Scripture as ‘Sacrament’ in Early Modern Evangelical Church Ordinances
Date
2025-01-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Repository Usage Stats
views
downloads
Citation Stats
Attention Stats
Abstract
This article seeks to contribute to the growing body of scholarly literature that challenges the Weberian disenchantment thesis and its assumptions about the role of the Protestant Reformation in shaping the modern world. It does so by interacting with scholarship that has identified a distinctively Protestant version of enchantment associated with the Word. Drawing on an unlikely and heretofore untapped source to support and expand such scholarship, this article examines treatments of the Word in Evangelical Church Ordinances. It demonstrates that the framers of the Church Ordinances frequently used the language of the Eucharist and other sacraments to explain the ministry of the Word, and thereby expressed their belief in the ‘real presence’ of the divine in Scripture. The article thus shows that the ‘enchanted Word’ was not a mere theological sideshow in the Reformation; it was an essential feature of institutionalized Protestant religious life, something previous scholarship has not appreciated.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Subjects
Citation
Permalink
Published Version (Please cite this version)
Publication Info
Rittgers, RK (2025). Scripture as ‘Sacrament’ in Early Modern Evangelical Church Ordinances. Reformation and Renaissance Review. pp. 1–16. 10.1080/14622459.2024.2446207 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/33048.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
Scholars@Duke
Ronald K. Rittgers
Prof. Rittgers joined the faculty of Duke Divinity School in the fall of 2021. He is interested in the theology and spirituality of the Age of Reform (ca. 1050-ca. 1650), and also studies the important intellectual, social, and cultural developments of this period in western Christianity. In addition to articles and essays, Professor Rittgers has authored a number of books: The Reformation of the Keys: Confession, Conscience, and Authority in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Harvard University Press, 2004); The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford University Press, 2012); The Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Hebrews and James (Intervarsity Press, 2017); a co-edited volume, Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe (Brill, 2019); and A Widower’s Lament: The “Pious Meditations” of Johann Christoph Oelhafen (Fortress, 2021). Prof. Rittgers is currently working on a book entitled The Enchanted Word of Early Protestantism. He has held grants from the NEH and the Lilly Foundation, and has been a senior research fellow at the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany) and the Leibniz Institute for European History (Mainz, Germany). Professor Rittgers has also served as the president of the American Society of Church History.
A committed teacher, Professor Rittgers offers survey classes on the History of Christianity, as well as seminars on topics such as Martin Luther, Christian Theology in the Age of Reform, Christian Spirituality in the Age of Reform, Renaissance Christian Humanism, and Faith and History.
Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.