Early Reformation Covenant Theology: English Reception of Swiss Reformed Thought, 1520-1555 (Reformed Academic Dissertation)

Robert Wainwright demonstrates the importance of covenant theology in the early years of the Reformation when Huldrych Zwingli, Heinrich Bollinger, and John Calvin recast late medieval conceptions of the divine pact within radical new parameters of grace alone and Scripture alone. Their ideas spread surprisingly quickly into English discourse, explaining the early emergence of Reformed theology under Henry VIII. Wainwright scrutinizes the covenant thought of William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, John Hooper, and John Bradford, questions essentially Lutheran characterizations of Henrician evangelicalism, and portrays early Reformation covenant theology as distinct from proto-Puritanism.