a political history of early christianity by allen brent t & t clark a new history of early...

DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2010.01399.x

Reviews

JESUS: A PORTRAIT by Gerald O’Collins SJ, Darton, Longman and Todd,London, 2008, pp. xvi + 246, £12.95 pbk

Gerald O’Collins is one of those rare breeds: a systematic theologian who hasbeen able, and willing, to keep abreast with developments in biblical scholarship.Perhaps more famous in New Testament circles for his significant books on theResurrection, in this volume he widens his sights to incorporate also the earthlylife and ministry. Yet this is no predictable ‘Jesus book’. O’Collins takes ashis starting point St Augustine’s meditation on divine beauty in his homily onPsalm 45, as the lens through which to explore the story of Jesus: ‘he [Christ]is beautiful in heaven; beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb; beautiful inhis parents’ arms . . . beautiful on the cross; beautiful in the sepulchre; beautifulin heaven’ (p. 2). This provides the setting for the remainder of the book, inwhich O’Collins explores various ‘moments’ in Christ’s life as manifestationsof the divine beauty. He attempts to do what few writers of Jesus books dareto do: facilitate a ‘face-to-face encounter’ with the Jesus witnessed to by theevangelists.

This in no way means that O’Collins has overlooked or bypassed his recentscholarly predecessors. On the contrary, he is far from naıve about the difficultiesof his task. He acknowledges the elusive mystery of the human person, noting atone point that the nature of our sources makes it hard (though not impossible) topenetrate the inner life of Jesus of Nazareth. In tackling the sources themselves,he accepts and utilises the ‘three stage’ theory of gospel formation typical ofmainstream historical criticism (Jesus – oral tradition – evangelists). However,he exhibits rather more historical optimism than the form critics regarding the‘second stage’. The influence of Richard Bauckham’s recent and provocativeJesus and the Eyewitnesses, and James Dunn’s stimulating exploration of oralityin Jesus Remembered, is pervasive and gratefully acknowledged. Simply put, theyremind us that there never was an ‘uninterpreted Jesus’ (Dunn), and that a goodcase can be made for the gospels having preserved reliable eyewitness testimony(Bauckham). This reviewer was also reminded of Luke Timothy Johnson, who hasasked some very searching questions of traditional ‘quests’ of the historical Jesus,not least the colourless non-apocalyptic version emanating from the AmericanJesus Seminar. In both one detects the conviction that there must be a moresatisfying alternative to that sharply posed dichotomy between ‘the historicalJesus’ and the ‘kerygmatic Christ’. Surprisingly, Johnson is not one of O’Collins’sconversation partners.

In the unfolding portrait which O’Collins paints, Jesus’s original proclamationof the Kingdom is envisaged as containing both present and future dimensions,and revealing a person profoundly steeped in Israel’s Scriptures yet finely attunedto the world around him. O’Collins make the powerful observation that, despitethe New Testament emphasis upon Jesus’s proclamation of the kingdom of God,‘King’ (so prevalent in the Old Testament) is frequently displaced by ‘Father’as Christ’s preferred divine title. While generally avoiding the infancy narrativesas precarious territory for historical reconstruction, he is nonetheless willing to

C© 2010 The Author. New Blackfriars C© 2010 The Dominican Society. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2010, 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

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speculate on the equally-shadowy pre-ministry years, as the formative periodduring which Jesus must have built up that rich stock of images which permeatehis parables: ‘During the years in Nazareth Jesus had been intensely alive to hisworld and what was happening between human beings and their constantly lovingGod’ (p. 20). He rightly notes the central place of the miracles in Jesus’s ministry,a body of tradition so pervasive that even the most sceptical of contemporaryhistorians would find it difficult to deny its antiquity. But instead of getting side-tracked into the ‘Did they happen?’ question, he is much more interested in theirmeaning for us: he teases out from the healings tradition four major themes ofdeliverance, forgiveness of sins, light, and life.

In O’Collins’s view, the ‘trinitarian’ face of the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesusis perhaps best exemplified in the parables he taught. What kind of mind orimagination, he speculates, lies behind such stories? At this point, the criteriafor distinguishing between the ‘three levels’, so carefully set out in the openingchapters, are far from evident. Given his particular concentration on the distinctlyLucan parables of the Good Samaritan, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and the LostSon (to which O’Collins devotes a whole chapter), one might equally ask ‘Whoseimagination?’ That of Jesus or of Luke? His profound reflections on the ProdigalSon are full of theological insight and homiletic potential, and his instinct maywell be right that we gain here a particular glimpse into the heart and mind ofthe Master. But it still requires careful methodological underpinning, of the sortO’Collins employs so adroitly elsewhere (e.g. in his treatment of the Beatitudes,or the Lord’s Prayer).

Most of the time, O’Collins is rather more restrained. He believes that Jesusanticipated his own death, but finds no clear evidence that he interpreted it inthe light of Isaiah 53. His account of the ‘moment’ of the Passion presumes thatwe cannot do better than the evangelists themselves in exploring the mystery ofChrist’s suffering and death. Following Bauckham, he majors here on two com-plementary accounts: of Mark (preserving second-hand the Petrine testimony) andof the Beloved Disciple (a close associate of Jesus but not one of the Twelve).Paradoxically, it is the one gospel springing from an eyewitness – the Gospelof John – which exhibits the greatest impressionistic creativity. For O’Collins,however, this is not a problem: ‘A lifelong process of understanding and inter-pretation, along with the abiding presence of the risen Jesus himself, allowed thebeloved disciple to gain ever deeper insights into the meaning of the events inwhich he had participated’ (p. 201). Indeed, unlike many of his fellow Jesus-questers, he does not conclude the story there, but includes narratives of Easterappearances to provide fuller insight into the Christ who continues to come to hisfollowers.

