A Books At a Glance Book Review
by Ryan M. McGraw
How would we characterize the Protestant Reformation? Many today would answer with the five solas or perhaps even the later “five points of Calvinism.” More narrowly, sola Scriptura often rises to the surface, contrasting returning to the living Word of God with sitting in the stale traditions of Roman Catholicism. However, many modern Protestants forget that the reformers also sought to establish historical legitimacy. Though the point should be obvious, the Protestant Reformation was just that – a reformation of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” (from the Nicene Creed). Reforming the church meant restoring the church, conforming to the ultimate authority of Scripture alone while recognizing that the Spirit preserved the gospel of Jesus Christ in his church throughout the ages. Matthew Barrett thus categorizes the self-perception of the Protestant reformers as “a renewal of evangelical catholicity” (32, emphasis original). While scholarly literature abounds today on how Protestants drew from the early church and medieval ideas as filtered through Scripture, Carl Trueman rightly notes that this book “is a key tool for bridging that gap between scholarly research and the everyday life of the student and the church” (xv). In a time when Protestants often denigrate church history, or discovering it, bend towards Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, The Reformation as Renewal shows how Reformation thinkers demonstrated both a commitment to Scripture and to the church’s teachings. Though its arguments will likely surprise many modern readers, this book, despite its size, is both accessible and timely for the church today.
The four parts and seventeen large chapters in this work cover a lot of ground. Roughly the first three hundred and seventy pages treat medieval backgrounds to the Reformation (chs. 1-7), pulling many Protestant readers into relatively unknown territory. This reviewer is happy to see writers like Barrett digesting medieval authors like Aquinas on their own terms, and reading them in their medieval contexts rather than through the lens of later Thomists. Whatever one thinks about Thomas’ thought, Protestants have too often been guilty of caricature. Though modern readers will find many points in Aquinas that are jarring with the Reformed doctrine of salvation, both Protestants and Catholics may be surprised how much continuity existed between his teaching and Protestant ideas. In fact, Barrett argues that only ten percent of the Summa Theologiae relates to questions that Protestants and Roman Catholics would later debate (142). If unfamiliarity characterizes most people’s knowledge of Aquinas, then how much more does this apply to other authors treated in these pages like Abelard, Anselm, Richard and Hugh St. Victor, Hales, Scotus, Ockham, and Biel? Barrett gives ample illustrations of how and why many reformers reacted primarily to late medieval innovations, such as the fact that selling indulgences to reduce time in purgatory, which so irritated Martin Luther, was introduced only in the late fifteenth century (398). This is not a call to become Thomists, but rather to become more charitable, learning to appreciate pre-Reformation theologians like Aquinas as Christian theologians living in their times. An example below shows how Luther did precisely this with Augustine on justification.
Following this extensive and illuminating medieval background, parts two through four trace the origins of the Reformation, its further formation in various parts of Europe, and attempts at Roman Catholic renewal in the so-called Counter-Reformation. Major reformers like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Vermigli, and Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, shape the main narrative. However, Barrett includes many other figures along the way, limiting his attention to the Reformation rather than the post-Reformation period. The thread running consistently through every chapter is that each of the Reformers treated sought to justify their theology both from the magisterial (inspired) authority of Scripture and the ministerial (uninspired) authority of the historic teaching of the church. Rather than evaluating whether Reformation claims to catholicity are true, Barrett seeks to lead readers to reevaluate their understanding of the self-conception of the Reformers in relation to the catholic Christian tradition (32). Luther’s use of Augustine on justification and merit illustrates the point. Augustine, while denying human merit in salvation, did not teach Christ’s imputed righteousness clearly. Luther nonetheless regarded Augustine as an ally, adding some corrections (168; so with Calvin pg. 695). While Luther’s stance might trouble modern Protestants, leading some of them to treat every pre-Reformation theologian as apostate, it does not trouble this reviewer. It is not troubling to say that Tertullian was basically a Trinitarian theologian even though he blurred vital nuances expressed later at the Council of Nicaea. Church history illustrates that time and debate often clarify aspects of the church’s confession that have always been, more or less, present in seminal form. The truth does not change, but the church’s apprehension and expression of it matures. Though such rhetoric is becoming common today, in the Reformation, it was only radicals like (the anti-Trinitarian!) Sebastian Frank who condemned all Christians after the apostles, including Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory, “of whom not even one knew the Lord” (651). Barrett appropriately concludes the book in a few pages (881-883) with Luther’s final set of ten reasons why Protestants represented the true catholic church in one of his later writings.
Such an ambitious and large volume will always have strengths and weaknesses. Barrett acknowledges, probably with this fact partly in view, that “this book has been one of the hardest books I have written” (887). Every scholar reading a wide-reaching text like this has expertise on things that the author does not. No one can be an expert in everything and there will always be room for improvement. That said, Barrett’s extensive use of primary and secondary sources is remarkable. He seeks as much as possible to give firsthand accounts from historical authors rather than second hand ones. Questions will remain, such as whether “Christian Platonism” is a useful and clear term describing Protestant uses of philosophy (e.g., 226, 722), let alone the ambiguous “sacramental ontology of the Great tradition” (250), but the narrative is still solid and impressive.
However, questions remain in this reviewer’s mind about how far the Protestant tradition could be critical even of deeply-rooted catholic doctrines like the nature of God and the Trinity. Barrett reads their early silence on such issues as tacit “conformity” to the tradition rather than criticism (138). Given that most subsequent Lutheran and Reformed treatments of the divine attributes were heavily Thomistic, this assertion makes sense. Yet sometimes, taking Calvin as the example, the reformers both offered more radical critiques of foundational doctrines, and appeared to miss the point of some medieval distinctions. Respecting the first, Calvin’s modifications of eternal generation in the Trinity in relation to divine aseity receive only a footnote (690, fn 139). Yet Calvin’s willingness to redefine the Nicene Creed’s “very God of very God” was a radical turn, producing over a century of debate (and heresy charges) among Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed. Regarding the second, Calvin’s use of scholastic categories drawn from Aristotle also misstepped at points. For instance, Calvin seems to miss the efficient cause in justification, divorcing it from the subcategory of instrumental cause, and conflating it with the formal cause (697). He made the Father’s gift the efficient cause, Christ the material cause, faith the “formal or instrumental” cause, and the glory of God’s justice and goodness the final cause. The material, instrumental, and final causes make good sense here, but later Reformed orthodoxy rightly made the Holy Spirit the efficient cause of justification, with faith resulting as an instrumental subcategory of the efficient cause. The formal cause (defining justification to be what it is) should be the Father’s declaration that believers are righteous in Christ. Jumbling fourfold causation, with related subcategories like instrumental causes in this way raises questions as to how familiar Calvin was with the medieval catholic Christian tradition after all. Though Calvin’s modifications of eternal generation are too big a can of worms to open here, skirting over the issue in a book this size can cover over the fact that sometimes Reformed theologians struggled over the proper bounds of catholicity, even in relation to fundamental doctrines and common distinctions.
Necessarily, this review merely skims the surface of the host of excellent insights in Barrett’s work. The Protestant Reformation was not only a recovery of biblical doctrine; it was a recasting of history and tradition through a Protestant lens. Becoming conscious of historical Christianity does not have to mean that we cease to be Protestant, as John Henry Newman said famously. Instead, Barrett reminds us that there was such thing as a Protestant catholic spirit that was both willing to employ both sharp correction and charitable reception.
Ryan M. McGraw
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary