DO WE NEED RELIGION? ON THE EXPERIENCE OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE by Hans Joas

DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2011.01435.x

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CHRISTIANITY IN WESTERN EUROPE c.1100–c.1500 edited by Miri Rubin andWalter Simons (The Cambridge History of Christianity Volume 4, CambridgeUniversity Press, 2009) Pp. xxi + 577, £110

After a brief explanatory introduction, this volume offers some thirty-one essayson the social and intellectual history of medieval Christianity which are groupedtogether under seven broad subject headings, and in some cases sorted into roughtime periods: ‘Institutions and change, 1100–1200’; ‘Forging a Christian world,1200–1300’; ‘The erection of boundaries’; ‘Shapes of a Christian world’; ‘Chris-tian life in movement’; ‘The challenges to a Christian society’; and, finally,‘Reform and renewal’.

Most essays are judicious summaries of major topics, while some also identifythe principal questions besetting scholars. Footnotes send the reader to detailedstudies. The more interesting pieces are mainly those that are more narrowlyfocussed and lead the reader into unfamiliar territory. Some experts in their fieldhave gamely covered large topics in too short a space. Social history receivesbetter treatment than intellectual history. Thus, the history of religious orders,especially that of their Observant reforms and their relationship to the Devotiomoderna, is especially well served, as is the place of preaching in its politicalcontext and in relationship to biblical exegesis.

There is a welcome interest in ‘semi-religious’ life, and there is also theattention we now expect for those whom medieval Christians treated in differentways as outsiders: heretics, Jews, and Muslims. On the other hand, this is not thebook to induct someone into medieval theology, and you will find little here tohelp in understanding the work of Bonaventure, Aquinas, or Occam. It is perhapstoo easy to fault such a volume for its omissions but there are some surprisinggaps in the institutional and cultural history: the Avignon papacy; papal schism;the history of conciliarism in relation to such matters; and the rise of ChristianHumanism. These are among the topics glanced at in the context of other subjectsbut which deserved greater space.

Occasionally, an English focus is detectable: Wyclif and Lollardy are the sub-ject of a separate study, whereas Hus appears only within other contexts. Moregenerally, and perhaps inescapably, we hear most about Italy; we hear least, andtoo little, about Ireland, Scandinavia, Poland, Central Europe, and the IberianPeninsula. More explicit reflection on what constituted Western European Chris-tianity would have been helpful in this regard.

Very rarely, the details themselves look wrong: in an otherwise admirableessay on ‘Sacramental life’, Miri Rubin translates Hugh of St Victor’s ‘sacra-mentum est corporale vel materiale elementum foris sensibiliter propositum exsimili repraesentans, et ex institutione significans, et ex sanctificatione continensaliquam invisibilem et spiritualem gratiam.’ This she renders as: ‘A sacramentis a physical or material element, which represents externally according to thesenses by similarity, and which signifies by the fact of its institution, and as tothe sacred, contains a certain invisible and spiritual grace’ (p. 222). Should wenot take ‘foris sensibiliter propositum’ with the noun rather than limit its scope tothe first present participle? And should ‘ex sanctificatione’ not refer to the divine

C© 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars C© 2011 The Dominican Council. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2011, 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA

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act of consecration? Nonetheless, this is a valuable reference work for studentsand scholars.

RICHARD FINN OP

PRAYING WITH CONFIDENCE: AQUINAS ON THE LORD’S PRAYER by PaulMurray OP (Continuum, London, 2010) Pp. xiii + 105, £10.99

In this book Paul Murray, a contemporary spiritual master, expounds the teachingof an earlier Dominican spiritual master, whose writings can be a bit dauntingfor the majority of Christians, let alone for the merely curious spiritual seeker.It is a vital part of the resurgence of interest in St Thomas that he should beappreciated as a preacher, and as a spiritual master, for these are hallmarks ofa Dominican saint. St Thomas was canonized because he contemplated Wisdomand handed on the fruit of his contemplation of sacra doctrina. It is this holyteaching that Murray shares with us again in this little volume. Just as St Thomasdrew on other commentators, notably Augustine and Origen to explain the Lord’sPrayer, Murray also draws on other Dominicans to illuminate his text. In thisway, it is the work of a community, a ‘holy preaching’, in the best Dominicantradition.

