How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture . By Patricia Ranft. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013. viii + 262 pp. $90.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture . By Patricia Ranft . Lanham, MD : Lexington , 2013. viii + 262 pp. $90.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesBoth Christians and non-Christians from Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe have told me that the material "success" of the "West" as well as its non-material, chiefly political, contributions to world-wide civilization is rooted in its Christian faith. This volume picks up on the suggestion of scholars such as Alexandre Koyre, Jaen-Claude Milner, and Alexandre Leupin that the belief that the second person of the Trinity became a human being, "the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on Western culture at the time it was establishing its fundamental characteristics" (3).Furthermore, Ranft supports Leupin's contention that "the Middle Ages, insofar as it worked out the consequences of the Incarnation, is also the birthplace of modernity" (4). Ranft labels the doctrine a catalyst, "a substance that can cause a change in the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being affected by the reaction" (9), a not fully satisfying metaphor in this case since cultural factors have affected expressions and emphases of the biblical reports of the Incarnation as it has been translated into new settings throughout history. Ranft finds the doctrine as first formulated at Nicea in 325 and matured at Chalcedon in 451, "a doctrine of supreme opposites, where the human and divine are synthesized in a paradoxical, irrational way" (10) that nonetheless challenged ways of thinking dependent on authority and elicited more active use of rational argument. Ranft concedes that her contention, based on the metaphor of catalyst, cannot be proven and that her "presentation is more expository than analytical" (11). That frees the reader from nitpicking when leaps of judgment from historical citation to present application occur. This makes this adventurous essay through early and high medieval thinking a more pleasurable path even when the daring of Ranft's associations and conclusions frustrate the wish for analytical assurance.Ranft's sketch of the early stages of the formulation correctly connects the doctrine of the Incarnation with the doctrines of the Trinity and creation. More detail regarding the radical differences between Platonic or Neoplatonic worldviews and Hebrew perceptions of reality would have more solidly anchored Ranft's study, for the personhood of the Creator who through conversation and community with his human creatures made and manages the world is key to many of the ideas she more directly ascribes to the doctrine of the Incarnation (with which these ideas are obviously also connected). Moving into the medieval period, she persuasively connects the doctrine of the Incarnation to the Lord's Supper and with Marian devotion, but her account of the more public, "great" thinkers inadequately faces how much of pagan presupposition adhered to the practical use of both Eucharistic devotion and Marian piety throughout the period. Her sketch of the controversies over Eucharistic theology in the eleventh century is helpful, strengthening her argument for the influence of incarnational theology on the practice of logic and formal argumentation. …