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WORK TITLE: The Bible
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: Canadian
LAST VOLUME: CA 303
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PERSONAL
Born 1962 in Canada.
EDUCATION:Dalhousie University, B.A., M.A.; University of St. Andrews, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic, historian, and writer. Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT, professor, 2008—, then Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History; also taught at University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, and Knox College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
AWARDS:Horace W. Goldsmith Award, Yale University.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
(open new1)Bruce Gordon is an academic and historian of Christian thought. He has served as the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School. Gordon has written or edited numerous books on the Protestant Reformation in Europe and biographies of central figures in the spread of Christian thought.(close new1)
Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation and The Place of the Dead
Gordon’s first book, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zürich, 1532-1580, explores the inner workings of early Protestant communities in rural Switzerland. According to J. Michael Hayden, writing for the Canadian Journal of History, “This book is essential for anyone interested in rural early modern Europe.” Euan Cameron likewise noted in the English Historical Review that “this is a highly proficient piece of research into one of the most difficult and most important of Reformation topics.”
This anthology, which Gordon edited with Peter Marshall, offers fifteen essays on medieval and early modern European ideas of death and the afterlife, as well as burial practices and the politics and culture that surrounded them.
In a review for Church History, Ralph Houlbrooke wrote that these essays are “all of high quality so far as both content and presentation are concerned. Each has thought-provoking new information or insights to offer.” S.J. Gunn likewise noted in the English Historical Review that “again and again they succeed in producing subtle and thought-provoking accounts showing the variety of local experience, the complex interactions between official teaching and popular belief.” Philip F. Riley wrote in History: Review of New Books: “ The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe contains path-breaking essays that illuminate important themes in social, religious, and family history. Undergraduates will find them accessible and well worth reading for lively class discussions.”
The Swiss Reformation and Calvin
Since most histories of the Protestant Reformation highlight the contributions of John Calvin to the exclusion of his predecessors Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger, Gordon seeks to shine the light on these two influential characters in his The Swiss Reformation. Writing in Reviews in History, contributor Amy Nelson Burnett explained that “Gordon has succeeded admirably, giving an English-language audience an in-depth view of a central but neglected area of the Reformation … mak[ing] the fascinating twists and turns of sixteenth-century Swiss history accessible. … The book contains a number of features intended to assist the general reader. … Gordon’s prose is eminently readable, his style is appealing, and his choice of topics sound.” Ole Peter Grell similarly praised the book in the English Historical Review: “Gordon’s book fills a considerable gap in our knowledge, not only by making available much information which until now has remained difficult to access for English students and scholars of the Reformation, but also by offering new insights. … Gordon has written an excellent textbook, even if the amount of information made available can at times be overpowering.”
By far, Gordon’s most noted book is his biography of John Calvin, simply titled Calvin, and published—as were many such works—on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth. Many reviewers identified Gordon’s book as the finest in this crowded field. As George Stroup explained in the Christian Century, this is “a magnificent biography that brings clarity to much of the confusion surrounding ‘the historical Calvin,’ dispelling many of the stereotypes that have followed him through the centuries, but without denying the complexity and ambiguity of Calvin’s personality. … Gordon’s impressive contribution to Calvin scholarship is to remind us that Calvin cannot be reduced to his theology and that his theology cannot be properly understood apart from the life he lived. He liberates Calvin from the many stereotypes to which he has too long been captive and turns him into a flesh-and-blood human being who is both more fascinating and more complex than his dour portraits suggest.” Or, as Barton Swaim wrote in the Weekly Standard: “He has total command of the scholarship on Calvin in French, German, and English, and his treatment is both winsomely sympathetic and justly critical.”
Many reviewers were especially impressed by Gordon’s impartiality. Noel Malcolm wrote in Standpoint that “the difficult task that faces a modern biographer of Calvin is to get past the invincible self- assurance of the religious leader in his final phase and gain a sense of all the uncertainties and compromises that preceded it. One of the strengths of Bruce Gordon’s new biography is that he does just that. … This is an impressive book, well-balanced in the sense that it is not at all partisan.” Tim Challies likewise noted on the Crosswalk.com blog: “Many of the biographies seem to focus undue attention on Calvin’s great accomplishments without wrestling with his notable faults and foibles. This new biography is an exception as Gordon writes from a position of notable objectivity. … The greatest strength of Calvin may be the author’s deep knowledge of the time in which his subject lived.”