The author has done an excellent job of pulling together St Thomas’ writingson the Lord’s Prayer for they are found not in a single treatise but in sevendifferent texts. He helpfully explains the history and context of these texts in the‘Appendix’. In the main text, Murray follows St Thomas’ own practice and weare led to consider the Lord’s Prayer one brief phrase at a time. Readers who arenot accustomed to the scholastic method of analysis may be astonished by howmuch St Thomas derives from the first two words alone, but the result is notacademic nit-picking or dry distinctions but the illuminating insights of a saintwho has prayed over every precious word taught by the incarnate Word. So, weare led into a Thomistic lectio divina of the Lord’s Prayer in which spiritualityand theology cannot be separated.

St Thomas’s well-known Summa theologiæ is famously structured as a seriesof questions, objections, and responses, and any reader of it knows how veryrelevant are the questions he poses, and how apt the answers he gives. So tooin this consideration of the Lord’s Prayer, many of the objections to petitionaryprayer, and erroneous ideas about prayer and the spiritual life, are answered, andso we are taught to pray. Moreover, we are taught to live well, for St Thomasbrilliantly shows how the Lord’s Prayer begins with the goal of life, namely God,and then shows how we can attain that goal with hope and confidence by lovingourselves in God (see p. 37). Therefore, we are more fully human and more freethe more we love and desire God above all else.

However, in all this, and particularly in St Thomas’s treatment of the phrase,‘forgive us our trespasses’ (chapter 7), his humanity stands out in the depthof his understanding of human weakness and of our need of God’s grace andcompassion. Similarly, Murray highlights some of the difficulties of living theChristian life such as forgiving our enemies, coping with suffering, and distractionin prayer, and he shares St Thomas’s eminently practical and compassionateresponses to such struggles.

St Thomas says that prayer should “last long enough to arouse fervour ofinterior desire”. This book is just long enough to be read with ease, and to stirup our desire to pray with confidence and hope, but it also contains such richnessthat it will amply reward many meditative revisits.

LAWRENCE LEW OP

C© 2011 The AuthorNew Blackfriars C© 2011 The Dominican Council

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CALVIN AT THE CENTRE by Paul Helm (Oxford University Press, 2009) Pp.x +368, £68.00

There is an old bumper sticker that contains a light-hearted prayer for protection:“God, save me from your followers!” In a fourth and (confessedly) final book onCalvin, Paul Helm turns again to the great French reformer to save him from hisfollowers and from detractors of various sorts. According to Helm, Calvin at theCentre deepens and extends the “approach to Calvin’s thought” found in Helm’s2004 book, John Calvin’s Ideas. In both books, Helm offers closely argued read-ings of Calvin’s positions on a wide range of difficult issues. His method fordoing this is, in a sense, historical, as it relies on comparisons among Calvinand his forebears and successors. Yet Helm is cordially indifferent to questionsof actual historical influence flowing to or from Calvin. For example, Helm findsit useful to read Anselm and Descartes alongside Calvin, whether or not eitherfigure bears real genealogical connections to Calvin. Helm is content to use his-torical comparisons to set Calvin in relief against non-Calvinian positions and toexplore intellectual affinities that bring forward characteristic features of Helm’sgenuine Calvin. In this sense, he places Calvin at the “centre” between patristicand medieval theologians on the one hand and modern and early modern thinkerson the other. In particular, Helm toggles between the venerable trio of Augus-tine, Anselm, and Aquinas, who allow Helm to illuminate the traditional cast ofCalvin’s thought, and a wide variety of later Calvinists (with Kant and Descartesalso included), who permit him to show, by contrast, what Helm believes to bethe biblical, humane – and misunderstood – character of Calvin’s theology.

