Sunday, October 24, 2004
"The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation" -- book review
McGrath, Alister E. The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. 2d ed. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. (289 pages).
By The Erudite Redneck
In The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, Alister E. McGrath places the origins and relationship of the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation within the context of late-medieval scholasticism, that is, the formal Aristotle-influenced study of Scripture, and humanism, especially the pedagogy and general ontology of the Renaissance. The work is an attempt to filter the details of thought and influence of leading thinkers and distill the main strains of philosophical and theological effort that connect the late-medieval period to the Reformation. McGrath studied the period 1300 to 1600, concentrating on the early and mid sixteenth century in an attempt to put the work and influence of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin within the intellectual-theological context of the broader period.
McGrath summarizes late-medieval religious thought generally, giving attention to the increase in religion among the laity, increased questioning of authority within the church and advent of doctrinal diversity in the generations leading to the Reformation.[1] He then considers the commonalities and differences between humanism in general, but especially in Northern Europe, and the Reformed Church and Lutheran Church.[2] McGrath then ties late-medieval theology to the Reformation, giving consideration to the via moderna and schola Augustiniana moderna to find theological connections between the late-medieval period and the early stirrings of both Reformed and Lutheran theology.[3]
McGrath then puts prevailing philosophies within the more mundane circumstances surrounding issues of scriptural veracity, legitimacy of translation and church authority. He explores the humanist emphasis on source texts against traditional understanding of Scripture and how sola Scriptura – the idea of Scripture as the ultimate source of theology -- came to be shaped by the evolving hermeneutics, or Biblical interpretations, behind the Lutheran and Reformed Church movements.[4] McGrath outlines how scholastics and humanists dealt with St. Augustine’s legacy and explains his view of how the Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church incorporated the influence and thinking of early church leaders, as revealed by humanist and scholastic impulses that inspired fresh considerations of Scripture and patristic interpretation.[5] In his conclusion, McGrath summarizes his findings that the Reformation emerged as a result of the confluence of some intellectual trends, and as a result of the clashing of others.[6]
McGrath’s thesis is that while the Reformation built upon certain strains of thinking from scholasticism and humanism, there is no way to reduce its intellectual origins to anything approaching a precise point, either in time or on any of the spectra of philosophy and theology under way when Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other reformers appeared. There is no single idea or tidy convergence of meaning that one can point to in explaining why the events and beliefs of the Reformation occurred exactly how and when they did. McGrath spells it out in his conclusion:
The movement so loosely designated ‘the Reformation’ arose from a complex heterogeneous matrix of social and ideological factors, the latter associated with individual personalities, intellectual movements, schools of thought, and universities in such a manner as to defy the crass generalizations that are the substance of all too many interpretations of the phenomenon.[7]
The meat, then, of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, is McGrath’s illumination of those disparate factors, personalities, movements and schools of thought. The work is a veritable string of subtheses, some built upon the conclusions of McGrath’s own historiographical forebears in Reformation intellectual history, some erected from the remains of others’ judgments that he has mown down.