This is a readable and penetrating book, which draws upon artists, poets andnovelists as well as patristic authors and contemporary exegetes to illuminateits subject. At times, some might find O’Collins over-optimistic, and guilty ofnot applying his criteria as systematically as his opening chapters suggest hemight. Yet again and again, one feels that his instincts are sure, and that hebrings us closer to the ‘real Jesus’ than do many rival questers. In the end,we are left not with a Jesus lying dead on a mortuary slab, to be dissectedby the disinterested historian. Rather, we encounter the living Lord, in all hiselusiveness and complexity. Moreover, as O’Collins reminds us early in his book,knowing another is itself an exercise in self-knowledge. This book is ultimatelyan invitation to a transforming encounter with the One who knows us more deeplythan we know ourselves.

IAN BOXALL

C© 2010 The AuthorNew Blackfriars C© 2010 The Dominican Society

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A POLITICAL HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY by Allen Brent T & TClark, Edinburgh, 2009, pp. xviii + 326, £25; A NEW HISTORY OF EARLYCHRISTIANITY by Charles Freeman, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009,pp. xvi + 377, £25; AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO: A LIFE by Henry Chadwick, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford, 2009, pp. xx + 177, £8.99

The comprehensive study of the world into which Christianity was born demandsthe mastery of a challenging range of disciplines and types of evidence. The his-torian of ideas also needs to be able to enter, with intellectual humility, into mindsvery different from our own; only in that way will he or she grasp the signifi-cance of the mass of available bits of information. Most scholars, unsurprisingly,contribute only small pieces to the overall jigsaw. It takes someone exceptionalto write an authoritative general account of early Christianity, let alone one ca-pable of changing our fundamental understanding of the period. Allen Brent’s APolitical History of Early Christianity is such an account.

Brent has two key insights: first, that everyone in the ancient world took forgranted the tight connection between metaphysical and theological, natural, andsocio-political, peace and good order; second, that the shifts in interpretation of thehuman and political world, which thus reflected shifts in the understanding of thedivine world, affected pagans and Christians in parallel and mutually interactingways. Brent makes helpful use of twentieth-century parallels to illustrate theway that socio-political worldviews function. His hermeneutic proves remarkablyfruitful, as again and again he is able to illuminate the significance of an obscurereference, whether from a canonical text or a little-known inscription. His attentionto religious ritual, both pagan and Christian, is particularly perceptive.

The book focuses on the contrast between apocalyptic interpretations of Chris-tianity and its relation to political authority, and those that seek some kind ofaccommodation with non-Christians. The first chapter argues, against gnostic orpolitical readings, that Jesus saw himself as an eschatological prophet inauguratinga new and definitive reign of God. At the very least, this was the understanding ofthe Markan community, which lived in Rome in the 60s AD, Brent argues, underthe threat of persecution, and believed in an imminent second coming, rather thana past resurrection, of Jesus. For this reason the community had no interest inengaging with or reforming the state; its oppression was simply to be endured. Onthe other hand, its interest in portents (e.g. Mark 13.24–25) would have suggestedto the pagan authorities that it welcomed the breakdown of the metaphysical andnatural order. The propitiatory rites of pagan religion were designed preciselyto defuse such a thing. (Tacitus criticised Judaism for related reasons (Histories5.13)).

Mark’s apocalyptic was a direct challenge to the religious self-understandingof Augustus and his successors, which Brent brilliantly reconstructs, using, forexample, the imagery of the Ara Pacis. Augustus, who saw his role as augur ascentral to his mission, had inaugurated the return of the golden age, the ‘peaceof the gods’; as a priest, he mediated the divine power that guided the agesas they revolved. Such ideas were undergirded intellectually by Stoicism. As theemperors, under pressure in particular from the cities of the east, were themselvesgradually divinised, the author of Revelation responded with an uncompromisingrestatement of apocalyptic. This countered in detail the imperial cult with theimage of the heavenly court: thus the elders around God’s throne wear the samewhite robes and gold crown as civic ambassadors honouring a visiting emperor-god.

Meanwhile a quite different response to imperial power was being developed byChristians elsewhere. Both Luke and Clement of Rome looked for convergencesbetween Christianity and the political theology of imperial peace. For Luke thepax deorum was inaugurated on earth too by the birth of Christ; for Clement,


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Christians formed a politeuma, a civic body, which, so long as it remainedinternally peaceful, could be protected within the imperial order. He goes so faras to talk of the ‘glory’ and ‘honour’ given by God to the emperors – a strikingcontrast with the Book of Revelation. Ignatius of Antioch provides yet anotherform of realised eschatology, understanding clergy like himself to be ensuringcosmic peace by enacting a religious drama which, once again, mirrors in detailpagan ceremonies. His title ‘theophoros’ recalls the pagan priests who carriedimages of the gods on their heads in procession.

Brent then traces parallel processes of unification: in theology, as the apologistspresented a hierarchical trinity that neatly corresponded to political structures; inecclesiology, notably with Callistus in Rome in the early third century (hereBrent’s detective’s eye is at its sharpest) and with Cyprian, developing the idea ofa universal church structure; and in pagan political theology, as Caracalla granteduniversal citizenship above all for religious reasons, a policy continued by Decius,while rulers from Elagabalus to Aurelian to the young Constantine pushed apagan monotheism culminating in the cult of Sol Invictus. This process was notsmooth, as the troubles of the mid-third century saw a revival of both pagan andChristian apocalyptic; however, its trajectory led towards Eusebius’ presentationof Constantine as the sole emperor of a unified, pacified, empire, who reflectedthe Logos as it ordered creation. Why then did Eusebian ideology, which is echoedfor example in the mosaics of Ravenna, not become the dominant understandingthroughout Christendom? Brent suggests an intriguing set of answers: the unitedChurch had become too robustly independent; the New Testament could notsupport a completely realised eschatology; orthodox trinitarianism did not coherewith it.