Most notably, this biography proved accessible not just to an audience of specialists, but also to general readers. According to Sean Lucas, writing on the Reformation 21 blog, “The few that know something about [Calvin] are as likely to idolize him as to understand him. Bruce Gordon’s Calvin is a marvelous corrective to both faults: informative, accessible, and realistic, it is the book to give to interested church members.” In a review for the Tablet, Hilmar Pabel concluded: “Gordon’s Calvin will likely become the standard introduction to the Genevan Reformer in English. The book commends itself to readers with a zest for biography. It surely counts as one of the most stimulating and accessible biographies of a major Christian figure that has recently been published.”
The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism and The Bible
(open new)Gordon coedited The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism in 2022 with historian Carl R. Trueman. The collection offers thirty-nine essays on both theological and historical issues related to more critical views of Calvin and Calvinism. Contributing writers present the material with new or alternative vantages to gain a fuller understanding of the concepts, while also returning to core questions on how to read Calvin. In a review in Choice, D.K. McKim stated: “Clearly recognizing the diverse influences of Calvin and Calvinism, the book broadens the scope of thinking on Calvin.”
With The Bible: A Global History, Gordon considers how the rabbinic Bible, the four Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles coalesced into a singular, sacred text from their diverse backgrounds and from across space. Gordon shows how its reception around the world varied, both in the ways that it was disseminated and how it was applied according to local customs and beliefs. A Kirkus Reviews contributor opined that Gordon “has written an approachable history suitable for lay readers, but it adds nothing significantly new to the sizable corpus of works on the same subject.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly said that “the result is a fascinating look at how the ‘most influential book in the world’ came to be.”
Zwingli
In Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, Gordon considers the life of Huldrych Zwingli and his efforts to spread the Gospel in Zurich and other Swiss Roman Catholic territories. Gordon looks into Zwingli’s many contradictions, as well as interpreting his dreams that linked Old Testament’s Passover with the New Testament’s Lord’s Supper. Gordon concludes by discussing his death and how his reputation has changed since his death during the Kappel Wars.
Writing in the Christian Century, Miles Hopgood stated: “Far from molding Zwingli’s life into a commentary on present events or using it as a lens to make sense of our current moment, Gordon’s telling of Zwingli’s life is a master example of how the tools of the historian can be used to make sense of the life of an individual within systems far greater than themselves and, in turn, get at what the life of an individual can mean even in the midst of far greater forces.” In a review in Choice, W.T. Lindley exclaimed that “this work is meticulously researched, cogently argued, and beautifully written,” adding that it is “a necessary volume for Reformation scholars.”(close new)
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2009, Gilbert Taylor, review of Calvin, p. 21.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, June 22, 2002, Katharine Park, review of The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, p. 362.
Canadian Journal of History, April 1, 1994, J. Michael Hayden, “Zurcher Beitrage Zur Reformationsgeschichte, Vol. 16, Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zürich, 1532-1580,” p. 191.
Choice, May 1, 2003, review of The Swiss Reformation, p. 1615; August 1, 2022, D.K. McKim, review of The Oxford handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, p. 1438; September 1, 2022, W.T. Lindley, review of Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, p. 50.
Christian Century, April 20, 2010, George Stroup, review of Calvin, p. 39; May 4, 2010, Amy Plantinga Pauw, review of Calvin, p. 23; February 1, 2022, Miles Hopgood, review of Zwingli, p. 88.
Church History, December 1, 2002, Ralph Houlbrooke, review of The Place of the Dead, p. 884.
Commonweal, January 15, 2010, “How Tough Was He?,” p. 22.
