One more reason Oecolampadius offers the needed refresher course in Christianity: "New life brings repentance."

Here are two sentences that occur near the end of Oecolampadius' "Sermon on the Healing of the Blind Man at Jericho," which — after a very long interruption — I only just finished translating yesterday: "Neither ashes, nor fasting, nor external work grant any justice that is valid before God. New life produces repentance, so that we would no longer sin." The latter sentence is hugely important and merits the following footnote (which will appear, Lord willing, in a forthcoming publication of the whole translation):

Poenitentiam facit nova vita, ita ut non amplius peccemus. The nominative here is clearly nova vita. Poenitentiam, in the accusative case, is the direct object, while the verb peccemus is subjunctive. The cause-and-effect sequence here is striking: it is not that repentance has cajoled new life from God. Rather, we no longer wish to sin because the gift of new life has brought about repentance. This reordering—grace before repentance—would become Karl Barth’s great discovery 400 years later, before he himself would make his way to Basel.

The pedantic footnote is warranted because, when I ran the sentence through every online translator I could find, every one of them reordered the sentence completely incorrectly: "Repentance brings new life," they said. Wrong. Meanwhile, I have had in my files for some time the unpublished translation of a friendly Latin teacher which, when I consulted it, confirmed that, yes, indeed (according to his rendering): "It is the new life that brings about penitence."

So what accounts for this persistently ass-backwards way of translating a text that clearly and unambiguously articulates the proper ordo salutis? Is it a malevolent ghost in the translation machine? I would not necessarily rule it out. Or, more likely, is it that the crowd-sourced theology of Christians the world over, the popular theology that feeds AI algorithms and in effect teaches the machine, is so bad that the machine assumes it must overrule plain, clear, straightforward grammar with eisegesis and crank out bad translations to support bad theology?

Either way, once again, we see how Oecolampadius warrants careful study and fresh translation (without over-reliance on machine translation), for he was not only every bit as important and ground-breaking as Luther was in his day, he was not only way ahead of his time (vis-a-vis Barth), he also offers a much needed refresher in Christianity to a church that so often misunderstands and misrepresents its own theology that the emerging class of robot teachers are likewise learning it and teaching it wrongly.

P.S.: Where this post impinges on preaching Year D, the primary text that should come to mind is Romans 2:4.

Oecolampadius, On the Easter Laughter

Benny Grey Schuster evidently issued his German rendering of this multilingual piece in 2019, but without any explicit reference to the Reformer in the title. It was called: Das Osterlachen. Darstellung der Kulturgeschichte und Theologie des Osterlachens sowie ein Essay über die kulturelle, kirchliche und theologische Verwandlung des Lachens. It was translated into German from the Danish version by Eberhard Harbsmeier. 

The English version appeared this year (2024) by Peter Lang, under the title: The History of Easter Laughter: Johannes Oecolampadius' 'De risu paschali' from 1518 with an Introduction, Annotated Translation, and an Account of the Cultural, Ecclesiastical, and Theological Transformation of Laughter.

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. 

Oecolampadius' Sermon on Luke 11 (Third Sunday in Lent, 1525)

Just finished translating this sermon preached in Basel in 1525. Here is the first sentence:

"The singular failing in which all misfortune occurs is ignorance of God and of ourselves. But if we knew how good and powerful he is, and indeed how wretched and weak we are, we would have instituted [institueremus] a much different life."

That sounds strikingly similar to the opening sentence of Calvin's Institutes, the first edition of which emerged eleven years later, in the same city. But to be fair, Oecolampadius' sermon was only published by his successor Myconius in 1536, the same year that Calvin's Institutes first appeared in Basel. But until I have time to investigate it, I can only imagine the conversations between the two (Myconius the editor and successor to the Basel reformation and Calvin the second generation Reformer who would make his way to Geneva). 

Here is another line from the sermon that should be instructive to everyone, especially preachers:

"... no one speaks properly who does not treat God as holy."

Amen to that.

At the headwaters of the Reformed tradition

 ... we have this summary statement from Karl Barth's colleague on the Divinity faculty at the University of Basel: 

Luther becomes a reformer because he cannot reach the assurance of salvation in the system of the Roman Catholic church; Oecolampadius becomes a reformer because, in the Roman Catholic church, he does not find the new creature in Christ sufficiently realized. For Luther it is about justification; Oecolampadius says in connection with 1Thessalonians 4:3, “God’s will is our sanctification.” With Luther, faith stands in the foreground, with Oecolampadius, that which flows from faith, the “piety,” the “sanctity,” the “charity,” both individually and in the totality of the “mystical body of Christ.” Luther represents a Christianity more strongly characterized by Paul, Oecolampadius by John. 

