The Sword of the Spirit, Puritan Responses to the Bible. by John R. KnottReview by: Douglas NichollsThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 147-148Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540088 .

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Book Reviews 147

The Sword of the Spirit, Puritan Responses to the Bible, by John R. Knott, Jr., The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1980. 194 pp., $12.00

An art historian who commented exclusively upon the use of the color blue in English paintings between 1540 and 1640 would produce criticism of limited insight. Similarly, a literary historian who concentrates upon one particular component, device, theme or genre, without wider reference to the historic purpose of that component runs the very serious risk of eroding the mountain of literature into a pebble. A geologist would not study a rock formation with only one piece of eqipment and one technique.

I am concerned that Knott's book, though concise, sensitive and eloquent, adopts a method inappropriate to a consideration of the use of the Bible from the first sixteenth century English translations to Bunyan. The very title of this book hints at the limitations of method: the Bible appears as homogeneous and passive, transported unblemished through time like a bar of gold, while the heterogeneous and active minds of mortals respond to it. In this sense Knott recapitulates the illusion of the Puritans themselves who saw the Word of God as in- divisible and ahistorical manifesting itself on earth as a light, bright or dim according to the relative blindness of man. The proper subject of contemporary inquiry is, in fact, in defiance of its illusion.

Contemporary scholarship must seek to explain the real, historic conjuncture which made certain ideas and images from, and attitudes towards the Bible an integral and aliquot part of the progressive movement against small scale production, feudal restriction and the monarchy in sixteenth and seventeenth century England. It is no longer, I feel, enough to repeat, as Knott does, old comments like: "Protestants of all kinds were capable of discovering paradigms in the experience of the Israelites and the spiritual life of David, or of being attracted by the figurative language of Isaiah and the Song of Solomon," unless we are prepared to consider the basis of the paradigm and why English experience was such a powerful metonym of Israel. So too with the idea of the 'power of the Word,' or the 'living Scripture:' to what extent was this idea made possible by the development of the powerful presses?

A detailed grasp of the variations in pitch and stress of this movement, reflected and generated by the writers analyzed in Knott's book, would enable us to appreciate more fully their points of contact and dissonance and the reasons for their adoption or inauguration of various literary forms. Knott can only link his subjects metaphysically: "The five writers that I discuss can be said to represent different moments in the evolution of a Puritan spirituality." "A sense of dynamism of the Word, ultimately the dynamism of the Holy Spirit acting through the Word, animates all five." More perversely, he can only account for their differences mechanistically: "The writers themselves differ in numerous respects, including their in- debtedness to Calvin, their intellect, their backgrounds, and their approaches to the question of how (and whether) the church should be organized." Knott sees Sibbes, Baxter, Winstanley, Milton and Bunyan as basically the same, but, in terms of superficial categories such as style and form, different. Future scholarship will have to bridge this gap.

Knott's first chapter sketches the development of Biblical translations and justifications for them. Most of this ground has been covered in detail elsewhere; nevertheless Knott's revision raises (perhaps inadvertently) a matter for more careful consideration. The reforming notion that the Scriptures must be available to all is clearly set against the acts passed against the reading of the Bible by women, artificers and apprentices and the traditional ecclesiastical restrictions. This familiar tension veils another equally worthy of investigation. Knott reiterates Tyndale's and Cranmer's repeated emphasis on the Bible as a source of instruction in 'godly living.' Such godliness was characterized by obedience to authority, particularly to the King. In my opinion this emphasis was actually the main motivating force behind the early translations. Knott ignores the plethora of psalm translations, mostly by members of the nobility, or Somerset's close supporters, which flooded the market just after the blatant lack of

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148 The Sixteenth Century Journal

obedience in 1549. Thus the whole important problem of the relationship between the apparent desire to have the ploughmen reading Scripture and the belief that Scripture encouraged obe- dience and harmony remains untouched.

Rooted from the very beginning in political responses to social order and authority, biblical metaphors and images were the vehicles of real ideas about real situations. Even meditation was seen by some as a means of stilling one's potentially rebellious spirit. In Knott's work it is, however, the force of quotations from the past, rather than the analysis of them, that clarifies this crucial point.

It may be argued that the criticisms of method in this review should not be made of a literary historian. But Knott's extremely sensitive and lucid appreciation of the essential style and qualities of a variety of genres; the Puritan sermon (Sibbes), meditation (Baxter), the radical tract (Winstanley), poetry and polemical prose (Milton), spiritual autobiography and religious allegory (Bunyan) so beautifully establishes literature as a sword in the battle for human advance that an account of their origins and functions within, and influences on social existence can only enrich our understanding. Anyone remotely interested in this period of history will benefit by reading this well produced and annotated work. Admirers of Sibbes will find him rightly rehabilitated. Winstanley's inheritors will find all of ther admiration confirm- ed. Those of us previously mystified by the 'audial imagination' and non-visual descriptiveness of Bunyan will be enlightened. Anyone who considered the un-Catholic disregard of oratory and verbal facility as a drab dogma will, having read this book, have understood a great deal concerning the eloquence of the language they use today and many of the concepts it conveys.

Douglas Nicholls University of Reading, England

The Battle for the Gospel: The Bible and the Reformation 1444-1589. By Marvin W. Anderson. Baker Book House: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1978. 136 pp., $4.95

In this brief volume the author seeks to describe the histoy of translations and commen- taries on the Bible from 1444-1589. The book also interweaves commentary, confession and controversy, progressing from the humanist efforts of Erasmus, Valla, Lefevre and Tyndale to the Wittenberg reformers and on to the Reformed tradition and the Catholic renewal.

For each chapter Anderson selects a theme which he finds to be central for each group of translators and commentators. For the humanists, it is their "study of the Holy Writ"; for the Wittenberg reformers, "clashes over Word and Spirit"; for the Reformed, "concern for the clarity of Scripture"; and for the Catholics, "crisis over Scripture and tradition" (p. 18). Although these are all issues of great importance, the author does not sufficiently justify his particular selections. Certainly the Reformed were neither alone nor unique in being concerned for the clarity of Scripture. A theme which occurs at intervals throughout the book is that of the relation between Gospel and Scripture or, phrased differently, the question of the inerrancy or infallibility of Scripture. This question is very much on Anderson's mind, and he strongly criticizes the reformers for an interpretation of Scripture which neglected Matthew 5 in favor of "logical rigor" (p. 79). He further notes: "And their successors do not seem to have learned the lesson from History when they confuse inerrancy and infallibility."

The preceding statement is an example of the way in which the author at times intrudes upon his scholarly presentation. Such comments might well have been withheld until the con- clusion. A considerable number of typographical errors jar the reader's attention, along with a few factual ones. On page 16 the author implies that Thomas Muentzer was one of the Zwickau prophets, and on page 105 he errs in saying that Ignatius Loyola began the study of Latin in Paris, rather than in Barcelona. He might also have followed a consistent use of modern translations, rather than mixing modern and colloquial ones. On the interpretive level,

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