Issue 13 Preaching across CulturesBlog | The Late Greats John Knox
The Late Greats John Knox
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 25.12.17
The remarkable career of John Knox reminds us of two features of the Protestant Reformation, the quincentenary of which we mark this year. One is the violence of the age: Knox famously carried a two-handed sword in order to protect the Lutheran preacher, George Wishart.1
H e was subsequently chaplain to those who avenged Wishart’s martyrdom by murdering the Cardinal, David Beaton, and was punished by servitude in a French galley. In an age where many were martyred, Knox was only burnt in effigy,2 but saw a place for the death penalty and believed that idolatrous rulers should be overthrown by force.3
The other feature of the European Reformation that Knox typified was its international character. Although principally remembered as the man who crystallized into an organized and durable form ‘an inchoate evangelical movement fused with nationalist resentment’4 in his native Scotland, Knox ministered in a number of contexts.
