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The Reformation was an unprecedented crisis in the Western Christian world — a crisis in religion, culture, and politics, certainly, but also a crisis of authority. Rome continued to insist that holy tradition was authoritative, but used that to justify some practices many found unjust and unjustifiable. The Protestants insisted that the Bible was authoritative, … Continue reading Historical Criticism: Reading the Bible in the Enlightenment

In the previous post in this series on the history of biblical interpretation, we saw how the Middle Ages were a period of stability in hermeneutics, with the Church more or less happy to interpret the Scriptures as they had traditionally been interpreted and within the broader context of the Church’s faith and worship. The … Continue reading Ad Fontes and Sola Scriptura: Reading the Bible in the Reformation

By the time the Western Roman Empire fell at the end of the fifth century, ushering in the ‘Middle Ages’, the die had already been cast for roughly the next thousand years of biblical interpretation. This is not, as some have suggested, because the medieval world was devoid of intellectual creativity — the Eastern Empire … Continue reading ‘The Faith Once Delivered to the Saints’: Tradition and Scripture from the Medieval World to Today