Helm’s apologetic focus does not prevent him from offering in this book aseries of fresh and remarkably creative essays. It rather provides a structurewithin which to portray the bold thrusts of Calvin’s thought while, at the sametime, attending to underappreciated moves that kept Calvin tethered to the Bible,the church, and the larger Western theological tradition. In ten very substantialchapters, Helm continues the exposition of Calvin begun in his earlier book.He begins with “The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves” in chapter one,navigating between Augustinian and Cartesian conceptions of self-knowledgeto argue for a distinctive Calvinian position based on the ineluctably moral,“immediately reciprocal”, quality of God- and self-knowledge. Chapters three(“Scripture, Reason, and Grace”), eight (“Calvin the Compatibilist”), and ten(“Pure Nature and Common Grace”) are also philosophically focused. Here Helmexplores reason, determinism, and human nature (respectively) by placing Calvinbetween earlier figures like Aquinas, the Stoics, and Augustine and later ones likePierre Bayle, John Gill, Jonathan Edwards, and Dutch Calvinists such as HermanBavinck. On the whole, Calvin’s philosophical ideas appear in these chapters tobe less extreme, and more positive in their assessment of human capacities, thanfamiliar characterizations of Calvin suggest. Edwards, Bavinck, Bayle, and others,then, are foils to Calvin’s bold but sensitive viae mediae.

Chapters four (“The Visibility of God”), five (“Providence and Predestination”),six (“The Atonement”), seven (“Duplex Gratia”), and nine (“Intermediate States”)treat theological topics. Anselm features prominently in the chapter on atonement.Aquinas lurks in the background in several discussions, but Augustine is, forgood reason, the most important pre-Calvinian source in these chapters. Helmranges widely to find modern and early modern interlocutors for Calvin. Theseinclude Peter Vermigli on soul sleep and the Eucharist, Turretin on justificationand sanctification, the Puritans on the atonement and predestination, and KarlBarth on the hiddenness of God. Because of his firm and admirable control ofReformed theology, Helm succeeds in bringing an eclectic group of figures tobear on illuminating presentations of Calvin’s theological ideas. Helm locatesCalvin in the sensible middle ground of long-standing controversial discussions,


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conceding enough to retain the sharpness of Calvin’s ideas (for example on divineunknowability) while separating them carefully from later misconstruals (positinga Calvinian basis for modern agnosticism, for example).

Helm also devotes a chapter to natural philosophy (chapter two: “Descartesand Reformed Theology”). His somewhat tentative argument is that Cartesianismmight have “provided the philosophical underpinning for the Reformed theolog-ical curriculum” (p. 40) in the era of Reformed Orthodoxy even though it didnot. As Helm notes, Cartesianism briefly made inroads among Dutch Reformedtheologians and Genevan scholars in the seventeenth century. In the end, though,the “Reformed Aristotelianism” of theologians like Gisbert Voetius carried theday. Helm’s interest in this material, however, is not simply historiographic. Thepoint is to dissociate Calvin from the (to Helm’s mind) rigid and retrogradescholasticism of his followers by suggesting that “Calvin’s stance is sufficientlyelastic as regards philosophy to permit an eclectic approach” (p. 63). In thisway Helm turns an unpromising counter-factual (could Reformed orthodoxy haveaccommodated Cartesianism?) into an oblique argument for a kind of Calvinianscientific progressivism.

