The Heidelberg Catechism, first approved in 1563, is a confessional document of the Protestant movement considered one of the most ecumenical of the confessions. Published to coincide with the catechism's 450th anniversary, this book explores the Heidelberg Catechism in its historical setting and emphasizes the catechism's integration of Lutheran and Reformed traditions in all of its major doctrines. An appendix contains a translation of the Heidelberg Catechism recently prepared and adopted by three of the Reformed denominations that recognize the catechism as one of their confessions: the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, and the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

This work examines key aspects of the development of the Heidelberg Catechism, including historical background, socio-political origins, purpose, authorship, sources, and theology. The book includes the first ever English translations of two major sources of the Heidelberg Catechism--Ursinus's Smaller and Larger Catechisms--and a bibliography of research on the document since 1900.
Students of the Reformed tradition and the Protestant Reformation will value this resource.

Font of Pardon and New Life is a study of the historical development and impact of John Calvin's doctrine of baptism, both adult (or believer) baptism and infant baptism. Did Calvin intend to teach a kind of baptismal forgiveness and regeneration, that is, did he believe that the external sign of baptism actually conveys the spiritual realities it signifies? If baptism does serve in some way as an instrument of divine grace for Calvin, what then are the roles of the Word, the Holy Spirit, divine election, and individual faith? Are spiritual blessings conferred only in adult (believer) baptism or also in the baptism of infants? Did Calvin's teaching on baptismal efficacy remain constant throughout his lifetime, or did it undergo significant change? What impact did it have on the Reformed confessional tradition that followed him? Lyle D. Bierma approaches these questions by examining Calvin's writings on baptism in their entirety, proceeding chronologically through Calvin's life and writings including his Institutes, commentaries on the Bible, catechisms, polemical treatises, and consensus documents. Bierma concludes that Calvin understood baptism as a means or instrument of both assurance and grace. His view underwent some change and development over the course of his life but not to the extent that some in the past have suggested. The overall trajectory of his baptismal theology was one of increasing clarity and refinement of basic themes already present in incipient form in the Institutes of 1536.

"The purpose of this study," writes the author, "is to take a new and hard look at Olevianus' doctrine of covenant and to determine its place in the larger picture of sixteenth-century thought." Bierma analyses all of Olevianus' work on covenant and challenges the notion that Olevianus was the first to use the covenant idea as the organizing principle of his theology. He maintains that Olevianus' most significant contribution was in using the covenant to provide assurance of salvation.