Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 34:3 (Sep 1991)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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JETS 34:3 (September 1991) p. 385

Book Reviews

Reformation Thought: An Introduction. By Alister E. McGrath. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988, 212 pp., £8.50 paper.

Not all who study the Reformation are trained theologians. McGrath’s book is for those who are not. Its purpose is threefold: to introduce, to explain, to contextu-alize. As the author himself indicates, this text “aims to introduce the leading ideas of the European Reformation”; it “aims to explain these ideas”; it “aims to contextu-alize, by setting these ideas in their proper intellectual, social and political context.” In so doing it “assumes that the reader knows nothing about the Christian faith underlying the Reformation, and explains exactly what terms such as ‘justification by faith’ mean” (p. xi). This is, in other words, a gentle book, one that places as few hurdles as possible in the path of the student who is new to the religious ideas, passions and events of the sixteenth century. That is what makes this slim volume a success.

McGrath carefully delineates the various theological and geographical characteristics of the Reformation mosaic, carefully explaining the German academic roots of Lutheranism, the Swiss theological and ecclesiastical nature of much of the Reformed church, and the English political origin and flavor of Anglicanism, among others. Unlike some modern histories of the Reformation, this book does not overlook the theological and ecclesiastical roots of that momentous movement. It examines the decline of papal power and prestige, it notes the flourishing of both late-medieval popular piety and of doctrinal pluralism, and it exposes the crisis of theological authority the Church was undergoing at that time. As indicative of the cultural and theological background of the Reformation, McGrath’s chapters on renaissance humanism and on scholasticism are quite good. In the former he properly contends that of the many tributaries flowing into the Reformation, renaissance humanism was “by far the most important” (p. 27). In contrast to many earlier writers, McGrath also properly upholds P. O. Kristeller’s view that the renaissance was far more a rhetorical and philological movement within theology than it was a metaphysical one. Concerning scholasticism, McGrath’s treatment is less useful and ]ess readable, primarily because it is a somewhat tendentious rehearsal of arguments he has made earlier elsewhere in books far more sophisticated than any introduction to Reformation thought ever could or should be. Thus some parts of his treatment of scholasticism seem self-serving and too difficult. They do not belong in this text—which is not to say they are incorrect. If anything in this excellent little book is incorrect (and very little is) I am inclined to think it is the sharp distinction, ...

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