The Unquenchable Flame

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This book is more of a devotional exercise than a work of scholarship. It seems to be designed to arouse the “base” against the notion that the “Reformation is over.” It does this by flogging the “black legends” of Catholicism and insisting that a chemically pure mental understanding of the mechanics of salvation is the sine qua non on which God determines the salvation of the individual.

The first indication that this is not a book of scholarship is that it lacks any footnotes of substance. For example, although the chapter on Luther makes many claims about Luther's life and theology, and his debate with Erasmus (and Erasmus comes across in this book as quite the whipping boy who let down the winning side), author Michael Reeves has only three footnotes, citing three sources, and maybe five pages from those sources. His citation for Luther's debate with Erasmus consists of a reference to page 33 of “Erasmus of Christendom,” published in 1969. The absence of relevant footnotes suggests that Reeve's has read neither Erasmus's opening salvo, “A Discussion on Free Will” or his response to Luther's “Bondage of the Will,” namely the “Hyperaspistes.”

Of course, very few people have actually read either of Erasmus's works in this very important debate on the true essential issue of the Reformation, whether human beings have any role in their own salvation, or, instead, if everything is done by God such that individuals have no choice and no role and no contribution at all in their own salvation. Since, as Erasmus points out, the Old Testament and the New Testament are replete with statements vouching that people do play a role in their salvation, such as jeopardizing salvation by engaging in sin, Luther's position seems problematic as a biblical proposition, notwithstanding his efforts to explain every contrary text away by grammatical parsing worthy of a Scholastic.

Reeves characterizes the Erasmus-Luther Debates as follows:

“Erasmus was, at the time, the most revered scholar in the world, and since On the Freedom of the Will came from so eminent a figure (and one who had been so instrumental in his own conversion), Luther actually read it. Usually he only read a couple of pages of polemics against himself before using them as toilet paper. Because of Erasmus' scholarly reputation, it looked like he was the heavyweight; but this was theology, and Erasmus was no theologian. In this arena, Erasmus was like an ant attacking a rhino. Luther responded with The Bondage of the Will, savaging Erasmus' half-baked arguments. And it really was a savaging. Luther refused to talk about the heart of how to be saved in Erasmus' cool, dispassionate style. He thought Erasmus had been worryingly glib about the key issue: are we able to do anything toward our salvation? In complete contrast to Erasmus, Luther was adamant that, for all we freely choose to do, we never naturally choose to please God, and therefore all our salvation must be God's doing, not ours. The difference is evidenced in the words used by the two men to describe their depressions. Luther called his Anfechtung. The word suggests an assault from without, an attack by the Devil. The only hope lay in a conquest from without by Christ, who for us overcame the Devil, Death, and Hell. Erasmus called his depressions pusillanimitas, literally, weakness of spirit, faint-heartedness, for which we have the little-used English derivative, pusillanimity. This implies a weakness within, which man can do something to remedy by pulling himself together. In Luther's case moral effort was useless, but not so for Erasmus. 3

Fine, Reeves has a side he's rooting for, which is why this is not a book of scholarship. However, I must concede that Reeve's accurate distinction between “Anfechtung” and “pusillanimitas” is worth the price of the book that points to a key distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, albeit Protestantism has tended to move in a Catholic direction with the Arminians. However, a more neutral description of the debate would be that Erasmus treated Luther with respect as a scholar, and that Luther became unhinged, as was his normal style - notice the part about toilet paper? - and attacked Erasmus personally as well as his arguments. This resulted in Erasmus taking off the gloves in his rebuttal. A fair reading the entire debate is that Erasmus wins the argument by pointing out Luther's textual errors, historical errors and logical inconsistencies, although Luther's name-calling is noteworthy.

But this is not a book of scholarship. For Reeves, Erasmus was a pusillanimous turncoat who “purrs” and “smiles” when he debates Luther - except in the Hyperaspistes, when he returns Lutheran vulgarity with Erasmian vulgarity. For example, in the preface of the Hyperaspistes Erasmus observes that he is writing the rebuttal, in part, because “Luther himself acts as if there had been no response at all and celebrates his triumphs with sufficient vainglory in a German pamphlet, challenging me contemptuously, or rather farting in everyone's face with that most boastful term of his “defiance...” Erasmus is not “purring” and “smiling” in the Hyperaspistes. He has taken off the gloves and is “savaging” Luther's well-known vulgarity with well-aimed mockery.

Reeves characterizes Erasmus's argument as follows:

“For, Erasmus purred, God is like a loving father, and takes our fumbling efforts and smiles on them as if they really were worth something. Erasmus always liked to position himself as the wise man, above the crude extremes of more petty minds, and this was typical Erasmus, aiming at a sophisticated middle position between Rome and the Reformation. But of course, he smiled, like Luther he wanted to uphold God's grace. Yet surely God would reward a good deed? Quite simply, he could not understand that Luther placed all his certainty of salvation on Christ alone, and not on his own performance at all.”

