De-Fragmenting Modernity - A Review

Paul Tyson’s 2017 book, De-fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being, is a place for those trying to bring order back to the modern world. This is not a book for the philosophical novice, and even those familiar with language like epistemology and ontology will have to read Tyson carefully. At the same time, the thesis and the argument are worth the work.

Tyson’s basic thesis is that “being, knowing, and believing always have their meanings in relation to each other.” (7) Unfortunately, the category of being has largely been ejected from the cultural imagination. This is part of what makes Tyson a challenge to read: He is resurrecting concepts and speaking in terms that are foreign to the way contemporary Western culture is constructed and communicates.

As the title indicates, Tyson is critical of modernity. Here he joins a line of other voices, which includes those who would like to return to some sort of pre-medieval synthesis and those who think that even the misshapen constraints of modernity are too restrictive. Tyson deals less with the cultural impacts of modernity than he does with the philosophical roots of modernity.

The beginning of an answer to what ails modernity, according to Tyson, is restoring the concept of ontology (the study of being) to the cultural imagination and then bringing being, wisdom, and truth back together in conversation. This process begins with the reconstruction of basic cultural assumptions, which begins by recognizing one’s hidden preconceptions and then trying to reconcile them with another set. The challenge is real.

One huge challenge Tyson identifies is that cultural assumptions are often masked, even (or perhaps especially) for those who specialize in pointing out the assumptions of others. He writes, “When modern theological thinking tries to be ‘scientific’ in modern terms––appealing to notions of objective proof and instrumental effectiveness––it is entirely unrelated to ancient theology. This is as true of ‘liberal’ theology as it is of ‘fundamentalist’ theology in modernity.” (37)

Tyson’s point here will be shocking to some, but he is far from the first to note that many fundamentalists have adopted basically modern approaches to theology. This has sometimes resulted in sub-orthodox formulations of doctrine, even among those most concerned with orthodoxy. The reductionistic tendency of our culture shapes us unless we consistently seek to challenge them, interrogating them to evaluate their integrity. That interrogation must not be done skeptically, with the cynicism entailed in the approach of the college sophomore, but honestly with a repeated attempt to ask “Is this right?” or “What am I missing?”

Tyson’s work fits well into the conversation with individuals like Zygmunt Bauman, Charles Taylor, and others. Tyson comes at the questions from a more directly philosophical angle, rather than the cultural or sociological angle of others. Everyone doing cultural analysis of modernity’s failings is engaged in philosophy, but Tyson’s analysis ventures little beyond philosophy.

De-fragmenting Modernity is a worthwhile volume for those philosophically minded and willing to invest some energy into careful reading. As we continue to try to restore a deeper sense of reality in our lives, including among our circles of friends and family, the foundational work Tyson is doing can be a source of conversation and discovery.

De-Fragmenting Modernity: Reintegrating Knowledge with Wisdom, Belief with Truth, and Reality with Being

By Tyson, Paul

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The Ethics of Authenticity - A Review

Charles Taylor is one of the critics of modernity whose work cannot be avoided. Taylor’s framework for understanding contemporary Western culture has been invoked, discussed, or critiqued widely in past few decades.

Many who have never picked up one of Taylor’s books nonetheless would recognize terms like buffered self or immanent frame if they were spoken within hearing. Those are ideas that accompany Taylor’s thoughts.

Unfortunately, though Taylor is important (even if not accepted by all) for understanding contemporary discussions, some of his works are both large and challenging to read. Many people, therefore, rely on second hand interpretations which are sometimes helpful, but also tend to carry freight beyond what Taylor intended. It’s always good to go to the source.

Taylor’s book, The Ethics of Authenticity, is a reasonable point of entry for his work. It originated as lectures that were received by a more popular than academic audience, so the language and explanation are much clearer. Additionally, the book itself is much shorter, while still providing a sufficiently thorough explanation of his main points.

In The Ethics of Authenticity, Taylor discusses three malaises of modernity: (1) Individualism; (2) The primacy of instrumental reasoning; and (3) The soft despotism of systems that are trying to maintain modernity’s grip.

Individualism is, Taylor recognizes, both a major accomplishment of modernity and one of its most troubling attributes. It is a good thing that the personhood and agency of an individual has been recognized and greater freedom has come to make real human progress. At the same time, the loss of the sense of belonging, of purpose, and of one’s proper place within the cosmos was swept away by what has become, in more extreme iterations, an existentialism full of dread.