McGrath holds nothing sacred, not even Luther’s insights. McGrath regards neither Luther’s beliefs nor those of Zwingli, Calvin or others as “distinctive foundational ideas” of the Reformation.[8] This puts McGrath at odds with historian Richard Bonney. In The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660, Bonney sees Luther’s “unique historical importance” in his actions as well as in his “truly original” doctrine of justification by faith alone.[9] McGrath regards Luther’s “breakthrough” on justification as “still well within the spectrum on contemporary catholic theological opinion,” in a time of doctrinal diversity.[10] McGrath’s interpretation of the origins of Luther’s central idea also puts him at odds with historian Donald J. Wilcox. Luther’s fundamental insight, not just the actions he took to defend it, is central to Luther’s legacy outlined in Wilcox’s In Search of God and Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought.[11]
McGrath challenges the notion that Desiderius Erasmus should be so personally identified with the early influence of humanism. Such a generalization, according to McGrath, is “improper and misleading.”[12] Bonney accepts the title of “prince of humanists” bequeathed to Erasmus by posterity and does not challenge it.[13] Wilcox, likewise, sees Erasmus as a singular figure in transmitting the influence of the Italian Renaissance to what emerged as the Reformation in Northern Europe.[14]
McGrath assails generations of scholars who have drawn a direct line from an Augustinian school (schola Augustiniana moderna), within or apart from the Augustinian Order, through Wittenberg to Luther by way of his mentor Johannes von Staupitz, and ultimately to the Council of Trent. McGrath points to historians’ confusion over divergent ideas that emerged in the Augustinian Order and mirrored wider polarization between the via antiqua and via moderna. The emergence of twin schools would mean little to a university faculty of arts, but the result of such intellectual divergence within a faculty of theology, such as at Wittenberg, has led to confusion not easily avoided by historians, according to McGrath. The via moderna, but not the schola Augustiniana moderna, was being taught when Luther arrived at Whittenberg, McGrath asserts. As for any formal Augustinian influence at the Council of Trent, McGrath points to recent study and interpretation of primary documents in arguing that the evidence for an Augustinian school at the council is lacking.[15] Bonney broadly asserts St. Augustine’s general influence on Staupitz, Luther and their contemporaries, and lays particular emphasis on Augustine’s ideas on justification by faith as an influence on Luther’s theology.[16] McGrath points out that new scholarship has called into question the personal influence of Staupitz on Luther’s evolving theology at Wittenberg.[17] Further, the Council of Trent considered a range of theologies surrounding justification, according to McGrath, not just one labeled – either then or now – as “Augustinian.”[18]
McGrath sees little intellectual connection between Luther’s experience at Wittenberg and the emergence of the Reformed Church and outlines several contrasts between the two movements: Wittenberg professors were culturally isolated from the humanist ideas of Zwingli and other Swiss thinkers. Theology at Wittenberg was literally an academic exercise, not the practical reform of life and morals that Zwingli sought for the church and his community of Zurich. Wittenberg theologians were mainly concerned with how divine intention and action resulted in human salvation, which is absent from early Reformed theology. Further, as emerging theologies at Wittenberg made it clear that separation from the inherited scholasticism was imminent, Wittenberg theologians thought it necessary to debate and oppose the old ideas, while Zwingli saw fit to simply ignore them.[19] It was Calvin, drawing most of his theology from Luther and his humanism from Erasmus by way of Zwingli, who merged the two disparate movements, according to Wilcox.[20] Bonney has Calvin following scholasticism to humanism via Zwingli, although Bonney sees a more tenuous theological connection between Calvin and Zwingli than between Calvin and Luther. This, according to Bonney, was expressed mainly in the Swiss Confession of Faith, seen as Calvin’s compromise between Lutheran and Reformed ideas surrounding the Eucharist (the bread and wine were signs, a nod to Zwingli, yet substantive, a nod to Luther).[21]
Personalities aside, McGrath asserts that divergence of interpretation between Lutherans and the Reformed Church shows that a broad-based return to Scripture as the main source for theology, whether fueled or merely paralleled by the Renaissance-humanist return to antiquity for source documents, was not a driving force of the intellectual origins of the Reformation. McGrath points to one disagreement as a foundation for many others: Both Lutheran and Reformed leaders looked to the Gospel story and Scripture in general as sources of moral instruction. However, to Luther, the point was the explanation of Christ’s work in – and for -- humanity; to early Reformed leaders, particularly Martin Bucer, disciple of Erasmus and mentor of Calvin, the point was the example of Christ, which humanity was to imitate with the help of the Holy Spirit. Rather than the Reformation being born of a distinct return to Scripture as the sole source for theology, McGrath sees both Luther and Zwingli – and Bucer, Calvin and others – continuing debates that started within the late-medieval church.[22] Wilcox acknowledges that Luther considered his notion of justification by faith alone as subordinate to the Bible, and points to Calvin’s greater emphasis on the Bible as an important distinction between the two. Wilcox forthrightly declares that both movements looked solely to the Bible as the source for theology, but even he acknowledges that leaders of each looked to Scripture for fodder for their own evolving interpretations, rather than deriving their different hermeneutics from Scripture.[23]
