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Інтелектуальні витоки європейської Реформації
У книжці відомого оксфордського історика і теолога Алістера Мак-Ґрата розглянуто інтелектуальні витоки двох головних напрямків Реформації - лютеранського і реформатського. Як можна пояснити релігійні ідеї першого покоління чільних реформаторів, особливо Лютера і Цвінглі? Які чинники, інтелектуальні й соціальні, покликали їх до життя? Чи не слід говорити про «інтелектуальні витоки Реформацій» у множині? Який зв’язок між Реформацією і Ренесансом? Була Реформація лише одним з аспектів Ренесансу, чи вона має особливе значення в сенсі своєї тематики, передумов, джерел або методів? Пошук інтелектуальних коренів Реформації, доводить автор, вимагає детального аналізу тяглості та перервності між двома цими епохами в історії думки та ставить перед істориком ідей і теологом надзвичайно важливі питання.
Книжка розрахована на фахівців-істориків, літературознавців і теологів.
Книжка розрахована на фахівців-істориків, літературознавців і теологів.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1987
3 people are currently reading
139 people want to read
About the author
Alister E. McGrath
451 books498 followersAlister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005. He is an Anglican priest and is ordained within the Church of England.
Aside from being a faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. McGrath holds three doctorates from the University of Oxford, a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics, a Doctor of Divinity in Theology and a Doctor of Letters in Intellectual History.
McGrath is noted for his work in historical theology, systematic theology, and the relationship between science and religion, as well as his writings on apologetics. He is also known for his opposition to New Atheism and antireligionism and his advocacy of theological critical realism. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, and A Scientific Theology. He is also the author of a number of popular textbooks on theology.
Aside from being a faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. McGrath holds three doctorates from the University of Oxford, a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics, a Doctor of Divinity in Theology and a Doctor of Letters in Intellectual History.
McGrath is noted for his work in historical theology, systematic theology, and the relationship between science and religion, as well as his writings on apologetics. He is also known for his opposition to New Atheism and antireligionism and his advocacy of theological critical realism. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, and A Scientific Theology. He is also the author of a number of popular textbooks on theology.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 3, 2013
Alister McGrath's "The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation" is an onerous and dry book detailing the ideas and methodologies that led to the Reformation (or, as McGrath emphasizes, ReformationS). There is much to be appreciated by this text, such as McGrath's explanation of the unreliability of the Vulgate and his analysis of the early church fathers on the Reformer's theology. McGrath also points out how on the eve of the Reformation, the papacy had been sluggish in establishing a fixed and bordered orthodoxy; because of this, there was widespread diversity in theological perspectives. This disunity around dogma played a key role in initiating Martin Luther to break away from the Catholic Church; there is the possibility he separated himself from the Catholic Church not because of Rome's teaching, but because of the anarchy of theology present among the Catholic Church's clergy at the time. However, the overall writing style is far too academic; McGrath litters the book with Latin without providing translations of the language. Writers like C.S. Lewis, Fulton Sheen and Timothy Keller are brilliant thinkers AND excellent communicators because they write in a way that anyone can understand. McGrath has demonstrated this ability as well, but not in this book. Unless you're especially interested in the subject and don't mind a lot of academic jargon, I would suggest finding a more readable book on the topic.
March 25, 2020
(NOTE: review is of 1st edition) Stephen Greenblatt begins "The Swerve " with an anecdote about the serendipitous purchase from the used book store bargain bins of "On the Nature of Things" by an Epicurean named Lucretius. Greenblatt subsequently wrote a book (a National Book award winner) about the impact of this work on Western culture after the manuscript was re-discovered by a Catholic church scribe.
