In Viking times the Northmen recognized several important sea routes, one of which, “the North Way,” was of such significance that it gave its name to a kingdom. The ships that sailed this route followed the west coast of the great Scandinavian peninsula northward and northeastward for a distance of one thousand miles to the land's end in the Arctic. Out toward the sea the fairway is flanked by an almost continuous series of islands, large and small, numbering perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand. Many of these are inhabited. On the other side rises the Norwegian plateau, a massive wall of ancient rock, which in many places descends abruptly to the water's edge. The wall is not continuous, for all along the coast the sea, thrusting forth its mighty arms, has carved out a maze of deep inlets, some of which run far into the land. The longest of these, the Sogn Fjord, has a length of nearly one hundred and forty miles.

Recent Luther scholarship seems to have reached an impasse in its attempt to solve the apparent inconsistencies between the so-called young Luther and the older conservative writer of confessions. Within the last few decades two distinct schools of thought, with of course variations in each, have developed in the attempt to solve this problem.

The humanitarianism of the eighteenth century gave added impulse to the members of the Society of Friends to practice the gospel of love for all mankind. Since at first “they were in derision called Quakers,” it is most likely that all of their interests were sneered at. Nevertheless, they influenced other denominations by their anti-slavery appeals and popularized the idea of a “society” for humanitarian purposes as they gave full meaning to the words friends and humanity. The English Quakers were called “Friends of Thieves” because they worked for prison reform in London, and the American Quakers appear to be the first persons who were known as “Friends of Humanity” primarily because they opposed Negro slavery vehemently.

At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the historical reconstruction of Christianity which had been made by Baur had come to dominate critical scholarship in the form popularized by the Tűbingen school generally. In Germany Zeller, Schwegler, Hausrath, Köstlin, Volkmar and Hilgenfeld were the distinguished heirs of Baur's views. His representative in Holland was Scholten. In French criticism Baur's influence was felt in the work of Colani, Scherer, and Havet. In Great Britain, Samuel Davidson expounded Tűbingen criticism, which was also to be found in the anonymous work later acknowledged by W. R. Cassels. Indeed the Tűbingen theology was reflected, although in a considerably modified form, in the work of Holsten and Pfleiderer long after the direct influence of the school had waned.

William Ockham's interests were turned to political philosophy by the circumstances of his life. As early as 1323, he became entangled in the controversy of his order on evangelical poverty with the pope, John XXII, who by his bull, Ad conditorem canonum, issued on December 8, 1322, withdrew from the Franciscans the right of holding property in the name of the Holy See, granted to them by Innocent IV in 1245, and by Nicholas III in 1279. The case seems trifling, yet it involved the interpretation of the life of Christ himself, whom the sons of St. Francis tried to imitate by substituting the use of property for its ownership. The “Spirituals” stood for the original views of the order and considered the papal bull as dragging them down to worldliness and abasement. Ockham in a sermon delivered at Bologna attacked the pope's conception of apostolical poverty. John XXII, in a bull dated December 1, 1323, and addressed to the bishops of Ferrara and Bologna, ordered his arrest and held him in Avignon for four years for trial. In August, 1325, a commission of six theologians, one of whom was Durandus de St. Porciano, at that time bishop of Meaux, was appointed to investigate his theological and philosophical doctrines. In 1326 the commission declared fifty-one articles taken from his Commentary to the Sentences as heretical. On April 13, 1328, Ockham signed the protest of the general of the Franciscan order, Michael Cesena, also under arrest, against the papal bull of 1322, which condemned the tenet of evangelical poverty. The night of May 24, 1328, brought a dramatic turn in his life. He succeeded in escaping from the papal prison in the company of Cesena and Bonagratia of Bergamo, the famous civil and canon lawyer, and fled to Pisa to seek the protection of Louis of Bavaria, emperor of Germany and archenemy of the pope.