James Ussher, Covenant Theology, and Theological Contexts

Abstract

This chapter outlines the arguments of the book and sets them within the context of the expanding scholarly interest in both James Ussher and Reformed covenant theology. This chapter surveys the secondary literature on Ussher from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century, then describes the major arguments about the history of covenant theology and situates Ussher in the context of the development and failure of the Reformation in Ireland by describing the historical circumstances and surveying the major literature about the Irish Reformation. The last major section addresses some of the complexities in authorship, dating, and origin for some of the primary sources from Ussher’s corpus.