LETTERS

before Christians can be the most effective presence of Christ in the world that God wants us to be, and that this work is going to require of us virtues and disciplines subservient but in addition to charity. In a postmodern world that seems to know and acknowledge no motivations other than money, the will to power, and "choice," perhaps among those disciplined ecclesiological and communal virtues might be voluntary poverty, obedience, and stability of life. These, of course, in addition to prayer and work, are historic Benedictine disciplines. They are equally germane to the challenges of modern Christian evangelization and missionary activity and, in retrospect, equally pertinent to the dilemma of modern colonialization.
Philip Bess
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME SOUTH BEND, INDIANA

REVOLUTION
Great Hearts Academies is the largest and highest-performing network of classical liberal arts K-12 academies in the country. We are accepting applications for Headmasters who will help lead the charge in providing a rigorous education centered on the Great Books of the Western tradition.

Headmaster opportunities at campuses in Arizona, Texas, & Tennessee

GreatHearts
classical education, revoiutionary schoois

www.GreatHeartsAZ.org

Ephraim Radner's review of Brad Gregory's Unintended Reformation wrongly accuses him of resuscitating a tired nineteenth-century Catholic antimodern narrative and offers as criticism the resuscitation of a tired nineteenth-century liberal-progressive narrative thinly disguised as an appeal to Christian charity. I write as a historian who finds Gregory's arguments persuasive, but I think Radner's review provides us with a teaching moment. He scolds both Protestantism and Catholicism for their failure to live up to the ideals of Christian charity, but the saving angel in his historical narrative is not Christian charity but liberal modernity. According to Radner, modern liberal notions of human rights enabled the more authentic realization of Christian charity in history, most dramatically in the abolition of slavery. Such a read of the history of slavery obscures its long, slow death in medieval Western Christendom and the dramatic revival of the institution in the service of the signature economic achievement of liberal modernity, the capitalist world market. The promoters of New World slavery were those on the modernizing, progressive side of history in the early modern Atlantic world. As Christopher Blum has recently reminded us, liberal icons from Locke to Mill to Tocqueville consistently held up slave societies as among the most "progressive" in the modern West. It is one thing for Christians to apologize for the crimes of Christendom; it is another for Christians to feel compelled to apologize for the crimes of modernity. As Gregory is willing to concede, Christians were no doubt complicit in imperial colonial violenceyet no one can deny that secular, liberal, modern progressives were clearly in the driver's seat, imagining and implementing the exploitation. At stake in Gregory's work is not the relationship between Protestant theology and univocity but

what Hans Blumenberg called "the legitimacy of the modern age." Gregory has said in response to the review that an "open-minded atheist could have written the book." An open mind must still engage in some process of choice and selection, and it would take a very rare kind of atheist to select Gregory's narrative, however persuasive it might be on its objective merits. To some degree, Gregory's book does participate in an older Catholic antimodern tradition, even as he takes this tradition to new levels of sophistication. His book is antimodern in the sense that it challenges the primacy of modern social and intellectual forms in dealing with the social and intellectual challenges of the pastfivehundred years. As modernity at its most liberal has allowed for Catholicism within the limits of liberalism alone, so Gregory seems to be suggesting an alternative narrative of engagement that allows for liberal modernity within the limits of Catholicism. In its postmodern manifestations, liberal modernity has discovered a perverted sense of mystery in Richard Rorty's unholy trinity of contingency, irony, and solidarity. The battle is no longer between Catholic faith and liberal reason but between two rival formulations of faith and reason linked to two distinct ways of life. Liberal modernity retains its appeal less on the strength of its arguments or its role in the abolition of slavery than on the continuing appeal of what Gregory calls the "goods life." Sadly, modern Catholics have been all too willing to confuse the goods life with the good life. In this, and not in the so-called Wars of Religion, lies the most pressing failure of Christian love. Christopher Shannon
CHRISTENDOM COLLEGE FRONT ROYAL, VIRGINIA

Ephraim Radner, in his thoughtful review of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation., makes a number of important observations. Ideas,

10

FIRST THINGS

October2012

Radner rightly notes, do not function in a vacuum, and it's impossible to understand the Reformation without recognizing the failure of caritas as an important factor in the division between Catholics and Protestants. He is also right in suggesting that the story of modernity is not just a narrative of failure but also contains elements of "the divine project of love." All of these points can be made, however, without in any way gainsaying the main point that Gregory makes in his book, namely, that "the Western world today is an extraordinarily complex, tangled product of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Western Christianity, in which the Reformation era constitutes the critical watershed." The entire book is a lamentation on the loss of caritas at the time of the Reformation. Particularly problematic is Radner's downplaying of the significance of doctrinal truth claims. Repeatedly, he places "ideas" against charity. The history of modernity, he argues, "should be understood in terms ofthe practical loss of love rather than doctrinal confusion." Accordingly, "the responses of modernity should first be looked at, not in terms of competing truth values . . . but in

terms of divine love's force at work." Therefore, the Reformation divisions "are properly met by a transformation in love among Christians, not by better arguments." The remedy of modernity's wounds is thus a "renewed ecumenism, where the credibility of the Church's life of love and will is primary, not her reasoning" (all emphases mine). Radner's hierarchical ordering of love and truth is, frankly, misplaced. Truth and love go together, as truth and love are ultimately one in God himself. Greater love and better arguments necessarily go hand in hand in dealing with the Reformation divisions. I agree with Radner that we need a renewed ecumenism. But it is one thing just to claim that theological disagreements (such as sola scriptura) are not the only problem; it's another to refute with arguments Gregory's meticulously argued claim that this did, in fact, constitute a serious problem. As a Protestant, I feel forced to acknowledge, with some embarrassment, that the truth of Gregory's claim that the divisiveness of the Reformation became unmistakably evident following the gradual disestablishment of Protestantism. It is only when weaknesses and shortcomings on both sides are roundly acknowledged

that we will be in a position to learn from one another and so to grow in charity and unity. Hans Boersma
REGENT COLLEGE VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

In "The Reformation Wrongly Blamed," Ephraim Radner writes that historian Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation revives the "distinctively modern and distinctively Catholic genealogy of modernity" in the fashion of Jaime Balmes and Jacques Maritain. But this reading of history is not distinctively Catholic. Two influential, non-Catholic figures immediately come to mind: sociologist Max Weber described a "Protestant work ethic" that explained the rise of capitalism and modernity on the basis of a disembodied understanding of salvation inherited from the Reformers; and systematic philosopher Georg Hegel hailed the Reformation, "the all-enlightening Sun," as ushering in modern times by freeing "the specific and definite embodiment of Deity" from any "outward form" so that one may be reconciled to God "in faith and spiritual enjoyment." These non-Catholics saw in the Reformation the seed of a

Saint Louis Abbey

v,imminunin TT^^^^i* ^
At Saint Louis Abbey, we live out the Gospel instructions of Our Lord, bringing from the Sacred Tradition those things that are old, such as Gregorian Chant at Latin Vespers every Saturday and Sunday and at many of our liturgies, as well as those things which are new, yet are in accordance with truth, beauty, and goodness. We combine a life of contemplative Benedictine monasticism with apostolic works, including staffing our high school of the highest excellence. If you a.spire to such a life, visit our website today at www.stlouisabbey.org and contact Fr. Ralph Wright at (800)-638-1527 or frralph@priory.org.

Therefore every scribe wfw has been trained for the Qndom ofHeaven is [ike a househoUer who brings out of his treasure ivhat is new and what is oCd. " Matthew 13:52

11

Copyright of First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion & Public Life is the property of Institute of Religion & Public Life and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.