After four years of separation, I'm blissfully cohabitating with my book collection once more. And I've finally gotten around to reading Jacques Barzun's massive history of modernity -- From Dawn to Decadence. So far I'm only through the Reformation, and I'm not enchanted with the book. While a nice survey, there really weren't any big new insights in the material. There were some great tidbits, however, and I love the format of the work.
His coverage of the Protestants vs. Romanists issue seems more than a little tendentious. When you end up arguing that it was the Proddies fault that the Catholics persecuted Galileo, you know you have an axe of some kind to grind. Somehow, Servetus and Castellio both make the book, Counter-Reformational slaughters don't.
He's also quite weak when he strays from cultural history into theology and church history. For example, he states that the only thing connecting the Puritans and Calvin was a belief in self-restraint. Excepting the fact that the Puritans took the bulk of their entire worldview from Calvin, I guess a belief in self-restraint was the only connection.
And he makes assertions like this: "At the same time, a man of intelligence and honesty like Luther cannot be blind to the many contradictions in the divinely inspired text." And the basis for this is. . .?
The book was well-received among conservatives, so I'm still hoping for good things. But if he's weak in an area where I know things, it makes me hesitant to trust him on other topics.
Posted by Discoshaman at juin 9, 2005 04:37 AM | TrackBack
Great to have you back in action!!!
I think he's weaker in the areas you're hitting than in most others. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, while noting some of his emphases were definitely shaped by a Continental, Rome-centered POV.
Nonetheless, it does beat a laicite-centered point of view, n'est-ce pas?
He does have some points, I think, in sheer cause-and-effect sense, which if taken as arguments "X should not have happened because it had bad effect Y" would be problematic. He doesn't seem to draw that consequentialist conclusion, which I appreciate.
However, I did think the "boredom" analysis was more trite than his encyclopedic knowledge had led me to hope for.
Cheers,
PGE
I actually agree that there are significant apparent contradictions in the Bible (we just read last night in 2 Cor how we will receive good or bad in front of the judgement seat based on what we did in this life, which seems to contradict the whole grace alone through faith thing), but they make living by faith a lot more engaging because we have to work them out. I'd be surprised if Luther hadn't made a similar observation.
Posted by: Lenise at juin 9, 2005 04:05 PM