James Simpson has an ax to grind. His ax is sharp and his blows are relentless against the cultural textus receptus. Conventional wisdom argues that the liberal cultural tradition is greatly indebted to the Protestant Reformation for initiating a reading culture. Protestant insistence on vernacular Bible translation (even to the point of martyrdom, thus the title) generated a sea change from the unwritten tradition to the centrality of the text as the source of authority. Opponents of the Reformation, both religious and secular, may disagree vehemently with the theology, but they are nonetheless beneficiaries of a culture that began with the sixteenth-century Reformers. The Reformers unwittingly planted the seed that eventually flowered in the Enlightenment. Lutheranism promoted the individual over the power of the institution. Widespread literacy resulted. The foundation of modernity rests on the survival of individual conscience and liberty grounded in unfettered reading. This conventional wisdom, Simpson claims, is all so much sophomoric bunk. It is in fact 180 degrees out of phase. A literalist reading of 2 Kings by William Tyndale and John Foxe, who found parallels between King Josiah and boy King Edward VI, contributed to 200 years of violence in Western Europe, according to Simpson. This, he argues, is not the fruit of the liberal tradition but the fruit of the fundamentalist womb. Simpson argues that the liberal tradition needs to search for its real parents. The legitimate offspring of sixteenth-century literalism is violent, authoritarian fundamentalism, not the liberal tradition. For Simpson, the legitimate offspring of this literalist Bible-reading tradition are in fact cultural bastards.

Generally speaking, the more provocative the thesis, the better the book. Simpson delivers admirably on this score. Whether he defends the thesis in a convincing way is quite another matter. It is a tour de force as an interdisciplinary essay touching on history, historiography, philology, theology, and hermeneutics. No doubt, scholars in each of these fields will want to have a go at Simpson where they see him especially vulnerable. The book is great fodder for scholars who will both hate him and love him. In the end his critique is more provocative than his solution. He provides few clues to help the liberal tradition actually find its true birth parents.

Readers of Church History drawn to the book by its title will quickly find it is not a narrative of the Reformation, English or otherwise. Simpson believes Protestantism has enjoyed a cultural hegemony that is unwarranted. He wants to balance the score somewhat, though he despairs of persuading “the fundamentalist of the error of literalist reading” (7–8). Simpson adds his voice to the growing body of revisionist scholarship, joining John Scarisbrick, Christopher Haigh, Eamon Duffy, and many others. Simpson's contribution is to correct the historiographical course beginning with literacy. He gently chides his fellow revisionists for their failure to address literacy and Bible reading. Simpson saves his most vicious backhand for Shakespeare scholar David Daniell. Daniell's admirable scholarship promotes English Bible translator William Tyndale as the source for modern liberty and freedom “in the face of tyranny” (28). This is too much for Simpson! Daniell is an “imperialist,” “ignorant of the history of language” who makes “elementary errors” and “silly claims” (28, 117–118).

The fundamental disagreement between professors Simpson and Daniell is hermeneutical. Simpson built his work around a series of paradoxes that the evangelical reader (that is, a literalist) must inevitably face. Simpson argues passionately for a figural hermeneutic. He considers a literal interpretation of the biblical text the scientific equivalent of a flat-earth perspective. Furthermore, evangelicals who bought into literalism suffer an untold number of maladies. A literalist understanding of predestination left Bible readers uncertain of their own status or plight. They believed the true meaning of the text was written on the heart of the elect. For all their rejection of the institutional church as the official interpreter of scripture, evangelicals were forced to admit another institutional authority: the truth written on the heart. Lack of personal assurance of salvation thus left the evangelical unsure where he or she stood, searching frantically for signs of divine election by a capricious God. Often, the suffering and persecution of the evangelical served as signs of election. Paranoia, Simpson tells us, “is the predictable characteristic of a literalist culture” (143). Evangelicals suffer an “intense experience of abjection,” a feeling of “worthlessness,” “anxiety,” “self-loathing” “persecution,” and “paranoia” (29, 69–70, 90, 106, 140ff.). According to Simpson the evangelical victim must hate scripture in order to love it and is traumatized by predestination because he or she cannot placate an angry God. Literalists who in times of trouble identify with the Psalmist will “hear voices” and “feel cut off,” “isolated,” and “betrayed by enemies” (143). Simpson argues that the heroic men who risked and gave their lives for vernacular translation suffered these additional internal traumas because they found parallels in scripture through a literalist reading of the text. At this point, the reader may be confused. Is this an accurate portrayal of evangelicals in the sixteenth century? The author must perform some highly selective cherry picking from history to make such a claim.

Throughout the book, Simpson wants to validate, or rails at the injustice of, a God who rejects good works. He agrees with his hero Thomas More's assessment of predestination. For Simpson, predestination makes “a cruel and sadistic tyrant of God and produces a Kafkaesque world of tormented uncertainty for readers” (253). This point of view reflects the understanding of someone who argues relentlessly for works righteousness rather than grace. For all his defense of church councils and church tradition, Simpson surely knows that the semi-Pelagianism he promotes was rejected at the second Synod of Orange in 529 a.d. His basic arguments here echo those of Erasmus in De Libero arbitrio that are answered in Luther's De Servo arbitrio. Erasmus claimed ignorance regarding the Synod of Orange.

Simpson's most serious weakness is his portrayal of a literalist hermeneutic. It is true that Luther largely rejected the medieval fourfold sense of interpretation for the sensus literalis. Luther, however, recognized that the Bible contained typology, figures of speech, symbolism, and allegory. Simpson insists on forcing the straitjacket of Deuteronomy 4 and 12 on all Protestant Reformers as if it provided the key to unlocking the Bible. The Deuteronomy passages warn of the dangers of adding to or taking anything away from scripture. A literalist reading of Deuteronomy creates manifold problems for the evangelical interpreter. The fourfold scheme did not entirely disappear, however, in Luther's literal-prophetic hermeneutic. In his 1519 lectures on Galatians, Luther acknowledged the limited value of the fourfold sense. Furthermore, his lectures on Isaiah and Genesis reveal extensive use of allegory as he applied the message of the Old Testament to his own day. Simpson acknowledges that Tyndale resorted to allegory on occasion but interpreted it merely as a “waste-disposal” technique of evangelicals (211).

How, Simpson wonders, can you hold to a literalist reading of an Old Testament text that commands the follower of God to wipe out completely the Canaanites, Jebusites, Hevites, et cetera? Where, he wonders, could you actually find a Hevite in England in the sixteenth century? His tongue-in-cheek question would be a good one if it were not so silly. Evangelicals, Simpson argues, suffered a “tortured reading of the Old Testament” where nothing could be added or subtracted (220). Furthermore, the specific requirements of the faithful follower of God in the Old Testament suggest a confidence in (good) works. Simpson's own portrayal of a literalist hermeneutic is the proverbial straw man. The Old Testament sacrificial system looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, the perfect Lamb of God whose own sacrifice fulfills the demands and eliminates the need for further animal sacrifice. Simpson wants to lock the literalist into a hermeneutic that denies any development or progressive revelation between the Old and New Covenant.

Every important book is measured by the enduring conversation it generates. The conversation will not only continue from this book; I suspect listeners will hear the shouts from long distances. We thus thank Professor Simpson for picking the fight. Let the conversation, the cheering, the muttering, the whining, whimpering, and shouting begin!