Theological Origins of Modernity

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ascension of his young son Edward VI (1547), Protestants gained the upper
hand. When Edward’s early death (1553) brought his half-sister “Bloody”
Mary to the throne, she sought to reestablish Catholicism through force.
Her marriage to the (Catholic) King of Spain produced no off spring and
she died in 1558. Her successor Elizabeth I reached a settlement with the
various religious groups in 1559 (embodied in the Th irty-Nine Articles of
1563) that guaranteed the independence of the English church with a centralized,
episcopal structure. However, radical Protestantism continued
to grow with the return of refugees who had gone to Geneva and Germany
during Mary’s reign. Th ey brought with them religious views that
led to the emergence of Presbyterianism in Scotland and Independency in
England. Th ese Calvinist Dissenters from the Elizabethan settlement were
characterized by their opponents as Puritans.
Th e opposing parties continued to agitate for change, and concerns
were heightened by religious warfare in France and the Netherlands. For
many Calvinists the slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s Day and the threat of
the Spanish Armada in 1588 were ominous signs. Th eir Protestant queen
could not live forever, and they knew that her successor would likely be less
friendly to their cause. Still, their strength was growing, and in 1590 the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York both endorsed the Calvinist notion
of absolute predestination.
At the same time, a new religious movement, Arminianism, had sprung
up. Arminianism was named aft er its Dutch founder Jacobus Arminius
(1560–1609), who had been a student of Calvin’s successor Th eodore Beza
but rejected Calvinism because he believed it made God the author of sin.
Drawing on Erasmus, he argued that free will was important in determining
salvation and damnation. Such a theology appealed to many in
England, and Arminianism grew rapidly. Th is new theology, however, was
viewed with suspicion by Calvinists who saw it as crypto-Catholicism, a
disguised form of “Popery.”
Th e struggle between the Calvinists and the Arminians, which mirrored
the earlier debate between Luther and Erasmus, became more pronounced
aft er the death of Elizabeth and the coronation of James VI of
Scotland as James I. He was the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who
had tried to revive Catholicism in Scotland. Although raised as a Protestant,
he had to navigate between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland. He
preferred Episcopalianism in part because it steered a middle course but
also because it provided the strongest theological support for his belief in
divine right. Th e king in his view was God’s anointed and was thus subject
to no man, including the pope.