ADORNO AND THEOLOGY by Christopher Craig Brittain

DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2011.01453.x

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BIBLICAL ART FROM WALES edited by Martin O’Kane and John Morgan-Guy,Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010, pp. 328, £35 hbk and £19.50 pbk

A handsome volume with over six hundred images and containing a DVD-ROMwhich further develops the material of the book, this work is a monument tothe extraordinary relationship between the Bible and art in Welsh culture in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. It chronicles all styles, from the simplicity ofthe Nonconformist chapel and Jewish synagogue to the more elaborate art formsof the Churches, both Catholic and Established, and the icons of the Orthodoxtradition. The volume and the DVD and the supporting on-line database hostedby the National Library of Wales (http://imagingthebible.llgc.org.uk) are a fittingtribute to the work of the research project funded by the Arts and HumanitiesResearch Council based at the University of Wales, Lampeter. The DVD-ROMaccompanying this volume expands on several topics explored in the book, suchas the interplay of art and faith, biblical imagery in a domestic context, andreligious military metaphors in war memorials in Welsh churches. The on-linedatabase of images recorded and researched in the course of the research projectlists over 3,000 photographs taken as part of the project fieldwork activities.As the Introduction to the book points out: ‘It is intended that all three, thisvolume, the DVD-ROM and the database should function together to provide acomprehensive resource for those seeking to locate, contextualize and becomemore familiar with the range and diversity of biblical art in Wales’ (pp. xiv-xv).

After the Introduction, the first three essays in the volume give an exceptionaloverview to the work as a whole: D. Densil Morgan begins with a brief historicalbackground (pp. 1–10); this is followed by an in-depth scene-setting analysisby John Morgan-Guy (pp. 11–44). In a wide sweep Morgan-Guy considers artin Wales from the early illuminated manuscripts of the eighth century to theimaginative and figurative art of more recent times. The third article (pp. 45–70) by Martin O’Kane provides us with a thought-provoking glimpse of whathas been called ‘visual exegesis’. From his own exegetical background O’Kaneskilfully exhibits how text and image combine to give substance to the Welshexperience of the prominence of the Bible as the Word of God. One of the lateressays in the book (L.J. Kreitzer, ‘Images of the Apostle Paul in Nineteenth andTwentieth-Century Wales’, pp. 235–252) could be said to belong to this samegenre of ‘visual exegesis’. For example, Kreitzer considers the three panels in the19th century stained glass window in St. Mary’s Church, Lenden Pool, Denbigh:in the first, the shepherds are being urged by the angels to come and see theChild at Bethlehem; in the second John the Baptist is urging his audience to seethe Lamb of God, while in the third Paul is preaching to the Athenians (Acts17:23): ‘In the final panel Paul’s preaching extends to the Athenians what Luke’sangel has already announced to the shepherds and what the evangelist John hasproclaimed to his audience through the Baptist’ (p. 240).

The remaining essays can be roughly divided into three categories: a) the artof the various confessions, churches, and religions in Wales; b) the work ofindividual artists; c) the social milieu. Each article is superbly illustrated withrelevant material. a) J. Harvey, ‘The Bible and Art in Wales: A NonconformistPerspective’ (pp. 71–90); M. Crampin, ‘Biblical Art from Wales: The Mediaeval

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Influence’ (pp. 121–138); A. Andreopoulos, ‘Icons and the Bible: St. Nicholas’sOrthodox Church, Cardiff’ (pp. 253–270); S. Kadish, ‘The Jewish Presence inWales: Image and Material Reality’ (pp. 271–290); b) D. Jasper, ‘Pre-RaphaeliteBiblical Art in Wales’ (pp. 139–154); C. Rowland, ‘Images of the Apocalypse:Blair Hughes-Stanton (1902–81) and John Hancock (1899–1918)’ (pp. 155–170);H. Dentinger, ‘Biblical Imagery in the Engravings of David Jones (1895–1974)’(pp. 171–186); P.E. Esler, ‘The Biblical Paintings of Ivor Williams (1908–82)’(pp. 187–204); N. Gordon Bowe, ‘Interpreting the Bible through Painted Glass:The Harry Clarke Studios and Wilhelmina Geddes (1887–1955)’ (pp. 205–216);A. Smith, ‘Light, Colour and the Bible: The Stained Glass Windows of JohnPetts (1914–91)’ (pp. 217–234); c) P. Lord, ‘The Bible in the Artisan Tradition ofWelsh Visual Culture’ (pp. 91–120); O. Fairclough, ‘Biblical Imagery in Privateand Public Spaces in Wales (1850–1930)’ (pp. 291–304).

The final article, C.Lloyd-Morgan, ‘Transformation or Decline? Modern WelshArtists and the Welsh Biblical Heritage’ (pp. 305–317), takes an honest look atthe present position with regard to biblical art in Wales. Much traditional biblicalart depended on religious patronage. This is no longer as readily available toartists, since patronage now comes more and more from secular sources. Goingalong with this is the decline in religious observance, with the result that scenesfrom the Bible no longer have the same resonance for present-day Welsh peopleas they had for their forebears. Lloyd-Morgan asks the question, ‘Biblical subjectsare certainly rarer among practising artists today than ever before. Now that theyounger generations lack the thorough, early grounding in the content of theBible, has the Bible remained a source of inspiration or has it largely beenabandoned?’ (p. 308). She concludes that the production of this volume, and theDVD to accompany it, is timely since it preserves the rich heritage of Welshbiblical art before it is attenuated further. This reviewer concurs and thanks theeditors and the many researchers involved for a superb production.

CELINE MANGAN OP

DIALECTIC AND DIALOGUE by Dimitri Nikulin, Stanford University Press,Stanford CA, 2010, pp. xiii + 169, $19.95 pbk, $19.95 e-bk, £55 hbk

In his seventh letter (if indeed it is his), Plato remarks that he will never writeabout the deepest matters of philosophy, ‘For this knowledge is not something thatcan be put into words like other sciences; but after long-continued intercoursebetween teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject, suddenly, like lightflashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and straightwaynourishes itself’ (341c). This idea, that there are some matters that cannot beexpressed or attained to outside of oral dialogue, forms the backdrop to DimitriNikulin’s book, Dialectic and Dialogue, which attempts to provide a philosophicaland historical account of the origins, interrelatedness, and significance of dialecticand dialogue.

In the first chapter on the platonic origins of dialogue and dialectic, Nikulinidentifies a development that is key to understanding the relation between them:‘dialectic originally was an oral practice established in oral dialogue; writtendialogue then appeared as an imitation of oral dialectic; and finally, writtendialectic was distilled into a non-dialogical and universal method of reasoning’(p. 2).

In chapter two, ‘Dialectic: Via Antiqua’, Nikulin looks in more detail at theorigins of dialectic. For Plato, the purpose of dialectic is to know the ‘what’ ofa thing (its essence). In Plato’s earlier dialogues, Socratic oral dialogue forces its‘interlocutors to recognize that the original description of a thing’s essence was

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wrong and that they must begin anew, doing so often without success’ (p. 25).Plato develops dialectic as a discursive, logical activity: ‘dialectical investigationbegins with what interlocutors can agree on and then proceeds toward a conclusionby excluding possibilities through reasoning with respect to opposites’ (p. 27).Aristotle takes dialectic in a different direction. In the Topics it is associated withpremises that are probably true and is therefore distinct from both eristic dialecticand syllogistic deduction. It cannot be the case for Aristotle that dialectic is ascience of being, since it concerns the probable and not the true. Thus, ‘Plato andAristotle substantially disagree about what dialectic is and how far it extends’(p. 43).

According to chapter three, ‘Dialectic: Via Moderna’, in modernity dialectic be-comes ‘a logical calculus of propositions . . . taking mathematics as a paradigmaticexample of clarity, systematicity, and order of arrangement’ (p. 49). Dialectic be-comes one of reason’s pretensions and needs to be subjected to critique: Kant’s‘transcendental dialectic is the critique of the rational illusion and unjustifiedclaim of reason of achieving complete and absolute knowledge’ (p. 52). Nikulintraces the origins of Hegelian dialectic in Nicholas of Cusa’s ‘program based onthe coincidence of opposites’ (p. 54). For Hegel dialectic ‘utterly dissociates itselffrom dialogue and becomes the method and driving force that cannot be divorcedfrom philosophy as the enterprise of solitary thinking’ (p. 65)

In chapter four, ‘Dialogue: A Systematic Outlook’, Nikulin identifies four keyfeatures of dialogue: personal other – the indefinable constant in and preconditionfor dialogue; voice – that which expresses and communicates discursively; unfi-nalizability – at every moment meaningful and always able to be carried furtherinexhaustibly; and allosensus – constructive, non-confrontational disagreement.Thus, dialogue ‘is a process of meaningful but unfinalizable allosensual exchangethat can always be carried on without repetition of its content and that impliescommunication with other persons in the vocal expression of one’s own (but not“owned”) personal other’ (p. 79). Dialectic, on the other hand, does not recog-nize this personal voice. It is monological. Moreover, it is not ‘unfinalizable’.It possesses the argument in a finite number of steps following formal logicalrules, ending in a true conclusion, whereas dialogue only ‘accidentally’ reachesa logically justified conclusion.