—Ernst Staehelin, Breakthrough to the Reformation, pp. 128-129.

In case you were ever wondering what it means to belong to the Reformed tradition, this, I would suggest, is what it originally meant.

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

The First Year in Basel (corrected edition is up)

Corrected edition is up, just as the last days of 2023 (500th anniversary of Oecolampadius' first year in Basel) tick down. 

The First Year in Basel contains the earliest German mass (published three years before Luther's), the next nine letters between Oecolampadius and Zwingli (the first two having appeared in previous volume: The Sermon on the Vernacular and the Correspondence with Hedio), excerpts from the famous Isaiah lectures, three prefaces to his Chrysostom translations (including those to the Psegmata and the 66 Genesis homilies), the four Theses for a Disputation, a painful rant from Capito against his colleague Hedio and Oecolampadius' pastor response, and his long letter to Bernhard Adelmann On the Distributions of Alms (or not discriminating among the poor). All (or most of it) "first-time-in-English" stuff. Perhaps the latter might make for instructive reading in Basel at the Bank of International Settlements? That may be too much to hope for. But certainly Presbyterian "Matthew 25" churches should read this.

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.]

"Sown on Rock": Oecolampadius' Sermon on the Vernacular (1522) is finally — after 500 years — in English translation

The late Phyllis Tickle famously observed that, every 500 years, the Church cleans out its attic. Well, here you go, Church: a 500-year old classic, now translated into English for the first time. 

If any one sermon is emblematic of the Reformation of preaching itself, this is it. Preached and promptly published in the spring of 1522, it made the biblical and practical case for reading and preaching in the local language. Oecolampadius, serving as chaplain for the household of Franz von Sickingen, noted how time was wasted in worship with the Latin readings, since no one understood them, and in fact they were read so poorly that those in attendance ridiculed the whole thing. But the Word of God himself wants to speak plainly his promises of eternal life and salvation to his people and, of course, to be understood, so the love of God for his people motivated Oecolampadius to read and preach in German. 

Rarely has a single sermon ever caused such a stir. To this sermon, preached three months before the publication of Zwingli's famous "Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God" (September 1522), can be traced the most important homiletical development in Reformation, a simple pastoral decision made by a chaplain and former monk who, at the time, was also reaching back 1000 (500 x 2) years or so into the church's attic and translating the sermons of the Greek fathers, especially Chrysostom, and refreshing the preaching office with the greatest examples of public proclamation in the Christian era. Sure enough, Oecolampadius' sermon itself, and the "Beautiful Letter" in which he explained his modest, common sense liturgical changes to his friend Caspar Hedio, became one of the great sermonic moments of all time.

To Hedio, Oecolampadius wrote of his service on the Ebernburg, "here I carry on sowing on rock," a clear reference to the quintessential parable of the Word, and thus to preaching itself. The parable of the sower, of course, as Jesus told it, promised no harvest from seed that falls on the path or among stones or thorns, but — another major point of emphasis in the sermon — the miracle of preaching is at work here. Yes, by a sheer miracle of God, when Jesus himself preaches with us as we preach, even a single seed, like this sermon, can strike such a strong root as to break through rock, find water, and bear a harvest to surpass all expectations. Has the last 500 years seen or heard a more seminal sermon than The Sermon on the Vernacular? 

The whole of Oecolampadius 1522 correspondence is included here, as is the balance of his letters with Hedio through 1525. Among the latter is Hedio's (1524) Foreword to his German translation of Oecolampadius' Sermons on the First Epistle of John. In the generous Supplement to this new volume the reader also finds the first English translation of Ernst Staehelin's exhaustive and groundbreaking 1916 essay on Oecolampadius' translations of the patriarchs.

 
Dedicated with thanksgiving to the Triune God for preachers of the Word everywhere.