Inevitably so rich a book leaves one asking questions: Where does Paul fit intothis picture, with his expectations of the parousia combined with respect for theauthorities? What worldview would have allowed the widespread acceptance ofa canon that included both Luke and Revelation? Was the development of paganmonotheism independent of Jewish and Christian influence? Why was egalitarianTrinitarianism eventually accepted as orthodoxy against both the surface read-ing of many New Testament texts and the powerful pressure of a monarchianpolitical ideology? (Brent is never crudely deterministic in his use of sociol-ogy for the history of ideas.) Unfortunately there is no space for more than abrief sketch of post-Constantinian developments; one would love to see Brentexplore in detail Augustine’s combination of detachment from and engagementwith political structures. Finally, the book raises profound theological issues, inparticular whether the post-Enlightenment separation of God, nature and societyis adequate to the continuing claims of Christianity. Finally, one small regret: toooften a looseness of style or minor errors of punctuation interrupt the reader’sflow; the second edition of this fine book would be fittingly honoured by morerigorous copy-editing.

Charles Freeman also attempts to tell a new story about the early Christiancenturies, from Jesus to Theodosius and beyond. However, where Brent is con-stantly attentive to the difference between ancient and modern ways of thinking,Freeman prefers to project contemporary judgements on his sources. The result isa thesis that is ironically old-fashioned in scholarly terms, though Freeman givesit a post-modern twist: the rise of Christianity, which imposed universally a nar-row interpretation of dogma, entailed ‘the closing of the western mind’, to quotethe title of another of his books. Before Theodosius, the world was full of open-minded scholars, pagan and Christian, accomplished in a range of philosophicaland scientific disciplines. By the time of Justinian, the free play of learning wasdoomed. The dramatic change was made possible only because the emperors, forsome reason that is not made clear, decided to use their political might to enforceorthodoxy. Freeman notes particularly the way in which the great variety of types


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of Christianity of the early centuries was reduced, as heresies were defined andthen extinguished. Underlying his account is his own conviction that the truthabout such questions as the nature of Christ is unobtainable, therefore debate onsuch matters ought to be allowed to continue interminably.

Freeman provides plenty of evidence for the slow development of the structuresof the canon and Church (as they were later understood); for the existence ofmany schools, sects and practices among Christians in the early centuries; for thepopularity of ‘subordinationist’ Christologies before Nicea; for the narrowing ofthe range of acceptable theological opinions as orthodoxy was gradually defined;for the sometimes decisive involvement of bishops in politics and emperors inecclesial matters; for a shift in focus from polytheistic to Christian literature; forthe use of violence and underhand methods by some bishops and their congrega-tions. None of this is new, but the vivid way in which Freeman brings togetherthe strands of his story gives it some persuasive power. Sometimes he adds hisown speculation to the mix; for example, in his desire to explain away the bodilyresurrection he suggests that Caiaphas had arranged for Jesus’ body to be movedand for one of his men (the ‘angel in white’ of Matthew’s story) to tell the dis-ciples to find Jesus in Galilee. He takes N.T. Wright to task for not consideringthis possibility in his magisterial volume The Resurrection of the Son of God. (Amore careful reading of Wright might have helped Freeman avoid misinterpretingI Corinthians 15.)

Freeman has read a reasonable range of translated sources and of (often excel-lent) secondary literature. However, he lacks the imaginative sympathy to makesense of the motivations behind the events he narrates. He is not alone in tendingto assume that both bishops and statesmen were driven primarily by ambition forpower. Even if that were granted, what of the conversions of the philosophically-minded Justin and Clement? He has almost nothing to say about the prayer andliturgy that must have been the dominant element in distinctively Christian ex-perience. He focuses on exegesis and philosophical argument, but his attitude tothese is puzzling. On the one hand, he writes as if intellectual argument alonepersuaded people to hold the views they did; on the other, he thinks that the greatvirtue of pre-Constantinian debate was precisely that it was inconclusive. It ishard to believe that his pagan intellectual heroes would have agreed with him.

The one-dimensional quality of Freeman’s narrative leads to some idiosyncraticjudgements: both Paul and Augustine, two of the villains of his story, are describedas ‘loners’ (one thinks of the chapter in Peter Brown’s great biography of the latterwhich begins ‘Augustine will never be alone’); Greek historians from Herodotuswere ‘preoccupied with the problems of discussing their sources’ (p. 73); Celsus,rather than Origen, is supported by Stoic philosophy in refusing to privilegehuman beings over other animals (p. 173). In general the detail is not reliable, aproblem that is greatly compounded by the author’s deliberate decision to reducehis referencing (even of quoted texts) to a bare minimum. So, for example, we aretold that I Thessalonians, Colossians and Ephesians were attributed to Paul first byMarcion (pp. 98–99), while Ernest Renan (p. 8) and Mel Gibson (p. 328 n. 1) arecited as evidence for the ‘Christian tradition’. Freeman tells us in his introductionthat he was ‘challenged’ to write the book by his editor at Yale University Press.It seems a pity in a field that has so distinguished a tradition of accessible writingby outstanding scholars that an academic press should commission intelligent butnon-expert popularisations.

It is a relief to turn from Freeman’s Augustine to that of Henry Chadwick.Augustine of Hippo: A Life was discovered as a manuscript among Chadwick’spapers. It was written in 1981, when he was asked to produce a text for thePast Masters series; in the event, he replaced it for Past Masters with a shorterand very different text (still available as Augustine: A Very Short Introduction),which focused more narrowly on the development of his thought. This longer


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version still includes lucid discussions of topics such as the Trinity and grace, butit also liberates Chadwick’s gifts as a narrator, with an unrivalled knowledge ofthe details of Augustine’s experience and a gift for bringing these to life. So, forexample, his retelling of the famous conversion scene in the garden makes evena disputed manuscript reading exciting for the non-specialist reader.

Augustine’s pastoral role is ever-present, as Chadwick shows partly by inter-weaving references from letters and sermons with discussion of more theoreticaltexts. ‘Shouldering the initially highly unwelcome responsibilities turned him intoa great man such as he would never have become had he remained a professorof rhetoric.’ A bishop had to engage with ordinary people’s lives, ‘from dukesto dustmen’ (pp. 75–76). Augustine’s comments repeatedly reflect such experi-ence: he ‘wisely observes that in charitable giving it is a good thing to take yourwife into your confidence’ (p. 60); ‘Augustine tried to wean his congregationfrom fortune-tellers, astrologers and amulets’ (p. 124); ‘At Hippo Augustine haddifficulty in persuading his congregation to be civil to Donatist fellow citizens’(p. 104). At the same time, Chadwick’s sympathy with his subject does not pre-vent him from detached criticism where it is appropriate, for example of some ofthe positions Augustine maintained in his dispute with Julian of Eclanum.