In chapter five, ‘Dialogue: Interruption’, Nikulin considers the claim that ‘di-alogue is essentially based on interruption’ (p. 95). It is this spontaneity of theinterruption that distinguishes it from dialectic and written dialogue. In oral di-alogue ‘there is no rule indicating when to interrupt or what to say exactly’(p. 100). However, Nikulin’s assertion, that to be ‘interrupted is to be included,invited, and recognized’ (p. 103), can hardly be said to reflect the commonexperience of being interrupted.

Nikulin, aware of the irony involved, gives the title ‘Against Writing’ to chaptersix. He recognises that dialectical reasoning requires the written form to maintainits argument: ‘writing is more effective than human memory at storing lengthylists and the exact details and particular path of an argument through whichdiscursive thinking had to proceed in order to establish a proof’ (p. 120). However,writing’s function as a ‘cure’ for the weakness of memory – verba volent, scriptamanent – is not as successful as we might think. Writing conveys knowledgewithout understanding. It is inflexible. It cannot speak to defend itself or clarifyits meaning. It cannot interrupt. And ‘if Plato is right in holding that being cannotbe known discursively . . . then it cannot be approached through a step-by-stepdialectical movement or argumentation, and it cannot be properly represented,written down, or read’ (p. 130).

This is an eloquent book, more rhetoric than dialectic, and its eloquence at timespushes the argument in unwarranted directions. Nikulin gives no consideration tothe liberating nature of the written word, which makes available to all, potentially


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at least, the knowledge, skills, and techniques that are otherwise available onlyto a small elite. (The symposium is after all only open to a handful of invitees,‘no fewer than the number of the Graces and no more than the number of theMuses’ (p. 83).) Nor does Nikulin consider the role of the electronic media as analternative means of capturing and conveying oral dialogue. He also understatesthe major limitation of the oral, its fleeting nature. The dialogue must end, andonce it is ended it disappears (unless captured on media such as YouTube). Oraldialogue may never be completed, but, unfinalizable or not, it will eventually beabandoned and lost.

Nikulin ends his book with a statement reminiscent of Martin Buber’s ‘Dialog-philosophie’: ‘to be is to be in dialogue’ (p. 155). To be in dialogue with God?That is not a question the author considers or perhaps would want us to consider.But it is, I think, where his ‘conclusion’ is pointing.

IAN LOGAN

THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD: THE THEOLOGY OF LANGUAGE OFAUGUSTINE OF HIPPO by Edward Morgan, T&T Clark, London and NewYork, 2010, pp. x + 191, £60

This book studies one, highly important aspect of Augustine’s understanding oflanguage – as the vocal medium in which God discloses Himself to believersand discloses believers to themselves – and three works in which the theologiandevelops his ideas on this theme: the De trinitate, the De doctrina christiana, andthe Confessiones. Familiar texts support a novel conclusion, that for Augustine‘human utterance’ is ‘what keeps the mind going in its searching after God’sreality’ (p. 13). The starting-point is De trinitate, Book 15, and Augustine’sreading there of 1 Corinthians 13:12. The image of God within the human personis the enigmatic mirror in which alone we can see God darkly. In thought (anunderstanding present within the heart prior to any kind of inner speech, andnot as a word in any given tongue) Augustine sees an image of the DivineWord in relationship to the Father whose Word and Wisdom He is. The openingchapter then turns to the analogy Augustine sets up between our utterance of aword in giving voice to thought and the incarnation of the Divine Word. Morganholds (in a way we may question) that this unqualified analogy ‘opens up humandiscourse and language christologically, enabling them to stand as salvific in a wayanalogous (sicut) to the historical event of the incarnation of the Word’ (p. 44).

Chapters Two to Four switch away to the De doctrina. We follow Augustine’strain of thought in Book I from the defence of theological writing on biblicalexegesis as integral to the proper understanding of it, to the ineffability of the Godof whom silence speaks louder than words, yet who has created people with thedesire to praise Him in so far as we can and whose Word (unlike the Plotiniandeity) became flesh for us and stands revealed in the Bible. We return to thefundamental analogy of the spoken word which now points to the significanceof the incarnation as an act of communication by which God without change inHimself may enter into the heart and mind, just as thought is given voice sothat it may enter unchanged into the hearer’s consciousness. Again, Morgan’ssummary turns the analogy round: ‘Words, in their outwardly verbalized form,are mediators between God’s transcendence and humanity’s material embodiment’(p. 53).

From Augustine’s reading of inspired human lives and deeds as God’s speechact, Morgan next explicates Books 2 and 3 of the De doctrina to show howAugustine understands Scripture as reflecting our fallen humanity back at us:‘Reading for Augustine, or rather the task of learning not to misread, is itself


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part of providence’s plan for human growth towards God’ (p. 63). We are takenthrough Augustine’s seven-stage ascent towards God and the place of devout med-itation upon Scripture in that progression. Within this process, Tobit’s command –do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself – acts as a break onwilful misreading while it also requires the reader to apply the abstract commandto practical circumstances. In the same way that Nathan’s figurative address toDavid permits the King to repent of his murderous adultery, Scripture engages thereader in an exercise which brings home the meaning of his or her acts. Finally,in this central section of the book, Morgan sets out Augustine’s understanding inDe doctrina, Book 4, of wisdom’s relationship to eloquence in Scripture, whichthe preacher is to explicate when himself inspired to wisdom by an eloquencethat points beyond itself and transcends the classical canons. This eloquence isboth divine and flows from the human authors of Scripture whose voices andvirtues address us publicly, put us on the spot. This is perhaps the most attractiveelement of Morgan’s presentation, directing us to a view of Biblical authoritywhich sees us as both attentive and answerable to a historical community of holyinterlocutors rather than simply to the book per se.

Chapter Five takes this rich account of how speech draws us towards God andapplies it to the Confessions as ‘an act of exemplary speech’ (p. 101). Morgandeftly observes that Augustine’s encounter with Neoplatonism in Book 7 is thepoint at which Augustine first considers himself to be addressed by God anddrawn into a sustaining conversation with God. Morgan also suggests persuasivelythat Ambrose, the preacher par excellence, is described in the same terms as thebiblical text he explicates and thus ‘represents an embodied paradigm of thecharacteristics of scripture’ (p. 109). Augustine’s conversion – his acceptance ofbaptism and the chastity he understands as consequent upon it – is then describedas the outcome of a crisis generated and negotiated by the harmonious interactionof Scripture and the social context of a Church invigorated by both the eloquenceof its local bishop and the tale of a distant monk. Out of this crisis, in Book 9,emerges an Augustine seen to possess a new garrulity in addressing the God whofirst spoke to him (p. 121), when Augustine for the first and only time in the textdirectly addresses Jesus Christ.

The final part of this study, a hefty fifty pages, returns to the De trinitate,and Augustine’s concern for the continuity between what Christ teaches and whoHe is as the Father’s Word (De trinitate 1.12.27). Our engagement with thisteaching is our entry into an understanding of the Trinity. The chapter takesa commonly accepted view of Augustine’s account of what ‘person’ means inspeaking of three ‘persons’ in the Trinity: Augustine does not mean what wedo in using this term, and the term is nothing more than a convenience in thebusiness of asserting that there are three who are the one God. Except, however,that Morgan also thinks that Augustine uses this empty term ‘as the referencepoint for our understanding the nature of identity and differentiation within theTrinity’ (p. 146). Much is meant to turn on this, though its sense is not entirelyclear, and the issue is further problematized by the later claim that Augustine‘meditated on the meaning of the word persona as exemplifying the Trinity’(p. 157). At very least, however, the word keeps the conversation going and somakes possible the communication of the mystery. From here, the chapter movesto how love for God is deepened through our attraction towards what is goodand just in holiness of life. St Paul, whom we know and love from his letters,attracts us towards the good which transcends himself. Knowledge and love ofGod cannot be had in isolation from exposure to, or participation in, such virtuoussocial contexts. Morgan then reflects briefly on Augustine’s account of love asitself Trinitarian in form (with lover, beloved, and the love shared between them).The human being can image God ever more strongly in the practised recollection,knowledge, and love of God, but must ever acknowledge the dissimilarity between


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God’s simplicity and our complexity, between image and reality, an admission thatfurther prompts contemplative awe before the God who transcends both wordsand wordless thought.

There is much here to remind or teach us of the value of Augustine’s theology,and of how far that theology builds upon a rich vision of the human person whois saved through listening and responding to the Divine Word which addresseshim or her. However, this is also very much a book which betrays its origins as adoctoral thesis. Numerous and extensive summaries hope to persuade the readerthat the different close readings, some of which are subtle and many of which areobscure, add up to a single and coherent argument. Despite, and to some extentbecause of this, the book remains hard going, and could not be recommended intoto to students of Augustine, let alone to the general reader. This reader at anyrate fears that at several places along the way he may not have seen the woodfor the trees.

