Silvianne Aspray
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266939
- eISBN:
- 9780191953842
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266939.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Because the magisterial reformers largely rejected metaphysical discourses, is often assumed that the Protestant Reformation had no metaphysics. However, if metaphysics is understood as the ...
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Because the magisterial reformers largely rejected metaphysical discourses, is often assumed that the Protestant Reformation had no metaphysics. However, if metaphysics is understood as the ontological relationship between God and the world, how could any theological work not be at least implicitly metaphysical? This book argues that the avowedly anti-metaphysical stance of many reformers is itself a metaphysical position, and that teasing out the implicit metaphysics in their worldviews is both possible and worthwhile despite – or even because of – their insistent denials that they have any such thing. Metaphysics in the Reformation proposes a novel methodology for studying the implied metaphysics of the Reformation, focussing on implied structures of being and causality. It then applies this methodology to the under-researched work of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562). Analysing four main areas of Vermigli’s theology – his anthropology, his soteriology, his doctrine of the Eucharist, and his political theology – the book argues that in his theology, Vermigli simultaneously inhabits two different metaphysical models of the relationship between God and the world. The book contends that by extension, this holds true of Reformation theology more generally.Less
Because the magisterial reformers largely rejected metaphysical discourses, is often assumed that the Protestant Reformation had no metaphysics. However, if metaphysics is understood as the ontological relationship between God and the world, how could any theological work not be at least implicitly metaphysical? This book argues that the avowedly anti-metaphysical stance of many reformers is itself a metaphysical position, and that teasing out the implicit metaphysics in their worldviews is both possible and worthwhile despite – or even because of – their insistent denials that they have any such thing. Metaphysics in the Reformation proposes a novel methodology for studying the implied metaphysics of the Reformation, focussing on implied structures of being and causality. It then applies this methodology to the under-researched work of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562). Analysing four main areas of Vermigli’s theology – his anthropology, his soteriology, his doctrine of the Eucharist, and his political theology – the book argues that in his theology, Vermigli simultaneously inhabits two different metaphysical models of the relationship between God and the world. The book contends that by extension, this holds true of Reformation theology more generally.