Silvianne Aspray's book seeks to “forge a middle path between two largely independent discourses around the origins of modernity: on the one hand, debates around the importance of metaphysical shifts in the (Late) Middle Ages . . ., which tend to bypass the Reformation, and, on the other, genealogies of modernity, which tend to put the Reformation at center stage” (137). Aspray describes and deploys a methodology for examining the “implied metaphysics” of reformers, using Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562) as a case study. Aspray rejects the objection that Protestant reformers wanted to “write a theology that was wholly exegetical” (4; quoting David C. Steinmetz) or wanted to discard metaphysics entirely, arguing with John Betz, Hans Boersma, and others that there is a “metaphysics implicit in all theology”: “exegetical theologies which understand the Scriptures to be a source of revealed and universal truth always have a metaphysical bearing” (5–6). According to Aspray, only a study of the implied metaphysics of the Reformation can counter scholarship criticizing reformers for univocity or “nominalism”—a critique that connects the disparate accounts of the rise of modernity but posits an unduly monolithic view of Reformation metaphysics.
Across four rich chapters, Aspray examines whether Vermigli's work reflects “an ontological participatory scheme, in which the distinction between finite and infinite causality is not seen as a matter of mutual exclusion but as a ‘grammatical’ distinction which allows for infinite agency to operate through the mediation of causes” or a “univocal picture in which the finite and the infinite share the same neutral ground of being, such that divine action must in some sense replace the finite.” These two models with their “respective understandings of being and causality” serve as “heuristic lenses through which to read Reformation sources” (12). Aspray concludes that “the metaphysical structures implied in [Vermigli's] theological work are complex. ‘Being’ is sometimes seen as a neutral category, whereas at other times, God's being is considered pre-eminent such that all other beings participate in it. Similarly, God's action is sometimes construed in ontological ways, working in and through other causes, but elsewhere divine agency is considered as merely general, and concurring ‘specially’ to the action of other causal actors.” Vermigli “simultaneously inhabits and exhibits aspects of two metaphysical frameworks which would normally be considered mutually exclusive” (27); but, Aspray admits, few theologians will appear consistent when scrutinized according to these metaphysical ideal types.
This book contributes to scholarship on Vermigli, who is understudied, and Aspray concisely but effectively outlines his significance to Reformation history, as well as scholars’ depiction of Vermigli as someone who bridged “traditional divides” between scholasticism, humanism, and the Reformation (22). There is, however, no overview of Vermigli's theology, nor is there detailed reflection on how his metaphysical complexity reshapes our understanding of his historical significance. The author is interested primarily in what Vermigli's thought reveals about shifts in metaphysics associated with modernity.
Aspray wisely avoids the easy recourse of accusing Vermigli of inconsistency and instead argues that Vermigli reflects a larger context of transition “from a predominately metaphysical framework to a predominately univocal one”—a long period when “no metaphysical episteme was dominant” and “there was not one single framework which thinkers would most naturally inhabit” (138). Aspray hopes this study will contribute to a larger revisioning of the period, and the book's conclusion references research into elements of Martin Luther's and John Calvin's theology that “are premised upon a participatory metaphysical model” (139). The association of the Reformation with univocal metaphysics needs revised, and Aspray critiques older scholarship (Joseph Lortz, Louis Bouyer) as well as those aspects of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation (2012) that address metaphysics: the metaphysics of the Reformation cannot have been the “primary impetus” behind “secularization or social fragmentation,” because those metaphysics were complex (142). (The social-historical aspects of Gregory's book are not addressed here.) If the unfolding of Protestant thought after the first generations includes an embrace of “univocal structures,” the question becomes why these came to the fore over “participatory metaphysical structures, even though the latter had been equally available in the Reformation” (143).
The book contains intricate analysis of Vermigli's writings, which will not be easy reading for non-specialists in Vermigli; the book targets advanced scholars of the history of theology and metaphysics. Aspray argues that Vermigli's doctrines of providence and knowing imply a “participatory model of causal explanation,” but Vermigli also teaches that sinful humans corrupt what God creates good, thus competing with God's agency (51). In turn, Vermigli's concept of faith involves God working “intrinsically, and non-competitively in human beings” even as he defends an extrinsic concept of imputation (79–80). In his eucharistic theology, Vermigli describes “the relationship between Christ, the eucharistic elements, and the faithful” in terms of “spatial distance,” except when considering believers’ union with Christ; he implies that unbelievers “stand in little or no ontological dependence on the infinite” (103–104). Similar inconsistency is found in Vermigli's political theology: temporal authorities mediate God's authority, yet Vermigli's understanding of the authority of God's word implies a “univocal understanding of being” (108).
In each locus, Vermigli's metaphysical complexity arises in the course of his work as an exegete and polemicist working within a developing doctrinal framework. Vermigli's commitment to a complex source, scripture, was a driver of metaphysical complexity. Aspray does not attend to this point but does show that the commitment to scripture itself had metaphysical underpinnings. The contribution of this book is that, by adding new insight into Vermigli to the rich world of scholarship on Calvin and Luther, it further undermines simplistic narratives about the Protestant rejection of metaphysics or the character of Protestant metaphysics. It adds to a deepening awareness of the complexity of the emerging Protestant traditions and should encourage attention to the diverse, even contradictory, unfolding of possibilities after the first generations of reformers. The Reformation remains significant to the story of modernity, but scholars must consider what forces determined the neglect or elevation of specific traditions, including metaphysical ones. Intellectual history proves no less complicated than social history, from which it is only artificially separated.