Individualism led to the break down of the sense of order in the cosmos, which led to disenchantment. That disenchantment, in turn, contributes to the primacy of instrumental reasoning. Less often is the inherent worth of an object, a task, or a person considered. Instead, the chief measure of value is whether something is efficient, what the bottom line is, and what it can be used for. This is a totalizing perspective, which forces even those who recognize that people are more than inefficient machines still must terminate the employment of their least efficient workers, whether their family circumstances support it or not.

There is irony in the freedom that has been achieved through modernity. We are cut adrift from many of the most onerous obligations, but we are now caught by our isolation in a much more unforgiving machine, which is difficult to resist. Thus, “the institutions and structures of industrial-technological society severely restrict our choices, that they force societies as well as individuals to give a weight to instrumental reason that in serious moral deliberation we would never do, and which may even be highly destructive.”

These malaises all involve a high place for “authenticity” as a central virtue of modern moral thinking. Rather than faith, hope, and love, which all bear a sense of duty and constraint, the central concern of modern ethics is to be authentic—to be true to oneself. Taylor first of all shows how this is more than total narcissism and vacuous reasoning, which many (especially conservatives) ascribe to modern thinking as they dismiss it. At the same time, authenticity is also tyrannical. One’s identity is not complete until it is recognized (affirmed?) by another. This, then, makes the whole system incoherent.

However, Taylor argues, that the current system is too strongly woven into the fabric of society, so that stepping out of modernity is not possible. He writes, “The struggle ought no to be over authenticity; for or against it, but about it, defining its proper meaning. We ought to be trying to life the culture back up, closer to its motivating ideal.” That is, those of us seeking to reclaim some semblance of sanity in culture might be better off pointing people toward what it means to be truly and properly human.

I’m too new to Taylor’s work to draw a final conclusion. There is also too much more for me to read to claim to say, “This is the way.” However, as I read through The Ethics of Authenticity I underlined and annotated a large number of passages. I found myself nodding along, thinking that he had perhaps gotten something that I had not figured out just yet, and that it would be worth doing more homework to figure out if what he says can be put into practice.  At the very least, I think I have a better sense of what everyone else has been talking about. If you want that, too, then this may be a book for you.

The Ethics of Authenticity

By Taylor, Charles

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Another Life is Possible - A Review

There is nowhere to run and hide from modernity, it seems. Even if you homeschool your children, screen the books you let into the house, keep them from radio, and unplug the TV, you still have to contend with conversations with other kids at church or in the neighborhood whose parents have not screened out the influences of the world. This was much of Rod Dreher’s complaint in The Benedict Option. More positively, it’s nearly impossible to find a community filled with people focused on rebuilding a culture from the wreckage of modernity, so to speak.

The Bruderhof communities, which are scattered through seven countries across the globe, are examples of people gathering around the common of aim of trying to live rightly in this life. Members give up property rights, commit to contributing to the common good with their labor, and give themselves to mutual aid in a life that is both civilly and religiously united on pursuing goodness and quiet in the midst of an increasingly busy world. The 2020 book, Another Life is Possible, tells their story in pictures and words.

The book itself is a beautiful, large format volume with glossy, full color pages. The pages are filled with brief accounts of the lives of many current and former residents of the various Bruderhof communities. It tells stories of those who came late in life to the community, looking for peace in the midst of life’s storms. It offers accounts of people who were raised within the community, were sent out to learn a trade, and came back to live the common life. It highlights the industries and efforts of the community to bear each other’s burdens and put food on the table. The accounts are often beautiful and reveal a lot of wonder and goodness in human community.

Though the volume is not primarily theological, the anabaptistic roots of the Bruderhof movement are clear. They eschew military service, seek withdrawal from political engagement, and focus on simplicity in attire—especially for women. The world transformation referenced within the volume is always organic and human-scaled, rather than political and grandiose. The emphasis of the book is on the common life, rather than the theology that must give form to that way of living. In fact, even the section on finding faith has little in the way of the content of that faith—it seems to point simply to the centrality of Christ, not the substance of who he is.

There is much to be praised in the book and the way of life it advertises. There is a comfort and homeliness apparent, which is enough to make the world-weary heart long to emulate it. Though each individual is poor, having chosen to live in community and maintain a common purse, there is great wealth in knowing that no individual or family stands alone. This solidarity comes through especially in the section about healthcare. In a world where rising costs and insurance premiums consume a great deal of income, there is security in knowing there are many who will stand with you and support you in your need.