RICHARD FINN OP

THOMAS AQUINAS: THE ACADEMIC SERMONS TRANSLATED by Mark-Robin Hoogland, The Fathers of the Church: Medieval Continuation Vol. 11,The Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC, 2010, pp. 358,£44.50

Mark-Robin Hoogland’s English translation of the academic sermons of ThomasAquinas renders a great service to the world of Aquinas scholarship as it presentsa more complete view of Thomas Aquinas, Dominican friar, a member of theOrder of Preachers. In the past, scholarship has tended to focus on Aquinas as aphilosopher or as a theologian (a generally unhelpful and anachronistic distinc-tion), while more recently scholarship has reminded readers of Aquinas’ primaryrole as Magister in Sacra Pagina, a lecturer in sacred scripture. Thus far hisacademic sermons have tended to be overlooked. The Leonine Commission arecurrently preparing the first complete and critical edition of the 20 sermons identi-fied as authentic from amongst the myriad of sermons attributed to Aquinas. Thiswork of Hoogland’s contains all 20, translated from the original Latin texts, plusone whose authenticity is debated (sermon 10, Petite et accipietis). The sermons,composed in the logical style of Aquinas, contain solid, profound, theologicalcontent, and yet are presented in a manner accessible to the listener. Some studyand reflection on these sermons might provide interesting lessons for those in-volved in the ministry of homiletics today. While most sermons were deliveredto an audience of student theologians, this in no way detracts from their widerrelevance.

A very informative Introduction provides the reader with the necessary back-ground knowledge for fruitful and easy reading of this book. The sermons, we aretold, were preached in Latin, mainly in Paris, but some were preached in Bolognaand in Milan. Generally speaking while the occasion of the sermon (i.e. the placein the Church calendar) is known, the actual date is not. The sermons consist ofthree parts – the sections termed the prothema (a very short introduction) andthe sermo were preached at mass, while the collatio in sero was given later inthe day, during vespers. Hoogland explains the probable process of recordingand transmission of these talks, and tells us, unsurprisingly, that not all of thesermons have been passed down in full. In the sermo itself Aquinas follows theclassic rhetorical rules, beginning with an outline plan, usually identifying threeor four points, and then proceeding to go through the points methodically. Thelanguage used is strikingly plain and simple. Truth, and not the entertainment ofan audience, is the concern of the sermon. Knowledge, and putting knowledge


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into practice, belong together. As in the Summa theologiae the cultivation of avirtuous life is his central teaching – ‘In all sermons Thomas urges his audience tolead a virtuous life’ (p. 15) – and Sacred Scripture is once more his foundationalresource.

As one might expect God is central. The image of God portrayed is loving, kind,just, merciful. Sermon 15, Homo quidam erat Dives, speaks luxuriantly of God,and demonstrates Aquinas’ style in reading scripture where he posits a characterin the story recalled from Sacred Scripture as ‘God’. In this way scripture’srevelation of the ‘nature’ of God is augmented. Many characters portray God, andso not only Christ, but also many other characters in the bible reveal something ofwhat God is. Aquinas’ positive view of humanity, and his reading of scripture asspeaking of God’s desire to be intimate with us, leads him to teach in a touchinglyprofound way: ‘If God has proved himself so intimate with us, then we also oughtto prove to him that we are intimate with him.’(p. 217) Consideration of Godis presented in parallel with his consideration of the human, always presentedas created in God’s image. In this same sermon Aquinas considers ‘What isproper to man (hominis)?’ Mildness in nature, and kindness are identified as theproperties natural to a human, ‘because kindness (benignitas) is called humanity’(p. 218).

Each sermon contains similar nuggets of wisdom, and the translated text isgreatly augmented by the excellent footnotes provided by Hoogland. These fre-quently refer the reader to the relevant sections of the Summa or to other writingsof Aquinas, while in other cases they fill out pieces of information lacking tothe reader of the 21st century such as the explanatory note on the Parvus Pons(p. 234). The notes also remind us that while Aquinas is very much a man ofhis time in his understanding of women, his view that in Christ they should notbe treated as secondary people (p. 234, n. 4) merits attention. In a commenton sermon 20, Hoogland cautions the reader against being too quick to make ajudgement on Aquinas’ attitude toward women. It is a noteworthy comment, assome theologians have indeed dismissed all of Aquinas’ works because of thecomments on women made in one or two places by a man from the 13th century.

This collection of sermons makes available a rich feast of theology presentedin the trademark clear and logical fashion of Aquinas’ theology, in an eminentlypractical and down to earth fashion. Sermon 12 provides a rich theology of Godas Trinity while Sermon 13 discusses at great length the dinner scene mentionedin Luke 14:16. Thomas concerns himself with the man who prepared the dinner,the kind of dinner, and how big it was. This practical meal imagery is used tospeak of vocation, call, amongst the spectrum of peoples who live in this world.Meal imagery is again used in Sermon 20 where we read that to eat at God’stable is to delight in and to be ‘refreshed by the same thing by which God isrefreshed . . . his goodness’ (p. 306). Aquinas’ stress throughout the sermons onjustice and on hospitality is striking, as is his wisdom regarding the clerical state.He cites Pope Symmachus to remind us that ‘being a cleric does not amount tomuch if that man does not surpass a layman in virtue’ (p. 323), again a valuableteaching for today.

This edition of the sermons is greatly enhanced not only by the footnotes,as mentioned earlier, but also by the provision of two excellent indices, andan appendix providing information on people famous in the time of Thomasbut perhaps not so familiar to the contemporary reader. Hoogland’s work oftranslation has much to recommend it. The care taken not only in translating butalso in providing much additional information means that this book should beaccessible to a reader approaching Thomas Aquinas for the first time. It is to berecommended to teachers and preachers alike.

FAINCHE RYAN


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PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN THE RENAISSANCE by Paul Richard Blum,Ashgate Studies in the History of Philosophical Theology, Ashgate, Farn-ham, 2010, pp. 222, £50

Oliver Wendall Holmes once wrote: ‘I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity onthis side of complexity, but I would give my right arm for the simplicity on thefar side of complexity’. Having read Blum’s book, I would suggest what thistext lacks is simplicity, a simplicity that the author needed to ensure the workcontained in order to make difficult concepts real and immediate to his readers.The major stumbling block in attaining this simplicity is in the very premise thatBlum sets out as his goal.

In the Preface Blum writes: ‘A purely theoretical book on faith, reason and re-ligion could be written, but not by me. For in my view, a philosophical problem isconstituted by its history, so that its historical stages enable us to understand whattroubles us today’ (p. vi). One has to bear this premise in mind before beginningBlum’s text, a text that is essentially a scan of a dozen religious minds of the Re-naissance, examining how each philosopher spawned a new idea or reacted to theideas of another. Blum has collected this group of philosophers suggesting thattheir Great Conversation, has helped shape the religious intellectual climate ofmodern times. One of the text’s great strengths lies in how Blum selects not onlysome of the well-known philosophers of the age, such as Montaigne, RaymondLull, and Nicholas of Cusa, all of whom have found their way to some extent intocontemporary parlance, but he also re-emphasizes the importance of others suchas Plethon and Salutati, towards whom posterity has not been so generous. Thetext’s weakness is that it is certainly questionable whether justice could be donein such a brief work to philosophers whose intellectual acumen was so great. Thegreat danger of doing this is that one risks losing the reader by throwing at thema great diversity of thought without providing adequate humus in which theseideas might germinate.

There is also the problem of abstruse language in Blum’s text which is cer-tainly not a reader friendly book. Granted, every scientific discipline has its ownway of communicating to their own, but surely there are better ways of con-veying meaning, then extraordinarily long sentences such as: ‘Marsilio Ficino’sattempt at salvaging Christianity and converting neopagan Aristotelians branchedinto extremely abstract speculation in order to capture the transcendence and ab-soluteness of God and a moral religiosity that in the end could only lead to aquasi-pietistic interiorization or spiritualization of the mystery of the divine bymaking the theoretical ascent an essential feature of being human’ (p. 126). Thissentence may sound erudite to some but it makes one wonder why the bookwas written: was it to publish a doctoral thesis, or a collection of lectures, or toinform the public? If the first, so be it, if the second, more support material wasrequired, if the latter, then the author must serve the reader better by making thetext, perhaps not rivetting, but at least stylistically interesting.

A further point is that – as with any discussion of the history of ideas –a map or chart would have been useful, perhaps a progressive map, showinghow the author is connecting the myriad of ideas to which he is providing anexposition. For although one can be certain that the author has a grasp of thisinterconnectedness of ideas, he must endeavour to ensure that the meaning isclear to the reader by text’s end. Blum’s Epilogue goes a distance in creatingsome intellectual coherence, but a chart would have been far clearer.

