There has been an increased interest in covenant theology, especially over the last two decades, within historical theology. Although covenant has been a recurring theme in every era of church history, albeit used in very different ways, it has an emphatic connection to Reformed theology. The Reformed tradition in particular has used the idea of covenant to explain how God relates to his people, how they receive blessings from him, how to understand the historical development of God's people across the Old and New Testaments, and how to read scripture with hermeneutical continuity.

In 2020 alone several notable studies on the history of Reformed covenant theology have appeared, and Robert Wainwright has produced one that focuses on the transmission of ideas from the Continental Reformed tradition to the Church of England in the early to mid-sixteenth century. The book opens with a very strong consideration of the state of scholarship about covenant theology and its relationship to various stages of the Reformation in England. Wainwright then examines the Continental and English use of covenant concepts as it relates to salvation and conditionality, followed by an exploration of Continental and English formulations about sacramental theology. The book then closes with a concluding chapter about how the era that Wainwright investigated relates to later Reformed developments of covenant theology in England.

In this reviewer's estimation, this book is a helpful contribution in the area of the transmission of ideas in the early modern period. Scholars at times have conducted investigations into historical theology without a proper awareness that ideas originate in particular places, develop, and travel. Perhaps more pointedly, the issue is that, in the early modern era, ideas were disseminated insofar as the resources and means to spread them existed. In other words, it cannot be assumed that just because an idea was important in one location—e.g., Germany—it was automatically important somewhere else—e.g., England. So, it has not always been well noted that ideas do not stay where they begin. On the other hand, due emphasis has not always been laid on how ideas also come from somewhere, usually somewhere else.

In this regard, Wainwright has done an excellent job in overturning some older scholarship that did not give enough weight to where the ideas of the English Reformation came from. There have been some strands of argument that assumed a type of English elitism by suggesting that English theology was not all that dependent upon outside sources, especially in relation to theological reform. Wainwright correctly stresses the connections that important English theologians had to Continental figures. He is certainly correct that the literature on covenant theology has looked at early Reformed Continental sources and later British and Irish sources, but there has been a gap in the literature about early English use of covenant. His work fills a much needed and understudied lacuna. So then, regarding his contribution to relating the growth of Reformed theology in England to the wider Reformation, Wainwright is profound and relevant to the ongoing trajectories of historiography.

There is also the matter of covenant theology itself, though. Wainwright spends a lot of time explaining how various Continental and English theologians unpacked covenant conditionality and sacraments in order to show the conceptual overlap in their theologies. He rightly qualifies his intended argument about influence so as not to overstate the point. Further, he notes several obvious conceptual correspondences between Continental and English figures concerning covenant conditionality and sacraments. Wainwright's points regarding the spread of these ideas are well taken. On the other hand, his claims about the nature of covenant conditionality in the early Reformed tradition, especially as it contained an imprecisely Reformed understanding of the relationship between works and grace that supposedly came into being with later federalism, are more debatable. Even Wainwright's own treatment of John Bradford, whom he seems to consider an outlier of sorts, shows that some of the ideas he attributed to later developments were at least somewhat already circulating as part of the same conversations about theological reform in England. Readers should then regard Wainwright's book as a powerful contribution to the dissemination of ideas and the relationship between Reformed theology on the Continent and in England rather than as a full exploration of covenant theology and how it functioned in the early modern Reformed tradition.

It should probably be noted that when Wainwright speaks of the “Swiss” Reformed tradition, he refers to theologians in Zurich and Geneva. Older scholarship posed a gap between the Zurich and Genevan schools on covenant and predestination. Given that Geneva had other political allegiances in the sixteenth century, it could easily be thought that Wainwright is connecting English Reformed thought to the Swiss theology of Zurich, in contrast to Geneva. Thankfully, however, Wainwright holds ground with the most current literature that, even with different emphases, Reformed theology was not made up of multiple competing traditions. Although he could have spent more time demonstrating some of the historical links between the English and Continental theologians, he does connect them through studies and correspondence, making a significant contribution to our understanding of the reception of Swiss Reformed thought in England during the early phases of the English Reformation.