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Dr. Timothy George’s Theology of the Reformers was a required text for me in seminary. It is one of the most memorable academic books I came across during my studies — concise, accessible, with a good mix of biographical information and theological exposition for four pioneers of the Reformation era. Now, Dr. George has released a revised and expanded edition of the book in honor of the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first edition.

In today’s interview, I ask Dr. George what led him to write the book in the first place, why he included an Anabaptist in the first edition and why he has added a chapter on William Tyndale this time.

Trevin: What led you to write Theology of the Reformers in 1988?

Dr. George: 1988 was an important year of transition in my life. In that year, I completed ten years of teaching on the faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville and moved to Birmingham to begin the work of Beeson Divinity School.

That being said, Theology of the Reformers was actually begun several years earlier. It was largely written during the only year-long sabbatical leave that I have ever had, which took place in 1985-86. My family and I lived in Switzerland near Zurich for much of that time. I also studied in Geneva and Basel and traveled extensively throughout Germany and Eastern Europe. During this time I was living and breathing the Reformation, so to speak, and I was impressed by the abiding validity of the reformers’ message for Christians today. I wanted to rescue the reformers from “affectionate obscurity” and allow them to speak again in their own distinctive tonality and gravitas.

Trevin: What was it that made you interested in the Reformation?

Dr. George: When I first went to Harvard Divinity School to pursue graduate studies in theology, I did so with the idea of pursuing doctoral studies in New Testament and early Christian origins. In the course of my studies in both historical and modern theology, though, I came to see that one could not really leapfrog over the Reformation to recover an unmediated, primitivist kind of Christianity.

One must come to grips with what happened theologically as well as historically during the great seismic divide of Western Christianity in the great sixteenth century. Thus my interest in the Reformation was always in service to a wider concern, namely, to understand the reformers as they saw themselves: faithful servants of Jesus Christ in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

Trevin: For the first edition, you chose to focus on Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and Menno Simons. Some scholars might question your inclusion of a non-magisterial Reformer, namely the Anabaptist Simons, within a book on Reformation theology. Why do you feel that Simons should be considered one of the most important Reformation theologians?

Dr. George: Yes, I have been both criticized and praised for including Menno Simons in my original quartet of reformers. Having been a student of the great George Huntston Williams at Harvard, I could not well leave out the entire Radical Reformation. Also, as a confessional Baptist I had to come to grips with the Anabaptist movement. I resonate with the Anabaptist vision in some respects, especially their ethics and ecclesiology, though I find unconvincing the case for the Anabaptist origins of the modern Baptist tradition.

I admit that in some ways Balthasar Hubmaier would have been a more obvious choice to represent the Radical Reformation. Both he and his wife Elizabeth were martyred for their faith. But I chose Menno Simons because I wanted to write about a person who stood at the vanguard of a living, continuing church tradition. Menno’s writings also have a pastoral quality about them that make them useful in today’s church.

Trevin: In the revised edition, you have added the biography and theology of William Tyndale. What is it about Tyndale that led you to write a new chapter for the book?

Dr. George: Because of space and time constraints, a major figure representing the English Reformation was omitted from the first edition. I wanted to correct this lacuna in the new twenty-fifth anniversary edition. But whom to choose?

Thomas Cranmer would have been an obvious choice. Not only was he the archbishop of Canterbury during a crucial phase of the English Reformation, but he gave the entire church a great devotional and liturgical classic in the Book of Common Prayer. The selection of later figures, such as Richard Hooker and William Perkins, could also be justified.

I chose William Tyndale because he stood at the headwaters of the entire English Reformation. His pioneering work as the first person to translate into English the New Testament and much of the Old from original biblical tongues can hardly be exaggerated. His life story reads like an evangelical James Bond novel—exile from his native land, living in the shadows, near-escapes, shipwreck on the open sea, and eventually betrayal and execution for his relentless efforts to give the world an English Bible.

But Tyndale was more than a translator of genius and a martyr with a cause. He forged a distinctive Reformation theology, drawing on Wycliffe and the tradition of native English dissent, influenced by Erasmus and Luther, and anticipating later Reformed and Puritan thought. Tyndale’s unique covenantal theology and Augustinian view of grace, together with his emphasis on the proper place of good works in the Christian life, are lines of thought that come together in later English Reformed thought, especially among the Puritans. I wanted to bring Tyndale the theologian out of the shadows and give him the exposure he widely deserves.

Tomorrow, we will continue our discussion on the theology of the Reformers. Dr. George describes why he does not separate the theology of individuals from their historical context, whether it is appropriate to speak of a Reformation “theology” rather than “theologies,” and how modern Christians can benefit from theologians who are so far removed from us temporally and contextually.

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