So now for the particular gems of Blum’s work. Blum’s opening chapter, ‘FromFaith and Reason to Fideism: Raymond Lull, Raimundus Sabundus and Michelde Montaigne’, is well-constructed and highly thought-provoking. He introducesthe reader to Lull’s quite radical notion that God desired humanity to love himin a variety of ways, thus explaining the diversity of religions (cf. p. 3). This


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is a key point to the chapter, for Blum uses the notion of revelation taken upby one of Lull’s followers, Sabundus, who sees religious belief as that which‘dignifies’ humanity. Montaigne appears soon after, for in his Essays, the Frenchskeptic writes an ‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’ which. as Blum argues, is lacedwith irony and vivid critique. Blum concludes the chapter, by describing howMontaigne stands against both Sabundus and Lull, for Montaigne is convincedthat the world is ultimately unintelligible, and that natural theology will ultimatelyleave the spiritual pilgrim in a cataclysm of faith and doubt.

Coluccio Salutati is the subject of Chapter Four, and the reader is exposedto some wonderful ideas from this 14th Century Italian philosopher. We readone of Salutati’s letters where he debates action and inaction, and comes tothe somewhat tenuous conclusion that a person is torn in life between planningfor a future that may never come and surrendering to Providence for whatevershall be, the latter tending almost to pious indolence. As the chapter progresses,Boccaccio and Petrarca are included in the discussion to assess the role of poetryin theology with the conclusion that Salutati envisages literature as having atheological dignity, something that is inherent to linguistic form. This concept isimportant for, taken to another level, one could argue that the pagan fables of theAncient World could have an almost Christian application, a return to what Cusacalls different Rites of religious revelation.

In Chapter Five, we see Blum extend the notion of religion and languagethrough the writings of Lorenzo Valla. Blum opens the chapter powerfully withwhat he perceives as the crux of Valla’s thought: piety through grammar. As Blumstates in the conclusion of this chapter, Valla’s approach was ‘to penetrate eachword for the sake of reaching the referent, the meaning itself, the truth’ (p. 92).If Shakespeare questioned what was in a name Valla’s question was far broader –what power is held in the word? According to a sliding scale of importance asto what the word denotes, ‘God’ is the most powerful of all possible names, andall words refer back to that highest Word, in order to establish their place in thegenealogy of language.

So what can be said in sum of Blum’s text? There are many aspects of thistext to like but they all relate to the wonderful ideas it contains from so manygreat minds. Blum should be congratulated for this. It is a joy to read throughthese ideas and to be exposed to such a treasure. However the book is thoroughlyundermined by its brevity, which forces so much that must be said into such aconfined space. The text is also constrained by a convoluted style of communi-cation. This being said, Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance should find arespected place in academic libraries as a useful source book which points towardother avenues for future research.

ANDREW THOMAS KANIA

THE ANNALS OF THE FOUR MASTERS: IRISH HISTORY, KINGSHIP AND SO-CIETY IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY by Bernadette Cunningham,Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2010, pp. 348, £45

The Annals of the Four Masters, compiled in the early seventeenth century, wereestablished two hundred years later as the text which perhaps best encapsulatedthe vitality and precociousness of the indigenous civilization swept away byEnglish conquest. Bernadette Cunningham in her meticulous study shows whythe later reputation was acquired. It owed much, she suggests, to cursory – oreven no – reading of the work. This is not a failing of which she can be accused.Better than any previous scholar, she uncovers the complex processes throughwhich the Annals emerged and the multiplicity of sources on which they were


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based. Moreover, the compilation is set assuredly in the ideological, confessional,and political contexts of its time. The result is an analysis which, if occasionaldetails may subsequently be amplified or modified, is likely in all essentials toprove definitive.

The contribution of one of the quartet of ‘masters’, Micheal O Cleırigh, over-shadows that of the other three. Cunningham patiently establishes the nature ofthe collaboration between compilers and scribes, and indeed between the annalistsand the custodians of the documents on which they relied. O Cleırigh combinedseveral of the characteristics that underpinned the entire enterprise. He belongedto a dynasty of scholars and so inherited a familiarity with the materials fromwhich any authoritative history of Gaelic Ireland was to be constructed. In addi-tion, the family, although its branches stretched across much of the island, wasrooted in the North West. And, indeed it was to that region, in the friary ofBundrowes (County Donegal), that the compilers headed by O Cleırigh returnedto complete their history. As a consequence of these connections, the dominantfamily of the area, Uı Domhnaill (O’Donnell), featured prominently, notably inthe sixteenth-century sections, with their struggles against their nearest rivals, theO’Neills.

O Cleırigh’s position within the hereditary learned caste helped his researches.Cunningham offers a detailed account of the manuscripts used by O Cleırigh,their owners, and the contemporary scholars whose expertise was enlisted. Whatemerges is an interest shared across the deepening confessional fissures in Ireland.Scholars committed to the promotion of Protestantism, such as Archbishop JamesUssher and Sir James Ware, assisted. On their side, the Four Masters eschewedthe aggressive polemics that marked other literary efforts to rehabilitate an earlierIreland. Nevertheless, the Counter-Reformation, with its redefinitions and revi-talization of Catholicism, is seen as important to the conception and writing ofthe Annals. The O Cleırighs had long-standing links with the Franciscan order.Micheal O Cleırigh himself became a lay brother, in which capacity not onlycould he tap into the network of Franciscan houses within Ireland, but benefitfrom the dynamism pulsing through its continental institutions. Among the lat-ter, the most important was St Anthony’s College, founded at Louvain in 1607.The college was intended to energize Catholic Ireland. To that end, it sponsoreda programme of instruction, which included the composition and publishing ofdevotional helps. More ambitious still was the intention to create an authoritativeaccount of Christianity in Ireland, with appropriate stress on its many saints andscholars. Cunningham demonstrates that the Annals belonged to this project beingoverseen by John Colgan.

As well as deploying formidable technical and linguistic skills, Cunninghamhas a sure grasp of the secular and cultural politics of the seventeenth century.In the face of a more assertive and effective Protestant state in Ireland, theolder worlds of Gaelic lordship were shrinking. Yet, throughout much of Europe,including the Spanish Netherlands, Protestantism lost ground and worshipperswere recovered for Catholicism. If one function of the completed Annals wouldbe to celebrate a vanishing order, another was to engage not just the sympathybut the active support of Catholics across Europe. For this reason, it is probablethat the Annals of the Four Masters were intended for publication at Louvain.Indeed, one of the two surviving original manuscripts may have been meantfor the printer’s copy. However, the scale of the edition and the intervention ofother priorities delayed any printing. Only in the nineteenth century, thanks tothe foundation in Dublin of learned societies and the urgency in some quartersto work through an avowedly nationalist agenda, was an edition published: anedition, by John O’Donovan, which, as Cunningham gently hints, is ripe forreplacing.


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So, with exact scholarship and speculative brio, the minutely local, the res-onantly national, and the international dimensions of the Four Masters’ workare set out. As in her earlier study of another leading Catholic historian inseventeenth-century Ireland, Seathrun Ceitinn (Geoffrey Keating), Cunninghamhas cut away the thickets of luxuriant verbiage that have grown up to obscurethese influential but complex histories. Now, thanks to her efforts, anachronismand nationalist mythologizing are banished. In the clearer light, the achieve-ments of the Four Masters, so far from being diminished, are enhanced, asis Cunningham’s reputation as the foremost expositor of these Irish historicaltraditions.

TOBY BARNARD

ANALYTIC THEOLOGY: NEW ESSAYS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THEOLOGYedited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, Oxford University Press, 2009,pp. x + 316, £50 hbk

This is a challenging, rich and stimulating book. Michael Rea’s ‘Introduction’clarifies the meaning of analytic theology and offers an extended meditation onpossible objections to it, objections addressed by later contributions. The bookdivides into four sections. The first presents the project of analytic theology, thesecond examines historical cases relevant to this project, the third discusses datafor theology (scripture, reason and experience), while the final section returns toaddressing objections.

Rea notes that much contemporary theology, insofar as it engages with philos-ophy, uses philosophy from the continental tradition. He also notes that philoso-phers of religion in the analytical tradition have turned their attention to the-ological topics. Indeed, ‘analytical theology is just the activity of approachingtheological topics with the ambitions of an analytical philosopher’ (p. 7). Hewants the collection to stimulate an interdisciplinary discussion about the valueof such an approach. He charts the typical features of analytical style – write in amanner that is formalizable, prioritize clarity and coherence, avoid metaphor, usewell understood primitive concepts and concepts analyzable in terms of these, andthink of conceptual analysis as having an evidential function (p. 5). He notes thatmany think analytical philosophers are substantively committed to the epistemo-logical position of foundationalism and the metaphysical position of metaphysicalrealism. While this is not so, it is true that the tasks of clarifying the scope andnature of knowledge and of providing true explanatory theories of phenomena aregenerally shared. But there are no substantive philosophical theses which separateanalytical philosophers from their rivals. Objections to an analytical approach in-clude the charge that it is ahistorical, is committed to ontotheology (which makesGod an explanatory posit and removes any sense of mystery), undermines thelife of faith with its rationalism, treats issues only amenable to this style, andavoids richer, messier topics, producing mere simulacra (intellectual creationswhich mimic the true theological topics).