McGrath’s command of the secondary literature on the Reformation is clear, according to Hans J. Hillerbrand’s review in The American Historical Review.[24] As a new synthesis of such a broad topic, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation is primarily concerned with others’ interpretations, not a reexamination of primary sources. McGrath was selective, however, in the materials he used and the orientation is reflected in what he does not explore. Hillerbrand, of Duke University, notes that McGrath does not consider the Radical Reformation at all; neither Luther’s fellow professor at Wittenberg, Andreas Carlstadt, nor the Anabaptist Thomas Muntzer is even mentioned.[25] Other reviewers point out other omissions. Joseph Tempest of Ithaca College, while he applauds McGrath’s work on Luther and Lutheran theology, found less to praise in his assessment of the Swiss Reformation.[26] However, Tempest pointed out McGrath’s inclusion of less prominent figures in the early Lutheran movement, such as the humanist and via moderna advocate Jodocus Trutvetter’s appointment as rector at Wittenberg in 1507, the year before Luther arrived, in building a formidable evaluation of Luther’s early influences, Trutvetter having been a professor at Erfurt when Luther studied there.[27] Charles G. Nauert Jr. at the University of Missouri faulted McGrath for simple errors, such as describing Erasmus, a priest and former monk, as an example of increased theological capability among the laity.[28] Harsh criticism came from Randall Zachman of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School; Zachman found McGrath’s thesis “unobjectionable” but faults him for building his case on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Reformation’s origins in both Wittenberg and Switzerland. Among other things, Zachman complains, McGrath all but ignores the indulgence controversy and fails to consider Luther’s ideas on the forgiveness of sins and the connection it makes to the thinking of Zwingli and Calvin despite the latter’s emphasis on outward moralizing rather than self examination.[29]
McGrath organizes his work loosely chronologically, but mostly around ideas that emerged and receded at certain times within the late-medieval and early Reformation periods. The complexity of the subject matter – McGrath’s examination of the intricacies of wide-ranging interpretations of theological thinking that was, itself, so much a matter of interpretation, on many levels – makes The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation a difficult read for even the most conscientious student. This is despite McGrath’s didactic approach. Unlike some scholars, he occasionally lists and enumerates his main points, especially when endeavoring to untangle a particularly confusing cluster of related but fundamentally different ideas. Such efforts to be clear are balanced against his copious use of Latin, with no translation.[30] In comparison, his section on “Sources and Methods,” wherein he places the evolution of ideas within the context of changing attitudes toward Scripture, translation and interpretation, are easy to digest because the subject matter is less an interpretation and synthesis of others’ interpretation of Reform theology and hermeneutics and more of a traditional attempt to recount the development of an intellectual history by giving the necessary evaluation and assessment of the practical application of reason.[31]
McGrath, a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended Oxford University and Cambridge University. He holds bachelor of arts degrees in natural science and theology, a bachelor of divinity degree and master of arts and doctorate degrees in theology. He is an expert in historical theology whose work comprises writing, contributing or editing some 40 books of both academic and popular history.[32] The bibliography of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation indicates McGrath’s familiarity with Latin, French, German and Italian, all necessary for judging secondary works on the Reformation.[33] McGrath is an Episcopalian who served as a curate of a parish church in Wollaton, Nottingham, England, from 1980-1983. His academic training was in theology, not history per se.[34] His youth amid the Protestant-Catholic tension of Northern Ireland, his experience as a church pastor, his academic training in religion – and his role as a Christian apologist in popular writings – would seem to serve him well as a researcher into practical matters of intellect surrounding sacred things.[35] However, such personal involvement in Christianity might also blind McGrath to strains of thought that fall outside the main streams of historical thinking, which, perhaps, is evidenced by the lack of consideration given to the Anabaptist movement, noted above. [36]
Proving a negative is difficult. McGrath, however, in illustrating his argument that no single idea or even easily discernable single sodality, or cluster, of thinking can be seen as the intellectual origin of the Reformation, does outline the major strains of theological thought that were ongoing in the generations leading up to it. Despite certain omissions that might have been included in such a broad work, McGrath is convincing in his argument that Reformation thought was in many ways an extension of late-medieval thinking, and therefore does not represent as clean a break with the intellectual tradition of the church as some want to believe. Likewise reasonable is his assertion that the Reformation took what it needed from the Renaissance and humanist scholarship, with Lutherans staying nearer to scholasticism and the Reformed Church relying on humanism for its socially oriented moral reforms.
