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  • Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages by Ian Christopher Levy
  • Mary Raschko
Ian Christopher Levy. Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. 352. ISBN: 9780268034146. US$38.00 (paperback).

In this study of influential theologians from 1370 to 1430, Ian Christopher Levy characterizes the debates over orthodoxy and heresy in the later Middle Ages as contests of scriptural interpretation. Scripture's authority, Levy asserts, was virtually unquestioned, but the struggle to find its "authoritative determination" on a wide range of subjects—especially those pertaining to ecclesiastical authority and the sacraments—yielded the well-known conflicts surrounding Wyclif, Hus, and their followers. Throughout the book, Levy persuasively demonstrates Wyclif's many commonalities with the theologians who directly preceded him and with many of his opponents. Even more powerfully, however, the study highlights the vexing issues that arise from the claim that the divinely intended meaning of scripture is the source of orthodox belief.

The book begins with an ambitious introduction that outlines major issues affecting how scripture was defined, interpreted, and applied in the medieval church. With reference to a variety of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians, Levy shows that there was a broad consensus that God was the author of scripture and that, as such, scripture was free from error and was the principle measurement of orthodoxy. Crucial to understanding the heated debates over authoritative meaning is the fact that the definition of the "literal" sense of scripture shifted in the thirteenth century from its historical sense to the meaning intended by its divine author. [End Page 104] Although Levy asserts that the search for intended meaning was necessarily subjective, he goes on to demonstrate that neither Wyclif nor any other medieval theologian regarded the piety of the reader as sufficient basis for authentic interpretation. Patristic commentary was widely accepted as an authoritative guide, yet the same problems pertained to the interpretation of these texts as to scripture: determining what the commentaries meant and how they applied to the late medieval church. Levy characterizes issues of scriptural and ecclesiastical authority as closely interrelated; therefore, throughout the second half of the introduction, he takes up the subject of extrascriptural tradition and the development of the church over time. He especially emphasizes conflict between theologians and canon lawyers. As "masters of the sacred page," theologians regarded themselves as the primary defenders of scriptural truth and, therefore, of orthodoxy. Yet it was the canon lawyers' role to apply scripture to the life of the church, and their efforts to increase papal authority threatened to inhibit the freedom of theologians to determine scripture's authoritative meaning. Given that theories of papal infallibility had little support in the period, Levy concludes that there seemed to be no final authority in the world for determining the truth of scripture and that this lack led to such strident contention in the later Middle Ages among theologians with remarkably similar views.

Levy structures the subsequent chapters around a series of major figures, but John Wyclif emerges as the key focus of the book. In the second chapter, Levy states his aim to replace the image of Wyclif as a radical with an image of Wyclif as a quintessential medieval theologian. Taking seriously his duties as a master of the sacred page, Wyclif defended the right of theologians to determine truth, protect orthodoxy, and correct prelates. For Wyclif, Holy Scripture is defined not as any physical book or expression in a particular language but as the Eternal Word or Book of Life that transcends any individual exemplar. Moreover, Wyclif regards Christ both as the hermeneutical key that guarantees true interpretation of scripture and as scripture itself. In the chapter, Levy counters two prominent ideas about Wyclif's exegesis: that he adhered to a hermeneutic of sola scriptura and that he neglected the literary complexities of the Bible in his emphasis on the Eternal Word. Levy argues that like other medieval theologians, Wyclif regarded the exegetical tradition as an authoritative guide and valued glossing, so long as it made explicit the truth of scripture...

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