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Entry: Christenheit oder Europa? Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/christenheit_oder_europa#25232 Post contents: Dan Larison on History: "between 1517 and 1529 (date of the Protestation of Speyer), there were people who could rightly be called Protestants who were not identified with the Protestation, because it hadn’t happened yet. To push the category back earlier than the time of the Reformers doesn’t really make a lot of sense. This isn’t to deny that the Reformers were part of an earlier medieval tradition of Church reform, nor would I want to deny that they borrowed from medieval sources and were deeply influenced by traditional patristic and scholastic modes of inquiry. But Luther’s (or Calvin’s or Zwingli’s) education does not make earlier members of the tradition to which he belonged part of the confession or religious movement that he and others like him inaugurated." OK: let's follow this "logic." Movements don't exist unless proper terms exist for them. Since "Protestant" had not been coined before the Reformation, there were no Protestants. Why stop there? Since Nietzsche did not describe himself as an existentialist, he cannot be described this way. Since Hobbes and Locke did not employ the 18th c term "bourgeois," they were not bourgeois either (even though they defended the rising bourgeoisie). And all those 17th c thinkers who are now considered part of the "Enlightenment," sorry, that term did not exist until the late 18th c either. Pedantry is a kind word for DL's thinking here. For his next trick, he will count the no of angels boogying on the heads of pins. Sent at: 2008 07 24