[1] Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2d ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 11-33.
[2] Ibid., 34-66.
[3] Ibid., 67-116.
[4] Ibid., 117-166.
[5] Ibid., 167-181.
[6] Ibid., 182-189.
[7] Ibid., 182.
[8] Ibid., 165-166.
[9] Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660, The Short Oxford History of the Modern World, ed. J.M. Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 15.
[10] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 28.
[11] Donald J. Wilcox, In Search of God & Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975; reprint, Prospect Heights, Ill., 1987), 294-295, 306.
[12] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 34.
[13] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 10.
[14] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 281.
[15] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 82-88, 106.
[16] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 10, 17.
[17] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 162.
[18] Ibid., 28.
[19] Ibid., 114-115.
[20] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 316.
[21] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 29, 44.
[22] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 129, 145, 156-157.
[23] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 303, 319.
[24] Hans J. Hillerbrand, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, The American Historical Review 94 (December 1989): 1362-1363.
[25] Ibid., 1363.
[26] Joseph Tempest, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (fall 1990): 508, 510.
[27] Ibid., 509.
[28] Charles G. Nauert Jr., review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, Renaissance Quarterly 41 (winter 1988): 726-727.
[29] Randall Zachman, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, The Journal of Religion 69 (April 1989): 248.
[30] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, passim.
[31] Ibid., 117-181.
[32] Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields, New Revision Series, Vol. 98, s.v. “McGrath, Alister E(dgar) 1953-.”
[33] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 254-272.
[34] Contemporary Authors, s.v. “McGrath, Alister E(dgar) 1953-.”
[35] Ibid.
[36] Hillerbrand review, 1363.
By The Erudite Redneck
In The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, Alister E. McGrath places the origins and relationship of the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation within the context of late-medieval scholasticism, that is, the formal Aristotle-influenced study of Scripture, and humanism, especially the pedagogy and general ontology of the Renaissance. The work is an attempt to filter the details of thought and influence of leading thinkers and distill the main strains of philosophical and theological effort that connect the late-medieval period to the Reformation. McGrath studied the period 1300 to 1600, concentrating on the early and mid sixteenth century in an attempt to put the work and influence of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin within the intellectual-theological context of the broader period.
McGrath summarizes late-medieval religious thought generally, giving attention to the increase in religion among the laity, increased questioning of authority within the church and advent of doctrinal diversity in the generations leading to the Reformation.[1] He then considers the commonalities and differences between humanism in general, but especially in Northern Europe, and the Reformed Church and Lutheran Church.[2] McGrath then ties late-medieval theology to the Reformation, giving consideration to the via moderna and schola Augustiniana moderna to find theological connections between the late-medieval period and the early stirrings of both Reformed and Lutheran theology.[3]
McGrath then puts prevailing philosophies within the more mundane circumstances surrounding issues of scriptural veracity, legitimacy of translation and church authority. He explores the humanist emphasis on source texts against traditional understanding of Scripture and how sola Scriptura – the idea of Scripture as the ultimate source of theology -- came to be shaped by the evolving hermeneutics, or Biblical interpretations, behind the Lutheran and Reformed Church movements.[4] McGrath outlines how scholastics and humanists dealt with St. Augustine’s legacy and explains his view of how the Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church incorporated the influence and thinking of early church leaders, as revealed by humanist and scholastic impulses that inspired fresh considerations of Scripture and patristic interpretation.[5] In his conclusion, McGrath summarizes his findings that the Reformation emerged as a result of the confluence of some intellectual trends, and as a result of the clashing of others.[6]
McGrath’s thesis is that while the Reformation built upon certain strains of thinking from scholasticism and humanism, there is no way to reduce its intellectual origins to anything approaching a precise point, either in time or on any of the spectra of philosophy and theology under way when Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and other reformers appeared. There is no single idea or tidy convergence of meaning that one can point to in explaining why the events and beliefs of the Reformation occurred exactly how and when they did. McGrath spells it out in his conclusion:
The movement so loosely designated ‘the Reformation’ arose from a complex heterogeneous matrix of social and ideological factors, the latter associated with individual personalities, intellectual movements, schools of thought, and universities in such a manner as to defy the crass generalizations that are the substance of all too many interpretations of the phenomenon.[7]
The meat, then, of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, is McGrath’s illumination of those disparate factors, personalities, movements and schools of thought. The work is a veritable string of subtheses, some built upon the conclusions of McGrath’s own historiographical forebears in Reformation intellectual history, some erected from the remains of others’ judgments that he has mown down.
