NOTE: part of this essay first appeared on the Ad Fontes website in 2022. That piece has been expanded here.
Introduction
In an eco-conscious age, we are looking for who to blame for our ecological crises. The tendency to lay the blame for all modernity’s ills at the feet of Protestantism often means the Reformation ends up in the dock. In his 2012 book The Unintended Reformation (surely the now archetypal recent “blame the Reformation!” polemical text), Brad Gregory claims that environmental concern is one of three “practical” issues of “considerable import” motivating his work.[1] Environmental damage, Gregory argues, is caused by “seemingly insatiable consumer desires and capitalist production”, which have been unleashed by the axiomatic belief that “the acquisition of consumer goods is the presumptive means to human happiness”.[2] By way of a lengthy intellectual genealogy, Gregory pins this on the Reformation.
This accounts for a changed view of ourselves, but Gregory also charges the Reformation with altering our view of nature, making us willing to treat it in such a way. In a move now almost overfamiliar to many, he pins this charge on the metaphysical univocity of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, and the Protestant rejection of transubstantiation: “Desacramaentalized and denuded of God’s presence via metaphysical univocity and Occam’s razor, the natural world would cease to be either the Catholic theater of God’s grace or the playground of Satan as Luther’s princeps mundi. Instead, it would become so much raw material awaiting the imprint of human desires.”[3] Elsewhere he describes the natural world as now “an enormous Baconian mine of disinterested matter waiting to be made into the material things that serve human desires for self determined “betterment””.[4] Gregory here hitches himself to the wagon of the “disenchantment” hypothesis popularised by Max Weber and Charles Taylor.[5]
Interestingly, despite saying environmental issues are one of his top three concerns, Gregory scarcely touches the issue throughout the book (and unsurprisingly, this thread of the book is barely ever mentioned in discussions about it). The gauntlet has, however, been very much taken up by thinkers such as long-time environmentalist, now conservative Orthodox convert, Paul Kingsnorth.[6] Chronicling his 2021 trip to monastery on Skellig Michael (founded c. 7th century), Kingsnorth describes the faith of its founders as “a wilder Christianity… localised around islands, rocks, caves and mountains, [which] undeniably incorporated what we would now call a ‘panentheist’ spirit: a sense that the divine is active in the world”.[7] What happened to this “Wild Christianity”?[8] Being Orthodox, Kingsnorth ultimately places the roots of our bifurcation from nature further back than Gregory, blaming it on medieval Roman conformity.[9] Yet the Reformation is still, in his telling, a key culprit, and he has directly engaged with Gregory’s thesis[10] Kingsnorth and others have, in part, tied a diminished view of nature to a loss of the liturgical calendar and devotion to the saints, which supposedly tied Christian piety into the natural world to a greater degree.[11] Nature is no longer redolent with meaning and glory, but inert and lifeless—and the Reformation’s fingerprints are all over the corpse.
There is a great deal contained in the above charge. This essay will limit itself to one aspect: is it straightforwardly true that the Reformation is responsible for modernity’s view of nature as simply “so much raw material”? Surveying the above criticisms, we may break them down into three sub-questions: whether Protestants viewed nature as a whole as less “enchanted” than their medieval forebears; whether Protestant sacramentology entails a diminished view of nature; and whether the Protestant reforms to the liturgical calendar really diminished man’s relationship with nature. To address each sub-question, we will examine the thinking of three key figures from the early Reformation: John Calvin, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Thomas Cranmer. These brief studies are by no means a comprehensive rebuttal of Gregory’s argument but evidence that, in short, things are not as simple as Gregory et al make out.
II. John Calvin and the Doctrine of Creation
Firstly, we must consider whether Protestants viewed the natural world as less “enchanted” than their medieval forebears. This question is inherently difficult to address because the doctrine of creation as such was not subject to Reformation debate.[12] This does not, of course, refute the argument of Gregory and others (who agree), since they argue that the Reformation’s negative impacts were largely unintentional. However, it should make us aware that such claims are therefore actually quite difficult to substantiate. Combatting alleged Protestant “disenchantment”, then, means reading between the lines of Reformation texts, searching for any overlooked tendencies to denigrate creation as whole, or for the emergence of unsustainable contradictions in discussions of, for example, the eucharist. The former possibility we shall take up presently with an examination of John Calvin’s doctrine of creation; the latter we shall do in the following section by examining Vermigli.
