Cardinal
Newman said, ‘To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.’ That might
be the case for systematic Protestantism along the lines of the Reformation,
with a strict observance of the solas. It applies less obviously to a
Protestantism that understands itself as a form of developing Christian faith
that happens not to include a strong allegiance to the bishop of Rome.
Diarmaid
MacCulloch is deep in history, and he has ceased to be anything in particular.
Nonetheless he looks with understanding and sympathy on the spiritual and
religious quests that have occurred in history and will no doubt continue to
occur.
I am rereading
MacCulloch’s book Reformation: Europe’s
House Divided (1490-1700), which I first read 10 years ago while I was in
the process of becoming Catholic, and which I am now reading in preparation for
a historical trip to Germany in the footsteps of Martin Luther.
It is striking
how religion and politics interplay, how allegiances and rivalries help to
build consensus, and how people navigate a world with the consciousness of a
last judgment, with a network of relations that has shifting perspectives on
the wheat and the tares, and with the human needs that are basic to us all.
When King
Henri IV of France (formerly King of Navarre) ultimately decided to convert to
the Catholic Church, allegedly on the grounds that ‘Paris was worth a Mass’,
this was the reaction of a prominent Reformer:
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