English Historical Review, November 1, 1995, Euan Cameron, review of Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation, p. 1256; June 1, 2001, S.J. Gunn, review of The Place of the Dead, p. 71; June 1, 2004, review of The Swiss Reformation, p. 785.
History: Review of New Books, June 22, 2000, Philip F. Riley, review of The Place of the Dead, p. 168.
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, January 1, 2004, review of The Swiss Reformation, p. 179.
Journal of Religious History, June 1, 2004, review of The Swiss Reformation.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2024, review of The Bible: A Global History.
Library Journal, May 15, 2009, Augustine J. Curley, review of Calvin, p. 77.
Mennonite Quarterly Review, April 1, 2004, review of The Swiss Reformation, p. 324.
Publisher Weekly, July 22, 2024, review of The Bible, p. 62.
Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 2003, review of The Swiss Reformation, p. 17.
Renaissance Quarterly, December 22, 2009, Philip Benedict, review of Calvin, p. 1317.
Shakespeare Studies, January 1, 2002, Katherine O. Acheson, review of The Place of the Dead, p. 242.
Sixteenth Century Journal, September 22, 1993, Lee Palmer Wandel, review of Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation, p. 769.
Times Literary Supplement, December 18, 2009, James Simpson, “Predestined to Predestine,” p. 34.
Weekly Standard, November 9, 2009, “Great Reformer; Is Freedom of Conscience Indebted to John Calvin?”
ONLINE
CathNews, http://www.cathnews.com.au/ (December 11, 2009), review of Calvin.
Crosswalk.com, http://www.crosswalk.com/ (October 6, 2009), Tim Challies, review of Calvin.
Love for Truth … A Truth That Loves, http://mikenhelen.blogspot.com/ (May 2, 2009), Mike Knox, review of Calvin.
Reformation 21, http://www.reformation21.org/ (August 28, 2009), Sean Lucas, review of Calvin.
Reviews in History, http://www.history.ac.uk/ (February 1, 2003), Amy Nelson Burnett, review of The Swiss Reformation.
Sean Michael Lucas Blogspot, http://seanmichaellucas.blogspot.com/ (July 2, 2010), Sean Michael Lucas, review of Calvin.
Standpoint, http:// www.standpointmag.co.uk/ (October 1, 2009), Noel Malcolm, review of Calvin.
Tablet, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/ (December 10, 2009), Hilmar Pabel, review of Calvin.
Yale Divinity School website, https://divinity.yale.edu/ (December 29, 2024), profile of author.
Bruce Gordon is Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School and has an appointment in Yale’s department of history. He is the author of the biographies Calvin and Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, and of a number of other books on the history of Christianity. Raised in Canada, he lives in Vermont.
Bruce Gordon (historian)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bruce Gordon (born 1962 in Canada) is Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School. He previously taught at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he was professor of modern history and deputy director of the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. Gordon specializes in late-medieval and early modern religious culture.[1] His 1990 dissertation was entitled Clerical Discipline and the Church Synods in Zürich, 1532-1580.
