B & H Publishing, 2010, 207 pgs.
Summary: Written in response to Mark Noll’s Is the Reformation Over? Reeves responds with a careful and often witty assessment of the history and theology of the Reformation. He begins with medieval theology, and works through Luther, Zwingli and the radical Reformation, Calvin, and the Puritans. He includes a helpful critique of Puritan introspection and how it can lead away from Christ.
Near the end of the book he writes:
The closer one looks, the clearer it becomes: the Reformation was not, principally, a negative movement, about moving away from Rome; it was a positive movement, about moving towards the gospel. . .Unfortunately for us moderns, obsessed with innovation, that means we cannot simply enrol the Reformation into the cause of ‘progress’. For, if anything, the Reformers were not after progress but regress: they were never mesmerized by novelty as we are, nor impatient of what was old, just because it was old; instead, their intent was to unearth original, old Christianity, a Christianity that had been buried under centuries of human tradition. That, though, is what preserves the validity of the Reformation for today. . .[because] as a programme to move ever closer to the gospel, it cannot be [over]” (190).
Recommended for all, but especially for high school students and home schoolers as a introduction to historical theology.