Rea believes these objections can be answered, but that they deserve sympa-thetic attention. Oliver Crisp’s chapter ‘On Analytic Theology’ covers much ofthe same territory and he is sympathetic to the view that the kind of work doneby the great theologians of the past is now being done by philosophers. WilliamJ. Abraham’s ‘Systematic Theology as Analytic Theology’ is punchier in its crit-icisms of contemporary theology. The most provocative essay in this respect isRandall Rauser’s ‘Theology as a Bull Session’. This employs Harry Frankfurt’scelebrated conceptual analysis of bullshit as a kind of discourse which doesn’tcare about truth, further distinguishing between kinds which are intentionally


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produced (insincere talk) and those which aren’t (nonsense) and then indictsSally MacFague and Jurgen Moltmann of producing such.

Given that analytical theology faces the challenge of being ahistorical, thesection on historical perspectives is exceptionally good. John Lamont’s ‘A Con-ception of Faith in the Greek Fathers’ includes a discussion of the epistemologyof testimony (defending a non-reductionist view), links this to the Thomist viewof faith (believing God’s word does not rest on inference from something else),and diagnoses a tension between Aquinas’s earlier and later views on faith.Among other things he presents Philo of Alexandria’s anticipation of scholasticphilosophical theology, discusses the Indian Nyaya school on testimony, and therecapitulation of the Thomist view on faith by the 17th century Puritan, JohnOwen. Andrew Chignell’s ‘“As Kant has shown . . .” Analytical Theology andthe Critical Philosophy’ is a careful study of the impact of a certain readingof Kant on contemporary theology and an argument that Kant did nothing ofthe sort. Chignell carefully and persuasively distinguishes Kant’s views on belief(Glaube) and knowledge (Wissen) noting that much theological material operatesin the realm of belief and that it can have theoretical underpinnings. He ar-gues that hard-line readings of Kant which present him as a proto-verificationist(Strawson, Bennett, Kemp-Smith) go way beyond what the text licences. NicholasWolterstorff’s ‘How Philosophical Theology Became Possible Within the Analyt-ical Tradition’ continues this march from the perceived influence of Kant andsituates it in a broader discussion of the trajectory of epistemology, from theclassical foundationalism of the Enlightenment to the current situation of ‘ex-traordinary epistemological pluralism’ (p. 161). He gives a very useful analysisof the much-mentioned term ‘ontotheology’ and an argument that it does notapply to analytical theology. Andrew Dole engages with the ahistorical charge bydiscussing ‘Schleiermacher’s Theological Anti-Realism’. He discusses the histor-ical context of conflict between religious orthodoxy and free inquiry and notes atension between Schleiermacher’s reductive approach to theology, which on oneside makes it a projection of feelings and intuitions while on the other having akind of transcendental deduction of the truth of religious claims. An importantlesson from Schleiermacher is that religious doctrines do more than report truth-claims – and that analytical theologians ought to be cognisant of the inner-worldlyimpact of these doctrines.

There are two essays on the inspiration of scripture. Thomas McCall exam-ines Karl Barth’s critique of the view that scripture simply is the word of God(the classical view), and his own proposal that scripture becomes the word ofGod in an event. McCall looks at the case for the Barthian view but is ul-timately critical of it. Thomas Crisp examines the epistemological justificationof the belief that scripture is inspired and discusses three options – an argu-ment from natural theology, an argument from testimony, and finally the ideaof something like ‘the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit’. His technicallysophisticated discussion of Swinburne’s use of Bayesian probability theory servesas a detailed case-study for those antecedently dubious of the possibility of usingnon-arbitrary values in such a context. He endorses a view where accepting thetestimony of certain licensed authorities confers justification on the belief thatscripture is inspired (the authoritative testimonial doxastic practice, p. 209). Thisconfers justification, while leaving it open whether knowledge ensues. MichaelSudduth discusses the contribution of religious experience to dogmatic theology.His view is that religious experience and natural theology are closely intertwinedand both feed into dogmatic theology. Michael Murray examines the relation-ship of science to religion using the metaphor of different possible kinds ofmarriage (most of which he deems dysfunctional). He particularly focuses on‘doormat love’ where one partner uncritically accepts the whims of the other. Hepoints out an historical case where theology accepted the wrong scientific views


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(Descartes on extension) and challenges a contemporary, John Haught, for anuncritical acceptance of contemporary science at the cost of making his theolog-ical view ad hoc and contentless. Murray endorses a view he calls constructiveengagement, which does not involve an uncritical acceptance of scientific views(p. 247).

The final section looks at challenges to analytic theology. Eleonore Stump dis-cusses the importance of narrative for understanding certain kinds of issue, arguingthat all knowledge cannot be ‘knowledge that’ and holds that stories transmit akind of knowledge of persons which is not reducible to ‘knowledge that’ (p. 259).Merold Westphal explores the place of phenomenology and hermeneutics in the-ology and thinks of them as complementary to analytical approaches. It seemedto me that the discussion of perspectivism and relativism in this paper wouldbenefit from engagement with recent analytical work on contextualism, makingmore precise the exact nature of the claims. Finally Sarah Coakley examinesTeresa of Avila, described in a memorable phrase as ‘the favoured “pin up girl”of analytical philosophy of religion in its appeal to veridical religious experiencesof a sporadic Jamesian sort’ (p. 283). She offers a powerful corrective to thatapproach, emphasizing that Teresa tells about ‘a transformed epistemic capacityin which affectivity, bodiliness and the traditional mental faculties are in someunique sense (through the long practices of prayer) aligned and made responsiveto God’ (p. 294).

Each essay repays close attention and several refer to the writer’s other worksfor further inquiry. This collection is a fine manifesto for a new approach totheology.

PAUL O’GRADY

THE POLITICS OF DISCIPLESHIP: BECOMING POST-MATERIAL CITIZENS byGraham Ward, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids MI, 2009, pp. 317, $24.99 pbk

The act of being a citizen often looks crass next to the polished acquiescenceto consumerism and endless materialism peddled for us by much contemporaryentertainment. But for the theologian, who is not a citizen of this world, GrahamWard’s The Politics of Discipleship is a call to a radical kind of impoliteness, thescandal of the Christ, and the Kingdom that this scandal introduces and carriesout through his disciples.

Ward’s targets are twofold: the facile politeness of ‘depoliticization’ thatemerges from the current post-democratic milieu, and the metaphysically adriftsentimentalities of post-materialism, resistances to the ‘endless materialism’ ofcapitalism that champion causes such as human rights, ecological responsibility,debt relief, and so on. The problem with these causes, for Ward, is that they alllack the ground of a metaphysical mindfulness. Can one defend human rightswithout first grasping what it means to be human? Especially in this case, Wardargues, the human body itself has been divested of meaning by the advocates forrampant materialism as well as by materialism’s post-modern critics.

Part one, ‘The World’, outlines the decay of democracy into post-democracy,a depoliticized matrix characterized by the dominance of the market, where pol-itics erodes into economics. ‘I may choose a post-materialist option and notbuy sportswear from Nike because of the charges of sweatshop exploitation, butmy index-linked pension, the investments made by my mortgage company andmy bank, my credit and debit cards, and online shopping all situation me veryfirmly in the global economy’ (p. 97). One can swim to the left or right bank,but one cannot swim upstream without great difficulty. And the idea of leavingthe stream altogether is unimaginable.


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Ward accordingly describes a tectonic break: on one side, a genuine politics,which advocates contestation (Ward’s impoliteness) as a civic responsibility; onthe other, laissez-faire capitalism and consumerism, in which the sole discernibletelos is the pleasure of the customer. But when pleasure becomes the end, as Ward(and Negri) notes, dialogue is lost. The customer, ironically, now provides theservice. The all-important equivocation between citizen and customer empowersthe hegemonic market place which had (erroneously) been thought to empowerthe citizen cum entrepreneur. Pleasure is no longer the goal of the marketplace,but rather (chapter 3) the means to an ever-expanding culture and religiosity ofthe corporation. The creation and maintenance of pliant zombies becomes thehidden ‘good’ of the undead city of commerce. The depoliticized world of post-democracy is not an apocalyptic nightmare for us to avoid, but the lived realityof the late-capitalist West.

Perhaps Ward’s critics have in mind such examples when they accuse him ofcapitulating to a dark interpretation of modernity. Yet, in part two, ‘The Church’,Ward explains that it is the milieu of depoliticization which the church has beengiven to redeem. The church’s job, and that of her disciples, is to ‘repoliticize’the public space. Ward is at his most theological here as he introduces thisprogram as one grounded in the church’s triune origin. The body participates inthe redemptive effects of the incarnation of God in Christ (chapter 5, especiallyp. 186). He connects politics and the church’s life not merely by the concept ofpolity as such, but first through Aristotle’s exposition in the Politics of leitourgiaas simultaneously political, ethical, and aesthetic.