Drawing on an impressive range of canonical and lesser-known figures and alsoon a deep knowledge of Calvin’s writings, Helm offers a moderate portrait ofCalvin. Calvin comes into focus as a philosophically astute reformer who neverbecame a philosopher; a forceful, clear-minded biblical interpreter who neverbecame a theologian; a catholic with Thomistic affinities who opposed Rome; achampion of biblical faith but not a scholastic; a modern but not a modernist.This portrait depends on what Helm calls a “cumulative case” (p. 3) for a well-centred Calvin. Interested readers will find a great deal to learn and like in theagile but substantial essays accumulated in this volume. They will also get helpin deciding whether a renovated Calvin may yet “speak to us afresh” (p. 3) orwhether Calvin’s theological legacy is – as essay after essay suggests – centralin another way: as symptomatic of the confusions that destabilized the Westernchurch at the time of the Reformation, and which persist in many forms today.

MICHAEL C. LEGASPI

THE POSSIBILITY OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: MAURICE BLONDEL ATTHE INTERSECTION OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY by Adam C. English(Routledge, London and New York, 2007) Pp. x + 144, £80 / $145 hbk

Few detailed studies exist in English of Catholic philosopher MauriceBlondel. He is best known for his highly controversial 1893 L’action, in whichhe demonstrated the incoherence of any analysis of human action that soughtto deny its ultimate grounding in absolute, divine action. In this lucid, concise,well-researched, and carefully-argued study, Adam English extends our horizonsforwards through Blondel’s later and less well-known oeuvre, in particular hislater trilogy on thought, being, and action.

For much of his life, Blondel was swimming against two tides: the causticsecularism of the Third Republic philosophes, who regarded philosophy as aself-validating, nihilistic discourse, and the neo-Thomism of his own Church,which saw philosophy’s function as being to interpret data already provided byrevelation. Neither could countenance the possibility that philosophy might leadto knowledge of God. On the contrary, protested Blondel, if the philosophercommences not with ideas but with action, the reverse is proven: that the soulharbours within itself a will to be, which necessarily closes the gap between thewill that wills objects in the abstract (the volonte voulante) and the will thatchooses the concrete purposes actually willed in reality (the volonte voulue), and


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as such originates in divine action. This can even be seen as a new ontologicalproof for God’s existence from action. Whether Christian philosophy was possible,and if so what form it took, was debated extensively in the period 1928 to 1936,and this debate is helpfully reviewed on pp. 26–30. But as English shows, Blondelcame to see that this focus alone assumed too readily that humans will actionand the unification of their personhood in God. Hence the importance of his laterworks, in which he shifts from descriptive phenomenology into ontology anddeontology.

In La pensee, Blondel delineates the intentional, purposeful structure thatthought identifies in the universe. Like the will, thought contains two poten-tially divergent aspects: the noetic (approximating to the notional) and the pneu-matic (approximating to the real). Both are incorporated into his transnaturalism,which he saw as avoiding the dangers of polarization continually inherent in thesupernatural-natural view of reality. Rather, all created being tends centripetallytowards God’s own being in Christ, in whom all things hold together. In order notto be seen itself as a new variety of pantheism, this must be regarded in light ofBlondel’s later methodological turn from immanence to implication. The formerhad been understood as giving too much ground to uninterrogated experience,whereas a method of implication is rooted in the deeper soil of interpretationand intelligibility. Moreover, English shows that Blondel, unlike de Lubac, byno means denied the existence of pure nature. For Blondel, ‘to see our “pure”nature is to see ourselves as we really are: selfish and weak. It is to make a pureevaluation without blinders. [He] uses pure nature to counter any temptation of anautonomous and natural philosophy or a Pelagian soteriology.’ (p. 45) This neg-ative view of pure nature as inachievement provides an important counterweightto de Lubac’s negative construal of the concept. Notwithstanding Blondel’s viewof humanity as adhering or attracted to the divine, it demonstrates his strongwish to continue to conceive the real, material context of human action, and aview of the incorporation of the believer into the divine life as enacted, albeitimperfectly, in present life rather than awaited passively in future resurrectedlife.

