Founding documents of the Reformed tradition: Works of Oecolampadius (5 vols.)

For the last 18 years I have been teaching at a seminary that was founded to equip pastors in the German (i.e., German-speaking Swiss) Reformed tradition. For this entire millennium, the seminary and the university in which it is now nested has been led by two presidents who have had the good sense to study carefully and honor the mission of the university's founders. For my part, since my first sabbatical in 2012, I have been laboring over the founding documents of the (German-speaking Swiss) Reformed tradition itself, many of which are now, in the Works of Oecolampadius series (B&N Press, 2017—2026), available for the first time in English.

  

Why claim such a distinction for the works of this too little known Reformer? 

• In 1512, when John Calvin was only three years old and five years before Luther's 95 Theses, Oecolampadius preached that the penitent thief on the cross was justified by faith.
• In 1516, Oecolampadius worked on Erasmus' team of scholars on the Novum Instrumentum Omne, the first edition of the parallel Greek New Testament on which the Reformers would come to base their interpretive work. Oecolampadius was the only eventual Reformer to be part of this team. 
• In April 1517, Oecolampadius issued, On the Paschal Laughter, a multi-linguistic critique of the popular misuse of the sermon for comic relief after Lent.
• From 1518—1522, Oecolampadius produced a number of translations of the Greek fathers, including Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom, whose style of exposition inspired both Zwingli, Capito, and Oecolampadius to reclaim serial lectio continua preaching.
• In 1522, Oecolampadius was the first to translate the mass, read the scriptures, and preach in the vernacular, thus reforming both Word and Sacrament within a six-week span, some four months before Luther's September Testament (German New Testament) was published. 
• In 1523, Oecolampadius lectured through the Book of Isaiah to packed auditoriums, using all three sacred languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; and he preached a continuous exposition of 1John. Both became landmark works of biblical interpretation that were applauded in Wittenberg and thus represent the height of Reformed scholarship in the early period of evangelical unity. 
• c. 1525-26, Oecolampadius drafted and circulated the earliest children's catechism from the Reformation; this would later, after his death, be developed into the Basel Confession of 1534.
• In the final pages of his recent biography of Zwingli, Yale professor Bruce Gordon acknowledged that between Oecolampadius and Zwingli, the former was the stronger theologian. 

This series (in its present state) concludes with a sampling of sermons and other writings on the sacrament, but stops short of a comprehensive translation of all the works that arose during the controversy over the mass, which eventually resulted in the famous rupture at the Marburg Colloquy (1529). The aim of this series has been to offer the most complete portrait of Oecolampadius, "the Reformer of Preaching," from the primary sources in which key reforms were first made, some even ahead of Luther. Though admittedly one of many pivotal characters among the first generation of Reformers, which includes Zwingli, Capito, Bucer, and others, Oecolampadius' series of "firsts" were truly groundbreaking and foundational for the Reformed tradition, of which Calvin himself was an heir and eventually became "the theologian."