The characteristically limpid and lively prose makes the book a delight to read,and it is prefaced with a sparkling introduction by Peter Brown. This is the perfectintroduction to Augustine, enabling the general public to share with pleasure thefruits of painstaking scholarship.

MARGARET ATKINS OSA

ASCETICISM IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD by Richard Finn OP, Cam-bridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 182, £16.99 pbk, £50 hbk

This slim volume sheds valuable new light on the already popular area of earlyChristian monasticism, by adding material from pre-Christian philosophical tra-ditions as well as from the Syrian east and Asia Minor, to be read along with thebetter-known texts from fourth century Egypt. It is a vivid and informative newslant on an area of great contemporary interest.

Chapter one presents a detailed and carefully expounded discussion of philo-sophic asceticism, by giving an account of the different practices and approachesto physical discipline of Cynic, Stoic, Neo-platonic schools of thought as wellas in Graeco-Roman cults. This absorbing chapter is followed by an analysisof the more familiar area of Jewish asceticism, looking behind Philo to asceticgroups in Hellenistic and later Rabbinic Judaism. The third chapter gives a longeraccount of Christian asceticism, carefully suggesting the influence of both paganand Jewish thought in this area. The author rightly stresses the complex nature ofearly Christian asceticism but comments that this has been ‘too long ill-served byaccounts which unduly privilege the Egyptian monks’ (p. 7); a thought-provokingpoint of view, in which one might take exception to the words ‘ill-served’ and‘unduly privilege’.

Chapter four gives an account of the ascetic theology of Origen, stressing hisextensive influence on the growth of Christian asceticism in relation to personalsanctity. Chapter five looks at areas of Christian asceticism in relation to personalsanctity. It looks at areas of Christian asceticism which the author suggests wereindependent of Origen’s influence, in Syria and North Africa and among those(previously ignored because ‘unduly privileged’) desert fathers, not the hermitsbut monks in Pachomian monasteries. The author’s ‘final thoughts’ constitute areflection on the influence of early Christian asceticism on the church as a whole.There is a bibliography of primary and secondary sources and an index.


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This book throws an engaging new light on the transmission of ideas aboutthe place in human life as well as in religious life of abstention from sexualrelationships, fasting from food and drink, poverty and detachment, as well asthe limiting of contact with others in silence and solitude. It gives a carefullynuanced picture of the wise transmission of ideas and practices and shows howthey changed in contact with different cultures and times.

BENEDICTA WARD SLG

CARDINAL NEWMAN FOR TODAY by Thomas J Norris, Columba Press,Dublin, 2010, pp. 230, £11.50

Fr Thomas J. Norris is Professor in Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Uni-versity at Maynooth and a member of the International Theological Commission.Cardinal Newman for Today is an amplified reprint of his earlier Only Life GivesLife, and is intended to serve as an introduction for the educated general readerto the thought of John Henry Newman. With Newman’s beatification a book likeNorris’s is certainly needed. If one were asked by an inquirer wholly unfamiliarwith the Cardinal why Newman is an important and holy man the question wouldnot be easily answered in a few words, but there is a need for something otherthan Newman’s own writings or the various magisterial biographies to proffer asa substitute for the impossible one line answer to that question. The book takesits structure from Norris’s understanding of Newman’s theological epistemologypassing from revelation, ‘the roots’ (chapters 1–3), through theology, ‘the shoots’(4–6), to Christian life, ‘the fruits’ (7–9).

As Norris indicates at the beginning of Chapter 4, the most important objectof Newman’s ‘courageous research’, the concept of doctrinal development, has inthe course of the twentieth century become the central issue of division withinthe Catholic theological academy. Is such development the extrapolation of thelogical consequences of a fixed deposit accomplished once and for all at the deathof the last apostle, and the tests of authenticity proposed by Newman exclusivelydiagnostic; or do such tests provide an independent warrant for a more occultprocess of growth in which the faith forever remains, in Norris’s words, ‘anunknown to be discovered’? The answer given to this question determines onwhich side of the great divide in the present struggle for the visible church athinker places himself. Norris seems to concede that Newman placed himself inthe doctrinal camp and yet he seems to want to put Newman on the other sideof the fence.

At Norris’s hands, Newman’s support is constantly invoked for the theologicalrevolutionaries of the second half of the twentieth century. Norris suggests, forexample, that the Anglican Newman resembled Kung, and the Catholic Newman,Rahner, and he presents the Cardinal as the father of Vatican II, which latterNorris interprets as opposed to rather than completing Vatican I. This theme isreinforced by a vigorous defence of the hermeneutic of rupture as the key to theinterpretation of the twenty-first Ecumenical Council offered rather incongruouslyin chapter five.

The question of the relationship between the essentially personal nature ofChristian revelation and the propositional manner in which it is transmitted isof course a quite legitimate one upon which Newman may throw a good deal oflight, but the fundamental theology Norris resolutely foists upon him seems toowe rather more to Friedrich Schleiermacher than to Newman himself. Newman’sdistaste for Liberalism is acknowledged but Norris refuses to express himself inthe same terms, preferring to recast Newman’s opponents as ‘sceptics’. These areplaced at one extreme of a spectrum through which Norris offers a via media. On


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the other end ‘conservatives’, we are assured, have no living experience of Jesusbecause of their ‘shallow discipleship’ and lack of contact with ‘the originatingexperience of the Christian community’.

Norris constantly and rightly emphasises the importance of the Fathers inNewman’s intellectual development, conversion and theological epistemology. Butadmiration for the Fathers presents very different aspects depending on whichside of Norris’s division between the fixed deposit and never ending story oneplaces oneself. For it is precisely those elements in the patristic writings that theFathers themselves found most frustrating and sought most earnestly to eliminate(a certain philosophical eclecticism and terminological instability) that so manymoderns most admire. John Henry Newman is doomed to suffer the same reverseengineering in Norris’s presentation. Newman passed from a flirtation with theBritish empiricists to the confession that Aristotle is ‘the oracle of nature andof truth’. His intellectual journey began when he ‘came under the influence ofa definite creed and received into [his] intellect impressions of dogma’ and itsdestination was a point at which he found himself with ‘no further history of[his] religious opinions to narrate’. Needless to say this is not the reason forwhich many of his contemporary admirers profess their enthusiasm and ThomasJ. Norris is no exception.