This is not one of those success stories. Picked out at Moe's in Berkeley, California, I didn't realize the degree to which I was unprepared for Alister McGrath's specialist treatise. If you've looking for a 'Dummy's Guide' to the Reformation, this ain't it. As an outsider to the tradition, I was hoping to learn about the new religious ideas behind the Reformation, a revolution in religious thinking which, in concert with new political realities, threw Europe into bloody chaos for decades. Unfortunately for me, the author seems more interested in explaining the history of those ideas, than clearly explaining exactly what they are, writing I suppose for the experienced theological student. There's also an distressing over-abundance of untranslated Latin.
Being the kind of book you read with Google easily at hand, I made a surprising discovery - in looking for some clarity on a particular point I was brought to a selection from... the second edition (!) of this very same book, one of the key pitfalls of buying used books. So some of my concerns might be addressed by the revised edition, I just stubbornly declined to make a second purchase to find out.
I'll confine my short commentary to some of the items I found most interesting, I'm really not qualified and experienced enough to render a useful opinion on the overall premise of the book.
The greatest insight actually concerns a corrective re-framing of the nature of Renaissance humanism. It was not, as many individualists & anti-institutionalists like me had imagined, an early burst of secular thinking that broke free of the oppressive bonds of the church, nor was it an early Enlightenment - it was a "cosmopolitan educational movement" dedicated to directly engaging with the texts of works from antiquity with with an emphasis on eloquence (why works by Cicero were especially treasured)- in fact the humanists were "virtually without exception, Christian." But that doesn't ultimately contradict the picture of a 'Renaissance Man' (if you'll pardon the sexism) - to have a well rounded education, familiarity with certain works, and the ability to discuss them intelligently.
One irony of the direct approach to text, or scripture in this case, was the discovery that the Word of God, "unfiltered" was a privilege not extended to the common man, but to those with the lingual ability to read the original Hebrew and Greek tests. More important, this new attention to original texts highlighted the inadequacies of the fourth century Jerome Vulgate - the official Latin translation of the Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church. Also the printed authoritative texts that emerged provided more reliable and consistent sources on which to debate, some of which were printed not only in Latin, but in Greek and Hebrew.
Luther was much focused on soteriology, the study of religious doctrines of salvation. This is a serious meat & potatoes theological issue, especially for those folks who insist that belief in God is the foundation of a moral life, who believe that only the stick and carrot of eternal bliss or damnation is powerful enough to curb human actions, especially given the vagaries of human administered justice. But the notion that human agency impacts heavenly admission runs counter to Luther's theocentric picture of an all righteous powerful God. This naturally speaks against the odious practice of "indulgences" but it also reserves ultimate verdict of good and evil to divine judgement. How, for example, are we to judge someone who by good intentions saves the life of someone who then later commits multiple acts of murder?
The figure of St Augustine features prominently in the entire book. Most Interesting is the "absence of evil" argument as depicted in his refutation of Manichean good and evil polarities. Evil is not the opposite of good, but its absence. Intriguing - just like ignorance and intelligence. By extension we can't blame anybody for not being good enough, smart enough, athletic enough - these are qualities distributed in various and often uneven measure - anymore than we could suggest that an animal attack was "unjust". For me this provides an special insight into Christian forgiveness, although it'd be difficult to say that the argument about evil can easily rest there: what of ISIS, or Nazi ideology, the deliberate refusal to curb the most savage of human impulses? Evil certainly can look like an entity rather than an abstraction of absence when directly confronted or experienced.
Interesting also is the dialectic between the two powers of God, a theological tool of the late Middle Ages. How "God could be said to act reliably (i.e. consistently) without simultaneously implying that he acted of necessity." It's a challenge that an artist by analogy must accept in their own work - that even as an all powerful "creator" the work itself insists on a logical continuity that actually limits the available choices going forward. But how can an 'all powerful' God be so limited? The dialectic recognizes two distinctions - the freedom to realize any and all potentialities (potentia absoluta) with the understanding that having done so, a self-imposed constraint (potentia ordinata) protects the consistency of that work from a say, creating circular triangles later on.
This book was often an uphill climb for a theological, non-practicing novice like me, but I still found some points of fascination, and may have even slightly enlarged my familiarity with Latin terms.
