The Roots of the Reformation by renowned historian G. R. Evans revisits the question of why the Reformation happened and how it changed Christendom.
Contravening traditional paradigms of interpretation, Evans charts the controversies and challenges that roiled the era of the Reformation and argues that these are really part of a much longer history of discussion and disputation with Christianity.
Evans takes up several issues critical to the leaders of the Reformation such as Scripture, ecclesiology, authority, sacraments and ecclesio-political relations, and traces the shape of the charged discussions that orbited around these through the patristic, medieval and Reformation eras. In this, she demonstrates that in many ways the Reformation was in considerable continuity with the periods that preceded it, though the consequential outcome of the debates in the sixteenth century was dramatically different.