First, we should briefly establish what “enchantment” meant in the medieval era. We have cited already Taylor’s description that “the enchanted world in this sense is the world of spirits, demons, and moral forces which our ancestors lived in”–but what did this actually look like?[13] We may take, as an example, a section from John Mirk’s Festial. Mirk (active c.1380-142) was an Augustinian Canon regular in Shropshire, who authored texts popular among both priests and laypeople. His Festial is a collection of sermons accompanying the liturgical year. In one sermon exhorting his hearers to greater devotion, he first notes how “thondyrs ben oft herd” as a suggestion of God’s judgement. He then warns of the influence of “fendys” (fiends, or demons) over the natural world, as well as other day-to-day occurences:
Thay rerythe warres: thay makyth tempestys in the see, and drownyth schyppres and men, thay makythe debate bytwyx neghtburs and manslaughter therwyth; thay tendyth fyres, and brennen houses and townes; thay reryth wyndys, and blowyth don howysys, stepuls, and tres; they make wymen to ouerlaye hor children; that makyth men to sle homsolfe, to hong homsolf othyr down hom in wanhope, and such mony othyr curset dedys.[14]
“Enchantment” here, then, can be taken to mean that anything in the created order—from thunderclaps to cot death—can be a vehicle for divine revelation, whether on the part of God or Satan.
So, do we see in John Calvin any evidence of a view of creation which diminishes its capacity as a vehicle of divine revelation? Susan Schreiner’s account of his thought in this area causes us to answer with an emphatic “no”—though we will see that Calvin is not without his differences here. Compared with ancient and medieval traditions, Schreiner argues that Calvin “stood in a line of continuity with the past teachings of the church. He too taught the doctrines of creatio ex nihilo, the direct and mediate providence of God over nature and history, the goodness of creation, the revelatory function of nature, and the redemption of the cosmos”.[15] Rather than seeing himself as at odds with Romanists over creation, Calvin saw himself in opposition to the Anabaptists, Libertines, and Rationalists, whose views he saw as threatening the doctrine;[16] he also opposed the naturalism of both contemporary Stoics and Epicureans.[17]
So, how similar is Calvin to someone like John Mirk? Calvin has little to say about demons in his most extended discussion on the topic inInstitutes 1.14.13-18, and he does not there at all discuss demonic influence over nature (though he does, like Mirk, affirm their capacity to sow error and division in 1.14.15). He seems to regard the whole question as a potentially dangerous distraction.[18] However, in Calvin’s sermons on Job, we find just the kind of continuity which Schreiner posits. Preaching on Job 1:13-19, Calvin states:
A man might demand how it happened that fire came down from heaven to burn up Job’s cattle. For the devil hath not the lightning and tempests in his power: we grant him no such sovereignty as to have dominion in the air to raise whirlwinds and tempests at his pleasure. The answer hereunto is easy… although the winds be God’s heralds to execute his will, and that the lightning have like nature, yet the devil worketh by them when God useth his service…. Then let us think it not strange that God should give the devil such a liberty as to be able to raise up lightnings, whirlwinds, and tempests. For he is not able to do it as much as he himself liketh, but God serveth his own turn by him as it pleaseth himself.[19]
Like any medieval, Calvin affirms that both God and Satan work through natural phenomena. He couches the demonic aspect within God’s sovereignty, but in doing so says nothing which his medieval forebears would not also have said. Job was, as Schreiner elsewhere notes, a much-commented upon book in the middle ages, and when Calvin preached on it “his listeners heard not only the Genevan Reformer but echoes of that medieval tradition.”[20]
When faced unavoidably with the question of divine activity within discrete natural events, then, Calvin stands in continuity with the medievals. However, given his overall lack of interest in such discrete interventions, it appears that Calvin differs from the likes of Mirk on the frequency and specificity with which either God or Satan act in this way. Rather than continually attempting to divine the intent of both God and demons in natural events, Calvin focuses on creation’s constant communication of God’s goodness. This different focus is evidenced clearly in the final 1559 Institutes, when Calvin intentionally shifts from his brief discussion of angels and demons to God’s constant revelation in creation:
Meanwhile let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beautiful theatre. For, as I have elsewhere said, although it is not the chief evidence for faith, yet it is the first evidence in the order of nature, to be mindful that wherever we cast our eyes, all things they meet at the works of God, and at the same time to ponder with pious meditation to what end God created them.[21]