Within the volume, however, there are signs of the inroads of modernity, despite their efforts at insulation. For example, due to the emphasis on cooperative labor of all parties, the Bruderhof have a daycare system for their preschoolers. Both parents are apparently working, so the three-year-olds have a caretaker in one of the stories. It is a friendly daycare and one that affirms the values of the families, but it provides evidence that even in a closed, supposedly pre-modern community, the drive to have both parents occupied outside the home can cause youngsters to be segregated from their families before normal school age. There are also accounts on the edge of the stories of individuals and families that have left the Bruderhof community, apparently finding the way of life less desirable than other opportunities. It is impossible to hide from the world, even in a community that seems designed to do so.

For those who find themselves unable to align fully with the Bruderhof theology, there is a still a great deal of help in this volume. The book does not offer a roadmap or instructions to building an intentional community, but it does illuminate an opportunity. As the title claims, Another Life is Possible. Although we cannot build our own Brigadoon and wake for only a day in the Scottish hills, attempting to maintain our idyllic perfection in perpetuity, there are ways that Christian communities can become more holistic and healthier. Few are likely to build a compound, take a vow of poverty, and break out the headscarves. However, the sharing, mutual aid, and companionship provide a vision that offers hope. In a culture that decimates friendship, there can be true companionship. The possibility exists. That is a hopeful contribution.

Another Life is Possible is the sort of volume that is better dabbled in and waded through than read cover to cover. I found myself picking up the volume for a few minutes each evening and sampling from various sections. It makes a good break from other forms of entertainment and really is encouraging in many ways. As we think through how best to live as humans in a dehumanizing culture, Another Life is Possible provides some glimpses that can inform our imagination and open up new possibilities for consideration.

Another Life Is Possible: Insights from 100 Years of Life Together

By Stober, Clare

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You Are Not Your Own - A Review

Sometimes the world is too much for us. Especially when we believe that we are our own people, destined to make our way in the world alone. Perhaps we are stardust, but as the dust of celestial bodies we have a lot to live up to. The pressure to become something and to be someone can eat our souls and sap our energy. It is this feeling that has caused many adults to burnout only a decade or so into their adulthood.

But what if we do not actually belong to ourselves?

What if we are not our own, but we belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to a faithful savior, Jesus Christ? What if he has fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood?

In fact, he has, which is what the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us of in Question 1. It is also what Alan Noble has sought to remind the world of in his latest book, You are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World.

This is Noble’s second book. His previous volume, Disruptive Witness, is a call to resist the consumeristic pressures of the world and, as Christians, to live redemptively in such a way as to witness to the goodness of God and disrupt the common pattern of the world. For those wondering how to live differently in a world that won’t leave us alone, that book is a great place to start.

But even being a disruptive witness can be exhausting if we see our identity as wrapped up in that effort. If we feel we must earn favor with God by seeking to live just right in this world and make something of ourselves for Jesus, that too will wear us down and leave us bent, bleary eyed, and hopeless. We can never be enough.

One of the first things that Noble does in this book is to establish the fact that the world is not made for humans. This is why we are so uncomfortable. It’s not that we are failures, it’s that society is structured in a way that fights against human flourishing. Everything in the world tells us that we are atomized individuals, adrift in a sea of stars. We are the captains of our souls. But, as Noble points out, we are actually more like animals in the zoo. No matter how hard the zookeepers and veterinarians try, they can never truly mimic the jungle for the tiger or the savannah for the lion. The zoo is made for the humans, not for the animals.

As a result of the inhumanity of the world we seek various ways to cope. For some it is illegal drugs or excessive alcohol. For others the solution is sought in online relationships, video games, or prescription anti-depressants. An increasing number of people seek fulfillment in sexual fantasies made possible in every variety through free, always accessible pornography. Many of these forms of self-medication are not wrong in and of themselves—though some of them clearly are—but they all tend to either treat the symptom without seeking a cure or simply make the problem worse.

However, Noble reminds the reader that we are not our own and that we belong to Christ. This is our only comfort in life and death. These are theological truths that are robustly biblical, but also tested by time. They come from an era before our own, with different trials and temptations, to bear witness to the goodness of Christ in all situations.

The book does not resolve with easy solutions. The last chapter opens up with what seems a somewhat dire statement, “Life is hard and death is terrifying.” Thanks. I think.

But Noble continues to trudge toward a better solution, “The only people who don’t recognize the need for comfort as we go through life and face death are those who have so effectively numbed themselves that they no longer recognize their numbness as a form of comfort.” So it is a good thing that the sense of alienation and longing remains with us. We are not yet beyond hope.

