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Rating: Summary: CALLING ON CHRIST IN A DESPERATE WORLD Review: "There was a king of Yvetot, " wrote the French poet Pierre-Jean de Beranger, "little known to history." Pick any period of history of which you are especially fond, and you will feel strongly that some figure you deem important is too "little known."Consider the era of the English Reformation. It is a time of tumultous change. A king shifts his faith, leaders are burned at the stake, people flee the country, many monasteries are destroyed, and the king's successors shift back and forth in the middle of the sixteenth century with astonishing rapidity. Read any work on this time and the authors TEND to focus on the politics, the leaders, the church, the liturgy and the men. When a woman is mentioned at all, the one bright light that gets nearly all the attention is Elizabeth I (1533-1603). Nearly all the other women are less noticed, and when they are focused on little is said about the role THEOLOGY plays in their lives and ministries. In a highly provocative and little noticed book, "When Life and Beliefs Collide : How Knowing God Makes a Difference" (Zondervan, 2001), Carolyn James writes: "As I have met with hundreds of women, I have encountered a wide spectrum of negative attitudes towards theology, from casual indifference to open hostility, and all points in between. Here and there, a few women may find theology fascinating, may even devote a lot of time to study it, but they are exceptional and, in the opinion of some, a little peculiar. Beyond these rare exceptions, most women cannot be bothered." Well, in the period of the English Reformation women COULD be bothered, indeed fascinated, by theology, as Paul Zahl's "Five Women of the English Reformation" (Eerdmans, 2001) shows. Dr. Zahl picks Anne Boleyn (1507-1536), Anne Askew (1521-1546), Katherine Parr (1514-1548), Jane Grey (1537-1554), and Catherine Willoughby (1520-1580) for his examination. "All of these woman thought theologically," he writes. "They were lay theologians. They read theological books, most especially the Bible, and anything to which they could gain access from the continental Protestant Reformers. They talked theology. Their inner circles were twenty-four-hours-a-day Bible studies. They saw everything that happened through two lenses: the lens of the providence of God and the lens of the furtherance of the Reformed religion." For Dr. Zahl, the "Reformed religion" comes to England in three successive parts. "The first phase of Reformation theology was justification by grace through faith rediscovered. The second phase was the implications of justification by faith for the Mass, the Mass being the central action and transaction of medieval Catholicism. The third phase of the English Reformation was the focus on election and predestination." Phase one concerns Anne Boleyn, "who died meekly but gave away nothing." So completely was she erased from the official record "it became as if she had never lived." For Zahl, however, she left the indelible mark of her faith. "As queen, Anne understood her providential mission to be.to bring the Reformation to England and employ every single instance of patronage and influence to that end." What is the human predicament? "The human person is caught up in himself and herself until set free to love by a prior exterior love." That prior love is the love above all loves, and the heart of Anne's faith, "the forgiving love of Christ Jesus, without which all human endeavors of love are doomed to be scripted and need projected." The second phase of the Reformation involves another Anne. "Anne Askew's primary target was biblical teaching concerning the eucharist, and more precisely the idea of transubstantiation. Anne was burned for denying transubstantiation. Her denial of it was aggressive. In fact she mocked the concept!" Zahl believes Anne Askew rejected transubstantiation for two reasons. "First, it is irrational to say that God can be contained within any object of any kind..`God will not be eaten with teeth': This is the Enlightenment or critical, deconstructing side of Protestantism in early form." Anne's second reason Zahl calls an "evangelical" one, namely the notion that Christ 's atoning death occurred once for all. "To conceive of the Eucharist as a sacrifice of repetition, by which the benefits of Christ's death are presented new and actual each time on the altar, was to denigrate the `one, full perfect sacrifice'" of which Cranmer wrote. The final phase of the Reformation concerns Catherine Willoughby, the duchess of Suffolk in 1533, who lived the longest of the five women treated by Dr. Zahl. She addresses primarily the subjects of divine will, providence, and election. When she loses her sons Charles and Henry to death, she seeks to understand it as a "mercy. She means that by taking away from her, her very most cherished prerogative-her children and her attachment to them-God has intentionally forced her to rely solely on Him." Zahl confesses this is "counterintuitive" yet sees it as the inevitable outflow of Luther's theology. "If grace alone saves, then God alone is the willing actor in all human events.Contemporary people make heavy weather of this. Our ancestors generally accepted it." So here is vintage Zahl: compact, pithy, and theologically oh so rich. Appropriately, there is a chapter of reflection by Mary Zahl which concludes with the best call of the book: "Study the Bible.be courageous.See God as. [your] only authority.Be grateful that .[we are] not being asked to die for" our faith. For all the talk about theology, however, this theologian was most struck by all the suffering these women went through, the physical agony, the emotional trauma of becoming convenient victims in other's schemes, and the lives cut so terribly short (Willoughby excepted). "What I think we can say regarding the steel of our heroes' convictions is that in each case their new convictions were made firmer by means of affliction, loss and harassment." Indeed. "Shall I fall in desperation?" Katherine Parr asks. "Nay, I will call upon Christ, the Light of the world. The Fountain of life, the relief of all careful consciences, the Peacemaker between God and man, and the only health and comfort of all repentant sinners." Oh how they suffered, but they suffered for and with Christ. May God grant us similar rich and deep devotion to him in our generation. --The Rev. Dr. Kendall S. Harmon (ksharmon@mindspring.com) serves as Theologian in Residence at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Summerville, South Carolina
Rating: Summary: Scholarly and Interesting Author - Reflects Trad Anglicanism Review: Dean Zahl is an intriguing and interesting preacher and author. I read the book as I am deeply interested in the Reformation - particularly in the United Kingdom. I was most impressed with his chapter on Lady Jane Grey who certainly should be the role model and main subject of the five. I believe he should have downplayed the role of Anne Boleyn because of the great sorrow her marriage to Henry VIII caused to his wife of 20+ years. I am of course referring to Katherine of Aragon. Henry and Cranmer's treatment of the Queen was cruel and should not be defended in any modern Protestant forum. Indeed in Britain in Peterborough Cathedral her grave (desecrated by Protestants) was restored and now befittingly says "Katherine The Queen". I otherwise enjoyed the book but wish he had not remained silent on this issue when proclaiming Anne's virtues. A modern parallel might be considered in the relationship of Edward VII and Alexandra - Alexandra a devout Protestant endured Edward's numerous affairs. Katherine endured the same with Anne. I have read all of his books and consider him a scholar on Anglicanism. A little more compassion for Katherine would have made me rate the book higher.
Rating: Summary: Does not reflect Reformed thinking Review: I don't have the book in front of me anymore, so I can't pull quotes from it, but I remember thinking as I read this book that the author didn't really understand what the Reformation was about. At one point, he says in effect "God's love responds to man's faith". The Reformers clearly taught that man's faith responds to God's love and His calling. I know that the book wasn't about in depth theology, but statments like the above made it hard to take the rest of the book seriously.
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