The warning: we may be so intent on discerning the discrete activities of God and demons that we become ashamed of God’s constant work in creation all around us. According to Schreiner, Calvin is principally concerned with two things when he considers creation: order and providence. At the centre is “the concept of order”, rooted in the belief that “God is not a God of disorder but of peace” (1 Cor. 14:33).[22] This quest for order is driven by Calvin’s commitment to the providence of God as the sovereign creator and sustainer of creation. Schreiner characterises providence as the “proscenium arch” in Calvin’s view of the universe as a theatre of God’s glory, both upholding everything and making it visible to the audience.[23]
A strong emphasis on order may seemingly support Gregory’s criticisms, making Calvin seem a step on the road towards an atheistic, mechanised view of the universe. However, it is here that Calvin is in the greatest continuity with his forebears. Troubling natural phenomena in the medieval era were the exceptions that proved the rule that the universe is incredibly orderly. In his book The Light Ages, Seb Falk chronicles the development of medieval astronomy, demonstrating that medieval monks viewed the cosmos as finely ordered. He describes the impression of the universe which would have been made upon one monk, John Westwyck:
As a child, John Westwyck could observe how important it was for farmers to understand the cycles of the Sun and the skies. As he grew older, contemplation of the stars gave meaning to the vast cosmos; a glimpse into the mind of God. Measurement and mathematical analysis could only heighten his sense of a world that was precisely designed and obedient to God’s laws.[24]
Calvin shared this view. Commenting on Psalm 104:5, he affirms the “whole order of nature” in which “each element has its peculiar property”. However, he never discusses this order without reference to God’s providence constantly sustaining that order, as seen if we expand his commentary:
[N]othing in the world is stable except in as far as it is sustained by the hand of God. The world did not originate from itself, consequently, the whole order of nature depends on nothing else than his appointment, by which each element has its own peculiar property…Yea, all the agitations which befall it more fully confirm to us the truth, that the earth would be swallowed up every moment were it not preserved by the secret power of God.[25]
In contrast to the medievals, Calvin is in fact more properly focussed on creation itself and its constant, clear divine message, rather than the sporadic, mysterious portents which the medievals sought to divine. We could say that, for Calvin, there is no need to “enchant” creation with immediate instances of demonic or divine activity, because it is already, by its nature, “magical”—a constant site of divine activity, declaring the glory of God by displaying his eternal power and divine nature (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 1:20). For Taylor’s definition of disenchantment to hold, the “locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual élan” would have to have shifted purely to the mind, but this is simply not what we find in Calvin.
III. Peter Martyr Vermigli and Eucharistic Divine Immance
The second issue we must address is whether Protestant sacramentology entails a diminished view of nature. The caveat must briefly be made that there were at least three different strands of Protestant sacramentology at the time of the Reformation, and so “Protestant sacramentology” does not necessarily describe a unified reality; however, these strands can certainly all be understood as sharing a common rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation as it had come to be formally articulated by Rome by the early 1500s.
Gregory makes this charge very openly. He argues that the (supposedly) common denial among Protestants “that Jesus could be really present in the Eucharist… is a logical corollary of metaphysical univocity”, since the spiritual presence and real presence of Christ are played off against one another as if they are simply two varieties of the same thing, with an attempt to preserve divine transcendence ending up simply denying divine immanence (particularly in Zwingli).[26] The supposedly univocal metaphysics of Protestant sacramentology combined at some point “with Occam’s razor and a conception of the natural world as an explanatorily adequate system of self-contained, efficient causes”, thus distancing God from direct involvement with creation, and leading “unintentionally and indirectly to post-Enlightenment disenchantment.”[27] Gregory sees Protestant rejection of transubstantiation as a denial of divine immanence tout court: if even the eucharist could not be an occasion on which lowly created elements became vehicles of the divine, then how could anything else in creation reveal God? Creation, supposedly, becomes like a party decorated for a guest who is not coming—who, indeed, cannot come, since he has been reduced to the same order as the decorations.