McGrath holds nothing sacred, not even Luther’s insights. McGrath regards neither Luther’s beliefs nor those of Zwingli, Calvin or others as “distinctive foundational ideas” of the Reformation.[8] This puts McGrath at odds with historian Richard Bonney. In The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660, Bonney sees Luther’s “unique historical importance” in his actions as well as in his “truly original” doctrine of justification by faith alone.[9] McGrath regards Luther’s “breakthrough” on justification as “still well within the spectrum on contemporary catholic theological opinion,” in a time of doctrinal diversity.[10] McGrath’s interpretation of the origins of Luther’s central idea also puts him at odds with historian Donald J. Wilcox. Luther’s fundamental insight, not just the actions he took to defend it, is central to Luther’s legacy outlined in Wilcox’s In Search of God and Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought.[11]
McGrath challenges the notion that Desiderius Erasmus should be so personally identified with the early influence of humanism. Such a generalization, according to McGrath, is “improper and misleading.”[12] Bonney accepts the title of “prince of humanists” bequeathed to Erasmus by posterity and does not challenge it.[13] Wilcox, likewise, sees Erasmus as a singular figure in transmitting the influence of the Italian Renaissance to what emerged as the Reformation in Northern Europe.[14]
McGrath assails generations of scholars who have drawn a direct line from an Augustinian school (schola Augustiniana moderna), within or apart from the Augustinian Order, through Wittenberg to Luther by way of his mentor Johannes von Staupitz, and ultimately to the Council of Trent. McGrath points to historians’ confusion over divergent ideas that emerged in the Augustinian Order and mirrored wider polarization between the via antiqua and via moderna. The emergence of twin schools would mean little to a university faculty of arts, but the result of such intellectual divergence within a faculty of theology, such as at Wittenberg, has led to confusion not easily avoided by historians, according to McGrath. The via moderna, but not the schola Augustiniana moderna, was being taught when Luther arrived at Whittenberg, McGrath asserts. As for any formal Augustinian influence at the Council of Trent, McGrath points to recent study and interpretation of primary documents in arguing that the evidence for an Augustinian school at the council is lacking.[15] Bonney broadly asserts St. Augustine’s general influence on Staupitz, Luther and their contemporaries, and lays particular emphasis on Augustine’s ideas on justification by faith as an influence on Luther’s theology.[16] McGrath points out that new scholarship has called into question the personal influence of Staupitz on Luther’s evolving theology at Wittenberg.[17] Further, the Council of Trent considered a range of theologies surrounding justification, according to McGrath, not just one labeled – either then or now – as “Augustinian.”[18]
McGrath sees little intellectual connection between Luther’s experience at Wittenberg and the emergence of the Reformed Church and outlines several contrasts between the two movements: Wittenberg professors were culturally isolated from the humanist ideas of Zwingli and other Swiss thinkers. Theology at Wittenberg was literally an academic exercise, not the practical reform of life and morals that Zwingli sought for the church and his community of Zurich. Wittenberg theologians were mainly concerned with how divine intention and action resulted in human salvation, which is absent from early Reformed theology. Further, as emerging theologies at Wittenberg made it clear that separation from the inherited scholasticism was imminent, Wittenberg theologians thought it necessary to debate and oppose the old ideas, while Zwingli saw fit to simply ignore them.[19] It was Calvin, drawing most of his theology from Luther and his humanism from Erasmus by way of Zwingli, who merged the two disparate movements, according to Wilcox.[20] Bonney has Calvin following scholasticism to humanism via Zwingli, although Bonney sees a more tenuous theological connection between Calvin and Zwingli than between Calvin and Luther. This, according to Bonney, was expressed mainly in the Swiss Confession of Faith, seen as Calvin’s compromise between Lutheran and Reformed ideas surrounding the Eucharist (the bread and wine were signs, a nod to Zwingli, yet substantive, a nod to Luther).[21]
