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The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society

Brad S. Gregory, 2012. The unintended Reformation: how a religious revolution secularized society. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.At first glance, the thesis of The unintended Reformation can be put quite simply: the chaos of modern life is a result of the Reformation, even if an unintended one. The origins of superficial atheism, apathetic relativism, the quasi-religious nature of the state, ethical incoherence, unrestrained consumption, and the fragmentation of academic discourse can all be traced back to the Reformation. While the Reformers would strongly reject each of these six modern afflictions, their actions have nevertheless led us to where we are. In six chapters, Brad Gregory provides a genealogy for each of these areas, stretching from the Reformation to today. It's a frequently brilliant, if flawed, book and one of the most significant works of Christian history to be published in recent years.One of the great strengths of the book is Gregory's pessimistic analysis of our present moment. He is incisive in his critique of Western societies which have no 'acquisitive ceiling' and whose theological and philosophical discourses have become impoverished to the point of paralysis. He does not necessarily attempt to pioneer any new analyses here but does well in synthesising the thought of people like Alasdair MacIntyre, Albert O. Hirschman, and others. The contentious part of Gregory's history is rather his extending his gaze beyond the Enlightenment to earlier roots. While critics since Johann Georg Hamann have warned of the corrosive effects of the Enlightenment, Gregory treats the Enlightenment within a genealogy that begins with the Reformation. He thus rejects 'supersessionist' accounts of history that see each successive age as begetting the next and thus only look to the prior movement for explanatory keys. He persuasively argues that historical trajectories run far deeper than this and require a greater historical perspective which modern academic specialisation frequently disallows. Thus while Gregory opens himself up to the dangers of generalisation, one cannot help but give him a long leash as he attempts to give the kind of 'big picture' argument that the academy rarely provides.Perhaps the best way to get into the book is to give a run down of how just one of Gregory's six genealogies takes its course. In his second chapter, 'Relativizing doctrines', Gregory traces the impact that Reformation divisions have wrought on the intellectual life of Western thought, with particular reference to modern relativism. In his sights is the Reformation teaching of sola scriptura. He notes that this was an important doctrine for Luther as well as Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer, Anabaptist theologians and others. But while they all valued this doctrine, none of them could agree on what the scriptures actually said and so came to doctrinal conclusions that were fundamentally irreconcilable. The perceived inability of sola scriptura to come to a unified vision of the truth led the European consciousness to reason. Thus, in a strange inversion of the path of Reformation theologians, philosophers began declaring their independent commitment to their own perceptions and reason alone. Montaigne, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, and others, all supposed that they alone were being truly independent, focusing on reason alone, only to be replaced by a newer independent thinker claiming pure reason as his starting point. …