autonomy of the regional Church alienated him from those of a precisian
bent, his thoughts on the primacy of Scripture brought him into conflict
with the traditionalists. These questions confronted Jewel not only when
as a bishop he debated Harding and other traditionalists as regards the
prerogative of the English establishment to order its own rites, but even
in his earlier days, during his life both as a student at Oxford and as an
exile from England, Jewel found himself opposing these very factions,
and often employing – however embryonic in form – the same types of
arguments he used later. The apparent contradictions of this position
were lost on Jewel. The coherent mélange Jewel tried to effect of these
antipodes unraveled in the seventeenth century.
Alister McGrath concluded his investigation into the intellectual
origins of the Reformation with the assertion that no reductionist
framework that sought only one dominant factor would work with so
heterogeneous a movement as the Reformation, an epoch as diverse in its
factors as it was in its constituent members. What is instead necessary,
according to McGrath, is a hermeneutic for ‘the unfolding of a complex
matrix of creatively interacting intellectual currents’.^53 In like manner, in
trying to find the particular crux of Calvin’s theology, François Wendel
noted: ‘If we want to speak of a “system” of Calvin, we must do so with
certain reservations, owing to the plurality of themes that imposed
themselves simultaneously upon its author’s thinking.’^54 Wendel presents
a Calvin largely interested in the task of rightly interpreting the Bible,
and that even the Institutesmust be seen as preparatory exercises for a
student’s further study of the Bible. Thus any attempt to press
predestination, the sovereignty of God, the glory of God, or even the
centrality of Christ, into service as the central motif of Calvin’s thought
is futile.^55
John Jewel presents a similarly variegated picture. The conclusions
that sundry studies have drawn from Jewel’s polemical tracts, specifically
his Challenge Sermon and its consequent vindication in the Answer to
Harding, his Epistola, the Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae and the
subsequentA Defence of the Apology, are varied and mixed. Southgate
noted his use of Patristic authors, and how these positively guided Jewel
in his interpretation of Scripture and his formulation of dogmas.^56 F.J.
Levy cited Jewel’s use of history, and that his critical approach to sources
shows him an heir of Renaissance humanism and criticism in the vein of
244 JOHN JEWEL AND THE ENGLISH NATIONAL CHURCH
(^53) Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation(Oxford,
1987), p. 197.
(^54) François Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought(New
York, 1963) trans. Philip Mairet, p. 357.
(^55) Wendel, Calvin, p. 358.
(^56) Southgate,Doctrinal Authority, pp. 174–91.
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