The next book: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants

With my next book, Medieval Wisdom for Modern Protestants, I want to make medieval Christianity accessible and edifying for modern Protestants. I will draw on C S Lewis and friends (Chesterton, Tolkien, Sayers, Williams), medievalists all, as docents in an introductory chapter and throughout the book. The eight topical chapters will open up eight themes:

(1) the medievals’ commitment to the sacredness of Creation, issuing in profoundly spiritual treasures of Western culture,

(2) their adherence to tradition as truth-source,

(3) their passionate search for theological knowledge (fides quaerens intellectum–“faith seeking understanding”),

(4) their moral seriousness, expressed in the notion of “faith formed by love,”

(5) their monastic way and monastic missions,

(6) their affective devotion (“heart religion”),

(7) their love affair with the Incarnation—and thus the embodied life of faith, and

(8) their insistence on the priority of the eternal over the temporal in human life, and therefore their “art of dying well” (ars moriendi).

Each chapter will tell the story of its theme in the medieval period through key ideas, figures, movements, and events.