But it is Paul who finally connects the leitourgia of the physical body to theecclesial body politic. Liturgical service is both political and theological, for thebody of Christ is poured out as a libation upon the world (p. 183). The bodyof Christ then manifests the quintessential marriage of the political and the theo-logical in service. Discipleship as such is a process of being formed into Christ,with all its attendant locatedness and eschatological significance (chapter 6). Ap-propriately Ward thus renders the Christic body as the model for understandingall embodiment (p. 251). Such a move places Ward’s work in direct dialoguewith Badiou, Agamben, and Zizek. Yet, unlike those authors, Ward argues thatthe disciple’s relation to Christ (en Christo) occurs precisely because of Christ’sbodily advent and the disciple’s being baptized into ‘another level of ontologicalintensity available in this world but not concurrent with it’ (p. 249). Discipleshipis completely informed by a metaphysical politics, or theo-politics, of the bodyof Christ. Just as the Incarnation re-presents the physical body, those who nowlive corporately en Christo re-constitute the body politic, which is another wayof saying that the resurrected body plays out on the stage of the political body,for resurrection implodes the logic of death in both micro and macro arenas. Thechurch ushers in a different kind of politics, the politics of what Ward calls theeschatological remainder (in contrast to Agamben’s remnant).

In the final chapter, Ward argues that discipleship alone offers the hope ofrepoliticization, the chance for viable political alternatives. Discipleship mitigatesagainst the great danger of depoliticization precisely because Christ’s embodimentin the world establishes an alternative kingdom, the Kingdom of the eschatologicalremainder. The disciple must gauge viability and success by another standard thanthe post-democratic measure of economic and materialist gain, which amounts to‘the prolongation of desire itself’ (p. 267). Rather, success for the disciple mustbe understood as the triumph of love, which creates alternative power relationscapable of overturning the present economies of desire (p. 275). Ward, therefore,looks to an ecclesiology of the Christic body politic wherein love amounts toparticipation in the triune life. The mutual love that flows between the Fatherand the Son generates and saturates the disciple’s being as a participant in Christ,which is, ultimately, a political matter.


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The Politics of Discipleship makes a valuable contribution to current conver-sation in political theology. Ward’s fluid style of narrating places, stories, andparables, coupled with critical analyses that draw on critical studies makes for anenjoyable read, but one that will surely find a more likely audience with graduatestudents or above.

And while I am generally appreciative of his argument, I do have severalreservations including Ward’s generalized use of the term ‘gnosticism’ withoutclarifying its meaning in the context of his text (cf. pp. 152–53). Moreover, heweakens the theological power of his argument by postponing a definition of‘discipleship’ until the final chapter. One significant ramification of this delay isthat most of his discussion in part two focuses on the church as a whole; bodypolitics are favored above physical body as agents of change, a consequence of thebook’s either/or division of World and Church. Similarly, there is an unnervinglack of attention to the literature on discipleship itself, such as Bonhoeffer’sCost of Discipleship (and the same could be said of his failure to treat Yoder’sPolitics of Jesus). It is highly unfortunate that he completely ignores Bonhoeffer’scontribution, given that Bonhoeffer’s case and text would seem to bolster many ofWard’s points. Additionally, Ward’s analysis of the global city suffers from manyof the same unsupported generalizations for which thinkers of Radical Orthodoxyare regularly criticized. He does well to recall the megalithic architects of theglobal city (Le Corbusier and Robert Moses) and the utopian, globalizing legacythey bequeathed to city-dwellers (chapter 5). However, he hyperbolizes theirimpact in overlooking the visceral and successful resistance to their schemes.While it is certainly true that utopianism represents one notion of the good life,he fails to support his assertion that only one vision dominates the city. Bettermetaphors for the city, I suggest, might be patchwork or bricolage; that is, thecity bears forth multiple ways of living.

Furthermore, he commits the same error that he would presumably blamethe modern corporate machine for committing when he says that ‘(t)he variousflows within the city are all basically flows of money, money as the constitutiverule of modernity’s transcendental logic, its ‘reality principle’’ (p. 215). In sodoing, he conflates corporations with real persons, thereby dismissing not onlyhis own metaphysic of the body, but also city dwellers as retrograde consumers,interested in naught else but the aesthetic of their depoliticized, de-ethicizedliving rooms. I wonder what he makes of the mothers who gather at La Lechemeetings, deeply invested in the (profoundly teleological and material) practiceof breast-feeding. I suppose that he might lump this and similar practices, like therise of farmers’ markets and urban renewal in general, with the post-materialistreaction to capitalism and argue that they lack the theological foundation to resistdepoliticization. And he may be right about that. However, he makes almost noattempt to substantiate his blatant generalization that city dwellers lack an ethicaldepth, that ‘they cultivate lifestyles without conscience, beyond good and evil’(p. 215).

That said, Ward is certainly correct that the city has become the locus of anepic struggle of corporate titans that use the city as a base for their financial(mis)exploits versus the denizens who live in the neighborhoods at the periphery.In the face of this, Ward argues, the church must become, as it has so oftenin the past, a vehicle of cultural change, promoting charity and hospitality, andcombating the social imaginaries that prop up purposeless materialism withoutwhich production of these goods could never happen, thereby opposing the social,economic and racial boundaries that make ghettos possible.

The Politics of Discipleship is a challenging but highly rewarding read whoseclarion call to theologians to enter the public fora and reassert the church’s theo-political voice amidst the warring factions of materialism and post-materialismseems to have already excited constructive conversation. This I am sure it will


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continue to do given the fact that, as Ward clearly demonstrates, both sides feedfrom the same consumer trough and so are not going away anytime soon.

DANIEL WADE MCCLAIN

THEOLOGY ON THE MENU: ASCETICISM, MEAT AND CHRISTIAN DIET byDavid Grumett and Rachel Muers, Routledge, London, 2010, pp. 224, £75 hbk,£21.99 pbk

Avoiding meat, however discreetly, provokes questions: ‘What is wrong with it?’,‘Where do you draw the line?’ For the questioners, it often seems, the issues areblack and white: either meat is murder or we should be carnivores without limitor discrimination. It is enormously refreshing to encounter instead the nuancedand subtle approach of David Grumett and Rachel Muers in this thoughtful andreadable volume. They are constantly attentive to the moral, social and religiouscomplexity of the question of abstinence, and to the multiple meanings that sucha practice can carry.

The book is packed with details that reveal the breathtaking diversity of Chris-tian attitudes to ascetical eating. At one end of the spectrum were the desertfathers, such as Abba Or, who took his pickled vegetables just once a week.At the other, those clergy of Reformation England who agreed to regulate theirappetites according to hierarchy: archbishops would not take more than six meator fish dishes at one sitting, bishops five, and deans and archdeacons four. SomeProtestant reformers, including John Wesley, promoted abstinence from meat forthe sake of both physical and spiritual health (one result of this was the inventionof Kellogg’s cornflakes). By contrast, the Men and Religion Forward Movementprided itself on its hearty meat-eating and associated vegetarianism with spiritualas well as physical weakness.

The early chapters provide a historical overview, which identifies key momentsof change. Jewish food laws were definitively, but not wholly, rejected by theapostles and elders at the Council of Jerusalem. It was not long before the deserthermits were taking fasting to new extremes. Coenobitic monasticism, tended atfirst to regulate fasting in order to moderate rather than increase the asceticalimpulse. The close relations between the monasteries and secular society encour-aged relaxations and dispensations, which then provoked restrictive regulation.Meanwhile, of course, the whole population followed the Church’s calendar offeasting and fasting, including the long Lenten abstinence from meat and certainother foods. The Reformation signalled a shift from ecclesial to civic control ofcommunal fasting; the Long Parliament, for example, attempted, without greatsuccess, to replace the traditional cycle of fasting with a single monthly fast day,the purpose of which was largely political. It was not until 1856 that the statutefor ‘fish days’ was repealed, ‘on grounds of disuse’ (though it is notable that somesecular institutions even today continue the tradition of serving fish on Fridays).The end of legislation signalled the shift from a communal to an individualisticunderstanding: ‘fasting and abstinence’ were succeeded by ‘vegetarianism’ and‘dietary preferences’.

The specific themes that Grumett and Muers explore bring out the tensions andparadoxes within their subject. The strictness of both eremitical and communalfasting did not remove the need to honour guests, which meant that the Christiantradition of abstinence always included a distinctive element of flexibility. ThusCassian found the Egyptian monks readily postponing their fasting at the arrival ofa guest, while the Rule of St Benedict prescribes a separate kitchen for the abbotand his guests. Similarly, the rhythm of alternate fasting and feasting allowed foodto be used to represent both the Creator’s generous abundance and his creatures’


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grief, sinfulness and need. Again, the observance of food customs has always beena powerful way of marking the boundaries of a community. Although Christianitybegan with a decisive rejection of the Jewish refusal to share meals with outsiders,it too quickly learnt to regard eating as a way of marking the boundaries betweenheresy and orthodoxy, sometimes by insisting that members abstain from, at othertimes that they partake of, certain foods. So, for example, the same Christianswhose liturgy celebrated the courage of the Maccabean martyrs could (underthe Spanish Inquisition) break into private homes to ensure that lard rather thanoil was being used for cooking: thus the pork-avoiding ‘Judaizers’ could beeradicated. The memory of Jewish practices is relevant also to a theme thatis discussed here with great sensitivity and sympathy, that of animal sacrifice.Grumett and Muers bring out the way in which sacrificial or ritual slaughter,which has endured in certain Christian traditions, embodies realism and reverencein a way that contrasts strikingly with modern meat production. The person whotakes the victim’s life is chosen in part for his compassionate nature, the ritualis regulated to minimise suffering, those who consume the animal share in itskilling and preparation, prayers of gratitude acknowledge the seriousness of whathas taken place.