Well....no. Erasmus was simply quoting scripture. In the Discussion, Erasmus argues in the Discussion of Free Will: “Accordingly, Paul says in Romans, chapter 8[26] ‘Likewise the Spirit assists our weakness.' ‘Weak' is never used to describe someone who can do nothing, but rather someone whose strength is not sufficient to complete what he attempts; and someone who does everything by himself is not said to “assist.' The whole of Scripture proclaims assistance, aid, succor, help; but how can you be said to ‘assist' a person unless he is doing something himself? ‘The potter does not ‘assist' the clay to become a pot, nor does the workman ‘assist' the axe to make a bench!” (Discussion of Free Will (Toronto University Press, 1999), p. 73.)

Erasmus might be wrong, of course, but his argument is not self-evidently wrong. It seems to be a matter of interpretation, and one held by all Christians prior to Luther, which raises the question of why “private interpretation” is a thing only for Protestants, but not for Erasmus.

In any event, we do not get into any interesting discussion like that because this is a devotional work, not a work of scholarship.

As a devotional text, it is important to the author to affirm not only was Erasmus foolish, weak and dangerous with his non-doctrinal views, but that the Catholic Church prior to 1517 was hopelessly corrupt wherever it was. Ironically, though, this corruption is actually irrelevant to the issue of Reform because the reform was not really about ending simony or the sale of indulgences - that's what the wimp Erasmus wanted - instead it was about changing Christian faith completely. Reeve's offers up this candid admission as follows:

“Because Erasmus failed to rely entirely upon God's grace, Luther concluded sadly that Erasmus must be a stranger to it. With his Greek New Testament, he had, like Moses, led many out of slavery; yet like Moses he never entered the Promised Land. The stark difference between them showed that reform of abuses and the Reformation were two completely distinct projects. The former was a call for man to do better; the latter was an admission that he cannot and hence must rely on the all-sufficient grace of God that the moralizers implicitly denied.”

I appreciated the candor of this statement because I have never been able to see how ending simony or the sale of indulgences required the abolition of Holy Orders or the denial of Transubstantiation or new definition of “justification.” The answer is that it didn't. Rather, in order to overthrow the existing institutional structure, which let German princes take over control of religion in their lands, or, more clearly, in the case of England, allowed Henry VIII to sell off monasteries, the maxim was “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Reeves' discussions of the differences between Luther and Erasmus are revealing. Reeves acknowledges that Erasmus and Luther split over the extent of human capacity to will the good, with Luther denying that there was any such capacity whatsoever, and that Erasmus wanted to reform the Church, whereas Luther wanted to end the Church, and that Luther was essentially dogmatic. Reeves observes:

“Christianity, to Erasmus, was essentially morality, with a minimum of doctrinal statement loosely appended. . . . Luther's attitude was very different. To him, Christianity was a matter of doctrine first and foremost, because true religion was first and foremost a matter of faith; and faith is correlative to truth. . . . Christianity was to Luther a dogmatic religion, or it was nothing. . . . Erasmus' conception of an undogmatic Christianity, and the humanist's airy indifference to matters of doctrine seemed to him as essentially un-Christian as anything well could be. 2”

Dogmatic, convinced in the evil nature of humanity, and giving moral reform a position of lesser importance than theological perspicuity....do most modern Protestant Christians really understand that this is how their religion is supposed to look? Frankly, that's normally what Catholicism is accused of.

Reeves' devotional approach is most unfortunate in the efforts to continue the tradition of what sociologist Rodney Stark refers to as “bearing false witness.” [[ASIN:B01F57R0LO Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History]] I don't mean to suggest that all of Reeves' examples are untrue, but his method is to deny context to events or to overlook or minimize similar Protestant excesses or to exaggerate some events.

For example, Pope Julius II did wear armor and participate as a war leader for the Papal States, but, apparently, according to Reeves, so did Ulrich Zwingli, who died in armor. However, when Zwingli fought that, apparently, was hunky dory because his was a good fight or something. Popes engaged in sexual sins, but then again so did Ulrich Zwingli, but when he did it that wasn't important because that was a one-time deal only, maybe, and besides he was just a likable guy or something. Catholicism was repressive and intolerant but - gosh! - Anabaptists got drowned in Zurich and Calvin's Geneva executed Servetus and the entire town of Munster was slaughtered by Catholics and Lutherans. With respect to Calvin and Servetus, we get an explanation from Reeves that Servetus was a dangerous heretic who denied the Trinity - which he did - and besides executions were quite normal at the time – which they were. (I will be the first to agree that Calvin played by the rules of the time, but, then, so did the Catholics.)

Another example, Catholics intolerantly prevented laypeople from reading the Bible to prevent misinterpretation, but after Luther translated the Bible into German, there were so many kinds of crazy interpretations (see Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster) that Luther insisted that his Bible contain footnotes, dogmatic explanations, and commentaries to prevent that kind of crazy “private interpretation.” (It was also ironic that in the the prologue Mark Devers scoffs at the notion that Protestantism divided into mutually antagonistic denominations since Reeves spends a lot of time showing that it did, including arguing that the English Reformation was a Reformation but not a Protestant Reformation.)

