Richard Muller's Persistent Whiggism Analysis

Richard Muller in the “Reflection on Persistent Whiggism and Its Antidotes in the Study of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Intellectual History”. The purpose of the article is to examined how the contemporary scholars are relating to the historical context of the sixteenth and the seventeenth century. The article also identified the thinkers and how they changed the ideologies of the church during the reformation era. Richard Muller argued that one must understand theological and philosophical views of the era to accurately understand their context before thinking of interpreting the era.
In the “Persistent Whiggism” article, Muller identified five problematic issues that cause a significant shift in the ways modern scholars are studying …show more content…
He mentioned that today’s scholar categorized some reformers as a ‘great thinker’ and ignore some. Muller implied that ignoring some of the reformers is very problematic because it removes some important context out of the whole history. For example, “the writings of a Luther, Calvin, Montaigne, or Descartes do not provide the context for the interpretation of the writings of Luther, Calvin, Montaigne, or Descartes” (Miller, Pg. 140). In order to understand the historical context one must take into consideration the social, political, and historical aspects that created the history of the Sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries. For example, one must take into consideration what their lives was like during the era, how they worship, speak, dress, think, socialize, marry, activities they do and how they interact etc. before deciding to interpret their contextual history.
Third, Muller tie the second and third problem together. He believes the third issue was birthed out of the second problem of the “great Thinker” ideology. He said. “the “great thinker” problems the apparent assumption of much older intellectual history that, as thought emanate from the decontextualized minds of great thinker.” (Muller, Pg.140) Which means the modern scholars are …show more content…
I discovered that this problem is one of the major problem that is affecting the traditions of the modern church. This problem is so rampart in the churches that it is overflowing to the social and political arenas. The majority of the biblical narrations are woven into the constitution of many countries and when it is misinterpreted it affect the minorities. For example, the ways many interprets the laws of the Leviticus on homosexuals. Many believe since the preacher argue that the bible says it is a sin for men to sleep with men that means it is absolutely true. The effects of misinterpretation affect the ways we as human perceive each other, we use the biblical text to judge one another by thinking the text is a manual to build our lives on, but we fail to acknowledged that we should not use modern interpretation on an ancient text like the bible or historical text of the earlier