The second and third portions of the trilogy can, although important, be delin-eated more briefly. In L’Etre et les etres, Blondel makes clear the centrality in hisontology of mystery. For Blondel, mystery was entirely concrete: the activity ofthe absolute within the relative itself. As such, mystery could be discovered andentered into. By means of this concept, he distanced himself from the widespreadintuitionism that stemmed from Rosmini and was predicated on a univocal viewof being. For the same reason, he adopted an analogia creationis in preferenceto an analogia entis, situating his entire ontology within divine creative action.Blondel’s revised L’action, forming the final instalment of his trilogy, enableshim to present action as personal, social, and divine power. Through the conceptof ‘agnition’, he again places centre stage the willing actor, in whose personare synthesized poesis, practice, and contemplation. English states: ‘God is mostproperly depicted as actus purus, the wellspring of all force and the efficientcause (causa efficiens) of everything that moves and has being.’ God is there-fore not so much distant cause but mediator, in Laberthonniere’s words the ‘verymovement of life as principle and end’ (pp. 95–6). Christ’s primary office isto act as this supreme mediator. Although such ‘panchristism’ could be seen tosmack of Scotism, we might push further the mitigating insight offered that the(Teilhardian) view of Christ as Alpha and Omega posits Christ giving to thecreated order both its end and its beginning, rather than being reducible tothe created order, in a fashion wholly compatible with a high doctrine of God asactus purus.

DAVID GRUMETT


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INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS: ESSAYS IN APPLYING LONERGAN’S THOUGHT byAndrew Beards (Continuum, London and New York, 2010) Pp. x + 272, £65.00

Andrew Beards is an internationally renowned scholar who specialises in thephilosophy and theology of Bernard Lonergan. Among his various writings areObjectivity and Human Understanding (1997), Method in Metaphysics: Lonerganand the Future of Analytical Philosophy (2008) and Philosophy: The Quest forTruth and Meaning (2010). The present book is a collection of nine essayspublished previously but which he hopes hereby will reach a wider audience.Each essay in its own way makes a contribution to the general conversation inphilosophy and to Lonergan studies in particular. Beards caps this fascinatinganthology with a brief Epilogue in which he offers some further reflections tobring things up to date. At the end of the book, there is an extensive and usefulindex of authors and themes.

The essays are grouped around five themes: knowing and consciousness, thephilosophy of language, post-Continental philosophy, philosophical ethics, andphilosophical theology. Although the subject matter is demanding, Beards’s lucidprose and occasional wit, together with his confident mastery of the subject,helps the reader to glide through. Hugo Meynell, who directed his doctoral thesisand to whom this collection is dedicated, rightly observes that Beards’s eruditionis ‘formidable’ yet his style ‘serene, limpid and unpretentious . . . a model forphilosophical exposition’.

Many scholars bemoan the lack of engagement between Lonergan’s thoughtand that of other philosophers and theologians. In the present collection, Beardsattempts to help remedy this; his provocatively pro-Lonergan stance – nevernaively espoused but always carefully established – should lure many scholarsfrom other traditions into the debate. Indeed, his fundamental thesis is that todeny or negate the basic position outlined is to eschew or to contradict the actualoperational structure of human knowing, willing, and loving.

In the earlier essays such as ‘Self-Refutation and Self-Knowledge,’ ‘John Searleand Human Consciousness,’ ‘Ubersicht as Oversight: Problems in Wittgenstein’slater Philosophy,’ and ‘Anti-Realism and Critical Realism: Dummett and Loner-gan’, Beards wades into analytical philosophy in order to engage with Mackie,Hintikka, Wittgenstein, Searle, MacIntyre, Dummett, Quine, and Putnam. He de-ploys to brilliant effect Lonergan’s account in Insight of the self-appropriatedstructure of the subject, using it as a critical tool, a kind of X-ray machine, toexpose both the valid positions as well as the counter-positions present in theother philosophies.

