One wonders why Brad Gregory felt compelled to add to our stock of historical fables. He is obviously dissatisfied with the way we live now and despairs that things will only get worse. I share his dissatisfaction and, in my worst moments, his despair. But it enlightens me not at all to think that \u201cmedieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity is failing,\u201d\u009d as if each of these were self-conscious \u201cprojects\u201d\u009d the annual reports of which are available for consultation. Life does not work that way; history does not work that way. Nor does it help me to imagine that the peak of Western civilization was reached in the decades just before the Reformation, or to imagine that we might rejoin The Road Not Taken by taking the next exit off the autobahn, which is the vague hope this book wants to plant in readers\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s just that I align myself more closely with Augustine than Gregory does. Though a lapsed Catholic, I share his assumption that the detritus we leave behind in history is a symbol of our fallenness, revealing little more than that. And I see the wisdom of his view that if members of the Church wish to serve it, they must let the past bury itself and concentrate on spreading the Gospel by word and especially deed in the here and now. The Road Not Taken is an empty fantasy, distracting Christians from the only road that ever matters: the one in front of them. Remembering that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n