Angels in the Architecture - Introduction "Positively Medieval"

Wilson begins the book with an introductory essay and posits a medieval / modern antithesis. He admits it may be odd, but says it is important to flesh out the Christian worldview and “Christian medievalism” is the best way to flesh out that story. The essays that follow cover subjects ranging from predestination, lovemaking, feasting, and agrarianism.

The obvious question for Wilson and Jones is how to define modernity and medievalism? Modernity is the current shape of the world, with all its sterility and loneliness. Modernity is whatever rejects truth, beauty, and goodness. This is why postmodernism is simply the child or grandchild of modernity, according the Wilson and Jones. The rejection of these categories means little until we recognize what they replace them with. Rationalism and sentimentalism are the virtues that modernity puts in the place of truth, beauty, and goodness. Modernity is the Enlightenment lived out to the n^th degree. It is a world without feeling, only sentimentalism. It is world without love, only cold rationalism. Medievalism, on the other hand, is the fullness of truth, beauty, and goodness and all the things that go with them. Wilson says,

“The medieval period is the closest thing we have to a maturing Christian culture.”

This maturing culture was cut short in the 16^th century by none other than the Reformation and the Enlightenment. While the Reformation was cut of the same cloth as medievalism, neither survived the Enlightenment very well. The Reformation was a revolution of sorts and revolutions always call for some serious calls to be made. Shipwreck survivors must make some very serious decisions about life and death in the immediate wake of the wreck that do not necessarily reflect how they would live normally. But the situation determines the actions. This is not a call for or an endorsement of situational ethics. No one can do anything immoral in the wake of a shipwreck or plane crash and call it OK because of the wreck. The situation never justifies the choice, but it can reasonably inform the choice. Luther and Calvin and the others made some societal and cultural choices to distance themselves from Roman Catholicism so much that their descendents mistook the emergency decision for the proscribed norm and made it normative for the resulting group.

But the true test between medievalism and modernity is the appeal of the story. Which has a better tale to tell? Would you rather hear the tale sitting before a roaring fire in a Danish Mead Hall with a mug of dark brew or in a cold, sterile restaurant on 5^th Ave in New York while you daintily sip your trendy mixed drink? Would you rather hear the tale after a long hard day’s work in your fields or after a long shift in the cubicle? To ask the question is almost to have it answered. We consider the medieval story more valuable because it was so rich. Yeah, it was dirty and we can learn that lesson later.

The introduction tells us that the medieval story was taken over by Protestantism but then lost in the trenches of modernity. We can recover it and move forward. The rest of this book, the essays that follow are guides to what medieval Protestantism would look like.