Miracles and the Protestant Imagination

The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23242566
AutoresPhilip M Soergel (autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Páginas234
Fecha de publicación2012-02-03
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaMiracles and the Protestant imagination (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199844661.001.0001
OpenAlexW4232482940
Open LibraryOL24918108M
ISBN9780199844661
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

This study examines the uses of miracles in Protestant wonder books in the century after the outbreak of the Reformation. The wonder book was a new genre that emerged in the troubled years after Martin Luther’s death and the outbreak of religious wars in 1546. Originally conceived as a kind of apocalyptic text intended to interpret the “signs of the times” during this uncertain period, wonder books were filled with accounts of celestial visions, comets, natural disasters, monstrous births, and other seeming signs and portents, events in which the hand of God was revealed. As the genre developed, its authors, mostly Lutheran pastors and theologians, increasingly delved into the theology of miracles and the supernatural, and the wonder book became a vehicle for waging the bitter polemic typical of evangelicalism during its second and third generations. Writing for a mostly clerical audience, these books satisfied an enduring appetite for news of God’s daily intervention in human affairs. Thus, in contrast to longstanding traditions of scholarship that have characterized the Reformation as a step on the way to the “disenchantment of the world,” this monograph demonstrates that German evangelicals were themselves active enchanters.

Art · Disenchantment · Literature · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Scholarship · Theology · Vision · Wonder · History · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · 16th century · Christian literature · Christian literature, history and criticism · Church history · Curiosities and wonders · doctrines · German Christian literature · Germany · History and criticism · History of doctrines · Lutheran church · Miracles