The Reformation as Christianization. Essays on Scott Hendrix’s Christianization Thesis ed. by Anna Marie Johnson and John A. Maxfield (review)

Rather than focusing on theological differences and the formation of distinctive confessional groups, in his study Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization (Louisville, 2004) Scott Hendrix sought to focus on the common desire of Evangelical (Protestant), Catholic, and Radical reformers to cultivate a more authentic Christianity. However, for Hendrix, drawing on Constantin Fasolt’s image of continuity (Fortpflanzung), “the Reformation was not a new drama, but rather the second act in which the plot thickened and took an unexpected and unprecedented twist” (Recultivating, p. xx). Nevertheless, “sixteenth-century Christianization was not equivalent to medieval reform … it entailed a more sweeping renewal of Christendom than medieval preachers had deemed necessary” (ibid., p. 17). As well as a sensitivity to the Reformation’s dialogue with the Middle Ages—something that identifies the author as a pupil of Heiko Oberman (1930–2001), to whom Recultivating was dedicated—Hendrix was careful to avoid the error committed by Jean Delumeau, who also found a similarity between the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, but who believed—mistakenly, in Hendrix’s view—that it was the goal of these parallel movements “to spiritualise religion in the sense of internalizing piety at the expense of ritual. … [whereas] neither thought that religion could survive without it and they divided to a large degree over the issue of how much ritual to abolish” (ibid., p. 21). Nor did Hendrix believe, unlike Delumeau, that by framing the Reformation in terms of Christianization, one had to portray late-medieval people as “so full of superstition, anxiety and guilt that they appeared to be unchristian” (ibid., p. 22). In a similar spirit of refusing to schematize and desire for dialogue, the essays in the volume under review have been conceived as presenting a variety of perspectives on, rather than simple consensus about, Hendrix’s Christianization thesis, whose refusal to sacrifice a sense of the shape of the wood for any microhistorical obsession with the trees is shared by their authors. The collection is divided into five sections. Section 1 consists of five broad-ranging essays that address the key concept of Christianization in the broader context of the Middle Ages and the early-modern period. In the first chapter, Robert Bireley rehearses in characteristically lucid fashion the argument of his important survey, The Refashioning of Roman Catholicism 1450–1700 (Washington, DC, 1999). The central thrust of this book was to argue, in consonance with Hendrix, for the importance of regarding religious reform not only, or even primarily, as arising out of disputes over religious doctrine, but rather responding to the broader changes in society. Bireley concludes with the idea, borrowing a term used to described the Second Vatican Council’s spirit of renewal, that “[t]he various Protestant traditions and the Catholic Reform may be seen as competing efforts at aggiornamento” (p. 32). Gerald Christiansen’s contribution focuses on Nicolas of Cusa’s ideas for reform. For Cusa, it meant “to bring back to its original form” (Chris-tiformitas), which anticipated Martin Luther in his insistence that this came about through mediation of the Word, not through human effort. For Carter Lindberg, author of the next essay, a nuanced treatment of Christianization and Luther on the Early Profit economy, the Saxon reformer was determined to proclaim the Word. Lindberg thus begs to differ from Hendrix and argues that Luther’s focus was not on the Christianization of Christendom but on theology, which was memorably defined by Luther in his Commentary on Psalm 51 in the following terms: “The proper subject of theology is man guilty of sin and condemned, and God the Justifier and Savior of man the sinner … Whatever is asked or discussed, theology outside this subject is error and poison.” Lindberg...