Whatever one’s view of his case, one might object that in order to engagecritically with Norris, indeed in order to engage this text even treated as anuncontroversial presentation of Newman (which it is not), one requires a levelof theological literacy that would already equip the reader to dive straight intomost of Newman’s major works directly. It would be less disingenuous thereforeif Norris were to present his glosses on Newman as the arguments they are inessay form, rather than dressed up as an introduction for the initial inquirer.

As Norris explains, Newman’s conversion centred on the triumph of the princi-ple of catholicity over that of antiquity. Not that Newman rejected the complete-ness of the revelation given to the Fathers but he rejected his own initial attemptsto unpick both the theology of the ‘reformers’ and that of Trent and re-stitch itfrom its patristic elements. (Norris’s enthusiasm for this latter project seems tolead him to misrepresent the purpose of Tract 90). For Newman, the theology ofthe reformers could be discarded, but to do the same with later Catholic teachingwould be to deny God’s providential protection of his Church: ‘securus judicatorbis terrarum’. The fact that Newman was more comfortable with a holistic con-cept of ecclesiastical infallibility than with its abbreviation into an Ultramontanepositivism only reinforces the impossibility of allying Newman with any return tothe sources that would entail the rejection of an intervening era of the Church’shistory. For this reason one must judge that, while introductory works on New-man are much needed, Norris’s contribution does more to distort than to unfoldthe riches of its subject.

ALAN P. FIMISTER

HARVESTING THE FRUITS: BASIC ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ECU-MENICAL DIALOGUE by Cardinal Walter Kasper, Continuum, 2009, pp. xv +207, £9.99 pbk

This is a timely publication. Some forty-odd years after the first hopeful dia-logues were held between the Catholic Church and four other Christian worldcommunions – Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and the World Alliance of Re-formed Churches – Cardinal Walter Kasper has gathered together the fruits of themany documents resulting from these dialogues. The intention is to prevent theloss of what has been gained at a time when the ecumenical movement appears


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to have shed some of its early enthusiasm and momentum, and to chart whatstill remains to be done. The book, which has been put together by membersof the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, consists mainly of fourchapters dealing respectively with: Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity; Salvation,Justification and Sanctification; The Church; and The Sacraments of Baptismand Eucharist. Under each of these headings the book’s authors have skilfullysynthesized the appropriate materials issuing from each of the sets of dialogues,beginning usually with what the Catholic Church and its four dialogue partnershold in common, even when expressed in different language, before moving on toareas where the degree of agreement is less clear and finishing with those areaswhere disagreement continues to be a regrettable reality. The spirit animating thediscussions is a genuine remorse, felt by all the participating Churches, over thedivisions within the Christian communion.

The first chapter deals with the Trinity and Christology, areas of fundamentalimportance, where there is a strong degree of consensus since the Reformersadhered to the decrees of the early Church Councils. This is a point of vitalimportance since it almost constrains the discussions to express their agreementin Trinitarian terms, leaving behind the temptation felt by each, no doubt, toexpress their beliefs in terms suited to their own historical evolution; it helpsbring the discussion down to basics, as when we read that ‘Communion withthe Triune God is the very life of the Church; communion with the mission ofGod’s Son and Spirit is the very mission of the Church’ (p. 19). This also hasthe beneficial effect of keeping the discussions close to the words of scripture,although difficulties of hermeneutics and criteriology emerge as the discussiondevelops.

The second chapter celebrates the basic consensus achieved on the issue ofjustification, one of the central points of division between Catholics, on the onehand, and Lutherans and Calvinists, on the other, at the time of the Reformation.This consensus was achieved by long and patient dialogue between Catholicsand Lutherans over many years and shows what can be done when polemicsare put aside and the focus is kept relentlessly on the rich resources of the Oldand the New Testaments. It is heartening to read that the mutual condemnations,by Catholics of Lutherans and by Lutherans of Catholics, at the time of theReformation no longer apply to the teachings of either Church as set out inthe Joint Declaration on Justification (p. 38). Some interesting differences ofemphasis between the Protestant participants are noted, such as that between theLutherans and the Methodists, with the former preferring to speak of justificationand the latter to speak of sanctification While these differences do not indicate anyreal disagreement they do point to how the discussion might be moved forwardin the future, enabling the Churches to find unity around new formulations.

The euphoria over the consensus on justification is followed, in chapter three,by the thorny issue of the Church. Here each of the four dialogue partners takesissue with the Catholic Church over one or other of its claims. However, evenhere the discussions have yielded strong areas of agreement on such matters asthe Trinitarian basis of the Church and on the Church’s salvific mission; there haseven been an outbreak of sacramental language with reference to the Church in allfour dialogues, a point picked out as ‘an important ecumenical breakthrough’ thatcould have far reaching consequences in further dialogues, and which has beenassisted by ‘the increasingly common understanding of the Church as communion’(p. 71), a theme known to be dear to the heart of Walter Kasper.

From there the discussion moves to the more contentious issue of the ministryof the whole People of God before tackling the nature of the ordained ministryitself, on which there is a surprising degree of agreement between Catholicsand Anglicans in particular (pp 102–110). In the eyes of the authors of thisbook, however, this particular dialogue received a fundamental setback with the


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Anglican decision to ordain women. A convergence towards a common under-standing of episcope is reported to have surfaced in all four dialogues and thisis closely allied to the shared perception that episcope needs to be exercised ina collegial fashion (p. 123f). It is stated, for example, that collegiality is ex-pressed on the Reformed side by ‘the synodical polity’, and on the Catholic sideby the episcopal college, ‘the understanding of which is in process of furtherdevelopment’. This last clause might strike many Roman Catholics as somewhatoptimistic in the light of their experience of how authority in their Church isexercised at the present time.