At the same time, he makes applications of Lonergan’s thought that advanceLonergan scholarship. For instance, in the essay ‘MacIntyre, Critical Realism andAnimal Consciousness,’ he brings together disparate remarks in the Lonergancorpus in order to contrast animal and human ‘knowing’. Using Insight – as wellas an appeal to his own experiences with the family dog, Bella – Beards ablydismisses the claim made by some that what differentiates humans from animalsis language, rather than such intentional operations as raising questions, havinginsights, and making judgements.

Beards is well versed not only in Anglo-American philosophy but also in recentcontinental thought. In ‘Badiou’s Metaphysical Basis for Ethics,’ he discusses thecurrent revival of metaphysics in the continental tradition in the light of an exten-sive, albeit critical, exploration of Badiou’s anthropology. In ‘Moral Conversionand Problems in Proportionalism,’ he argues convincingly from a critical-realistviewpoint how utilitarian, consequentialist, and proportionalist thinking in ethicsis the result of flawed epistemologies such as idealism and relativism. In thisessay, he also ventilates the fascinating issue of Lonergan’s reaction to HumanaeVitae and his stance on contraception.


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The final two essays constitute something of a tour de force. In ‘Christianity,Interculturality and Salvation: Some Perspectives from Lonergan,’ Beards beginswith an analysis of Lonergan’s much vaunted assertion of the shift in Westernculture from classicism to historical mindedness. Lonergan, he avers, was notoffering an explanatory account: he was painting with broad brush-strokes, some-thing many commentators fail to observe. This is why Lonergan does not reallydevelop what Ratzinger has underlined: that the Church herself is a cultural sub-ject such that the task of inculturation is always one of ‘inter-culturation,’ Atthe same time, Beards ingeniously shows how Lonergan’s richly nuanced accountof conversion as intellectual, moral, and religious, would confirm Ratzinger’smistrust of Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christian’ thesis. Using the example of HelenKeller, referred to by Lonergan in Method, Beards maintains that conversion toChrist is not merely a cognitive shift (from implicit or unthematic knowledge toexplicit and thematic) but something far more life changing, nay, dramatic.

Many Rahnerian scholars presently contest the interrelationship of Rahner’sphilosophy and theology, arguing that his theology can be ‘free-wheeling,’ withouthis philosophy. Beards is thus not alone in finding aspects of Rahner’s philosophyproblematic, but he argues that problems with Rahner’s philosophy do indeed leadto problems with his theology. In this respect, the final essay in the collection,‘Rahner’s Philosophy: A Lonerganian Critique’, is important. In his analysis ofSpirit in the World and Foundations of Christian Faith, Beards uses Lonergan’simpressive account of cognitional and volitional operations to mount a devastatingcritique that leaves Rahner’s philosophy vanquished, both by its oversight ofinsight – its inattention to basic human psychology – and by its uncritical andselective assumption of elements of neo-Scholastic philosophy. It is preciselyhere that Lonergan’s method becomes a critical tool once again as Beards showshow for Rahner ‘being conscious’ and ‘knowing’ – so clearly delineated anddifferentiated in Lonergan – are often equated, appearing on occasion to be usedinterchangeably. One consequence of this is to undermine his celebrated notionof the Vorgriff , the pre-apprehension of Being, or implicit knowledge of God. Ina sparkling account appealing to Chapter Sixteen of Insight, Beards shows howthis oversight impacts upon Rahner’s anthropology, and in particular, his accountof the survival after death of the human spirit or soul.

This book will be controversial. Yet despite its penetrating analysis, Beardsalways shows a deep respect for his interlocutors. It is this that makes this wide-ranging collection applying Lonergan’s thought to various philosophies well worththe effort.