Personalities aside, McGrath asserts that divergence of interpretation between Lutherans and the Reformed Church shows that a broad-based return to Scripture as the main source for theology, whether fueled or merely paralleled by the Renaissance-humanist return to antiquity for source documents, was not a driving force of the intellectual origins of the Reformation. McGrath points to one disagreement as a foundation for many others: Both Lutheran and Reformed leaders looked to the Gospel story and Scripture in general as sources of moral instruction. However, to Luther, the point was the explanation of Christ’s work in – and for -- humanity; to early Reformed leaders, particularly Martin Bucer, disciple of Erasmus and mentor of Calvin, the point was the example of Christ, which humanity was to imitate with the help of the Holy Spirit. Rather than the Reformation being born of a distinct return to Scripture as the sole source for theology, McGrath sees both Luther and Zwingli – and Bucer, Calvin and others – continuing debates that started within the late-medieval church.[22] Wilcox acknowledges that Luther considered his notion of justification by faith alone as subordinate to the Bible, and points to Calvin’s greater emphasis on the Bible as an important distinction between the two. Wilcox forthrightly declares that both movements looked solely to the Bible as the source for theology, but even he acknowledges that leaders of each looked to Scripture for fodder for their own evolving interpretations, rather than deriving their different hermeneutics from Scripture.[23]
McGrath’s command of the secondary literature on the Reformation is clear, according to Hans J. Hillerbrand’s review in The American Historical Review.[24] As a new synthesis of such a broad topic, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation is primarily concerned with others’ interpretations, not a reexamination of primary sources. McGrath was selective, however, in the materials he used and the orientation is reflected in what he does not explore. Hillerbrand, of Duke University, notes that McGrath does not consider the Radical Reformation at all; neither Luther’s fellow professor at Wittenberg, Andreas Carlstadt, nor the Anabaptist Thomas Muntzer is even mentioned.[25] Other reviewers point out other omissions. Joseph Tempest of Ithaca College, while he applauds McGrath’s work on Luther and Lutheran theology, found less to praise in his assessment of the Swiss Reformation.[26] However, Tempest pointed out McGrath’s inclusion of less prominent figures in the early Lutheran movement, such as the humanist and via moderna advocate Jodocus Trutvetter’s appointment as rector at Wittenberg in 1507, the year before Luther arrived, in building a formidable evaluation of Luther’s early influences, Trutvetter having been a professor at Erfurt when Luther studied there.[27] Charles G. Nauert Jr. at the University of Missouri faulted McGrath for simple errors, such as describing Erasmus, a priest and former monk, as an example of increased theological capability among the laity.[28] Harsh criticism came from Randall Zachman of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School; Zachman found McGrath’s thesis “unobjectionable” but faults him for building his case on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Reformation’s origins in both Wittenberg and Switzerland. Among other things, Zachman complains, McGrath all but ignores the indulgence controversy and fails to consider Luther’s ideas on the forgiveness of sins and the connection it makes to the thinking of Zwingli and Calvin despite the latter’s emphasis on outward moralizing rather than self examination.[29]
McGrath organizes his work loosely chronologically, but mostly around ideas that emerged and receded at certain times within the late-medieval and early Reformation periods. The complexity of the subject matter – McGrath’s examination of the intricacies of wide-ranging interpretations of theological thinking that was, itself, so much a matter of interpretation, on many levels – makes The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation a difficult read for even the most conscientious student. This is despite McGrath’s didactic approach. Unlike some scholars, he occasionally lists and enumerates his main points, especially when endeavoring to untangle a particularly confusing cluster of related but fundamentally different ideas. Such efforts to be clear are balanced against his copious use of Latin, with no translation.[30] In comparison, his section on “Sources and Methods,” wherein he places the evolution of ideas within the context of changing attitudes toward Scripture, translation and interpretation, are easy to digest because the subject matter is less an interpretation and synthesis of others’ interpretation of Reform theology and hermeneutics and more of a traditional attempt to recount the development of an intellectual history by giving the necessary evaluation and assessment of the practical application of reason.[31]
