December 1 is the anniversary of this monumental series and a good day to start reading one sermon per day

... or six sermons per week (leaving out Sundays, if you want to be exact), which will take you to Christmas Eve. 

This December 1 is the 501st anniversary of the beginning of the preaching of the series, which was published in 1524. (So in terms of publication, it is still the 500th, if anyone else is keeping track.)

Here is the hardcover at B&NPress, here is the paperback at Amazon, here is the Kindle, and here is the playlist of introductions to the series. See previous post for the soundtrack to the videos.

Backing tracks for The Reformation of Preaching

If you have enjoyed the soundtrack behind "The Reformation of Preaching," i.e., the 30-minute introduction to Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John, or the music in the short five-minutes introductions to the individual sermons, here is the record from which those instrumental tracks were taken.

The album is called The Great Western Road, named for the three-part guitar suite of the same name. That suite was written in stages in the period 1991-1994. Strange how some gifts come seemingly overnight or in a matter of minutes, while others take years and years. 

This Friday, December 1, marks 500 years from the first sermon delivered in this pivotal series on 1John

 

  

Cloth w/ DJ                                      Kindle                                      Paperback

Friday, December 1, 2023, marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of this sermon series of twenty-one sermons by Oecolampadius preached every evening during Advent in December 1523 (leaving out Sundays, but leading upon toe Christmas Eve). Though it was a weekday (evening) series, the lectio continua style of straightforward, comprehensive Bible teaching (1) represented an historic reclamation of patristic expository preaching, and (2) set the standard that would be implemented by ordinance in all the pulpits of Basel some five years after these sermons were published. Though Oecolampadius was gone by the time Calvin arrived in Basel, every church in town was ringing with the form of preaching offered here. There can be no doubt that Calvin will have had a copy of the series, which sold through several editions in multiple languages very quickly. Surely for this reason, among others, Oecolampadius can be called, and indeed he has been called, Calvin's "spiritual father." 

Not only are the sermons lively, accessible, and illuminating, Oecolampadius' selected book of the Bible, The First Epistle of John, proves a perfect focal point for this Advent series, for a fresh approach to the then-current debates over the doctrine of justification, and as he himself says, the book is a veritable "Handbook for the Christian Life." 

Here is the playlist of videos consisting of one 30-minute introduction to "The Reformation of Preaching" and 16 very short intros to the individual (or occasionally groups of) sermons:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZZ9pVHWq-xaT3XJ5qBOIwmzg55ZPLx4X

Kindle available at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Sermons-First-Epistle-John-Christian-ebook/dp/B075WRG9CV/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1664564991&sr=1-1

Paperback available at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Sermons-First-Epistle-John-Christian/dp/197589202X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1664564991&sr=1-1

Hardcover available at Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sermons-on-the-first-epistle-of-john-johannes-oecolampadius/1128121419?ean=9781668519998

499 years old, now going on 500

This historical and pivotal sermon series began on December 1, 1523. It evidently ran right up through Christmas Eve.

2023 would be a great time to have a Bible study on 1John, with Oecolampadius' sermon series to guide you. 

Here is a playlist of 17 videos consisting of a 30-min Introduction and sixteen short summaries by Oecolampadius' leading biographer, Ernst Staehelin (a contemporary colleague of Karl Barth); the summaries are newly translated and read as introductions to Bible Study sessions.

Meanwhile, as further evidence of just how groundbreaking this series was, check out this link; notice whose name appears first and notice the categories:

Tradition = Reformed and Genre = Sermon / Sort = Date (Oldest)

The title in question is the third on the list. The first is Oecolampadius' translation of a patristic sermon, the second is a collection of three sermons from 1521, which merit translation, but do not quite represent the full breakthrough to the Reformation, as they were produced while he was still in the monastery.

For the hardcover version of the Sermons on the First Epistle of John, and also for additional translations of related material, ... these Works of Oecolampadius are appearing at Barnes & Noble.

First Year in Basel

This latest volume in the series, The First Year in Basel, fills the gap between Sown on Rock: The Sermon on the Vernacular and the Correspondence with Hedio, and the Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life).

[Links to images lead to paperbacks. Links in the paragraph above lead to hardcover options.]

Errata Corrected

This is to document the recent correction of several errata in the first pressings of Johannes Oecolampadius (1482—1531), Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life). In addition to a number of spelling corrections, two dates on p. 5 were off by a factor of ten: JO matriculated in Tübingen in 1513, not 1523, and he left Tübingen in the summer of 1514, not 1524. [Apologies to Jeff Fisher for introducing this error into a quotation taken from his fine work.] Also, on p. 9, I have changed "John Chrysostom" to "the Greek Fathers", and after "the sermons of Chrysostom," inserted the phrase, "begun in Mainz," which is more accurate. The influence of Chrysostom on JO is undoubtedly the most decisive, but as Staehelin's reconstruction makes clear at several points, it is only in Mainz that JO's work on this particular Greek Father begins. Any copies of this translation ordered after November 16, 2018 will reflect these most recent corrections. Anyone with earlier copies may wish to pencil in these corrections.

A genuinely fresh angle on the Reformation

The reader of The Year D Project website — there is likely good reason to use the singular — may wonder at the long period of recent inactivity since the last post in February. That post announced the publication (with corrections) of a short biography of Oecolampadius, which itself promised the forthcoming translation of the Reformer's sermon series on the First Epistle of John (from Advent 1523). I left the website parked at that juncture, at the risk of being towed, in order to focus on fulfilling that promise. With everyone casting about for a fresh angle on the Reformation, the 500th anniversary of which will be widely observed next month, by the grace of God, this is my take. If anyone can find a better one, I would like to know whose it is and what it is. 

Meanwhile, here is the write-up from the back cover. 

"Perhaps the most consequential series on 1John ever preached and one of the earliest examples of a complete expository series from the Swiss Reformation, these sermons mark Oecolampadius’ arrival as the leading voice of the evangelical movement in Basel. As Ernst Staehelin noted, here in the 1John series the Reformer “for the first time organizes the reformatory message in a comprehensive manner.” Preached over the course of twenty-one consecutive evenings in Basel’s St. Martin’s Church in December of 1523, this popular Advent series ran through six print editions in two years. More than any single series, it set the standard for Basel’s program of lectio continua preaching which, with allowance made for the main feasts of the Christian year, became the norm for the Sunday service as well. In these sermons, modeled after the Reformer’s important translations of Chrysostom and delivered concurrently with his famous lectures on Isaiah, he explains the pressing doctrines the congregation asked him to address: Are we indeed justified by faith, and if so, then what is the role of works in the Christian life? In response, Oecolampadius provides, among other things, a biblically rich and theologically lucid Johannine complement to Luther’s labors on the Pauline doctrine of justification and a strong claim, ringing even in the final sentence, that the presence of Christ issues in works of love. Anyone seeking a fresh perspective on the preaching of the Reformation, an understanding of the chief homiletical corrective of the age, a clear articulation of basic Christian doctrine and the ordo salutis, or even (in the words of the Reformer himself) “an enchiridion for the Christian life,” will find fresh and ample inspiration in this vital but forgotten classic which, after 500 years, appears here in English for the first time."