And then the book moves to close by assuring readers that there is no simple solution that will make everything better. There is no secret key that will unlock a human shaped culture within the alienation of modernity. Rather, there is hope to be found in Christ: “Only in Christ can we find a belonging without violence or abuse, a belonging that grounds and fulfills our personhood rather than effacing it. . . . We find comfort in belonging to Christ because Christ is the only one we can belong to without harm or loss of our humanity.” That is a powerful answer.

You are Not Your Own is an example of the sort of synthetic work that needs to continue to be done. As Noble readily admits, there is nothing novel in what he writes. But he does not need to be novel. He simply needs to convey an intelligible message to those who need to hear it and be shaped by it. And he does that.

I read this book in one sitting on a plane. It washed over me like a flood of assurance and comfort. I belong to Christ. My feelings of failure and inadequacy belong to the world and not to me. Noble is right about his diagnosis of the problem and right about the solution. We need to find our belonging in Christ—the creator of everything—in this inhuman world.

This is a book I would recommend for people of every age, but especially for those about to be sent out into the world. Noble teaches undergraduates, so it has the marks of many conversations had behind an office door, with students who came for help with an essay, but needed assistance in putting life together. Would that many more young Christians would discover the central message of this volume before heading out into the world, making shipwreck of their health, their life, and perhaps their faith in attempt to become someone, do something, and belong to themselves in an inhuman world.

You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World

By Noble, Alan

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NOTE: I was given a free copy of this volume, in part because I provided feedback on an earlier draft of the volume. However, a positive review was not guaranteed.

Breaking Bread with the Dead

The life of the mind is a topic of growing significance as the pace of change, with its assaults on our mental stability, continue to accelerate. Some sources estimate there are more than 2 million books published worldwide each year. And that volume of content is in addition to the newspapers, magazines, blogs, tweets, and emails that also vie for our time.

Along with the flash and glamour of new publications, our attention is also directed to “old books,” which are often celebrated as “classics” that are critical to becoming properly formed as humans or derided as elements of a “racist patriarchy” that must be resisted by any means and at any cost.

In three books, written through the last decade, Alan Jacobs has drafted a series of books that wrestle with the life of the mind, the nature of reading, and value of ancient literary history. This is an odd series. Each book comes from a different publisher, has a distinct thesis, and wrestles with a different topic. There is no thematic unity and little hope of a boxed set, which seems to be the hallmark of such sequences in our day. The progression of topics, too, does not seem as unified as one might expect.

And yet, Jacobs admits that these books are in a series, and that they are related, as disparate as they may seem. The careful reader will, indeed, find that there is a connection between them all. Not a connection that requires reading the books in sequence, but that these are markers, perhaps, staking out the boundaries of a mind alive to the unity of the world and its possibilities. The series is by no means complete, so it will not surprise me to find another short book set out to help readers navigate the modern world, published in a few more years.

Jacobs is, by profession, a teacher of literature. He has also done significant work as a cultural critic. In this he is much like C. S. Lewis, a thinker with whom Jacobs has demonstrated significant interest and expertise. It is not difficult, as a result, to find echoes of Lewis throughout Jacobs’ work, especially in this latest book, Breaking Bread with the Dead, which shares a common theme with Lewis’ essay, “On the Reading of Old Books.”

Breaking Bread with the Dead obviously comes out in favor of reading old books. But read in context with The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, it is abundantly clear that Jacobs is not advertising the “checklist” approach of slogging through “Greats,” which is a quest to max out your score on Facebook quizzes and a recipe for gobbling a gourmet feast without savoring the marinated centuries between works—in other words, it represents the sin of gluttony. Rather, he is arguing that reading old books is necessary to understand our times and to live in them.

Jacobs clearly states this goal toward the end of his introduction,

To open yourself to the past is to make yourself less vulnerable to the cruelties of descending in tweeted wrath on a young woman whose clothing you disapprove of, or firing an employee because of a tween you didn’t take time to understand, or responding to climate change either by ignoring it or by indulging in impotent rage. You realize that you need to obey the impulses of this moment—which, it is fair to say, never tend to produce a tranquil mind.

This book is an essay that wanders toward a single goal, rather than an argument with chapters neatly divided into segments of support and refutation. It is a literary essay that seeks to deal with the questions of the day. One of the most pertinent questions for our tiny historical moment is whether one dare to read authors whose social and moral views differ—whether greatly or radically—from our own.

