Thomas McPherson
Författare till Prayers of the Reformers
Om författaren
Verk av Thomas McPherson
The Philosophy of Religion 2 exemplar
Philosophy and religious belief 2 exemplar
Political obligation 2 exemplar
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
Det finns inga Allmänna fakta än om den här författaren. Du kan lägga till några.
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Statistik
- Verk
- 12
- Medlemmar
- 75
- Popularitet
- #235,804
- Betyg
- 4.0
- Recensioner
- 1
- ISBN
- 16
McPherson is committed to preserving the prayers of ancient saints(he worked on another volume for Paraclete, Essential Celtic Prayers, perhaps more to follow).The focus here is specifically on the magisterial Protestant Reformers (and proto-reformers), so no Carmelites, Jesuits, Jansenists or Anabaptists. The twelve pray-ers are John Wycliffe, John Huss, Ulrich Zwingli, William Tyndale, Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, Thomas Cranmer, Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, John Knox, Theodore Beza and Lancelot Andrews.
McPherson's introduction highlights how these prayers declare confidence in God's supreme authority, their dependence on Him for everything, our need for illumination through the Spirit and the Word, their ongoing trust in God, and the telos of God's glory (7-10). This is followed by brief paragraph-long biographies of each of these reformers, The prayers follow chronologically by each reformer (contemporary authors, presented chronologically by the year of death—the order of the list above): a hundred prayers in just over a hundred pages (pp 17-123).
A book like this is selective and not exhaustive. You could fill up volumes of prayers from either Luther and Calvin alone (they wrote almost half of the prayers in this book), or you could crib Thomas Cranmer's entire Book of Common Prayer and call it a day. Still, these prayers are well chosen, capturing the essence of protestant spirituality. Often McPherson includes a scripture reference ahead of each prayer, revealing what portion of scripture the prayer was reflecting upon. There are several prayers afre various, several about on the Lord's Prayer (notably Tyndale), devotional prayers, prayers of discipleship, prayers to prayer when facing persecution and various difficulties, prayers for morning and evening, etc. I was surprised on how much I appreciated Zwingli's prayers (three in volume, 22-27) and Beza's supplication on bearing the cross (113).
Here are some prayers from Cramner, Luther and Calvin:
There are other powerful prayers here. However, despite the quality selection and the book's brevity, this is not a user-friendly volume, or at least not as user-friendly as it could be. There is no table of contents or index. That means that if you are looking for a particular prayer, scriptural theme, or topic, you have to flip through the book to find it. In an e-book format, this is not a big deal and certainly, the industrious reader can make their own index of meaningful prayers, but a scriptural or thematic index (or just a list!) would be helpful. I also wish that there were notes (footnotes or endnotes) which provided the sources of these prayers (i.e. what of the reformers' works they come from). I don't think these notes need to be obtrusive, but when I read a moving prayer or quotation in a collected volume, I like to track it back to the source, which is difficult here.
These qualms aside, I think this makes a beautiful gift book, perfect for devotional reading and a great way to celebrate 500 years of ecclesia semper reformanda. I give this book three-and-a-half stars.
Notice of material connection: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review… (mer)