By staking so much on Protestant sacramentology, Gregory opens himself up to a simple critique: if he is wrong on this, he is wrong on almost everything. So, does Protestant sacramentology, of whatever stripe, logically correlate with metaphysical univocity? Do Protestants deny divine immanence in their attempt to preserve divine transcendence? A close examination of the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli, one of the Reformation’s greatest voices on the eucharist, demonstrates that Protestant sacramentology entails no such things.
In his Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, Vermigli gives a masterful defence of Reformed sacramentology. As well as dismantling the Roman position, he also critiques those of Luther and Zwingli, and it is his response to the latter’s views which are of most interest to us. Vermigli critiques the Zwinglians for too seldom affirming any kind of change in the eucharistic elements, directly affirming that the Reformed do believe in a change taking place—not one of transubstantiation, but what he calls a “sacramental mutation of the bread and wine” or “sacramental conversion”.[28] This is a change which occurs when Christ joins himself to the symbols, a change and joining which Vermigli likens to those which take place when Christ dwells in believers or speaks through the Word.[29]
The Zwinglians, Vermigli says, will say that such a view “attributes too much to the elements of this world.”[30] Here, we see the Zwinglians perhaps proving Gregory’s charge right: that Protestant sacramentology drives God out of any created element in a desire to preserve his transcendence. But Vermigli counters in a way which powerfully affirms both:
We answer that it is not attributed to them for their own sake, but on account of the institution of the Lord, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the clarity of the words. If they ask how I can know that the Holy Spirit is at work here, the answer is simple: because a spiritual eating is already ordained, and how will we eat spiritually without the Holy Spirit? There is no doubt about the Lord’s institution, and of the efficacy of the Word the Scriptures everywhere speak. Paul says, “The Gospel is the power of God to salvation,” namely that God will declare his power by this instrument; and what else is the Eucharist than the visible Gospel or Word? Paul also says, “Faith is by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Not that the Word makes us believe, for the Spirit is he though whom we believe; but he uses the instrument of words and also sacraments, which are sensible words of God. For who does not know that creatures are sanctified by the Word of God, as in the letter to Timothy? This also must be understood properly, for it is the Holy Spirit who sanctifies, but he does it through instruments of both words and sacraments. Therefore we must not remove from bread and wine this change by which they are made effective signs of the body and blood of Christ, that is, through which the Spirit of the Lord works in us powerfully and extraordinarily provided we are endowed with faith and piety.[31]
An affirmation of divine transcendence undergirds Vermigli’s entire argument: God is not in competition with the created elements as if he were the same kind of being, jostling for “presence” in the eucharist. Rather, being entirely distinct from creation, he is sovereignly able by the work of the Holy Spirit (mentioned six times) able to use created means to his ordained end. In describing this use, Vermigli then affirms divine immanence, three times referring to the sacraments (along with the Word) as “instruments” of God which “declare his power”, “make us believe”, and “sanctify” us, being “effective signs of the body and blood of Christ”—“effective” meaning not simply “effectively”, but truly having an effect caused by the body and blood of Christ. Such language is hard to square with Gregory’s insistence that Protestant sacramentology destroys divine immanence.
Vermigli then goes on to affirm that the union believers have with Christ isa union with his body. Although the union itself is, by necessity, a spiritual one, it is not one which simply unites spirit to spirit, but also body to body: “Although we hold that the encounter with Christ’s body happens through faith, yet a true union with Christ follows this contact as an effect, not fictitious or imaginary. It is related to the soul then redounds to the body.”[32] Turning to Ephesians 5:30, Vermigli notes that “[t]he words from Ephesians are especially relevant here, according to which we are said to be of his flesh and of his bones.”[33] Vermigli does not read this as simply a metaphor for spiritual union, but as speaking of a real union of our bodies with the resurrection body of Christ. Vermigli then explains why an affirmation of this spiritual union of bodies does not necessitate either a Lutheran or Roman view of real presence:
The above does not make it necessary to draw Christ from heaven, or spread his body throughout infinite places, since everything we teach is spiritual. Yet it is not fictional, since spectres, apparitions, and illusions do not nourish the soul, as this certainly does. For we declare and insist that these symbols signify, offer, and most truly exhibit the body of Christ, although spiritually, that is to be eaten with the mind, not the bodily mouth.[34]
Vermigli is at pains to affirm that teaching a spiritual union does not mean teaching a merely imagined union. By the Spirit, the sacramental signs “truly exhibit” the body of Christ, and so nourish the soul. The created elements then, by the sovereign Word of God, are affirmed as vehicles of the divine, not inert collections of atoms in which God is inactive. This strongly echoes what we saw in the previous section regarding Calvin and creation more generally: creation has no glory of its own, yet, sustained by the Word of his power (Heb. 1:3), its ongoing order reveals his glory. The same is true of his sovereign work in the visible Word of the eucharist—yet in a different manner, not least of all because the sacraments proclaim the Gospel.
