The Catholic Church's claims to spiritual and temporal authority rest on Jesus' promise in the gospels to give Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven. In the sixteenth century, leaders of the German Reformation sought a fundamental transformation of this "power of the keys" as part of their efforts to rid Church and society of alleged clerical abuses. Central to this transformation was a thoroughgoing reform of private confession.
Unlike other Protestants, Lutherans chose not to abolish private confession but to change it to suit their theological convictions and social needs. In a...
The Catholic Church's claims to spiritual and temporal authority rest on Jesus' promise in the gospels to give Peter the keys to the kingdom of hea...
Protestant reformers sought to effect a radical change in the way their contemporaries understood and coped with the suffering of body and soul that were so prominent in the early modern period. The reformers did so because they believed that many traditional approaches to suffering were not sufficiently Christian--that is, they thought these approaches were unbiblical. The Reformation of Suffering examines the Protestant reformation of suffering and shows how it was a central part of the larger Protestant effort to reform church and society. Despite its importance, no other text has...
Protestant reformers sought to effect a radical change in the way their contemporaries understood and coped with the suffering of body and soul that w...