Indeed, there is an element of mutual exhortation just below the surface of thisfascinating book, as Catholics drop strong hints to the others on a variety of issuesand the others, notably the Anglicans, hint diplomatically about their interest, forexample, in the idea of the reception of doctrine by the faithful currently beingdeveloped by Catholic theologians. Both sides occasionally convey the feelingthat if only the other lot would just loosen up a bit on this or that issue thenthings could move forward much better. For the most part the language used toexpress disagreements is polite and decorous: we read of how Anglicans ‘hesitate’on the issue of papal infallibility (p. 140), of how Methodists are ‘reticent’ onsome other point, and there are many occasions when it is said that ‘furtherdialogue is necessary’. It comes as all the more surprising, therefore, to comeacross the word ‘repugnance’ repeated several times by the Reformed Churchin its response to the use of the term ‘infallibility’ by the Catholic Church –but much better to have this clear statement than too much of the coy anddiplomatic.

While this is a most valuable book, it is not an easy read. With reference beingmade to dialogues on similar issues over many years with four different partners,there is inevitably a good deal of repetition; at the same time the differences indegrees of agreement between the Catholic Church and the other four can makeit difficult to form a clear view of how things stand with any one of them, forexample on an issue such as the duration of the Lord’s presence in the eucharist.The authors have done much to help the reader, however, with clear headingsand sub-headings and very useful summaries at the end of each chapter. The finalchapter entitled ‘Some Preliminary Conclusions’ is particularly helpful both forcelebrating what has so far been achieved and in identifying the problem areaswhere further dialogue is needed.

JOSEPH FITZPATRICK

AGAINST THE TIDE: LOVE IN A TIME OF PETTY DREAMS AND PERSISTINGENMITIES by Miroslav Volf, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids and Cam-bridge, 2010, pp. xii + 211, £11.99 pbk

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at YaleDivinity School and is already well known internationally for his contributionsto theology. Yet to introduce him seems to be the clearest explanation of whatthis book is trying to achieve. A collection of short articles, almost invariably nomore than three pages in length, spanning over a decade’s work is a fresh way topresent the thoughts of this leading theologian. In previous books, Volf focusedon forgiveness and reconciliation in societies that seem stripped of grace. Thepublication of Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and PersistingEnmities draws together many of the lessons of these previous explorations andpresents them in fresh contexts across a number of topics including culture andpolitics, giving, mission, other faiths, and evil. The background picture Volfpresents is that of a world characterised by selfishness. Indeed Volf is quite


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fond of Philip Roth’s succinct characterisation of people as ‘”black holes ofself-absorption”: manipulating, cheating, deceiving, and exploiting others.’ Asbleak as that sounds stated baldly, it is a platform for an alternative vision: ahope. This hope is for a life that takes the dignity of others seriously and isfounded on the love of God in his judgement and forgiveness.

The original place of publication – the popular US theological magazine TheChristian Century – may account for the brevity and immediacy of these essays,but their depth and challenge is testament to the personal and dialogical elementsin each. These elements come out most in the tremendous sensitivity Volf displaysin anticipating potential objections to his arguments. This sensitivity allows theobjections to function as springboards to bring the reader to the substance of theargument more quickly. This makes subtle and challenging theology possible inshort spaces and makes for very accessible reading.

A particularly noteworthy example of this is the essay Evil and Evildoers,the first of a number of essays on this subject. This article, as with many inthis book, is based on an argument Volf had with a friend. Volf’s friend is ar-guing that it is inhumane to call someone evil and we should instead note thepernicious influences and circumstances to be blamed and addressed. Implicitin this argument is that a strong insistence on labelling someone as evil canhave a dehumanising effect, casting them as some kind of ‘shape-shifting’ de-mon, which is fundamentally unhelpful since it presents an obstacle to learningand makes the person in question vulnerable to vigilante action. This is hardto deny. Volf manages to argue to greater depth by introducing, with great sub-tlety, a perspective from the Christian tradition: when his friend charges thatBin Laden is unhelpfully seen as evil incarnate Volf agrees that it is indeedunhelpful but also impossible for the Christian tradition because evil cannot beincarnate. Those who do evil remain good creatures of God: though they com-mit evil they are not qualitatively different from the rest of us. Volf is thereforeconcerned to recognise Bin Laden as part of the human race by naming his eviland drawing attention to our unity with him as good creatures with the poten-tial to cause evil, all of whom are answerable to and capable of being forgivenby God.

The dialogical style and the personal stories used in this and many otherarticles lend a very engaging immediacy to the arguments. Personality is quiteimportant to the appeal of this text. Volf is himself a very interesting character:belonging to a religious minority in a war-torn country (the Evangelical Churchin Croatia), imprisoned by an oppressive regime, and now a leading academicat one of the world’s best universities (having studied with Jurgen Moltmann inTubingen). The shape of his life and the seriousness with which he takes hiswitness in theology comes across, lending credibility to his words. As appealingas these aspects make the text, a question nonetheless hovers: for whom is thisbook meant? Those already familiar with Volf’s work are unlikely to find muchthat is new here. The picture is similar to many of his other books. That shouldnot be surprising since this collection spans many years and should perhapsbe considered more of a summary than an advance. Since the nature of thecollection creates an overall sketch of the shape of Volf’s theology, clergy andlay people may find this quite a user-friendly ingress into political theology: thatis, a theology concerned with how Christian faith is lived out in this world. Theimmediacy with which complex theological ideas are expounded make it wellsuited as a further reading text for theology undergraduates in their early stages.The confessional depth of these articles may even make this book useful as a sortof ‘thought for the day’ devotional for some; certainly each article deserves itsown space to be pondered.

This book is an excellent example of the unity of thought in theology acrossthe diverse range of topics in contemporary life. Those seeking a snapshot of this


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fine and well-ordered thinker and reflector on Christian faith will find here muchto stimulate them.