Gregory, then, overplays his hand: to charge Protestant sacramentology in its entirety with necessitating a diminished view of creation by rejecting divine immanence simply fails to pay attention to what the Reformed actually taught. Of course, Gregory may be right that Zwinglianism (the now dominant Western Protestant sacramentology) has played a hand in this, but that is a far lesser claim than the one he makes. What’s more, we should note that even Vermgli, before giving the above response to the Zwinglian position, defends Zwingli against the latter’s staunchest critics, stating that Zwingli “considers the signs in this sacrament to be far from empty or useless”.[35]
IV. Thomas Cranmer and the Rhythm of the Seasons
Finally, we must consider whether the Protestant reforms to the liturgical calendar really diminished man’s relationship with nature. This charge is an often nebulous one, hard to find articulated with much precision, but it permeates the writing of many contemporary, non-Protestant advocates of “reenchantment.” The accusation is, essentially, that the abundance of religious feasts which structured European life prior to the Reformation were closely tied to the seasons, and so the loss of the liturgical calendar ruptured man’s relationship with the natural world, denigrating it for him, and thus enabling him to view it exploitatively. Examples of such lost festivals may be Midsummer’s Eve in June, known otherwise as St. John’s Eve—a night marking the high point of summer when bonfires were lit and plants took on magical properties. A rose picked on Midsummer’s Eve would last until Christmas; St. John’s Wort would take on healing powers.[36] Or we might consider the “charming of the fields” in late spring during Rogationtide (the run-up to Ascension), in which crosses were paraded through the countryside and Gospel readings given to future crops.[37] These festivals and fasts, whilst mostly not properly about nature, unavoidably incorporated nature into their observances,pushing man into regular contact with the natural world as a vehicle for God’s revelation. With the loss of the rhythms of the liturgical year, Christendom then supposedly lost its sense of the rhythms of the natural year, paving the way for a technocratic dominance of the natural world which pays little heed to its contours, with people seeking simply to extract from it whatever they desire.
The nature of such reforms of course varied from country to country, and so we shall limit ourselves to consideration of the English reforms enacted by Thomas Cranmer under Henry VIII. In 1536, with Cranmer in place as Archbishop of Canterbury, a clerical Convocation of the Church of England (chaired somewhat aggressively by Thomas Cromwell on behalf of the crown) met to consider various pressing matters of reform—most significantly, to what extent the English church could affirm the Augsburg Confession.[38] In 1535, Henry had sent a delegation to Wittenberg to see if an alliance with the Lutherans could be made, having made it clear that he would never sign a full Lutheran confession.[39] The output of the Convocation, then, is not an example of full-blooded Protestant thought on most matters, since all things were phrased, as Gerald Bray puts it, “in order to get past the eagle eye of Henry VIII” and to be acceptable to the large number of Convocation members who were not overly enthused by reform.[40] The eighth article instructed that “all bishops and preachers shall instruct and teach our people, committed by us unto their spiritual charge, that saints, now being with Christ in heaven, be to be honoured of Christian people on earth, but not with that confidence and honour which are due only unto God”, affirming the ongoing observation of saints’ days.[41] However, eight days after the articles were signed by Cromwell and the Convocation, the assembly mapped out a proposal for the abrogation of certain holy days.[42] This proposal sought to put into legislation concerns which Hugh Latimer had raised in his opening sermon to the Convocation:
Do ye see nothing in our holidays? of the which very few were made at the first, and they to set forth goodness, virtue, and honesty: but sithens, in some places, there is neither mean nor measure in making new holidays, as who should say, this one thing is serving of God, to make this law, that no man may work. But what doth the people on these holidays? Do they give themselves to godliness, or else ungodliness? See ye nothing, brethren? If you see not, yet God seeth. God seeth all the whole holidays to be spent miserably in drunkenness, in glossing, in strife, in envy, in dancing, dicing, idleness, and gluttony. He seeth all this, and threateneth punishment for it. He seeth it, which neither is deceived in seeing, nor deceiveth when he threateneth.