Works
Clerical Discipline and the Rural Reformation: The Synod in Zürich, 1532-1580 (Zürcher Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte) (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers 1992) ISBN 9783261044068
(editor with Peter Marshall) The Place of the Dead in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press 2000) ISBN 9780521642569
The Swiss Reformation (Manchester University Press 2002) ISBN 9780719051180
(editor with Emidio Campi) Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504-1575 (Baker Academic 2004) ISBN 9780801028991
Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 9780300170849
John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography. (Princeton 2016) ISBN 9781786845696
(editor with Carl Trueman) The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism (Oxford University Press 2021) ISBN 9780191795527
Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet (Yale University Press 2021) ISBN 9780300258790
The Bible: A Global History (Basic Books 2024) ISBN 9781541619739
uce Gordon
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Bruce Gordon
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Bruce Gordon
Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History
Phone:
(203) 432-5355
Email:
bruce.gordon@yale.edu(link sends e-mail)
Office:
S130
Denomination Affiliation:
Presbyterian
Education
B.A. (Hons) King's College
M.A. Dalhousie University
Ph.D University of St. Andrews
Biography
A native of Canada, Bruce Gordon taught at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was professor of modern history and deputy director of the St Andrews Reformation Studies Institute. He came to Yale in 2008. His research and teaching focus on European religious cultures of the late-medieval and early modern periods, with a particular interest in the Reformation and its reception. In 2021 he published The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism (Oxford) and Huldrych Zwingli. God’s Armed Prophet (Yale). The biography of Zwingli explores the roots of the Reformation and the problematic relationship between religion and violence. His John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Princeton 2016) looks at the reception from the sixteenth century to the age of YouTube of one of the defining works of the Reformation. He is the author of Calvin (Yale, 2009), a biography of the Genevan reformer, and the Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), a Choice Magazine “Outstanding Publication” (2003). His The Bible: A Global History(link is external) (Basic Books, NY) appeared in September 2024 and was a Publishers Weekly starred review(link is external) and one of their “Top Ten Religion Books” for 2024. In addition, he has edited books and written widely on early modern history writing, biblical culture, Reformation devotion and spirituality, and the place of the dead in pre-modern culture. He was principal investigator for a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom for a project “Protestant Latin Bibles of the Sixteenth Century”. He received a Horace W. Goldsmith Award from Yale University to develop an online course (MOOC) called ‘A Journey through Western Christianity’, appeared in 2016 from Yale and Coursera. He teaches and supervises graduate students in a broad range of medieval and early modern subjects and their resonances in contemporary historiography and society. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Zurich, Switzerland (2012), and the University of King’s College, Dalhousie, in Canada (2019).
Bruce Gordon
Bruce Gordon's picture
Titus Street Prof of Theology, Prof of Reformation Hist, Div Schl and History and Religious Studies
bruce.gordon@yale.edu
Office:
409 Prospect
Phone:
203-432-5355
Fields of interest:
Late Medieval, Early Modern Religious History, Biography
Bio:
A native of Canada, Bruce Gordon taught at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was a professor of modern history and deputy director of the St. Andrews Reformation Studies Institute, before joining the Yale faculty in 2008. Gordon’s research and teaching focus on European religious cultures of the late-medieval and early modern periods, with a particular interest in the Reformation and its reception. His most recent book is Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet (Yale, 2021). His John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Princeton 2016) looks at the reception from the sixteenth century to the age of YouTube of one of the defining works of the Reformation. He is the author of Calvin (Yale, 2009), a biography of the Genevan reformer, and the Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), a Choice Magazine “Outstanding Publication” (2003). In 2021 he edited, with Carl Trueman, The Oxford Handbook to Calvin and Calvinism (Oxford). In addition, he has edited books and written widely on early modern history, biblical culture, Reformation devotion and spirituality, dissent and heresy, and the place of the dead in pre-modern culture. His most recent book, The Bible: A Global History will appear with Basic Books (NYC) in September 2024.
Period:
Early Modern
Medieval
Thematic:
Religious
JOHN CALVIN'S INSTITUTES OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
Bruce Gordon
Despite deep divisions over the man and his doctrines, the Christian heirs of the Protestant Reformation have always considered John Calvin a key figure among their founding fathers. But for outsiders, from Roman Catholics to atheists, the French theologian, born in 1509, is perhaps the iconic Protestant thinker, more so than Martin Luther. Calvin and Calvinism have been credited or blamed for formative building blocks in Western culture. These range from religious revolution--Calvin's doctrine of predestination proposes that God has selected a handful of humans for salvation (one in 100, Calvin often suggested) and condemned the rest to perdition without regard for their good works or merits--to capitalism and its work ethic, modern democracy and sexual repression.
The roots of these responses lie in the Institutes, Calvin's multi-decade work about Christian salvation, human worth and divine arbitrariness. As Gordon, a Winnipegger and professor of ecclesiastical history at Yale Divinity School, points out, predestination, for Calvin, was not about the doom of the 99, but the assurance it gave--in the teeth of medieval Catholic uncertainty--of God's grace and salvation for the one elect.
