Both Christians and non-Christians from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe have told me that the material “success” of the “West” as well as its non-material, chiefly political, contributions to world-wide civilization is rooted in its Christian faith. This volume picks up on the suggestion of scholars such as Alexandre Koyré, Jaen-Claude Milner, and Alexandre Leupin that the belief that the second person of the Trinity became a human being, “the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on Western culture at the time it was establishing its fundamental characteristics” (3).
Furthermore, Ranft supports Leupin's contention that “the Middle Ages, insofar as it worked out the consequences of the Incarnation, is also the birthplace of modernity” (4). Ranft labels the doctrine a catalyst, “a substance that can cause a change in the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being affected by the reaction” (9), a not fully satisfying metaphor in this case since cultural factors have affected expressions and emphases of the biblical reports of the Incarnation as it has been translated into new settings throughout history. Ranft finds the doctrine as first formulated at Nicea in 325 and matured at Chalcedon in 451, “a doctrine of supreme opposites, where the human and divine are synthesized in a paradoxical, irrational way” (10) that nonetheless challenged ways of thinking dependent on authority and elicited more active use of rational argument. Ranft concedes that her contention, based on the metaphor of catalyst, cannot be proven and that her “presentation is more expository than analytical” (11). That frees the reader from nitpicking when leaps of judgment from historical citation to present application occur. This makes this adventurous essay through early and high medieval thinking a more pleasurable path even when the daring of Ranft's associations and conclusions frustrate the wish for analytical assurance.
Ranft's sketch of the early stages of the formulation correctly connects the doctrine of the Incarnation with the doctrines of the Trinity and creation. More detail regarding the radical differences between Platonic or Neoplatonic worldviews and Hebrew perceptions of reality would have more solidly anchored Ranft's study, for the personhood of the Creator who through conversation and community with his human creatures made and manages the world is key to many of the ideas she more directly ascribes to the doctrine of the Incarnation (with which these ideas are obviously also connected). Moving into the medieval period, she persuasively connects the doctrine of the Incarnation to the Lord's Supper and with Marian devotion, but her account of the more public, “great” thinkers inadequately faces how much of pagan presupposition adhered to the practical use of both Eucharistic devotion and Marian piety throughout the period. Her sketch of the controversies over Eucharistic theology in the eleventh century is helpful, strengthening her argument for the influence of incarnational theology on the practice of logic and formal argumentation.
The chapter on Peter Damian recapitulates Ranft's earlier examination of his thought. Her citations again expand and bolster her thesis with insights into Peter's mode of argumentation, which applied elements of the doctrine of the Incarnation to his social theory, view of the individual, treatment of paradox, “ethics of intention,” and eschatology.
Ranft also brings the critical role of women theologians into her argument. Her portrayal and analysis of the contributions of Hrotsvitha, “the first woman dramatist of Germany, Christianity, and the West; the first poet of Saxony, the first woman historian, the only woman author of a Latin epic, the inventor of the Christian epic, and the first to redefine antiquity's portrait of women” (85), is a gem of biographical interpretation (85–92). Ranft connects women's eucharistic devotion with their drive toward individuating matter, which led to their seeing in their physicality “a likeness binding them to Christian's physicality in ways that men were not able to” (161).
Ranft begins her concluding synthesis by noting that “without its strong sense of individualism Western culture would be shorn of its liberal and fine arts and its economic systems. Without its political theory Western democracy would not exit. Take away science, and its material world would disappear. By documenting the presence of the Incarnation doctrine in the creators of these characteristics, the case for the doctrine's pivotal role as catalyst in the shaping Western culture [sic] becomes even more persuasive” (185). The claim seems oversimplified because too many other factors—Germanic common law and its “democratic” tendencies, to name but one—come into play. The failure to engage how biblical and pagan views of the material world met, interacted, and cross-fertilized in this period weakens the analysis. Ranft's focus on a single doctrine—while acknowledging its connections with other doctrines—misses how the biblical worldview functions as a whole with its several “articles of faith” contributing to the whole.
That said, Ranft has created a plausible and, often in its detail, credible case for her contention, indeed more expository than analytical, challenging readers, inviting renewed discussion of the critical impact of the doctrine of Incarnation and related biblical teachings on cultures around the world, especially “Western” culture. Ranft could not have in a single monograph carried the study further. However, she or others should examine, for instance, the claim of Heiko Obermann that found the origins of some of the characteristics of Western thought she dates to an earlier time actually originated in their more or less modern form with William of Ockham and the several trains of thought that proceeded from his work. Luther's doctrine of creation and his high appreciation of both the divine and human natures in the hypostatic union provide another critical point at which this biblical raw material flowed into the production line of the “modern” world. Ranft's contribution is indeed controversial but also constructive and a significant contribution to what must be a continuing conversation.