Thus men serve the devil; for God is not thus served, albeit ye say ye serve God. No, the devil hath more service done unto him on one holiday, than on many working days. Let all these abuses be counted as nothing, who is he that is not sorry, to see in so many holidays rich and wealthy persons to flow in delicates, and men that live by their travail, poor men, to lack necessary meat and drink for their wives and their children, and that they cannot labour upon the holidays, except they will be cited, and brought before our Officials? Were it not the office of good prelates to consult upon these matters, and to seek some remedy for them? Ye shall see, my brethren, ye shall see once, what will come of this our winking.[43]
The Convocation subsequently passed “an Act for the abrogation of certain holy days”, in which the king decreed that all parochial dedication festivals should be celebrated on the first Sunday in October rather than on church’s saint’s day, and that all feasts falling in harvest time (from 1st of July to 29th of September), as well as those occurring during Westminster law terms, should be abolished, “excepting only feasts of the Apostles, the Blessed Virgin, St. George,the Ascension, the nativity of John the Baptist, All Saints’ Day, and Candlemas, along with Easter (including Lent) and Christmas (including Advent).[44] Although the act itself cites “superstition” as a concern regarding the multiplication of feast days,[45] its primary concern (following Latimer), is sinful celebration and the fact that, during harvest, good food is lost through “not taking the opportunity of good and serene weather, offered upon the same in time of harvest.”[46] This latter point is the most relevant to our concerns: the abrogation of feast days under Cranmer was explicitly driven by a submission to the natural rhythm of the seasons. For the benefit of the poor, Cranmer said that men must make hay while the sun shines—literally. Contrary to the nebulous criticism that the reform of the liturgical calendar sundered man’s relationship with the natural world, we find that, at its inception, it was driven by the need to relate more rightly tothe natural world. With their abundance of saints days, it was the papists distancing people from creation, not the Protestants.
It may immediately be objected that this shift simply evidences another of Gregory’s chief charges against the Reformation: that it inaugurated an “intensification and demographic spread of capitalist behaviour and acquisitive practices” which “precipitated the progressive disembedding of economics from any public morality expect that dictated and reinforced by the market and the competitive self-interest of autonomous individuals.”[47] By stripping workers of their feast days—rare moments of leisure amidst a brutalising medieval existence—in the name of a more productive harvest, Cranmer and the Convocation were arguably placing productivity and capital above rest and community. However, we can flip this entirely: to the (significant) extent that they upheld the wider, profit-driven system of merit in medieval Roman religion, the excessive number of feast days were deployed in service of acquisitiveness and capital—rather like large companies offering beer fridges and an office party culture to engender employee loyalty, whilst withholding more costly but ultimately more helpful benefits such as healthcare of maternity pay.
V. Conclusion
We return then to our initial question: is it true that the Reformation is straightforwardly responsible for modernity’s view of nature as simply “so much raw material”? The brief survey of Reformation sources undertaken above should lead us to conclude that is at least not nearly so simple, and that the burden of proof remains on the anti-Protestant polemicists. This is not to say that significant developments concurrent with and related to the Reformation have not played a significant role in the creation of modernity’s defective view of the natural world; it is simply to say that those developments cannot reasonably be attributed to the Reformation itself, even by good and necessary consequence. As seen in Calvin, Protestantism stood in broad continuity with medieval beliefs regarding God and Satan’s discrete use of natural phenomena, but shifted emphasis to the clearer and constant revelation of God in creation as a whole—a shift which in fact entailed a higher view of creation, giving ears to its constant voice. As seen in Vermigli, a clear understanding of the way in which Reformed sacramentology upholds God’s use of the eucharistic elements as instruments for truly exhibiting the body and blood of Christ rubbishes the suggestion that Protestant sacramentology per se rejects divine immanence (and even charges against Zwingli on this discount may be over-exaggerated). And finally, as seen in the early reforms under Cranmer, the Protestant approach to the liturgical calendar in fact entails a greater closeness to the rhythms of the natural world than the Romanist one. Rather than bringing a disenchantment into the world, the Protestant view of creation, by affirming the already present “magic” of creation’s order, instrumentality, and rhythms, rather corrected what we might call the Romanist mis-enchantment of creation in their errant superstitions, sacramentology, and liturgical practices.
