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July/August 2022
Summer/Fall Book Preview by Noah Frens
Reformation in the Low Countries, 1500–1620 by Christine Kooi CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS | JULY 2022 | 250 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $39.99
the Reformation in the Netherlands has been long neglected. The only such volume came nearly three decades ago by Alastair Duke. Though good, his work was a collection of previously published essays that were formed into a history of the Reformation in the Low Countries and largely still reads as a series of essays rather than a book (Duke even acknowledged this in his introduction). All this is to say that the Dutch Reformation has been greatly neglected by scholars, and this volume by Christine Kooi is greatly welcomed. Kooi is well suited to write such a volume, having written two books and a number of articles on the various religious and political upheavals experienced in the Low Countries during the Reformation. I am particularly interested in how she narrates the often tense and tenuous interactions of the diverse religious groups that continued to call the Low Countries home even after the Dutch Reformation, from Jews to Catholics to Calvinists. A MONOGRAPH ON
Providence, Freedom, and the Will in Early Modern Reformed Theology by Richard A. Muller REFORMATION HERITAGE BOOKS | MAY 2022 | 304 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $25.00
THIS NEW VOLUME by Richard Muller follows his recent trend of books on the topic of divine providence, free choice, and related concepts in the Reformed tradition. The volume is a mixture of previously published essays, most coming from articles in academic journals, and new essays on the topic that chart Reformed conceptions of providence from Peter Martyr Vermigli to Jonathan Edwards. The first seven chapters of the volume trace the development of the Reformed understanding of providence and free choice; one considers the debate over Jacob Arminius’s views, and the last three chart the revision of this Reformed understanding in Jonathan Edwards. Rather than seeing Edwards as continuing the Reformed legacy on the matter, Muller argues that he departed from this tradition in his understanding of necessity and contingency. This latter argument is one of the most controversial aspects of Muller’s recent works and has met with a range of positive and negative appraisal. I am glad his essays on the topic are now in one place, making them more easily accessible for a wider audience. This will also make his earlier work more coherent, as a fair bit of Divine Will and Human Choice presupposes knowledge of some of the articles in this present volume. 1
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Alasdair MacIntyre: An Intellectual Biography by Émile Perreau-Saussine, translated by Nathan J. Pinkoski UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS | SEPTEMBER 2022 | 288 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $40.00
probably one of the most important philosophers of the past half-century and easily the most discussed ethicist in recent ALASDAIR MACINTYRE IS
