Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England. By Paul C. H. Lim. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. xvi + 448 pp. $74.00 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Mystery Unveiled: The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England . By Paul C. H. Lim . Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2012. xvi + 448 pp. $74.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesIn early modern England, religious disputation suffused the culture of Protestantism. The Reformation gave birth to a national church established by law and governed by the Crown, a profound restructuring of authority ended papal hegemony but not discussion of what constituted an appropriately Protestant theology. For the past fifty years or so, scholars have mapped this religious culture in vivid depth and detail. Paul Lim's learned book takes up a theme has been explored previously, but which is also in need of a fresh consideration. The doctrine of the Trinity opened up the question of Christ's divinity: was He to be worshipped in His own right, or was God the Father the sole focus of devotion? This was a question engaged the attention of the early church, and it continued unabated in seventeenth-century England. Lim's book draws these two contexts together and offers some important insights into the religious, political and intellectual culture of early modern England.In 1645 the Independent minister John Owen made a marginal note on the doctrine of the Trinity. He described it as that mysterious Arke must not bee pryed into . . . wherein plain Scripture goeth not before. Here was the problem in its essence. That is, there were aspects of received doctrine came under scrutiny and which could not be accepted as mere mysteries. To many, this reliance on mystery cut to the heart of what was wrong with Catholic theology: it elevated the clergy and traditions of the church to a level of authority both usurped the scriptures and enslaved the reason of individual believers. However, Protestant ecclesiology did not depend on a wholesale repudiation of tradition; rather, it had to be re-interpreted and re-written. This process was aided by the parallel development in humanist textual and critical scholarship defined the late Renaissance: for humanists ad fontes meant a return to the classical sources in their pure form, an impulse complemented by the Protestant attachment to sola scriptura --an unbending adherence to the authority of the Word. This is the view expressed in Owen's note to himself.Broadly speaking, Mystery Unveiled examines how writers active in theological disputes during the 1640s and 1650s engaged with the rich textual history of the church, poring over its patristic authors, scrutinizing the judgements of its councils (beginning with Nicea), and, of course, attempting to make plain what it was the scripture said on the matter of the godhead. This is done in six chapters, each based on a deep and assured encounter with polemical and manuscript sources. The first examines the anti-trinitarianism of two prominent writers on trinitarianism: Paul Best and John Biddle, former Cambridge friends whose scholarly exchanges shed light on the approach to scriptural and patristic sources in the heat of polemical battle. …