The Protestant Reformation and the Christian Intellectual Tradition

Each chapter contains a brief summary of the Christian discussion prior to the Reformation. It then provides a longer exposition of the development of the Reformation and post-Reformation or Protestant scholasticism. In a systematic discussion, aspects of the Reformation, such as its alleged irrationalism, pessimism, or individualism, are analyzed. In the field of apologetics or defense of Protestant Christianity, the author attempts to respond to some theological and philosophical objections that arise from the self-understanding of much of Protestantism.

The Reformation represents a crucial milestone in the intellectual history of the West not only because of its influence on the future, but also because of its peculiar way of rooting itself in the past. This book attempts to account for its place in that broad web of relationships.

One does not need to know much about the Reformation to at least suspect what it meant for the European political order or for the ecclesiastical order. For those who view the phenomenon from a distance, it is clear that in both spheres the Reformation meant a great change and also a significant continuity. However, from the perspective of much of modern Protestant and Catholic historiography, the Reformation meant a radical change, a break with the complex synthesis that for centuries had been woven between Christianity and the Greek intellectual heritage. It is not uncommon, in fact, for Protestant thought to be characterized by a simple rejection of the preceding tradition. It would mean an abandonment, for example, of Aristotelianism or medieval scholasticism, a rejection of static formulas and their replacement by the existential message of faith.

What we seek in this book is to approach the intellectual tradition prior to the Reformation, and to inquire into the ways in which it breaks with, continues, modifies, or redirects it towards some previous point. This means, first of all, that this book should not be read in place of a history of the Reformation. We inevitably assume a reader who is moderately familiar with the broad outlines of Protestant history, as we will be moving with some freedom between different periods. Although the center of the reflection carried out here is the Reformation, our work will sometimes lead us to dwell on authors from the patristic period, at other times on medieval authors, on Protestant scholastics, and on the first modern critics of all of the above, with a view to a better understanding of what the 16th-century Reformation represented, and still represents.