In George Sayer's biography of C. S. Lewis, Sayer discusses Lewis's contribution to The Oxford History of English Literature, in which Lewis discusses British writers of the sixteenth century. Over the years, this book has become a classic of literary scholarship. Sayer's summary of Lewis's views of Renaissance humanism, Calvinism, Tyndale, More, and Hooker is notable:

The study begins with a startling and controversial general survey. In the early part of the sixteenth century English poetry was dull, monotonous, and drab. Then suddenly it seemed reborn, and by the end of the century it was rich in fantasy, paradox, color, and incantation, just the qualities we find in the sonnets of Shakespeare. Literary historians before Jack had given credit for this to the Renaissance. He disagreed. The Renaissance in his view was brought about by the humanists. They recovered, edited, and wrote commentaries on the classics with an exaggerated concern for form, polish, and exactness of language. They killed Latin by refusing to let it develop and grow. They produced a literature remote from the senses and the soil. They hated the Middle Ages, particularly chivalrous romance and scholastic philosophy. Humanism was a Philistine movement. "The new learning created the new ignorance."

After his crusade against the humanists--and it amounted to that--Jack tells us that our view of the Puritans is wrong. The Protestant doctrine of salvation by grace is not gloomy or terrifying; it is joyous. The Puritans praised the marriage bed; it was the Catholics who exalted virginity. As for Calvin, his "was the creed of progressives, even of revolutionaries. . . . The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings were likely to be Calvinists. He was a dazzling figure, a man born to be the idol of revolutionary intellectuals." All this and much more come in the first sixty pages. The controversy provoked by their brilliance has not yet died down.

The rest of the book consists of a review of all the major and many writers of the period. Over and over again we are swept away by his enthusiasms and the quotations he has found to illustrate them. There are new discoveries, such as Tyndale as a great prose writer. He quotes: "Where the spirit is there is always summer. Who taught the eagles to spy out their prey? Even so the children of God spy out their father. That they might see love and love again." In his comparison of Tyndale and More Jack writes: "In More we feel all the smoke and stir of London; the very plodding of his sentences is like horse traffic in the streets. In Tyndale we breathe mountain air." From Richard Hooker, another discovery, he does not quote much, "for very few of Hooker's beauties can be picked like flowers and taken home: you must enjoy them were they grow--as you would enjoy a twenty acre field of ripe wheat."

The way [Peter Leithart's] essay ["The End of Protestantism"] is set up reminds me of an awkward stage some of my undergraduates go through. They come to Biola from good families and good churches, and we give them, along with all the Bible instruction, a truckload of Irenaeus, Athanasius, Nazianzus, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Dante. They read it, wrestle with it, come to love much of it, and then at some point in the sophomore year they look up and ask, “Why don’t Protestants read any of this great stuff?”

They ask this at a Protestant establishment. And not just Protestant, but the evangelical kind, a Bible Institute that turned into a university. They ask it of an evangelical faculty that has carefully led them through the whole heritage of patristic and medieval riches. They are sent here by their Protestant parents from evangelical churches to do this reading at a former Bible Institute with an evangelical faculty, and they want to know, “where are all the Protestants?”

Trying to avoid that gobsmacked look, I sometimes ask, “By ‘Protestant,’ do you mean your high school youth group?” Sometimes they admit that’s what they mean.

Sometimes a student will ask, “why don’t any Protestants recite the creeds?”

I don’t get exasperated. I get pretty excited that I get to be the person who throws open the doors to the vast resources of historic Protestant theology. Come on in, kids, and explore a lost culture: your own! Start with Billy Graham and R. A. Torrey and read your way backwards into the Victorians and the Puritans. Check out the Protestant Scholastics who knew Aristotle by heart. Meet the Methodist revival, run almost exclusively by Anglicans at first. Try to follow Martin Chemnitz as he engages Cyril of Alexandria on the hypostatic union. Watch Calvin’s mastery of the church fathers, and see him refuse to yield the patristic case to Sadoleto. See if you can figure out what strange mystical spot Luther is reading the Bible from. Explore the hinterland of the soul. All things are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

Fred Sanders, "Glad Protestantism"

Peter Leithart argues for what he calls "The End of Protestantism."

C. Michael Patton discusses whether Roman Catholics are regenerated.

Are We Together? A Protestant Analyzes Roman Catholicism by R.C. Sproul
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In this book, Sproul is remarkably charitable, gracious, and fair as he shows differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Sproul shows that Protestants have often been sloppy in their critique of Roman Catholicism, frequently accusing Catholics of doctrines that they do not actually hold, using historical innacuracies in their critique, and so forth. But Sproul also shows that there truly are deep differences between official Roman Catholic teachings and Protestant doctrine.

Specifically, Sproul looks at the differences in the doctrines of scripture, justification, the church, the sacraments, the papacy, and Mary. He shows the common ground between Protestantism and Catholicism in these areas, but he also shows where the two sides differ.

Overall, this is a very helpful book.

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