Jacobs begins by examining the problem of presentism, which is the tendency to see our particular cultural moment as the moral apex of humanity and to denigrate all who have ever had a differing opinion. Thus, the reading of Robinson Crusoe must be abandoned because it is racist, sexist, colonial, and a bunch of other bad things that are native and irrevocably attached to old, dead, white men. Jacobs argues that in order to properly understand our own moment, we must interact with minds that came before our moment, even when they do, in fact, have racist, sexist, and colonial ideas.

The concept for engaging with those we disagree with is represented as “table fellowship,” which is obviously conveyed by the title of the book. Jacobs understands this has the center of the book: “sitting at the table with our ancestors and learning to know them in their difference from, as well as their likeness to, us.” He argues that reading even those with whom we disagree—by inviting them to our table—we open ourselves up to a greater understanding of their time and ours. But at the same time, since we invite these sometimes-scraggly guests through the practice of reading, we control the interaction, so that when they get to rowdy we can, with little effort, simply disinvite them from the meal by closing the book and moving to another guest.

Breaking bread with the dead offers us challenges to our own worldview—exactly the reason many activist “academics” want them “cancelled”—and force us to examine our unexamined assumptions. They also force us to wrestle with the reality that our morality du jour has some of the same barbarities of a previous age (albeit with a different shade of lipstick) and that it sometimes is a positive logical outcome of a trajectory we might find in older literature, if we but take the time to consider it. Reading old books helps us to understand ourselves and our time better.

As morality has become increasingly unpinned from any sense of permanence or overt morality, the pace of change from one absolute standard to another has become exhausting. A group of racist trolls on a social media site turn the “OK” symbol into a symbol for “white power” and suddenly everyone who uses the symbol, with its long-standing cultural significance, is now complicit in white supremacy. Unless, of course, someone who is of the right color or political affiliation uses it, in which case it means what it has consistently meant. The tyranny of the present undermines every sense of peace. As Jacobs argues, reading old books is the best way to remind ourselves of our own finitude, the temporary nature of our culture’s moral conclusions, and deepens our souls to better understand those who differ from us. In other words, breaking bread with the dead helps make us more human and reminds us of the humanity of others.

Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

By Jacobs, Alan

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume with no expectation of a positive review.

Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians - A Review

Theological retrieval has become increasingly popular among evangelicals as young evangelicals, especially, react to some of the narrowly contextual interpretations of many Twentieth Century evangelical and fundamentalist theologians. There has been a great deal of orthodox preaching that has tried to present orthodox theology as if it is the simplest, most obvious reading of texts that any casual interpreter should be able to arrive at. Sometimes, in a rush to conserve the apparent authority of Scripture, well meaning interpreters arrive at heterodox conclusions and claim they are authentically biblical, despite disagreeing with the careful, Bible-saturated arguments of centuries of prior Christians. Theological retrieval is the process of reading historical theology, parsing it against the witness of Scripture, and using the copious resources of our theological ancestors to enrich our theologies.

There has been a great deal more work done on retrieval of the Early Church resources than of Medieval resources. Part of this is due to the acceptance by most Protestant traditions of the product of the seven ecumenical councils, the last of which wat the second council of Nicaea, which concluded in 787 AD. Another reason for the relative concern for retrieving Medieval theology is that the Roman Catholic tradition claims to have direct ties to that tradition.

The Middle Ages was also the time during which the worst abuses of papal authority and incrementally increasing confusions of Christian doctrines were incorporated. The Protestant Reformation was, after all, an attempt to reform some of the deviations from biblical orthodoxy that had evolved during the Middle Ages. Some of Martin Luther’s most severe critiques are of elements of Christian theology invented in the Middle Ages and the Roman Catholic church, which claims continuity with Medieval versions of Christianity, killed many Protestants trying to enforce both political control and adherence to some of those doctrines invented in the Medieval era. There is a reasonable basis for a reduction in concern for that theological age.

Christ Armstrong’s book, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis, is a project for Protestant theological retrieval from the Middle Ages. The book is written for a predominately Evangelical, but possible broadly Protestant audience. It uses Lewis’ interest as a medievalist to show that retrieving doctrines from the Middle Ages is consistent with mere Christianity and can be fruitful.

 Lewis was deeply influenced by the contemplative and devotional aspects of Medieval theology. His book, The Discarded Image, is basically a call for a retrieval of a medieval perspective on the cosmos—not for the adoption of their astronomy, but for their memory of the enchantment of the created order.

