Catholic and Protestant Sacraments

For Further Reading

Aland, Kurt. Four Reformers (Augsburg, 1979) presents brief biographies of Luther, Melancthon, Zwingli and Calvin.

Chadwick, Owen. The Reformation (Penguin Books, 1972) discusses the Protestant and Catholic reformations and their consequences in practice and theology.

Dawson, Christopher. The Dividing of Christendom (Sheed and Ward, 1965) shows how Protestants and Catholics reacted to one another from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

Estep, William. Renaissance and Reformation (William B. Eerdmans, 1986) situates the Protestant reformation in its cultural and historical context.

Hughes, Philip. A Popular History of the Reformation (Doubleday, 1957) was never very popular with Protestants, having been written before Vatican II, but is detailed and readable.

Piault, Bernard. What Is a Sacrament? (Hawthorn Books, 1963) gives a clear presentation of the modern Catholic understanding of the sacraments and their development to the time of the Council of Trent.

Roguet, A.-M. Christ Acts Through the Sacraments (Liturgical Press, 1954) is a lucid summary of Catholic sacramental theology as it was taught prior to the Second Vatican Council.

Willimon, William. Word, Water, Wine and Bread: How Worship Has Changed over the Years (Judson Press, 1980) gives special attention to Protestant developments from the Reformation to the present.

For Further Study
Sacraments and Theology

Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Abingdon Press, 1950) is a classic biography of the first Protestant reformer.

Borgen, Ole. John Wesley on the Sacraments (Zondervan, 1985) claims to be a definitive study of his theology of worship.

Bouwsma, William. John Calvin (Oxford University Press, 1988) tries to get inside the mind of the reformer.

The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation (Herder, 1955) is a handy source of official Catholic statements on the sacraments in medieval and modern times, especially the Council of Trent.

Dillenberger, John. Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings (Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961) contains Luther’s main ideas on the sacraments and other subjects.

Kerr, Hugh Thomson. A Compend of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster Press, 1939) contains, in Book IV, John Calvin’s main ideas on the sacraments.

Leeming, Bernard. Principles of Sacramental Theology (Newman Press, 1956) is a detailed exposition of the modern Catholic understanding of the sacraments as it developed in history, written from the viewpoint of scholastic and dogmatic theology.

McGrath, Alister. A Life of John Calvin (Blackwell Publishers, 1990) focuses on the social setting of the Reformation and Calvin's impact on Western culture.

Sheeben, Matthias. The Mysteries of Christianity (Herder, 1946), originally published in 1865, is a very thorough yet readable presentation of Catholicism as a religion of divine mysteries.

Stevens, W. P. The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Clarendon Press, 1986) contains chapters on his understanding of the sacraments, especially baptism and eucharist.

Todd, John. Martin Luther (Burns and Oates, 1964) is a sympathetic biography, written by a Catholic.

White, James. Protestant Worship (Westminster John Knox, 1989) describes and analyzes nine styles of worship, their historical origins and development. Roman Catholic Worship: Trent to Today (Paulist Press, 1995) details developments during the modern centuries, including the beginning of the liturgical movement.

Church History

Bossy, John. Christianity in the West 1400-1700 (Oxford University Press, 1985) emphasizes the social and spiritual dimensions of the transition from medieval to Christianity to the beginning of its modern expression.

Daniel-Rops, Henri. The Catholic Reformation (E. P. Dutton, 1962) details the Roman church's attempt to reform after the loss of much of Christian Europe to Protestantism.

Iserloh, Erwin, Joseph Glazik, and Hubert Jedin. Reformation and Counter Reformation (Crossroad, 1986) is volume 5 of the ten-volume History of the Church by Jedin, which covers the events in this and other chapters in great detail.

Klassen, Peter. Europe in the Reformation (Prentice-Hall, 1979) puts the Protestant Reformation in the context of European history.

Miller, Glenn. The Modern Church (Abingdon Press, 1997) situates developments in Roman Catholicism within the context of world-wide Christianity.