Fred Sanders Responds to Peter Leithart on “The End of Protestantism”

Fred Sanders responds to Peter Leithart’s blog post at First Things on “The End of Protestantism“:

Leithart calls us away from that kind of small-minded, knee-jerk, unimaginative, amnesiac man of ressentiment, and conjures instead something free and fully realized. He calls it Reformational Catholicism, and builds up its portrait in bright, not to say self-congratulatory, colors, in contrast to the dark tones he has just used.

To put it this way is to point out that the essay labors under an inconsistency between its message and its method. You don’t beat the man of ressentiment by resenting him harder. And this “End of Protestantism” essay has a  squint, a stoop, a cramp, a kink in the hose. It deplores more than it deploys. The spring in its engine is the decision to turn the word “Protestant” into a term of abuse, and use it as a label to catch all the mockery directed at the know-nothings depicted above. I’m not sure who that’s supposed to help. It seems likely to quench the smoking flax of any actual Protestant interest in the great tradition.

Further:

What bothers me about “The End of Protestantism” is that it gives people like this [= the students at an evangelical institution like Biola who discover the great tradition through their coursework] the message that the trailhead to the great heritage cannot be picked up in their own church. The trailhead must be in some other church or denomination. Letihart’s unfortunate language effaces all signs of the trailhead, covers the tracks that we could follow back, demands a leap. The face of Luther glowers ambiguously from the top of the page, but we are assured that there are ”unplumbed depths in Scripture, never dreamt of by Luther and Calvin.” I expect this kind of dismissiveness from someone who hasn’t spent any time reading the exegesis of Luther and Calvin. But I always assume Leithart’s read everything, so I boggle at his false dichotomy between the Reformers and the ancient church.

You can read the whole thing here, as he analyzes what he takes to be a “misleading,” “misconceived,” and “convoluted” case.