McGrath, a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended Oxford University and Cambridge University. He holds bachelor of arts degrees in natural science and theology, a bachelor of divinity degree and master of arts and doctorate degrees in theology. He is an expert in historical theology whose work comprises writing, contributing or editing some 40 books of both academic and popular history.[32] The bibliography of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation indicates McGrath’s familiarity with Latin, French, German and Italian, all necessary for judging secondary works on the Reformation.[33] McGrath is an Episcopalian who served as a curate of a parish church in Wollaton, Nottingham, England, from 1980-1983. His academic training was in theology, not history per se.[34] His youth amid the Protestant-Catholic tension of Northern Ireland, his experience as a church pastor, his academic training in religion – and his role as a Christian apologist in popular writings – would seem to serve him well as a researcher into practical matters of intellect surrounding sacred things.[35] However, such personal involvement in Christianity might also blind McGrath to strains of thought that fall outside the main streams of historical thinking, which, perhaps, is evidenced by the lack of consideration given to the Anabaptist movement, noted above. [36]
Proving a negative is difficult. McGrath, however, in illustrating his argument that no single idea or even easily discernable single sodality, or cluster, of thinking can be seen as the intellectual origin of the Reformation, does outline the major strains of theological thought that were ongoing in the generations leading up to it. Despite certain omissions that might have been included in such a broad work, McGrath is convincing in his argument that Reformation thought was in many ways an extension of late-medieval thinking, and therefore does not represent as clean a break with the intellectual tradition of the church as some want to believe. Likewise reasonable is his assertion that the Reformation took what it needed from the Renaissance and humanist scholarship, with Lutherans staying nearer to scholasticism and the Reformed Church relying on humanism for its socially oriented moral reforms.
[1] Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 2d ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 11-33.
[2] Ibid., 34-66.
[3] Ibid., 67-116.
[4] Ibid., 117-166.
[5] Ibid., 167-181.
[6] Ibid., 182-189.
[7] Ibid., 182.
[8] Ibid., 165-166.
[9] Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States, 1494-1660, The Short Oxford History of the Modern World, ed. J.M. Roberts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 15.
[10] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 28.
[11] Donald J. Wilcox, In Search of God & Self: Renaissance and Reformation Thought (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975; reprint, Prospect Heights, Ill., 1987), 294-295, 306.
[12] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 34.
[13] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 10.
[14] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 281.
[15] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 82-88, 106.
[16] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 10, 17.
[17] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 162.
[18] Ibid., 28.
[19] Ibid., 114-115.
[20] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 316.
[21] Bonney, European Dynastic States, 29, 44.
[22] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 129, 145, 156-157.
[23] Wilcox, In Search of God & Self, 303, 319.
[24] Hans J. Hillerbrand, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, The American Historical Review 94 (December 1989): 1362-1363.
[25] Ibid., 1363.
[26] Joseph Tempest, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (fall 1990): 508, 510.
[27] Ibid., 509.
[28] Charles G. Nauert Jr., review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, Renaissance Quarterly 41 (winter 1988): 726-727.
[29] Randall Zachman, review of The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, by Alister E. McGrath, The Journal of Religion 69 (April 1989): 248.
[30] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, passim.
[31] Ibid., 117-181.
[32] Contemporary Authors: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Nonfiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields, New Revision Series, Vol. 98, s.v. “McGrath, Alister E(dgar) 1953-.”
[33] McGrath, Intellectual Origins, 254-272.
[34] Contemporary Authors, s.v. “McGrath, Alister E(dgar) 1953-.”
[35] Ibid.
[36] Hillerbrand review, 1363.