PHILIP EGAN

HANNAH’S CHILD: A THEOLOGIAN’S MEMOIR by Stanley Hauerwas (WilliamB. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids MI and SCM CanterburyPress, Norwich, 2010) Pp. xii + 288, $24.99 / £19.99

No contemporary theologian is perhaps more uncomfortable with fame thanStanley Hauerwas. Although gaining in influence for a number of decades, onepublication, Time Magazine, would go so far in 2001 as to name him America’smost influential theologian. Although Hauerwas likely felt more comfortable withthe invitation to offer the 2000–01 Gifford Lectures, he still found himself con-fronted by reservations over giving a set of lectures intended by their benefactorto “‘promote and diffuse Natural Theology’” (p. 262).

Some suggest that Hauerwas’ discomfort with such forms of fame is drivenby his propensity to play the role of the contrarian. For example, in To Changethe World (2009), James Davison Hunter characterized Hauerwas as “relentlessly


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negative” (p. 164). One must admit that at times this son of a Texas bricklayeralmost seems to revel in his ability to foster discomfort beneath the skin ofindividuals with well-defined perceptions of what is good, decent, and even holy.However, perhaps Hauerwas’ memoir, Hannah’s Child, will bring those critics astep closer to realizing that an unrelenting commitment to the Church and thosewho love her is what truly defines Hauerwas’ vocation as a theologian.

While Hauerwas’ bricklaying father proved to have an important influence onhis life, a dimension of his mother’s role in his life is the one memorializedin the title of this work. Hauerwas’ parents married late and endured a numberof challenges and even tragedies in relation to their efforts to have children.Having read Hannah’s prayer in the Old Testament, Hauerwas’ mother offereda similar petition. Hauerwas thus opens his memoir by acknowledging that “Ivividly remember my mother telling me that I was destined to be one of God’sdedicated” (p. 3). Like Samuel, Hauerwas has “played a Samuel-like role andchallenged the religious establishment of the day” (p. 4). Although Hauerwasinitially believed he was called to be a minister, he found that his vocation wasto serve as a theologian in the academy. In the end, he claimed that this callingis one defined by efforts to “make the connections necessary to articulate clearlywhat it means to say that what we believe is true” (p. 157). Like Samuel, at timesthese connections have proven unsettling to the religious establishment.

The story of Hauerwas’ development as a theologian proves to be largelychronological in nature. He begins with the story of how his mother understoodhis calling in life and concludes by discussing his struggles to maintain thiscalling under the weight of fame. Chapters are divided roughly by the time hespent as a student at Southwestern University and Yale University, and then as afaculty member at Augustana College, the University of Notre Dame, and DukeUniversity. Each one of these institutions exercised a formative impact upon hislife. For example, Hauerwas acknowledges “I am not sure if I became a Christianat Yale, but I certainly began to be a theologian because of what I learned there”(p. 49). At Notre Dame, Hauerwas contends, “I began the slow, agonizing, andhappy process that has made me a Christian” (p. 95). As a result, these chaptersalso introduce us to the influence that scholars such as John Howard Yoder andAlasdair MacIntyre had on Hauerwas and his work.

While this memoir is largely chronological in terms of its organization, perhapsthe larger theme that holds it all together is Hauerwas’ appreciation for the friendswho have left their imprint on his life. These people, while often encountered inthe academy, largely learned what it means to be a friend in the Church. Suchan influence is imprinted in equal measure on Hauerwas’ own life. For example,while in South Bend, Indiana, Hauerwas acknowledges he and his son, Adam,were Christians “because of the people at Sacred Heart [the basilica on campusat Notre Dame] and Broadway [United Methodist Church] who welcomed us intotheir lives and made us participants in the drama of our salvation” (p. 144). Asa result, Hauerwas even turned to his fellow congregants at Broadway for advicewhen he was struggling with whether to leave Notre Dame for Duke. Woven intothese pages are the lessons Hauerwas has learned from people like Adam, hiswife Paula Gilbert, friends from South Bend such as David Burrell, and friendsfrom Durham, North Carolina such as Stuart Henry.

