Carl Trueman’s post praising the cynicism of church historians has so many quotable parts that it’s hard to choose just one. While you’ll want to read the whole thing, here is a good bit to chew on:
Any intellectual historian of any merit will tell you that the last 1,000 years in the West have only produced two moments of paradigm shifting significance, and neither of them was the Reformation. The first was the impact of the translation into Latin of Aristotle’s metaphysical works. This demanded a response from the thirteenth century church. The response, most brilliantly represented by Thomas Aquinas, revolutionized education, transformed the philosophical landscape, opened up fruitful new avenues for theological synthesis, and set the basic shape of university education until the early eighteenth century. Within this intellectual context, the Reformation was to represent a critical development of Augustinian anti-Pelagianism in terms of the understanding of the church and of salvation, but it did not represent quite the foundational paradigm shift that is often assumed.
The second major moment was the Enlightenment. Like the earlier Aristotelian renaissance, this was a diverse movement and the singular term is something of a scholarly construct; but the various philosophical strands covered by the terms served to remake university education and to demand new and fresh responses from the church in a way that the Reformation had never done.
April 21st, 2011 | 9:54 am
I can’t resist thinking about that “only two moments” claim.
The invention of the printing press?
April 21st, 2011 | 12:12 pm
Good to know that I am not merely a killjoy, but performing a public service.
April 21st, 2011 | 12:50 pm
arty: We should probably be skeptical about the printing press (or more recent analogues) as driving a revolution in thought. It mainly meant more, and more affordable, books. Just as an urban-artisan “middling sort” was continuing its centuries-long emergence, it became more affordable for them to own books. It meant that universities could afford more books, and that complete copies of ancient texts started to supplant quote-collections from ancient works. Perfect to help the existing trend toward having more and more universities. Printed books started to appear as classroom aids in universities, but the basic university system saw only an incremental reform instead of a revolutionary change.
The printing press helped fuel movements, but technology is only an amplifier of what people are already inclined to do. Or a way of speeding up existing trends. That’s one thing that separates a lasting technological advance from a mere passing curiosity. Given time, technology can foster new ideas and reshape institutions and culture. But that is a process of decades or centuries, not years.
April 21st, 2011 | 2:31 pm
I like “men without hats”….
You can dance if you want to
You can leave your friends behind…
April 21st, 2011 | 2:43 pm
There was a big stir back in the 1960s about Bishop Robinson who wrote a book called “Honest to God” which was then widely regarded as a second Martin Luther moment. Who has heard of him now? Men Without Hats are more famous.
April 21st, 2011 | 6:27 pm
An intellectual historian of even greater merit will tell you that Kuhn’s idea of “paradigm shifts” is self-contradictory. See this NYT article about it: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the-ultimatum-part-1/
April 22nd, 2011 | 12:46 am
Cynical church historians: May their ranks increase and their progeny prosper!
April 23rd, 2011 | 6:57 pm
“The printing press helped fuel movements, but technology is only an amplifier of what people are already inclined to do.” —Kevin White
I’m not sure I agree. Were people not mostly inclined to remain chaste (for fear of the consequences) before the pill came along or to be less wasteful (to save money) before everything was disposable?
April 24th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
“I’m not sure I agree. Were people not mostly inclined to remain chaste (for fear of the consequences) before the pill came along or to be less wasteful (to save money) before everything was disposable?”
Boy, you certainly don’t know much about our ancestors, do you?
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