This is not one of those success stories. Picked out at Moe's in Berkeley, California, I didn't realize the degree to which I was unprepared for Alister McGrath's specialist treatise. If you've looking for a 'Dummy's Guide' to the Reformation, this ain't it. As an outsider to the tradition, I was hoping to learn about the new religious ideas behind the Reformation, a revolution in religious thinking which, in concert with new political realities, threw Europe into bloody chaos for decades. Unfortunately for me, the author seems more interested in explaining the history of those ideas, than clearly explaining exactly what they are, writing I suppose for the experienced theological student. There's also an distressing over-abundance of untranslated Latin.
Being the kind of book you read with Google easily at hand, I made a surprising discovery - in looking for some clarity on a particular point I was brought to a selection from... the second edition (!) of this very same book, one of the key pitfalls of buying used books. So some of my concerns might be addressed by the revised edition, I just stubbornly declined to make a second purchase to find out.
I'll confine my short commentary to some of the items I found most interesting, I'm really not qualified and experienced enough to render a useful opinion on the overall premise of the book.
The greatest insight actually concerns a corrective re-framing of the nature of Renaissance humanism. It was not, as many individualists & anti-institutionalists like me had imagined, an early burst of secular thinking that broke free of the oppressive bonds of the church, nor was it an early Enlightenment - it was a "cosmopolitan educational movement" dedicated to directly engaging with the texts of works from antiquity with with an emphasis on eloquence (why works by Cicero were especially treasured)- in fact the humanists were "virtually without exception, Christian." But that doesn't ultimately contradict the picture of a 'Renaissance Man' (if you'll pardon the sexism) - to have a well rounded education, familiarity with certain works, and the ability to discuss them intelligently.
One irony of the direct approach to text, or scripture in this case, was the discovery that the Word of God, "unfiltered" was a privilege not extended to the common man, but to those with the lingual ability to read the original Hebrew and Greek tests. More important, this new attention to original texts highlighted the inadequacies of the fourth century Jerome Vulgate - the official Latin translation of the Bible used by the Roman Catholic Church. Also the printed authoritative texts that emerged provided more reliable and consistent sources on which to debate, some of which were printed not only in Latin, but in Greek and Hebrew.
Luther was much focused on soteriology, the study of religious doctrines of salvation. This is a serious meat & potatoes theological issue, especially for those folks who insist that belief in God is the foundation of a moral life, who believe that only the stick and carrot of eternal bliss or damnation is powerful enough to curb human actions, especially given the vagaries of human administered justice. But the notion that human agency impacts heavenly admission runs counter to Luther's theocentric picture of an all righteous powerful God. This naturally speaks against the odious practice of "indulgences" but it also reserves ultimate verdict of good and evil to divine judgement. How, for example, are we to judge someone who by good intentions saves the life of someone who then later commits multiple acts of murder?
The figure of St Augustine features prominently in the entire book. Most Interesting is the "absence of evil" argument as depicted in his refutation of Manichean good and evil polarities. Evil is not the opposite of good, but its absence. Intriguing - just like ignorance and intelligence. By extension we can't blame anybody for not being good enough, smart enough, athletic enough - these are qualities distributed in various and often uneven measure - anymore than we could suggest that an animal attack was "unjust". For me this provides an special insight into Christian forgiveness, although it'd be difficult to say that the argument about evil can easily rest there: what of ISIS, or Nazi ideology, the deliberate refusal to curb the most savage of human impulses? Evil certainly can look like an entity rather than an abstraction of absence when directly confronted or experienced.
Interesting also is the dialectic between the two powers of God, a theological tool of the late Middle Ages. How "God could be said to act reliably (i.e. consistently) without simultaneously implying that he acted of necessity." It's a challenge that an artist by analogy must accept in their own work - that even as an all powerful "creator" the work itself insists on a logical continuity that actually limits the available choices going forward. But how can an 'all powerful' God be so limited? The dialectic recognizes two distinctions - the freedom to realize any and all potentialities (potentia absoluta) with the understanding that having done so, a self-imposed constraint (potentia ordinata) protects the consistency of that work from a say, creating circular triangles later on.
