Secularism as Unintended Consequence of Luther’s Nominalism and Reformation (Brad Gregory)? Part 1
Many historians have identified philosophical nominalism, which became influential in the European universities of the fourteenth century, as a major factor in the breakdown of the synthesis of Christianity and Greco-Roman thought that had served as the basis of intellectual life and religious life of medieval society for 1000 years. As this synthesis weakened, so too did the religious authority that undergirded the social and cultural order of medieval Christendom.
One influential school of thought in contemporary Western academia—associated with figures such as John Milbank (Radical Orthodoxy), Louis Dupré (Passage to Modernity), and Brad Gregory (The Unintended Reformation, 2012)—has advanced a more focused genealogical argument. According to this narrative, the Protestant Reformation functioned as a principal carrier of nominalism, thereby eroding the participatory metaphysics and epistemological foundations of Western culture. Michael Horton summarizes this thesis succinctly: “According to this story, the Reformation was a prime carrier of the nominalism that has emptied into the gulf of postmodern nihilism”1Michael Horton, Justification, vol. 1, p. 311. Ironically, the prominent Malaysian Muslim scholar Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas places the blame for secularism not on nominalism but on Thomas Aquinas, despite the fact that Thomism is fundamentally antithetical to nominalism. In Islam and Secularism, al-Attas interprets Thomistic philosophy as a source of secularization, a reading that many historians of medieval thought would regard as historically problematic. Unsurprisingly, some of his followers view the rise of secularism in the West as evidence of Christianity’s theological failure and the absence of genuine revealed truth within the Christian tradition Continue reading “Secularism as Unintended Consequence of Luther’s Nominalism and Reformation (Brad Gregory)? Part 1”
