Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Written by Carl R. Trueman Reviewed By John Coffey

This short, thought-provoking book is based on four lectures given at the Word and Spirit conference of the Evangelical Theological College of Wales. In a characteristically direct and hard-hitting style, Carl Trueman sets out to rescue the Reformation from both its detractors and its friends. On the one hand, he is concerned about those on the evangelical ‘left’, ‘the radicals, the visionaries, the risk-takers’; theologians who deny that God knows the future or that Christ is the only way to salvation, and charismatics whose services centre not on biblical preaching but on nebulous choruses, testimonies and entertainment. However, he is also worried about the Reformed ‘right’, which tends to idolise the Reformers whilst often failing to appreciate Luther’s ‘theology of the cross’ or the Reformation stress on assurance of salvation. For Trueman, a proper understanding and application of Reformation theology provides the antidote to our current evangelical ills.

After introducing his theme in chapter 1. Trueman moves on in the three subsequent chapters to explain the relevance of Reformation teaching on the Cross, biblical preaching, and assurance. The outstanding chapter is chapter 2. ‘Meeting the Man of Sorrows’. Here we read of Luther’s insistence that God’s ultimate revelation of himself is in the weakness, brokenness. suffering and humiliation of the Cross. Trueman laments the fact that Luther’s ‘theology of the cross’ quickly slipped from the agenda of Protestant theology, and contends that it is an explosive challenge to a society obsessed with self-fulfilment, materialism, and personal comfort. Here Reformation theology produces radical social analysis. Chapter 3 focuses on ‘the most difficult and perhaps most controversial part of the Reformation legacy today’—the centrality of the Word written and preached. Trueman champions the traditional Reformed vision of a learned ministry, whose practitioners possess a solid grounding in biblical languages, biblical theology and systematic theology. Finally, chapter 4 discusses the Reformation doctrine of assurance, which directs the believer to look outside himself to a trustworthy God, rather than to look within. Trueman makes the intriguing case that this is the corrective to both the ‘introspective legalism’ found in certain branches of Highland Presbyterianism and the ‘joyful triumphalism’ common in some charismatic circles.

Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow is never dull, and it demonstrates that far from being the irrelevant playground of antiquarians, sixteenth-century Protestant theology can enrich and deepen the life of the evangelical church. However, the book could. I think, have been stronger if it had shown greater sympathy for the pietist and charismatic currents within evangelicalism. The pietist and charismatic movements, of course, have had their faults, but they have also done much to revitalise evangelical Protestantism, and bring millions of people into a living faith in Christ. There are also hard questions to be asked about the Reformed model of a learned ministry, since the extraordinary impact of mass evangelical movements like Methodism and Pentecostalism owes much to their populist impulse and their tendency to prize charisma over erudition. Evangelicalism does need to keep returning to its Reformation roots, but it also needs to learn from subsequent movements in later centuries.


John Coffey

University of Leicester