John Dillenberger – författare

This volume presents texts selected from the full range of John Calvin's writings, including excerpts from commentaries, sermons, letters, catechisms, tracts, broad-based theological works.

This book explores the extent to which artists of sixteenth-century Europe were influenced by ideas of religious reform. Analysing the content of major works by eight prominent artists, noted reformation scholar John Dillenberger argues that these artists' productions provide a fascinating map of the evolution and influence of major theological currents of their time.

This volume presents texts selected from the full range of John Calvin''s writings, including excerpts from commentaries, sermons, letters, catechisms, tracts, broad-based theological works.

The development of Martin Luther''s thought was both a symptom and moving force in the transformation of the Middle Ages into the modern world. Geographical discovery, an emerging scientific tradition, and a climate of social change had splintered the unity of medieval Christian culture, and these changes provided the background for Luther''s theological challenge. His new apprehension of Scripture and fresh understanding of man''s relation to God demanded a break with the Church as then constituted and released the powerful impulses that carried the Reformation. Luther''s vigorous, colorful language still retains the excitement it had for thousands of his contemporaries. In this volume, Dr. Dillenberger has made a representative selection from Luther''s extensive writings, and has also provided the reader with a lucid introduction to his thought.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Protestant Thought and Natural Science presents a concise interpretation of the relations between natural scientists and Protestant theologians from the Reformation to the present day. The book penetrates behind the skirmishes to the underlying issues in a manner not achieved before.John Dillenberger’s firsthand knowledge of the source material has enabled him to break through the “science-and-religion” stereotype in an account at once complex and interesting.

This volume presents texts selected from the full range of John Calvin's writings, including excerpts from commentaries, sermons, letters, catechisms, tracts, broad-based theological works.

For most of history, argues John Dillenberger, the visual arts were, for better or worse, part of the very fabric of the life and thought of the church. But with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation a major change took place. Protestant rejection of the visual was matched in Roman Catholicism by the reduction of its formative power. While the visual arts dropped out of the lives of Protestant churches, they became a memory rather than a source of ennoblement or power in the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, in different but allied ways, Protestants and Catholics lost the power of the visual. Part art history, part historical theology, and part theological reflection, this book is both an argument and a program for the recovery of the visual arts in the life of the church, for reclaiming seeing as part of religious perception. It offers a theological understanding of the visual and provides a basis upon which the visual arts may again be incorporated into Protestantism and reinvigorated in Roman Catholicism. The first part is devoted to historical reconstruction, exploring those moments in Western history in which the relation between religion and the arts was in ferment. Part 2 is given to contemporary delineation and analysis: of spiritual perceptions in modern American painting and sculpture, of modern church art and architecture, and of the changing views of contemporary theologians toward the visual arts. Citing David Tracy, Karl Rahner, Langdon Gilkey, and others as examples, Dillenberger argues that contemporary theology is moving away from the modern rationalistic understanding of theological analogy to one far closer to the arts. Part 3 is constructive, developing a theological perspective that demands and includes the visual arts, and suggesting ways in which this can be accomplished in pastoral and theological education. The world of art, says Professor Dillenberger, is more aware of the role of religion in the arts than the world of religion is of art. Thus it is time for the church to resume its historic association with the visual arts, albeit in analogous rather than repristinating ways.