culties capable of reshaping all of society and life.
             Kelley moves on to discuss "The Grand Synthesis" of the medieval world: pagan classicism and historic Christianity. Like Christopher Dawson, Alister McGrath, and other deeply informed observers of this era, Kelley is aware of the dominating influence of monasticism on it. It was not merely one religio-cultural factor among many, but in many ways was the dominating feature of medieval life. Kelley believes the origins of the monastic ideal in certain aspects of pagan Greek philosophy, and correctly suggests that "Christianity's eventual triumph over the ancient pagan world was tragically undermined by an opposing development, the incursion into the life of Christianity of a deeply rooted pagan outlook that took hold as monasticism" (p. 83). The Platonic dualism, according to which matter, material substance, and the things of this world were considered vastly inferior to the world of eternal Forms and Ideas, heavily influenced Christian monasticism, as did the Gnostic heresy. Further, monasticism carried on that aspect of the pagan Greek philosophical tradition which divided humanity into the elite and the masses: for Plato and company, the philosopher-kings comprised the elite, while for the monastics, those who separated themselves from the "world" and devoted themselves exclusively to a pious devotion to God constituted, in fact, the Christian elite. Kelley notes, moreover, how the ancient Greek notion of man's coming to the fullest measure of his humanity in civic or political association was perpetuated in the monastic ideal of the Christian elite communing together in the monastery (p. 87). Even St. Augustine, while recognizing many flaws of the patristic monastic order and, certainly, the pagan heresies from which it sprang, did not break decisively with this monastic ideal and thus bequeathed to the later Middle Ages, along with his sound, Biblical theology, a certain measur...