Armstrong offers ten chapters in this volume. He begins with an explanation of his approach to the topic, which is focused on maintaining Christian orthodoxy while retrieving the treasures from oft-ignored saints. In Chapter Two he makes the argument, which is easily defensible, that Lewis had a distinctly Medieval worldview. Helpfully, Armstrong also acknowledges that while Lewis was a man of the Middle Ages, there were times his argumentation and epistemology were distinctly modern. He was a man of his times as well as a man deeply saturated with the time before. In Chapter Three Armstrong caps off the introductory topics by arguing that tradition can be a source for truth. His argument here does not conflict with Sola Scriptura, a fundamental of the Reformation, but shows that we can glean wisdom as we discerningly parse through historical and theological writings of the church.

Chapters Four through Ten focus on retrieval of medieval ideas within various categories. Chapter Four deals with recapturing the delight in theological thought of the Middle Ages. The fifth chapter considers the ethical reasoning of Medieval Christians. Chapter Six builds on the previous chapter discussing the culture shaping influence of Christianity in the Middle Ages, which led to the invention of institutions like hospitals. In the seventh chapter Armstrong pushes back against the over-spiritualizing tendencies of much of modern, orthodox Christianity, which tends to value the spirit to the neglect of the body. Armstrong’s argument is that the Medieval, despite the influence of asceticism, had, on balance, a much better doctrine of the body and the created order. In Chapter Eight the pietistic traditions of the Middle Ages are celebrated, with some of the better elements highlighted for consideration. The ninth chapter argues that the medieval focus on the Incarnation was far superior to that of many modern Evangelicals and should be retrieved. Finally, Chapter Ten ties the pieces together and calls for continued work to discover the helpful elements of Medieval theology that can enrich and inform the Christian faith.

The premise of Armstrong’s book is outstanding. There were a great many gospel-saturated Christians in the centuries of the Middle Ages whose writings can enrich our understanding of Christian doctrine, our worship, and our devotional practices. Armstrong is absolutely correct that Lewis was tied into the ethos of the Middle Ages, which means that by reading Lewis deeply (especially beyond the most popular works) one gets an introduction into a Medieval worldview and that by studying the Middle Ages, one can understand Lewis’ work better. This book is worth buying and reading on those accounts.

Perhaps because a great many books highly critical of errant ideas in medieval theology have already been written, there is very little critique offered in this book. In fact, there are some recommendations for adoption of ideas that are, at best, not biblically supported and are, at worst, unhelpful for gospel Christians. Lewis himself adopted a belief in Purgatory toward the end of his life, claiming that it would function as a hot bath to cleanse the Christian from sin before entering heaven. That, indeed, is a reasonable conception, but it undermines the sufficiency of the work of Christ on the cross. Christ paid the penalty to cleanse us from sin, so that no additional, extra-biblical purgation is needed for the sacrifice of the God of the universe to do its work in us. Additionally, Armstrong seems to affirm the idea of transubstantiation of the elements of the Eucharist. The confusion caused by this doctrine has been analyzed greatly, so that I can add little to it, except to note that it that it is a case of (a) excessive literalism, with (b) a strongly contested tradition even within the early Church and  it (c) leads to potential confusion of the creation/creature distinction, which (d)  leads to “veneration” of the elements and (e) an unbiblical belief of the special spiritual status of those ordained by the Church. Another example includes Armstrong’s apparent preference toward the traditional Roman Catholic representation of Christ on the cross as the center of worship. He claims this reinforced the doctrine of the Incarnation. However, this also undermines the biblical emphasis on Christ’s completed work, which was recognized through the triumphant resurrection. Apart from potentially violating the Second Commandment, as many Protestants would argue, the crucifix contributes to an unhelpful focus on the misery of the cross rather than the triumph of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We must understand the first to get to the second, but we worship a Christ ascended, not a Christ trapped in the tortures of the cross. There are reasons, after all, that the Protestant Reformers rejected some of the traditions of the Papal tradition that were not supported by or ran directly counter to Scripture.

Despite some disagreements with where Armstrong takes Medieval retrieval, this is an excellent book. As a volume in Lewis studies, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians is an example of the best sort: it looks where Lewis was pointing, rather than seeing Lewis as the final stopping point for theological consideration. As a volume encouraging theological retrieval, it shows that Armstrong has carefully studied and lived within the traditions he is attempting to retrieve. He is right to show that there is much good that has too often been ignored and contemporary Protestants would do well to revisit some of the theology from a forgotten age.

Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C. S. Lewis

By Armstrong, Chris R.

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