That wasn't the way it was seen by everyone, then and now. Even those who didn't quarrel with the theological reasoning were troubled by Calvin's forceful and unapologetic attitude: "That is not what the people need to hear in church on a Sunday," said his friend and fellow reformer Philip Melanchthon. Theological opponents were appalled, seeing in Calvin's teachings a God who is the actual author of sin, a supreme being who created humans in the full awareness of which of them would be punished for all eternity.
But the afterlife of the Institutes is much broader, argues Gordon. Calvin's Renaissance humanism, his appreciation of a natural world tailor-made for humanity and his insistence on individual conscience, infuses the novels of Marilynne Robinson, as it did many earlier American classics, like Moby-Dick. The theologian's uncompromising defence of God's law may have stiffened the spines of slave owners in the past, but it has also proved a bulwark for Christians under duress, from black churches in apartheid South Africa to the house churches of communist China. As next year's 500th anniversary of the Reformation approaches, the Institutes is as vibrant a text as ever. BRIAN BETHUNE
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Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 St. Joseph Media
http://www2.macleans.ca/
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Bethune, Brian. "John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion." Maclean's, vol. 129, no. 26, 4 July 2016, p. 60. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A457828576/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0ab0f03a. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
The Oxford handbook of Calvin and Calvinism, ed. by Bruce Gordon and Carl R.Trueman. Oxford,. 692p bibl index ISBN 9780198728818 cloth, $145.00; ISBN 9780191795527 ebook, contact publisher for price
59-3470
BX9418
MARC
Gordon (Yale Divinity School) and Trueman (Grove City College) are fine historians and especially adept at understanding the Reformed theological tradition, epitomized here as Calvin and Calvinism. The book's size befits the many dimensions and huge amount of literature on Calvin and Calvinism. Written by interpreters both well recognized and emerging, the 39 essays address historical and theological issues with a global reach and unvarnished honesty. The volume is oriented to "rethinking Calvin and Calvinism" (p. 11), so new directions emerge. The essays reflect and expand on recent literature that has "reinvigorated the field by asking fundamental questions about how [one] should read the reformer and what it means to speak about his kaleidoscopic legacy" (p. 15). Authors were challenged to offer new vistas, and the editors confirm that the essays "take [one] to unexpected places" (p. 17). This handbook will be indispensable to those working in this field. Clearly recognizing the diverse influences of Calvin and Calvinism, the book broadens the scope of thinking on Calvin and "the many lines of cultural and intellectual development [that] connect him to the world of today" (p. 3). Summing Up: ** Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.--D. K. McKim, formerly, Memphis Theological Seminary
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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McKim, D.K. "The Oxford handbook of Calvin and Calvinism." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 59, no. 12, Aug. 2022, p. 1438. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A711837651/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fe52649b. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
Gordon, Bruce. Zwingli: God's armed prophet. Yale, 2021. 376p bibl index ISBN 9780300235975 cloth, $32.50; ISBN 9780300258790 ebook, contact publisher for price
60-0103
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CIP
This new volume from Gordon (Yale Univ.) about Huldrych Zwingli is a superb complement to his previous book, Calvin (CH, May'10, 474964). Here, Gordon portrays Zwingli as a complex individual, a man dedicated to solidifying the Gospel in Zurich and spreading it to the Swiss Roman Catholic territories; a preacher/prophet who gave little quarter to his opponents be they Roman Catholics, Lutherans, or Anabaptists; and a man committed to education and assisting the poor. A man of contradictions, Zwingli adamantly opposed the mercenary system in Switzerland, yet his actions helped spark the Kappel Wars in which he was killed. He was also an accomplished musician and songwriter, but Zurich banned music from worship. An interesting aspect is Gordon's focus on a dream Zwingli had that paved the way for comparing the Old Testament's Passover to the New Testament's Lord's Supper. The last two chapters examine the contemporary response to Zwingli's death and the shifting interpretation of the man and his theology over the last two centuries. Gordon concludes that Zwingli laid the foundation for the Reformed Church. This work is meticulously researched, cogently argued, and beautifully written. A necessary volume for Reformation scholars. Summing Up: **** Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.--W. T. Lindley, Union University
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Lindley, W.T. "Gordon, Bruce. Zwingli: God's armed prophet." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 60, no. 1, Sept. 2022, p. 50. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A715401565/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=eb94367e. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet By Bruce Gordon (Yale University Press)
Often the readership of a biography is limited by the name recognition of its subject, and here we find Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet at a disadvantage. If you need to be reminded of who Ulrich Zwingli was--or if you never knew--don't feel ashamed. At best, you probably learned of him as a foil to Martin Luther or precursor to John Calvin in a course long ago, the books for which you quickly off-loaded when the term finished. Perhaps you have a vague memory of debate at Marburg, a death at Kappel, or something called the Affair of the Sausages.