Within the vast variety of eating practices on display in Christian history, canwe detect any kind of continuity? Or should the pluralism that Grumett andMuers reveal lead us to ethical indifference about food? First, and fundamentally,all eating has been seen as meaningful, in ways that appeal to health, friend-ship, social structure, and even political considerations. Secondly, this range ofoverlapping reasons has reinforced rather than weakened the ethical and religioussignificance of meals. One of the lessons of this book is that moral seriousness iscompatible with both flexibility and nuance. Thirdly, fasting and abstinence havebeen practised almost everywhere that Christianity has flourished, and where theyhave been suppressed, they have soon recurred in a different form. Finally, formost of Christian history, these issues have been important to communities, notsimply matters of private choice.

Grumett and Muers deliberately begin with practice, arguing that just as thelex orandi rightly shapes the lex credendi, so the practices of abstinence prop-erly generate reflection upon their (often multiple) meanings. Whereas individualdietary choices must be self-conscious, the customs of a community may con-tain hidden and inarticulate wisdom. For this reason, it makes sense to scrutinisetradition as a resource for interrogating current practices, alerting us to ethicalquestions to which we may have become insensitive.

Is there any chance, one might wonder, that the Western Church could recovera communal sense of the significance of what, and how, we eat? We could beginby restoring the regular saying of grace. Perhaps the carnivores among us wouldlike to add a specific prayer of thanks for the lives of the animals they are aboutto consume: thus both reverence and realism might return to the common table.

MARGARET ATKINS OSA

ABSENCE OF MIND: THE DISPELLING OF INWARDNESS FROM THE MOD-ERN MYTH OF THE SELF by Marilynne Robinson Yale University Press, NewHaven and London, 2011, pp. xviii + 158, £10.99 pbk

With his characteristic blend of wit and deceptive simplicity, G.K. Chesterton oncedefined philosophy as ‘thought that has been thought out’. He followed up thispithy definition with an account of why philosophy, so defined, is indispensable:‘It is often a great bore. But man has no alternative, except between beinginfluenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought


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that has not been thought out. The latter is what we commonly call culture andenlightenment today’ (‘The Revival of Philosophy – Why?’ in The Common Man,London and New York, 1950, p. 176).

Chesterton would surely approve of the ambitious project undertaken byPulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson in Absence of Mind. Basedon the Terry Lectures given by Robinson at Yale University in 2009, Absenceof Mind inveighs against a fashionable species of bad philosophy – of ‘thoughtthat has not been thought out’ – seen by many as inseparable from the cause of‘culture and enlightenment’. Robinson’s target, however, is not so much a systemof philosophy as it is a literary genre embodying a philosophical outlook hostileto the Judaeo-Christian tradition. ‘Parascientific literature’ – the name Robinsongives to the genre in question – refers to a kind of popular polemical writing inwhich a radically reductionist picture of human nature is defended by invokingthe authority of modern science. These days, of course, there is no shortage ofwriters working in this genre; and the most successful of them – ‘New Atheists’Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, as well as Steven Pinker, E.O. Wilson, andAntonio Damasio – have won fame well beyond the walls of the academy. Nowwhatever we may think of these self-styled iconoclasts – and Robinson herselfthinks very little of them – there are two things that we absolutely must notsay: first, that they have invented the genre in which they are working; second,that what they have to tell us is fundamentally new. As Robinson points out,parascientific literature has been around since the mid-nineteenth century; andthe most influential of its early practitioners – Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer,Charles Darwin, T.H. Huxley, and Sigmund Freud – defined its essential, mod-ernist message once and for all. And just what is that message? Simple, saysRobinson: we are given to understand that ‘the Western understanding of whata human being is has been fundamentally in error’ (p. xiii). Far from being acreature made a little lower than the angels, or a soul intuitively attuned to truth,beauty, and goodness, each of us is nothing more than a poor, bare, forked animalwhose self-understanding is inherently untrustworthy, even delusional. Love andcompassion, remorse and forgiveness, terror and pity, inspiration and grace: noneof our intensely significant experiences are what they seem from the first-personperspective; and all of them can be explained away with the aid of evolution-ary biology, neuroscience, psychology, and anthropology. Since science has nowshown that everything which Western civilization has traditionally regarded as‘higher’ is in truth a mere mask of something ‘lower’, it follows that our religion,our morality, and our art can no longer be taken at face value. Such things canbe seen rightly only when viewed from a detached or external perspective; andwhen we look at human beings from this objective point of view – rather in theway a clinician coolly scrutinizes a hypochondriac – we discover that there ismuch less to human experience than meets the eye (or mind) of the credulousnon-scientist.

This, then, is how Robinson understands the popular philosophy at which herpolemical shafts are aimed. Here are four of her main objections to it: (1) Para-scientific literature claims to speak with the authority of science, and yet theintellectual virtues for which science is renowned are conspicuously absent fromparascientific tracts. For when we open bestsellers belonging to this burgeoninggenre, what do we find? Instead of curiosity, complacency; instead of wonder,glacial knowingness; instead of the bread of evidence, the stones of anecdote; andinstead of theory answering frankly to fact, fact tortured and forced to serve the-ory. (2) Parascientific discourse is apt to present itself as wholly disinterested andobjective: that is, as uncoloured by culture, unconditioned by history, and uncon-taminated by the subjectivity of its practitioners. However, a closer acquaintancewith the classics of this genre – Freud’s works, for example – indicates that thisis far from true. (3) Parascientific arguments are typically based on the science of


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the moment. However, any philosopher who builds on this foundation may wellbe building his house on sand, because the history of science teaches us that notheory ever loses its hypothetical character. Science progresses, forever criticiz-ing and completing and correcting itself, and today’s fresh fact often becomestomorrow’s stale fiction. (4) Parascientific discourse has the deck stacked againstreligion from the very beginning. How? Through epistemological legerdemain.Once we have granted that nothing counts as evidence except what is accessibleto scientific observation – in other words, once the voice of subjectivity has beensilenced and excluded – it is not terribly difficult to depict “religion” as a vestigeof a pre-scientific worldview, akin to magic and superstition.

Despite a certain amount of repetition (excusable, perhaps, in a lecture series)and occasional longueurs, Absence of Mind is an admirable work: lucid, forceful,and refreshingly impatient with fashionable cant. Like Robinson’s novel Gilead(2004) and her nonfiction work The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought(1998), this slender volume – a thoughtful critique of ‘thought that has not beenthought out’ – is simultaneously a celebration of the mysterious gift of mind anda demonstration of that gift’s nuanced powers.

DOUGLAS MCDERMID

ADORNO AND THEOLOGY by Christopher Craig Brittain, Philosophy andTheology Series, T. & T. Clark, London, 2010, pp. x + 238, £16.99 pbk

The forms of Marxism which so dominated sociology, politics, and philosophyin the United Kingdom during the late 1970s and mid-1980s were marked byscholastic skirmishes around theories of the state as derived from the importedtexts of Althusser and Poulantzas. In these forms, religion was subsumed underideology and stamped as irrelevant in a secular ethos that brooked no self-criticismon that matter. With the translations into English of the works of Adorno, Ben-jamin, and Horkheimer, who dominated the Frankfurt School, considerable sur-prise was generated in the mid-1980s at the theological baggage attached to thesethinkers, all the more so as it was decidedly Jewish in shape and origin. Benjaminoccasioned deeper bafflement with his interest in the writings of the kabbalah,his fascination with the painting of Angelus Novus by Paul Klee, his fixations onallegory and the baroque, and his frets over naming that had unexpected roots inGenesis.

Cast as idiosyncratic in the United Kingdom during the 1990s, this form ofMarxism was never really assimilated into sociology and theology but was de-posited in the left luggage section of the history of ideas and was marked as‘unclaimed’. But as Brittain indicates, with the ‘return’ of religion, again, theshrill cries of the ‘new’ atheists, and the angst of post-secularity, times are ripefor a re-appraisal of that unspent Marxist legacy, which he supplies well in relationto Adorno.

Usually treated as a self-declared atheist, with whom Christian theologians did(p. 189) or did not (p. 171) engage, some might be puzzled that Adorno exhibitedany interest in theology. Brittian gets around this difficulty by concentrating onwhat he terms an ‘inverse’ theology in his writings, which extend over the cultureindustry, politics, and music. Adorno’s route into theology is confused and dividedin origin. Rightly, Brittain stresses the influences of Jewish theology in shapinghis orientation, but also notes that Adorno’s doctoral thesis was on Kierkegaardand that his supervisor was Paul Tillich. From this study, Adorno emerges moreas an agnostic than as an atheist.