A.D.R. HAYES

SECULARIZATION AND THE WORLD RELIGIONS edited by Hans Joas andKlaus Wiegandt, Liverpool University Press, 2009, pp. x + 325, £70 hbk, £14.95pbk

Unexpectedly (for sociologists of religion) the term ‘secular’ has of late becomea battleground over the place of Christianity in Europe and in British society inparticular. For those within Catholicism, it has emerged as a nefarious process thatmarks the hostility of political and cultural elites who conspire to discredit andmarginalise the faith. From the other side, it has become a strategy of desire todefenestrate Christianity, with all its antique prohibitions on sexual emancipation,from the public square. In short, the ‘secular’ has become the battleground forcultural wars.

Yet, despite, its significance and seeming fusion with modernity, the termis remarkably under-theorised and is deeply perplexing in sociology, not leastbecause of a realisation, that when compared with the vitality and significanceof religion in the USA, Europe is markedly exceptional. This suggests that thereis something parochial if not misplaced about European, and especially British,assumptions that religion is fated to collapse with the advance of modernity. Alsoemerging is a realisation that secularisation embodies far more complex processesthan many in contemporary disputes seem to realise.

Nobody seriously interested in debates on multiculturalism, faith communitiesand on the place of religion in modern society can neglect this highly importantand original collection. It manages to draw out the distinctively Christian basisof secularisation, but at the same time points to the distinctive formats thatemerge from the responses to modernity of non-Christian religions such as Islam,Judaism and Buddhism. Whilst these responses have been raised elsewhere inmore specialist venues, it is difficult to think of an equivalent collection of essaysthat brings these issues together in an accessible way, hence its enormous value.

The collection, impeccably produced by Liverpool University Press (thoughsadly lacking an index) emerged from the Forum fur Verantwortung series andis based on a conference, directed by Hans Joas, at the European Academy, atSaarland and held in April 2006. Impeccably translated by Alex Skinner, theessays are masterly, scholarly, highly readable and replete with many unexpectedinsights. With the exception of Casanova and Martin (both of whom are in fineform), the contributions are German in origin and this lends a further novelproperty to the collection. The introduction by Joas is exemplary. While manyof the contributors are specialists in religion, their contributions flow well in acoherent and fruitful sociological direction.

Containing thirteen essays covering Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam,Hinduism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, the collection also has essays on thereligious situation (as relating to secularisation) in Europe, the USA, and EastAsia, the use of the European model of secularisation in relation to America andAfrica, and a very original contribution on the desecularization of the Middle Eastconflict. Standing alone is Fischer’s essay, chapter 8, ‘Science Doesn’t Tremble:the secular natural sciences and the modern feeling of life’. The essay has muchto commend.

Fischer is professor of the history of science at the University of Constance andwrites well, with authority and with a sense of topicality. By contrasting the formsof rhetoric employed in the natural sciences with that proper for characterising


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the spiritual, Fischer draws out the intrusion of secularisation into modern thoughtwhere fear of the unknown seems to have been expelled. But his point is thateven with ‘the neutralisation of the cosmos’ (pp. 203–4) a sense of disquiet stillremains, but now one expressed as disenchantment, the loss of ‘a harmoniouslyordered whole’ (p. 205). For him, the Designer always returns.

The trouble with secularisation is that as a concept it never sufficiently encom-passes that which it stipulates: the disappearance of religion. The force of thecollection is to demonstrate that too many permutations, too many exceptions, andtoo many conundrums defeat its aim to imperialise religion and eject it from thedomain of modernity. The essay on Catholicism by Cardinal Lehmann (chapter 1)represents a missed opportunity to confront the dangers of secularisation, espe-cially as these have been magnified by an ill-considered strategy to moderniseecclesial culture. By contrast, these perils are well recognised in Graf’s essayon Protestantism (chapter 2). He draws out persuasively the individualism, thesubjectivity, and the pluralism of Protestantism that involves the exercise of acalling within the world. As to be expected, Weber looms large in the essay.Facing the duty of seeking salvation by reference to this world, Graf asserts that‘Protestants were both empathic modernizers and utterly distraught by modernity’(p. 67). Invoking the theologian Mark Noll, Graf suggests they had ‘the gift ofambiguity’, characteristic of Lutheranism in particular, of living in the world butwith awareness of being different from it (p. 76). As to be expected, Graf isuseful on the influence of Protestantism on the formation of the German nationand politics (pp. 68–72). This essay enforces the sense that secularisation is apeculiar plight of Christianity and its efforts to accommodate to the gestation ofmodernity in Europe.

Secularisation is applied to Judaism in Otto’s essay (chapter 3) where it istreated as an ambiguous process but one that generates distinctive forms of the-ologization peculiar to this faith. By way of background, Otto provides a usefulsummary of Weber on the Jewish religion which also had to reconcile demands ofthe other world with the entailments of this world (pp.78–82). Otto suggests that‘the response to the disenchantment of the lifeworld was an ethical theologizationwhich saw the secularized external lifeworld as a field to be shaped pragmaticallyin line with God’s laws’ (p. 101). The need to reconcile ties of Ancient Israelwith accommodations to their modern state provided Jews with a distinctive formof secularisation. But Otto concludes that more than in Christianity, there is inJudaism ‘a core of messianic non-conformity to the everyday lifeworld, whichwill be resistant to every compromise between transcendent God and the world’.In his reading, the coming of Christ into the world generates a compromise withit, leading him to wonder if Christianity contains within its structure ‘the seedof secularization, ultimately even its own self-abolition’ (p. 107). This draws at-tention to the apocalyptic property of secularisation that renders it tolerable butintolerable. Such destructive seeds and ambiguities are treated as inapplicable inthe case of Islam.