Zwingli's career as a Reformer was short, and his ignominious death left little in the way of a following to establish a legacy like some of his contemporaries and followers enjoy. There are Lutherans and Calvinists but no Zwinglians (except those Lutheran seminarians accused of secretly being crypto-Calvinists for having spoken too imprecisely regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist). In short, Zwingli's legacy is not claimed by many today, however he might have shaped them.
By Bruce Gordon's own admission, these difficulties are at the center of the challenge he accepts in taking on the task of chronicling the life of Zwingli. Rescuing Zwingli from both general obscurity and the shadows of Luther and Calvin is no trivial affair. Yet Gordon does just that, and expertly so.
What emerges is a fully fleshed portrait of Zwingli that illuminates many aspects of his life and work, some which have been the focus of sustained interest and others which have too long been neglected by scholars. Those interested in Zwingli's contributions to theology will find here the framework necessary to ground his thought in his life. Those rightly clamoring for less gilded recountings of the past will be heartened that Gordon does not shy away from tackling head-on the condemnable aspects of Zwingli's character, such as his notable misogyny and his animus toward Jews. Zwingli's complexity is presented here, but not at the expense of clarity in writing or thought. The result should be considered a new benchmark for biographies of Zwingli across all languages. It's simply that good.
Were this merely an excellent biography, we could stop the review here. But Zwingli is something more. What makes it a worthwhile read for an audience wider than Reformation enthusiasts or Zwingli-heads is the way in which Gordon tells more than just the story of Zwingli's career. What gives shape to the life of Zwingli is Gordon's sweeping expertise in the Swiss Reformation and the political and cultural currents that shaped it. For those who have read his 2002 work, The Swiss Reformation, nothing less would be expected. Yet even for those who saw it coming, Zwingli is a remarkable accomplishment for how thoroughly Gordon has intertwined an account of Zwingli's life with the broader history of the people and movements that surrounded and shaped him.
It is difficult to describe the mastery needed to give a portrait of a subject's background as rich as the subject without losing focus or creating a distraction, but that is what Gordon has accomplished here. He carries the reader's attention back and forth from the world that shaped Zwingli to the ways he shaped his world. It is one thing to observe in Zwingli's early writings commentaries on the mercenary trade, for example, or shifting opinions on the papacy. It's another to weave those aspects of his career with the larger histories of what was happening around them in a way that truly opens up a compelling narrative of how Zwingli came to the helm of the Reformation in Zurich and gave it shape.
The fruit of Gordon's efforts is a book that offers an insightful look into not only Zwingli's life and times but our own. By this, I do not mean to malign Zwingli by associating it with that genre of polemic that wears biography like a wolf would sheep's clothing. What Gordon has done could not be further from, say, Eric Metaxas's revisionist portrayal of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an American evangelical or Michael Massing's myopic portrayal of the conflict between Luther and Erasmus as a forecast of a clash between Donald Trump and establishment liberalism. Far from molding Zwingli's life into a commentary on present events or using it as a lens to make sense of our current moment, Gordon's telling of Zwingli's life is a master example of how the tools of the historian can be used to make sense of the life of an individual within systems far greater than themselves and, in turn, get at what the life of an individual can mean even in the midst of far greater forces.