BTW, Amazon's hardcover platform is still in Beta, so the two JO translations linked here (in hardcover with djs), plus this hardcover reprint of Sime's short double biography of Zwingli and Oecolampadius, are all available at Barnes & Noble. Paperback will go live in a day or so. Don't expect Amazon to list BN titles, though. I'm not sure "do unto others" has quite penetrated the greatest retailer on earth. For that reason, it would be most helpful if you would spread the word, link, like, share, gift, recommend, purchase, order through your local BN, ask your library to acquire it, shout it from the rooftops, all of the above, etc. Don't let Behemoths go unchallenged. But the current paragraph constitutes the major part of my very low-tech and organic marketing plan. May the Lord give the growth. Thank you and may the Lord be with you.

Return to God: Historical and Modern Confessional Sources for the Renewal and Regathering of the Church

My latest book gathers a number of sources together that (1) are previously unpublished or are translated here into English for the first time, (2) have struck me as important both in their original  time and context and (potentially) for our time and place, (3) share a common confessional conviction (in both the "penitential" and the "professional" sense), and (4) may be of particular value as the Church shakes off it Covid shackles and regathers to pray, sing (!), worship, celebrate the sacraments, and breath in the Holy Spirit together.

Two sermons from the American Awakenings are here: one by Gilbert Tennent (First GA) on how we should listen to sermons, and another by Samuel Miller (Second GA) on the glory of the Gospel. 

Several first-ever English translations are also included (which I mention here in reverse chronological order): 

• the long prayer from the London journal of the brilliant critic of the Enlightenment, Johann Georg Hamann; 
• a prayer of confession "for more difficult times" from Oswald Myconius (the successor to Oecolampadius in Basel)
• three pieces from the Oecolampadius corpus: 
• A Litany to God the Father (a clear attempt to reform the rosary in a more orthodox direction, this is a wonderful tool for commiting the life, work, and ministry of Jesus to memory)
• Questions and Answers for the Examination of Children (a child's catechism)
• Discourse at the Synod of Basel (1531), delivered not long before the Reformer's death and culminating in his own Profession of Faith.
• the opening and closing prayers of confession from the 1520 edition of Jodocus Windsheim's Confession of a Repenting Christian, to which Oecolampadius provided the preface. Earlier editions of this piece have roots going back to at least early 1517. It made a big impression on Oecolamapadius, who later wrote his own attempt to reform the penitential rite. 

These pieces by Windsheim—offered here only in partial translation for its 500th anniversary—surround his nine prayers of confession in response to the Ten Commandments (he responds to the ninth and tenth commandment with a single prayer), and this form in turn inspired my own eleven prayers of confession, offered here in the modern section of the book, in response to the Decalogue (one for the prologue and one each for the commandments) and with the current state of the church and the world in view. 

The modern section also includes four "scripture messages" or postils, if you will, consisting purely of biblical verses arranged in logical sequence and which may prove useful for either outreach or in lieu of a sermon where the services of a preacher are not available. With no pretensions of adding to the authoriatively confessional literature of the church, I have also included my own Twenty-four Theses as a personal confession of faith offered at such a time as this, in view of the social unrest of the age.

A short, basic introduction to John Oecolampadius

I'm happy to report there is quite a bit of buzz developing in the area of Oecolampadius research. Here is a short, basic introduction to John Oecolampdius: The Reformer of Basel, by way of my recent translation of a late 19th c. biography by Theophil Stähelin. Lord willing, there will be much more to follow, from yours truly and from many others, on this wonderful first generation Reformer. Meanwhile, here is your handshake proffered.

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.

Open the aperture and read backwards: Primary (but often overlooked) sources of theology from the Reformations

Here is a link to my article by this title over at The Presbyterian Outlook.

Kindle version is live

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."

In memory of Hughes Oliphant Old

I was saddened to read of the recent death of Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old, late Dean of Erskine Seminary and a rare historian of preaching and worship in the Reformed tradition. His textbook on worship ever a staple of the classroom, Dr. Old's scholarship on preaching crossed my radar screen again lately in the form of his contribution to Communio Sanctorum, a 1982 festschrift for J.-J. von Allmen, Old's essay being a study of the preaching of John Oecolampadius on the 500th anniversary of the birth of the Basel Reformer.

May the coming General Assembly in Portland not come and go without notice of Old's valuable work and his passing. In my own small way, and hopefully on the way to other projects related to the homiletics of the "house lamp" of the Reformation, I would honor the memory of both Dr. Old and the Basel Reformer, with this translation of Theophil Stähelin's mid-19th c. biography of John Oecolampadius.