Whereas Christianity faced a diminishment of its public sphere of influencewith the rise of the secular nation state, Islam suffered no such weakness, asKramer indicates in chapter 4. He asserts that any separation of religion andstate ‘is an offence against Islam as well as a violation of Muslim identity –both individually and collectively’ (p. 109). Secularisation, when it emerges, doesso over the validity and application of the system of norms and values knownas Sharia. Inhibitions on its practice in the West lend a pejorative property toIslamic responses to secularisation. One form of secularisation was treated ashostile, but another form simply did not apply, for as Kramer suggests, Islamholds no equivalent notion of church, let alone of one as separated from thestate. The edifice complex has a particular application in Islam which Kramerasserts ‘is a public religion par excellence. According to classical legal notions,


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the minaret must be taller than all other buildings’ (p. 119). The degree towhich adherents of Islam are secularised in second and third generations in theWest is not considered in the essay. When the contributors attend to Hinduism,Confucianism, and Buddhism, matters become truly anomalous and conventionalunderstandings of secularisation become muddy.

In chapter 5, von Stietencron draws out well the problems Hinduism posesto advocates of secularisation. First, and most unexpectedly, he suggests thatHinduism is more a civilisation than a religion, given that four traditions have tobe fitted under the definition (pp. 125–6). Hinduism seemed to be characterisedby some of the properties of secularisation, but apparent before the advent ofmodernity. In its pre-modern form, it lacked a central authority, the codificationof a belief, and binding forms of tradition. Only with the advent of modernity doesit organise itself into a religion. The forces that gave rise to the de-constructionof religion in the West generated the need for its construction for Hinduism, ifit was to survive the pressures of modernity. Modernity generated competitionfrom other religions such as Christianity and Islam and forced Hinduism in thedirection of a coherence of belief rather than a state of incoherence. But it is inchapters 6 and 11, on Confucianism and Buddhism and religion in East Asia thatthe seemingly fixed relationship between secularisation and modernity becomesunstuck. It seems to have secularised itself as a religion without reference to theclaims of modernity.

The disdain of the world to be found in Islam is even more sharply asserted inBuddhism. As Wagner suggests, Buddhism treated the world as secular from thebeginning and this distancing formed the basis of renunciation and the seekingof salvation, values infused into the cultures the religion shaped by means of anall-pervasive monasticism. Again, the impression emerges that Buddhism was abeneficiary of modernity. Unlike Christianity, with its Incarnational ties to theworld, Buddhism seemed to have an uncomplicated set of teachings devoted tothe need to detach one’s self from the world’s allures. By treating the world aspurely secular, Wagner suggests that Buddhism offered an uncomplicated escapefrom it (p. 152). Whereas Buddhism rendered itself immune to properties ofsecularisation, Confucianism seemed to flourish under its ethos as a form of statereligion, but one whose gestation was pre-modern. As a result, compared with theIslamic world, Wagner asserts that ‘Buddhist and Confucianist cultures of EastAsia had no difficulties in assimilating the secular agenda of the modern nationstate, including its nationalist and socialist variants’ (p. 158).

In chapter 11, Gentz draws attention to the invention of new religions andthe revival of more traditional versions in East Asia, again undermining thesweeping tenets of secularisation that religion is to be treated as a casualtyrather than a beneficiary of modernity (p. 243). He suggests that in relation toChina, modernisation did not lead to the secularisation of Buddhism but ratherto its international revival (p. 248). He is particularly interesting on the waymodernisation led the post-Revolution Chinese government to form a Bureau ofReligious Affairs to work out which religions to recognise. He is especially goodon the problems posed by the Falun Gong movement. In summary, Gentz suggeststhat in China, of late, ‘secularization must also be understood as the redefinitionof traditional teachings and practices within a new conceptual system. Here,the place reserved for “religion” was so greatly diminished that the continuityof religious traditions could be ensured only under a secular banner’ (p. 262).Furthermore, Gentz claims that the traits of secularisation were to be found inJapan ‘earlier than in Europe and independently of modernity’ (p. 269). Thedifficulties of concluding whether secularisation did or did not occur in EastAsia are well set out in arguments for and against the plausibility of its thesis(pp. 274–77).


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On the religious situation in the USA, Latin America and Africa, Chapters 10and 12, by Joas and Martin, illustrate further exceptions to European assumptionsregarding the secularisation thesis. Chapter 7, by Brugger, on state-church modelsand their relationship to freedom of religion has some very useful schemas. Butit is Casanova’s contribution, in chapter 9, on the religious situation in Europethat requires comment. He draws out well the need for new interpretations of thesecularisation thesis. It has a high degree of plausibility in regard to the formerEast Germany, the Czech Republic, and France, the most secular of all Europeansocieties ‘countries in which religion as chain of collective memory is clearlydisappearing’ (p. 213). But he is right to suggest that this outcome relates less tomodernisation and more to what he terms ‘the particular historical dynamics ofstate, church and nation’ (p. 214). Reversing the famous notion of ‘believing with-out belonging’, popularised by the English sociologist, Grace Davie, Casanovapoints to the reverse, of ‘belonging without believing’, a phenomenon to be foundespecially in Scandinavian countries (pp. 214–16).

In the end, one feels that Casanova is right to suggest that there is a self-fulfilling prophetic dimension to secularisation in Europe where the populationaccept its hegemony as normative. He is also correct to point to the transfer ofcollective affiliations with the imagined community from the church to the nationstate (p. 220). The outcome was that the churches ‘lost in the process their abilityto function as religions of individual salvation’ (p. 222). Finally, his commentson what he terms ‘a post-secular Europe?’ deserve close attention (pp. 223–8).

The ironic way the advance of modernity in the Middle East generates a processof desecularisation leads Kippenberg to note a dangerous point. With the advanceof modernity, religion has become more and more difficult to understand andas it unexpectedly revives secularisation has generated a generation of religiousilliterates (p. 321).

This collection will bring no comfort to advocates of secularisation, suggestingas it does that the process is not a one-dimensional trait of modernity but isinfinitely more complicated. Nor will it give comfort to those who treat seculari-sation solely as a nefarious process. It can become a scapegoat and there is somejustification for this treatment, but the danger is that this might distract attentionfrom a much more fundamental point: the failure of Christianity to reproduce it-self in the context of modernity in Europe. Compared to non-Christian religions,Christianity in Europe has made some unproductive capitulations to modernisa-tion, uncoupled its own chains of memory, and lost what might give its religionits distinctive power: the provision of safe means for seeking salvation.

KIERAN FLANAGAN


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