Theological Origins of Modernity

132 chapter five
a vision of Christianity that resembled that of Luther. Its Christianity was
also less ritualistic and more spiritual, and equally critical of corruption
and hypocrisy, but also more circumspect in its opposition, not attacking
fundamental beliefs and practices directly, employing instead irony and
satire, and relying ultimately not on an ecstatic and rapturous rebirth in
the spirit but on a system of moral training and education. Christian humanism
thus off ered a less disruptive and less violent path to reformation
that by all estimates had a good chance of success.
Why then was this path so unacceptable to Luther? What was wrong
with humanism? One might imagine that Luther was unhappy with humanism
because it was so secular, because it pulled Christians away from
their faith. Surprisingly, this was not the case. While some humanists
may have followed a more secular path, this did not particularly concern
Luther. Indeed, in his opinion secular humanists were clearly preferable to
many other secular possibilities. What he found intolerable was not secular
humanism but Christian humanism. Indeed, the more Christian humanism
was, the more dangerous it seemed to him, the more likely to mislead
Christians and distort religious life. Th e real and essential diff erences between
Luther’s thought and the thought of humanism thus become apparent
only when accidental factors are eliminated, that is, only when they
most nearly approach another.
As we saw in the last two chapters, both humanist and Reformation
thought developed as responses to nominalism. Th e diff erences between
them were largely the result of their diff ering perceptions about what
nominalism was and what needed to be done to overcome it. On basic
issues they were in agreement. Both accepted the nominalist critique of
scholastic realism and the ontological individualism that was central to
nominalism. Both also rejected the nominalist treatment of words as mere
signs in favor of a rhetorical or hermeneutic understanding of language.
On matters of metaphysica generalis, they were thus on remarkably similar
ground. Th e real diff erences between them emerged in the realm of metaphysica
specialis, and particularly in their confl icting views of the ontic
priority of man and God and of the relationship between them. Th ese differences
led to profound disagreements about how Christians ought to live
as individuals, in communities, and with respect to their God; and it was
these disagreements that brought them into confl ict.
Th eir diff erences on these matters are a refl ection of a deep tension
within Christianity itself. What distinguished Christianity from the very
beginning was not its monotheism (which it shared with Judaism and
later with Islam) but its notion of divine incarnation that bridged the gap