Book Review: John Knox

In preparation for my Reformation Sunday sermon this year, I read a biography of John Knox (Rosalind K. Marshall, 2000). Before reading Marshall's book, my knowledge of John Knox was limited; I could only recite that he was one of the great reformers of the sixteenth century, a father of Scottish Presbyterianism.

I discovered about three-quarters of the way through the book that it is not quite accurate to attribute to Knox the flowering of Presbyterianism in Scotland. That accolade, according to Marshall, goes to Andrew Melville, who imported "fully-fledged Calvinism" to Scotland after Knox died, in the 1570s. However, Knox and his preaching were indeed powerful in combating Roman Catholicism in Scotland and giving Calvinist (or, maybe better, Swiss?) understanding of the Lord's Supper a foothold there--as opposed to the Lutheran understanding of the Lord's Supper.

Marshall convinced me that John Knox was a complex character who cannot be fairly reduced to this or that contribution to the history books. (This revelation, repeated over and over again in my life, is what keeps me studying history.) His motivations, obscure and muddled at best to those of us looking back, do not submit to simple categories or judgments. Like all of us, John Knox had the full complement of human complexity and changeability. If there was one thread that ran through his adult life, it was his dedication to simple obedience to the will of God revealed in the scriptures.

Even this thread, however, is dyed with different colors than we recognize today. I recently listened to a preacher declare (quoting someone else) that "Where goes the family, there goes the Church; where goes the Church, there goes the nation; where goes the nation, there goes the world." John Knox's world saw the structure of human society differently. Knox and his contemporaries, if I might dare to put words in their mouths, would have expressed it thus: "Where goes the King, there goes the kingdom; where goes the kingdom, there goes the Church; where goes the Church, there go the masses." Knox's age differed radically from ours in how the world worked, therefore how God worked, and therefore how the gospel should be preached.

Of his thirty-year career as preacher (at the end of which he died), Knox spent ten of those preaching directly against the female monarchs of Scotland and England ("Bloody" Mary I, and Mary Queen of Scots). He wrestled, in conversation and correspondence with the likes of John Calvin and Theodore Beza, with the question of what Christians ought to do if their monarchs disobey God. Knox formulated an interpretation of scripture by which Christians were allowed to rebel against kings and queens, an idea which was beginning to take hold in the philosophical corners of society but was still repugnant to most Church thinkers. The constant fear of those who heard Knox--both friends and enemies--was that giving authority to The People would mean descent into chaos.

Knox also lived and preached in a time when everyone was Christian. Or, perhaps more accurately, it would not occur to anyone (except Jews) in sixteenth-century Europe to declare faith in anything or anyone else than the Christian God. To be alive was to be Christian. Battles were fought and heretics were burned over differences in Christian faith; but atheism, Buddhism, genuine agnosticism, or others were never on the table.

On the other hand, as a parish pastor, some of Knox's work and tribulations sound stunningly familiar. While in Frankfurt, he endured great pains for a congregation in conflict over what form of worship service to use (Genevan book of prayer versus the English Book of Common Prayer). The fractures and debates have deep echoes with present-day debates over traditional versus contemporary forms of worship and music. After four hundred years, we have not come very far.

I will try to capture something of the spirit of Knox for my October sermon. To do this I think I will imagine what contemporary characteristic of the Church would inflame Knox the most. He behaved like a prophet, outraged at disobedience to scripture and "never fearing nor flattering any flesh." If transported in a time machine to 2011, to what reformation would John Knox call the Church? And then, what would he say? Time to find some of his sermons to read.

~ emrys