyle Bierma is P. J. Zondervan Professor of History of Christianity at Calvin Theological Seminary. The Theology of the Heidelberg Catechism is the culmination of Bierma’s writings on the Heidelberg Catechism (hereafter HC), Caspar Olevianus (one of the drafters of the HC), covenant theology, and the sacraments. This volume was written for the 450th anniversary of the HC (1563) and complements An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History, and Theology (2005), a scholarly introduction to the Catechism by Bierma and other church historians. A consideration of the HC through this review is fitting as we remember the legacy of John Calvin and the later Reformation. For Bierma, the Reformation in Heidelberg historically was built upon a Lutheran foundation and refined through Reformed traditions. He intends to show that in the HC we “encounter traces of the same grafting of Reformed branches onto a Lutheran vine” (p. 11).1 For that purpose, after an introductory chapter that discusses most of the significant literature on the topic (in English, Dutch, and German), he engages in a detailed textual analysis and theological commentary on the Catechism itself in chapters 2 to 8. Those chapters show familiarity with a rich variety of confessional and catechetical Lutheran and Reformed sources. The book ends with possible applications to the present ecumenical context of the church and a modern translation of the Catechism (pp. 131–200: this 2011 translation is the official translation of the Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in America, and 1 In a previously published chapter on Melanchthon and the HC, Bierma has pondered the HC’s relationship to Lutheran views, cautiously indicating that in the tapestry of the HC, some Melanchthonian colors are found but no specific sources can be identified. See Lyle D. Bierma, “What Hath Wittenberg to Do with Heidelberg?,” in Karin Maag, ed., Melanchthon in Europe: His Work and Influence Beyond Wittenberg, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 103–21, esp. 120–21.