The study, divided into seven chapters is well sectioned and sub-headed andtraverses a lot of ground with considerable economy. There are three prime


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concerns in the study. First is an exploration of the implications of Adorno’sfamous comment that ‘to write poetry after Auschwiz is barbaric’ which Brittainnotes is ‘a damning condemnation of modernity’ (p. 5). Second is Adorno’sstress on Bilderverbot, the prohibition on the making of images, which links tohis notion of ‘inverse’ theology. Thirdly, the political and cultural implicationsof Adorno’s writings are explored to assess their contemporary impact. LikeBauman, Adorno is all the time seeking openings and resisting forms of closureeffected by method or ideology. This follows a contemporary path in sociologicaland philosophical thought where reference to the beyond is the price of thepreservation of indeterminacy, the antidote to the hegemony of reason.

‘Inverse’ theology arises deductively (virtually as an imperative necessity) fromthe culture of modernity and is a response to the suffering it generates. Giventhe deceiving basis of culture and its proneness to commodification, theologyemerges as a resource of resistance to these trends, unexpectedly occupyinga default position. Its ‘inverse’ form bears a sort of resemblance to negativetheology. Brittain treats this ‘inverse’ form as being ‘at the very core of themoral impulse that motivates his work’ (p. 170). He encapsulates Adorno’s plightwell when he observes that ‘an inverse theology has no revelatory scripture; itis merely aware of its need for one, and feels the pain of its absence’ (p. 101).In another passage, Brittain suggests that Adorno’s ‘inverse’ theology ‘involvesthe “spiritual experience” of thinking the “last extreme of horror” and beingprepared to confront it’ (p. 174). The difficulty, as Brittain admits is that the term‘theology’ is not really defined by Adorno (p. 11), who nevertheless seeks fromit a theodicy and the motifs of redemption (p. 96), expectations generated by hisruthless appraisals of the distortions of the social. Adorno needs a theology; hedoes not inhabit one.

A missing ingredient in the study and one almost impossible to supply isa notion of a ‘normal’ theology against which to compare Adorno’s ‘inverse’version. Eluding the study is whether Adorno’s theology is one at all. Somehow,he fumbles about with concerns about ‘reasoning about God, or at least theontological structures which give shape to existence’ (p. 11). The latter mightnot require belief in a God, but at least it permits recognition of the ingredientsto think about one, and perhaps this is the unexpected witness to wrest from thestudy. The tenor of the study seems to suggest social suffering finds secularitywanting in supplying healing, hence issues of theology return, so that in thissense post-secularity is the unfinished business of the maturation of modernity.

Chapter 2, on ‘actuality and potentiality: on Kant and metaphysics’ and con-taining a detour into Milbank, is not very profitable. Oddly, when Brittain triesto situate Adorno’s insights in contemporary debates on religion, the complexityof his ‘inverse’ theology that so attracts manages to unravel. Chapter 5 on ‘pol-itics, liberation and the Messianic’ is bitty. It involves a peculiar digression intoliberation theology and has not enough on the Messianic, especially in relation toAdorno. The effort in chapter 6 to link religion and the culture industry producesa mixed bag. The critiques of rational choice theory and religion are decidedlyunpersuasive, though better material appears on ‘spirituality’ and on religion as aform of compensation.

The best chapters emerge when Brittain is dealing with the perplexities sur-rounding Adorno’s own approach to theology. Chapter 3 on social science, nega-tive dialectics as ‘crypto-theology’, centring much on the debate about positivismbetween Adorno and Popper, is excellent, as is chapter 4 (which Brittain treats asthe heart of the study) on ‘inverse’ theology itself. In that chapter, the materialon Benjamin and Kafka is invaluable. The study finishes with chapter 7, aptlyentitled ‘hymns to the silence’. The definite article attached to silence is notable.The title marks a return to the issue of Auschwitz where Brittain tellingly notesthe way Adorno reversed his position, not only on poetry, but also on belief. The


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chapter contains a most interesting section on ‘reconciliation: from autonomy tolove’ (pp. 194–200), where Brittain suggests that the ‘scattered fragments in hiswritings . . . offer illuminating commentary on relationships of love which enhancethe power of his conception of an inverse theology’ (p. 195). Brittain gets mattersright when he suggests that Adorno’s ‘inverse theology acts as a “force-field”against a collapse into pessimism’ (p. 198). Instead of being treated as a site ofillusions, theology emerges as a source of sanity, one to be used to make senseof an insane world. To that degree, theology becomes a projection, not cast inillusions but by reference to the requisites for survival.

Overall, this study is a brave venture providing much to reflect on. On balance,it copes well with a thinker whose work is as fragmentary as the insights ityields. What emerges is an ‘inverse’ line of thought which ‘new atheists’ arelikely to find negative, but which those dwelling in the homelands of theologywill regard as oddly positive. Going against the vulgar assumption of the massmedia in the United Kingdom that intellectuals exit from theology, this studysuggests that they make reluctant entries into its ambit even if these do not yieldstated affiliations. As was the case with Benjamin, an oddly rich and unexpectedamount of theology can be found in Adorno if one looks as, in this study, Brittainprofitably did.

KIERAN FLANAGAN

NOMADIC NARRATIVES, VISUAL FORCES: GWEN JOHN’S LETTERS ANDPAINTINGS by Maria Tamboukou, Peter Lang, New York, 2010, pp. 209, £45

In 2008 the Barber Institute gallery at Birmingham University held an exhibitionof paintings of nuns by Gwen John (1876–1939). There were three versions ofher portrait of Mere Poussepin, the founder of an order of Dominican Sisters ofCharity with a convent in Meudon, the French town in which John had settledin 1910 after the breakdown of her affair with Rodin. The portraits were basedon an old prayer card the nuns gave to John, and this commission led to otherpaintings of nuns and worshippers in the local church. Evidently Gwen John oftensat sketching in the rear pews. But she was also in the church because of her owncommitment. Gwen John had been received into the Catholic Church in around1913.

Gwen John is now the subject of a number of books, but most of them havetroubles with her conversion to Catholicism. It is often explained away as arebound from Rodin, when it is not just passed over as an oddity, worth lessnarrative attention than her fondness for cats. This new volume on John, by thefeminist sociologist Maria Tamboukou, continues the trend of passing over theconversion in near silence. This is shown by Tamboukou’s reading of a poignantpassage in Gwen John’s notebooks. Writing after her conversion, Gwen Johncalled herself ‘God’s little artist: a seer of strange beauties, a teller of harmonies,a diligent worker’ (quoted on pp. 56–57). For Tamboukou this passage revealsnothing less than John placing herself in the tradition of the Christ-like artist,a tradition initiated in Durer’s self-portraits as Christ. Tamboukou is confidentof the link to this tradition: ‘it is this trail in the history of art that John wasfollowing in trying to make sense of herself as an artist and this was independentof the fact that she had become a Catholic’ (p. 57).

Tamboukou has to make this claim because her analysis is driven by Deluezeand Foucault, two writers who feature so often in cultural analysis nowadaysthat they have become an obstacle to independent thought. This book is ledby its theoretical attempt to establish Gwen John as a ‘nomadic subject’ whothrough her writings and art becomes ‘difficult and impossible to pin down as a


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coherent and fixed identity’ (p. 57). By this argument to call John a ‘Catholicartist’ – and therefore to take the notebook entry at face value and as a statementof an intention to put the work at the service of God – is indeed to fix identity andthus situate Gwen John within structures of meanings which are fundamentallypatriarchal.

Tamboukou offers one reading of Gwen John which is based on a deep andsensitive encounter with the archive of letters at the Rodin Museum in Parisand the National Library of Wales in Cardiff. The art is given less attention.Tamboukou is aware of the status of her narrative as one amongst many. Sheadmits to ‘different approaches in how John’s life has been represented and herwork has been appreciated’ (p. 2). The multiple approaches all move in the spacecreated by Gwen John’s personal style, which was reticent, small-scale, and quiet,although Tamboukou rightly draws attention to John’s participation in the life ofParis in the 1900s. Before the move to Meudon at least Gwen John was norecluse. By her own concession then – a concession which is inherent to thetheoretical and methodological principles she seeks to employ – Tamboukou’sbook is itself partial. Like all other books about Gwen John, Tamboukou’s isexploiting the enigma of John for its own theoretical-methodological purposes. Itis a shame that this happens. The theoretical baggage often gets in the way ofthe analysis which Tamboukou is more than capable of providing for herself. Itis this theoretical baggage which causes Tamboukou to read John’s identificationof herself as ‘God’s little artist’ with a theoretical insight it simply cannot carry.Taken in the round of everything else Gwen John painted and wrote it is hard tojustify any contention about ‘Christomorphic’ tendencies.

Gwen John is an enigmatic artist but certainly one of the two or three mostintriguing British painters of the twentieth century. Her life can be positioned inmany ways, so perhaps it is best to turn to the art rather than the artist if wewant to develop our appreciation of her status and significance. For Tamboukou,John might not be a ‘Catholic artist’, but when we confront the paintings ofnuns and of the nameless girl in the blue dress sitting in the wicker chair whomJohn painted around twenty times after her conversion, she certainly producedwonderful art possessed of a Catholic religiosity.

KEITH TESTER


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ADORNO AND THEOLOGY by Christopher Craig Brittain