Zwingli was just one person, caught up in forces much larger than himself, many of which would have seemed beyond contention. Yet, as Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet evinces, the life Zwingli lived, however humble in origin and brief in length, left an enduring mark on a city, a confederacy, and indeed Christianity itself. He did very little alone, and what he did was built with a network of co-Reformers, supporters, and allies of convenience. And yet it is hard to say that what took place was so inevitable that it would have happened without him. To those of us seeking the vantage point to assess what is possible in our own day, Gordon's work offers, by way of case study, instruction in how to discern the value of a life lived in and through systems much larger than itself.
There is, of course, a great difference between doing such work in assessing a past life and doing it in one's own. But the past is an instructor we cannot do without, and with Zwingli, Gordon gives us a lesson as indispensable as the life of the man himself.
Miles HOPGOOD is pastor of Abiding Presence Lutheran Church in Ewing, New Jersey.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 The Christian Century Foundation
http://www.christiancentury.org
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Hopgood, Miles. "Bringing Zwingli out from the shadows of Luther and Calvin: Bruce Gordon masterfully weaves together the world that shaped the least-remembered Reformer and the ways he shaped that world." The Christian Century, vol. 140, no. 2, Feb. 2023, pp. 88+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A736958368/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e5df1f68. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
The Bible: A Global History
Bruce Gordon. Basic, $35 (528p) ISBN 978-1-54161-973-9
Yale Divinity School history professor Gordon (Calvin) delivers an ambitious survey of how a collection of prophecies, poems, and letters became a sacred text that has shaped cultures. Styling the Bible as a migrant, he describes how diverse writings--the rabbinic Bible, the four Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles--coalesced into canon through "worship, reading, and devotional practices," then were spread by "merchants and colonizers" to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. There, local communities adapted the "alien" book through a mix of cultural blending, reinterpretation, and even rebellion. For example, theologians in 20th-century China drew comparisons between Confucianism and biblical texts, Native Americans centered themselves in biblical stories (a group of 18th-century Mohican converts renamed themselves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, declaring themselves "patriarchs of a new nation of believers"), and a charismatic 20th-century Baptist catchetist in the Democratic Republic of Congo formed the "Kimbanguist" movement, which rejected "the God of the missionaries" but revered Christ. Smoothly capturing a sprawling and complex history, Gordon frames the Bible as both a cultural artifact and a dynamic site where identity is negotiated, a force that binds communities, and an arena where foreign influences are contested. The result is a fascinating look at how the "most influential book in the world" came to be. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"The Bible: A Global History." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 28, 22 July 2024, pp. 62+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A803518167/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b2726d18. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.
Gordon, Bruce THE BIBLE Basic Books (NonFiction None) $35.00 9, 17 ISBN: 9781541619739
A global history of the Bible.
Church historian Gordon describes for the reader a sacred book that seems to take on a life of its own. Through two full millennia, the Christian Bible has survived, thrived, and acted as both a holy object and a cultural force. Gordon notes that early Christians "would participate in a communications revolution," a revolution that continues to this day. Adopting the codex as their chosen medium, Christians would, over the course of several generations, craft a canon of scripture that would survive centuries of cultural fragility in Europe. From the fifth century on, Gordon writes, "the Bible itself became an object of veneration. [It was] the ultimate symbol of the sacred Christ's physical presence in the world." With new technology and the Protestant Reformation, the Bible would move beyond the church and monastery and into the home. No version of the book reflected this cultural sea change more than the King James Bible, which came to dominate the English-speaking world and influence missionary activity outside of it. Spreading into Asia, Africa, and elsewhere, the Bible would be influenced by new, global voices. Gordon describes the story of the Bible as "the story of a life force" and mystically concludes that "the Bible dictates its own history, which is without end." He has written an approachable history suitable for lay readers, but it adds nothing significantly new to the sizable corpus of works on the same subject. To mention just two examples, Karen Armstrong'sThe Bible (2007) provides a more academic viewpoint; John Barton'sA History of the Bible (2019) offers a more critical reading of the Bible's background.
Serviceable but not particularly original.
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Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Gordon, Bruce: THE BIBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804504564/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=637d61e9. Accessed 5 Dec. 2024.