The charges advanced by Gregory, and others then, fall down when scrutinised against the actual thought of the Reformers. What’s more, the charges simply fail to take notice of how some of modernity’s greatest thinkers have accounted for the shift in how we view the natural world. At the risk of criticising Gregory for the argument he doesn’t make, he laments how we have reduced creation to “an enormous Baconian mine of disinterested matter waiting to be made into the material things,” yet does not once engage with Martin Heidegger.[48] Gregory’s criticisms are along the exact same lines as those made by Heidegger in The Question Concerning Technology: the essence of modern technology (drawing from its Greek root techne) is a “revealing” or “bringing-forth”, brought about by a “challenging” [Herausfordern] and “setting upon” [stellen] nature through an “expediting” [Fördern] which unlocks and exposes the latent potential in natural resources which, crucially, are stored rather than used, reducing nature to the level of a “standing reserve” [Bestand].[49] Heidegger famously gives the example of the hydroelectric power on the Rhine for how such technology changes our view of the natural world: “What the river is now, namely, a water power supplier derives from out of the essence of the power station. In order that we may even remotely consider the monstrousness that reigns here, let us ponder for a moment the contrast that speaks out of the two titles, “The Rhine” as dammed up into the power works, and “The Rhine” as dammed up into the art work in Hölderlin’s hymn by that name.”[50] Heidegger’s account is the definitive one of our changing relationship with the natural world, and he places its genesis long after the Reformation. Notably, he cites Hölderlin as embodying an earlier, more “enchanted” view of nature in his poetry—a man born 250 years after the Reformation, into a strongly Lutheran family, and whose career largely post-dated the Enlightenment. If Gregory’s account is right, how could someone like Hölderlin possibly have remained so much an epitome of enchantment that he is Heidegger’s go-to example?
Gregory’s alleged concern for our environmental crises is a laudable one. And he is right that, if there is any hope of addressing it, we require an intellectual genealogy to do so. But his attempt to attribute our dysfunctional relationship with creation to Protestantism simply does not hold water. We would all do better to look for an explanation elsewhere.
Rhys Laverty is Senior Editor of Ad Fontes, Senior Managing Editor of the Davenant Press, and Communications Director for The Davenant Institute. He writes The New Albion Substack, and his writing has appeared in First Things, The Spectator, The Critic, and elsewhere.
[1] Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How A Religious Revolution Secularized Society (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2012), 14-20.
[2] Gregory, Unintended Reformation,17-18.
[3] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 57.
[4] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 295.
[5] “[Pre-modern people] lived in an “enchanted” world. This is perhaps not the best expression: it seems to evoke light and fairies. But I am invoking here its negation, Weber’s expression “disenchantment” as a description of our modern condition. This term has achieved such wide currency in our discussion of theses matters, that I’m going to use its antonym to describe a crucial feature of the pre-modern condition. The enchanted world in this sense is the world of spirits, demons, and moral forces which our ancestors lived in… The process of disenchantment is the disappearance of this world, and the substitution of what we live today: a world in which the only locus of thoughts, feelings, spiritual élan is what we call minds; the only minds in the cosmos are those of humans (grosso modo, with apologies to possible Martians or extra-terrestrials); and minds are bounded, so that these thoughts, feelings, etc. are situated “within” them.” Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 25-26; 30).
[6] Kingsnorth’s testimony and conversion are detailed in “The Cross and the Machine”, First Things, June 2021, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/the-cross-and-the-machine.
[7] Paul Kingsnorth, “Intermission: The Green Martyrdom”, The Abbey of Misrule, 14 July 2021, subscriber only Substack, https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/intermission-the-green-martyrdom.
[8] Kingsnorth coins this specific phrases in “Intermission: Reading Matter”, The Abbey of Misrule, 3 February 2022, subscriber only Substack, https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/intermission-reading-matter-1b2.
[9] Kingsnorth, “Intermission, The Green Martyrdom”.