This book was often an uphill climb for a theological, non-practicing novice like me, but I still found some points of fascination, and may have even slightly enlarged my familiarity with Latin terms.
March 30, 2020
In this detailed, nuanced examination of the intellectual origins of the Reformation, McGrath explores continuities and discontinuities between late medieval thought (14th and 15th centuries) and the early decades of the 16th century. On these bases, he further explores convergences and divergences between early Reformed perspectives and early Lutheran perspectives in the first period of the Reformation. All in all, patient and diligent reading of this book leads to a much more informed and nuanced understanding of the late medieval period and the early Reformation than one finds in many more partisan characterizations, both positive and negative, of the Reformation. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in this intellectual history and is willing to follow the complex currents McGrath navigates.
July 28, 2025
While McGrath’s writing is generally clear, it hinges on untranslated Latin, French and German quotes. For McGrath, questions like “Did medieval theology influence Calvin?” is a yes or no question. That these never have a clear answer means that doesn’t mean that we should dive into the weeds of concrete thought. No. He uses high philological standards on scant evidence to come to no conclusion. He adds vague talk about scholarly method to justify himself. He assumes that you know Calvin and Luther thoroughly so he studiously avoids explaining their ideas. Only when it is relevant to his yes or no question does he leave a few lines to actually talk about ideas. For the most part, he does indefinite, semi-philology. No one who did not already understand the Reformation will even learn anything from it. It is too foggy to put a rope around it.
September 5, 2013
МакГрат безспорно е един от добрите познавачи на света на идеите от времето на реформацията. Книгата му (доколкото мога да преценя) води до няколко много важни извода - опасността да опростяваме реформацията не само в исторически аспект, но и по отношение на идеите, които стоят зад нея, сложните влияния, с които тя е свързана както и относителната хетерогенност между отделните й течения - последното, по мои впечатления, е почти напълно пенебрегван въпрос. Твърденията на автора са солидни, добре документирани, препращат към голям количество допълнителна литература и нерядко полемични (особено с някои тези на Х. Оберман - друг значим съвременен играч в изследванията на реформацията).
Моят основен проблем при четенето беше сравнително слабото ми познаване на оригиналните източници от периода, около които се върти голяма част от дискусията. Да знаеш кратките определения на школи като via moderna и via antiqua или да си чел 2-3 страници обобщение на идеите на Грегъри от Римини или Уилям от Окъм просто не е достатъчно, за да се справиш с текста на МакГрат - при това избороените са само началото на един доста дълъг списък. Това съчетано с един доста сух и съвсем не лек стил и огромно количество латински понятия и цитати доста пъти ми попречи да осмисля достатъчно идеята на автора. Оттам и сравнително ниската ми оценка. Напълно е възможно причината за нея да е лично моята некомпетенстност.
Моят основен проблем при четенето беше сравнително слабото ми познаване на оригиналните източници от периода, около които се върти голяма част от дискусията. Да знаеш кратките определения на школи като via moderna и via antiqua или да си чел 2-3 страници обобщение на идеите на Грегъри от Римини или Уилям от Окъм просто не е достатъчно, за да се справиш с текста на МакГрат - при това избороените са само началото на един доста дълъг списък. Това съчетано с един доста сух и съвсем не лек стил и огромно количество латински понятия и цитати доста пъти ми попречи да осмисля достатъчно идеята на автора. Оттам и сравнително ниската ми оценка. Напълно е възможно причината за нея да е лично моята некомпетенстност.
January 21, 2009
Very good.
January 19, 2012
A good writer should be able to put complex ideas over in clear English. I found the language of this book unnecessarily complex and stilted.
January 7, 2015
Good introduction to the pre-reform movement!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews