In early modern England, religious disputation suffused the culture of Protestantism. The Reformation gave birth to a national church “established by law” and governed by the Crown, a profound restructuring of authority that ended papal hegemony but not discussion of what constituted an appropriately Protestant theology. For the past fifty years or so, scholars have mapped this religious culture in vivid depth and detail. Paul Lim's learned book takes up a theme that has been explored previously, but which is also in need of a fresh consideration. The doctrine of the Trinity opened up the question of Christ's divinity: was He to be worshipped in His own right, or was God the Father the sole focus of devotion? This was a question that engaged the attention of the early church, and it continued unabated in seventeenth-century England. Lim's book draws these two contexts together and offers some important insights into the religious, political and intellectual culture of early modern England.

In 1645 the Independent minister John Owen made a marginal note on the doctrine of the Trinity. He described it as “that mysterious Arke that must not bee pryed into . . . wherein plain Scripture goeth not before.” Here was the problem in its essence. That is, there were aspects of received doctrine that came under scrutiny and which could not be accepted as mere mysteries. To many, this reliance on mystery cut to the heart of what was wrong with Catholic theology: it elevated the clergy and traditions of the church to a level of authority that both usurped the scriptures and enslaved the reason of individual believers. However, Protestant ecclesiology did not depend on a wholesale repudiation of tradition; rather, it had to be re-interpreted and re-written. This process was aided by the parallel development in humanist textual and critical scholarship that defined the late Renaissance: for humanists ad fontes meant a return to the classical sources in their pure form, an impulse complemented by the Protestant attachment to sola scriptura—an unbending adherence to the authority of the Word. This is the view expressed in Owen's note to himself.

Broadly speaking, Mystery Unveiled examines how writers active in theological disputes during the 1640s and 1650s engaged with the rich textual history of the church, poring over its patristic authors, scrutinizing the judgements of its councils (beginning with Nicea), and, of course, attempting to make plain what it was that the scripture said on the matter of the godhead. This is done in six chapters, each based on a deep and assured encounter with polemical and manuscript sources. The first examines the anti-trinitarianism of two prominent writers on trinitarianism: Paul Best and John Biddle, former Cambridge friends whose scholarly exchanges shed light on the approach to scriptural and patristic sources in the heat of polemical battle. Next, Lim turns to an examination of the ways in which “radical” sects approached the problem of the Trinity. With the collapse of the “orthodoxy” of the Laudian and royalist Church in 1642, England experienced a sudden proliferation of religious belief and action. The members of the Westminster Assembly sat throughout the war in the attempt to furnish a new ecclesiology, yet this was complicated by rifts among the opponents of Charles I and a widening of theological argument. That which was aimed at Best and Biddle forms the subject of the third chapter.

The fourth chapter looks closely at two other figures—John Owen and William Sherlock—and traces the evolution of their views (and reactions to them) as the Interregnum gave way to the rebirth of what was now Anglican orthodoxy after 1660. Chapter 5 takes up the broad theme of anti-clericalism, focusing on three of the most vocal and influential exponents of the attack on “priestcraft”: Hobbes, Richard Baxter, and Andrew Marvell. The final chapter is concerned with a series of encounters with the gnomic words of John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”). Here the focus is on major figures like Grotius and Socinius, and the chapter demonstrates how the aspiration to ground belief on the scripture was frustrated by the irreconcilable differences raised by contrasting views of the word made flesh.

This is a complex book, and one (as Peter Lake notes in a forward) that “is not an easy read.” This is owed both to the density of the material and the amount of prior knowledge that is required of the reader. That said, the book is important in two respects. First, Lim has drawn a clear map of a vital topic of theological controversy that took place at an important juncture in English history. The second point has to do with the meta-narrative that the book seeks to challenge. That is, that the early modern period witnessed the slow but sure “disenchantment of the world,” the prerequisite for the advent of secularism, rationalism and easy toleration of voluntarist religion that are (according to the “just so” story) the defining characteristics of Enlightenment. This book is part of a trend in recent scholarship that takes religion seriously; aligns it to the wider political and intellectual concerns of the period; eschews the view that religion must necessarily be a disruptive force; and which does not make secularization a precondition of Enlightenment. That we continue with wrestle with the “God debate” suggests that the desire to peer into the ark is no less strong for us than it was for them.