Reeves spends time explaining away Luther's awful book on “The Jews and Their Lies,” but he doesn't mention that Luther reinvigorated the “blood libel” after Catholic Popes had spent centuries attempting to end that dangerous claim.

These are all examples in Reeves' book, but apart from Calvin and Servetus, and Luther and the Jews, Reeves doesn't seem to think that problematic behavior on the part of the Reformers needs explanation - except Calvin and Servetus, for some reason - so he blows right past all of these inconsistencies between theory and practice while condemning Catholicism for immorality. Interestingly in writing this review, I ran across this line from the Concordia Theological Quarterly (Lutheran):

” It must be added that some Roman Catholicism and Fundamentalist Protestants point out that a certain amoral streak exists in Lutheranism.32 I am not going to belabor this point since historically Lutherans have been anything but antinomian. The truthfulness of a religion is not ultimately judged by the moral conduct of its adherents, though the lack of morality can curtail its influence.”

True, unless one is writing a history of the Reformation, it seems, and then it applies against Catholicism only.

I also was amused by the treatment of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre which got mentioned and its own section and Reeve's casual reference to something that Reeves wants to depict as an obscure kerfuffle by a few Catholics in the north of England who were stubbornly refusing to become reconciled with the future:

“In similar style, Henry legislated both for and against Catholicism, and both for and against Protestantism. A large anti-Protestant uprising in the North, though savagely put down by Henry, was an alarm-call to him that antagonizing the old order could be dangerous. He responded by announcing harsh measures against those who denied such traditional beliefs as transubstantiation and celibacy for priests (no doubt making Mr and Mrs Cranmer nervous).”

This is amusing because it sugests how the anti-Catholic “Black Legend” lives on in the subterranean Protestant world, while Protestant persecutions of Catholics are forgotten. In this passage, Reeves is referring to the Pilgrimage of Grace, which resulted in Henry reneging on pardons to Catholics and promises not to suppress some Catholic practices. As a result of his promise-breaking, Henry executed over 140 Catholics, including burning one pregnant woman.

But those were only Catholics on the wrong side of history, so, never mind. Those kinds of things just don't make it into the history books.

Also, I was amused by the absence of any reference to Luther's decision to secretly permit one of his supporters to enter into a bigamous marriage. Again, this is a devotional work, so I had no expectation that there would be a mention of that problematic conflict of interest. I suspect that if even one bishop had done the same thing, that would have made the list of Catholic sins.

Because of Reeves reference to it, I spent some time reading up on the “revered Rood of Boxley”, which he describes as “a crucifix which would jiggle excitedly whenever anyone made a generous donation.” I learned from scholars who had read primary sources on the subject that at the time of the English Reformation it was not in working condition and that no monk knew that it had the ability to be manipulated. In addition, it was known to be a mechanical contraption of a kind well-known to be used in Passion Plays. By omitting this detail, of course, Reeves can plant the notion of stupid and gullible Catholic peasants who would be liberated by enlightened and literate Protestants.

Weirdly, this book is an intentional throwback to the anti-Catholic triumphalism of earlier decades. Mark Dever's prologue acknowledges as much:

“This book focuses on the first few decades of this remarkable story. With stories, anecdotes, and explanations that catch something of the flash and thunder of the insights and conflicts of the time, this book tells the story of the attempted reform of the universal Church and its rejection by many of those in positions of power and authority. For the last several decades, it has been the accepted thing to tell the story of the Reformation from Rome's standpoint. The wider contrarianism of the 1960s joined with important, real, and fresh research into the sixteenth century that has revised much of the accepted historical orthodoxies about the state of the Christian church in western Europe, and of the popular practices of piety in the early 1500s. J. J. Scarisbricke, Christopher Haigh, Eamon Duffy, John Bossy, and a host of others have refined the more Protestant reading of the early sixteenth century as a time solely of corruption and despair. They have explained political and economic interests of rulers in backing Lutheran teachings and rejecting the political claims of the Roman Church. John Foxe's Book of Martyrs has been balanced and demythologized and corrected. Traditional readings of the Reformation by everyone from Merle d'Aubigne to A. G. Dickens have been dismissed. To many ‘the Protestant Reformation' has been removed from history altogether as little more than pious propaganda, more hagiography than history.”

Reeves' book clearly intends to play the old song. It nowhere indicates any awareness that things were far more nuanced and complicated than his Manichean story of good v. evil. This book, on the whole, reads as if it were recited from Sunday School lessons learned long ago when the good guys were the good guys and the bad guys were the bad guys. That would explain the absence of footnotes and the fact that sometimes this book reads like it was written for children, e.g., “Yet with Bucer and Farel ganging up on him, he was eventually persuaded. Poor Calvin!”

Obviously, if a person is looking for a devotional that will convince them that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, then this is the correct book to read and enjoy. However, there are other books that are more scholarly and more informative and provide a more neutral overview of the Reformation. I recommend that those books be read.