[10] Paul Kingsnorth, “The Migration of the Holy”. The Abbey of Misrule, 24 January 2022, subscriber only Substack, https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/the-migration-of-the-holy
[11] See Kingsnorth’s reflections on Saint Patrick and the interweaving of Irish Christian sites with the environment in “Splendour of Fire, Speed of Lightning” The Abbey of Misrule, 18 March 2022, https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/splendour-of-fire-speed-of-lightning.
[12] Susan Schreiner notes this point: “In the sixteenth century the doctrine of creation was not the point of controversy between Catholics and Protestants. Their central debates concerned justification, the Eucharist, authority, the interpretation of Scripture, and the certainty of salvation.” Susan E. Schreiner The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991), 2.
[13] Taylor, A Secular Age, 26.
[14] John Mirk, Mirk’s Festial: A Collection of Homilies, ed. Theodore Erbe (London: Early English Text Society, 1905), 150. Archaic Middle English letters have been updated for legibility.
[15] Schreiner, Theater of His Glory, 3.
[16] Schreiner, Theater of His Glory, 3.
[17] Schreinger, Theater of His Glory, 17.
[18] “And what concern is it to us to know anything more about devils or to know it for another purpose? Some persons grumble that Scripture does not in numerous passages set forth systematically and clearly that fall of the devils, its cause, manner, time, and character. But because this has nothing to do with us, it was better not to say anything, or at least to touch upon it lightly, because it did not befit the Holy Spirit to feed our curiosity with empty histories to no effect. And we see that the Lord’s purpose was to teach nothing in his sacred oracles except what we should lean to our edification. Therefore, lest we ourselves linger over superfluous matters, let us be content with this brief summary of the nature of devils.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol. 1, trans. Lewis Ford Battles, ed. John T. McNeill, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006),1.14.16, 175.
[19] John Calvin, Sermons of Master John Calvin Upon the Book of Job, trans. Arthur Golding (London: Lucas Harrison and Georger Bishop, 1574), 27. I have modernised some of the spelling for legibility.
[20] Susan E. Schreiner, “Exegesis and Double Justice in Calvin’s Sermons on Job”, Church History 58 no.3, September 1989, 322. Scheiner is referring specifically here to Calvin’s drawing upon commentators such as Gregory the Great, Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Lyra regarding providence and justice, but the point, as we have evidenced, holds true regarding views of creation as well.
[21] Calvin, Institutes, 1.14.20, 179.
[22] Schreier, Theater of His Glory, 3.
[23] Schreiner, Theater of His Glory, 7.
[24] Seb Falk, The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery (London: Penguin, 2021), 42
[25] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms Vol. 4, trans. James Anderson (Grand Rapids: Christian Classical Ethereal Library, n.d.), https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom11/calcom11.xiii.ii.html.
[26] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 42-43.
[27] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 42-43.
[28] Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist (Moscow: Davenant Press, 2018), 122.
[29] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 122.
[30] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 123.
[31] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 123. Emphasis added.
[32] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 124.
[33] Vermiglil, Oxford Treatise, 124.
[34] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 124. Emphasis added.
[35] Vermigli, Oxford Treatise, 121.
[36] Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford), “Tonight is Midsummer Eve, the night before the feast of St John the Baptist. It was once a high point of the festival year, a time for bonfires, ghosts, love, and roses – a night when plants had a special power of healing and fire could drive evils away”, Twitter, June 23 2022, https://twitter.com/ClerkofOxford/status/1539865221493309440.
[37] Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (Avon: Yale University Press, 1992), 279-280.
[38] Gerald Bray, The History of Christianity in Britain and Ireland: From the First Century to the Twenty-First (London: APOLLOS, 2021), 191-195.
[39] Bray, History of Christianity in Britain and Ireland,, 193-194.
[40] Bray, History of Christianity in Britain and Ireland,, 193.
[41] Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. David Wilkins (1737), III, 821.
[42] Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 394.
[43] Hugh Latimer, “Sermon Preached Before the Convocation of the Clergy” (Grand RapidsL Christian Classical Ethereal Library, n.d.), https://ccel.org/ccel/latimer/sermons/sermons.v.html.
[44] Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, 394.
[45] Concilia Magnae, III, 822.
[46] Concilia Magnae, III, 823.
[47] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 243.
[48] Gregory, Unintended Reformation, 295.
[49] Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2013), 14-16.
[50] Heidegger, Question Concerning Technology, 16.