Despite the immeasurable joy that the gift of Christian friendship has offeredHauerwas over the course of his life, his memoir also accounts a measure ofgreat pain emanating from his marriage to Anne Harley. Married just prior to hisenrolment at Yale University, Hauerwas and Harley were married throughout thecourse of time he spent as a student and then through his years at Augustana andNotre Dame. Anne, afflicted with mental illness, left Hauerwas shortly after theymoved to Durham, ending twenty-four years of marriage. The details in betweenare painful to read and must have been even more painful to write. At the end


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of his marriage to Harley, Hauerwas writes, “I was exhausted. Adam was gone[a student at Haverford College]. When Anne declared that she intended to leaveme, she did not seem to be crazy. I finally told her to do what she had to do”(p. 200). Hauerwas is thus to be commended for reminding all of us that theformative details in our lives are both joyful and painful in nature. Together, suchdetails converge to form our calling in life.

In addition to the influential roles that both friendship and pain played inHauerwas’ life, we are also confronted with the reality that the fame that hasfound Hauerwas (regardless of what he might think of it) has come in part throughhard work. This commitment to hard work for Hauerwas is one that reaches all theway back to his father. Laying brick is hard work. However, we must rememberthat Hauerwas’ father practiced his craft under the punishing sun in Dallas, Texas.Hauerwas acknowledges, “I loved working for my father. I loved the bond hardwork established between workers” (p. 29). Hauerwas writes theology much likehe learned to lay brick. He arrives at the office early and takes just as much joyin putting in a full day of effort as he does in the well-crafted fruits of his labor.For him, the product and the process are much more closely linked than mostindividuals think. This well-habituated inclination is perhaps what kept Hauerwasgoing through the trying moments that came with the conclusion of his marriageto Anne Harley. Discussing these details, Hauerwas writes: “The marriage wasfinally over. I was not sure what that meant, but I would do what I had alwaysdone. I would put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I got up the nextmorning and did what I always did. I went to work” (p. 200).

Despite the self-awareness Hauerwas offers in this immeasurably valuablememoir, moments do surface where I wonder if a small form of charity es-capes him. Those moments, although few and far between, seem to surface inrelation to administrators with whom Hauerwas worked. For example, Hauerwasclaimed Dennis Campbell, the Dean of Duke University Divinity School duringmuch of Hauerwas’ tenure, “was ambitious, but it was not clear that his talentbefitted his ambition. He wanted to be dean, but it did not seem he wanted to bedean for any reason but to be dean” (p. 174). Like anyone who serves in sucha role, Campbell was likely to make decisions that reflected compromise ratherthan conviction. Some administrative decisions are wrong. However, others proveto be the best possible outcomes forged in conflicted sets of circumstances. Onecan only speculate how Hauerwas would respond in such circumstances, giventhat some necessary decisions simply cannot reflect the full measure of our ideals.

In the end Hannah’s Child is necessary reading for anyone concerned with theChurch, the academy, and the relationship they share in the work of theology.We would all do well to follow in Hauerwas’ footsteps by showing “how we livetogether in marriage, how and why we have children, how we learn to be friends,and how we care for the mentally disabled are the ways a people must live if weare to be an alternative to war” (p. 274). Although some may persist in their viewthat such convictions are negative, Hannah’s Child reminds us all that our firstcalling is to be the Church regardless of what the world may think. This memoiris an admirable window into the life of a theologian who will leave his imprintfor generations to come.

TODD C. REAM

THE SHAPE OF PARTICIPATION: A THEOLOGY OF CHURCH PRACTICES byL. Roger Owens (Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2010) Pp. x + 197, £14.21

Roger Owens’ efforts to describe what constitutes the church as God’s life inthe world is an ambitious project. His conviction that ‘the church’s participation


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in God is none other than Christ’s practicing himself as the embodied practicesof the church’ (p. 183) requires a lot of unpacking: space is at a premiumin this slim volume. He clarifies and develops this point by sticking closelyto the questions that have led this discussion to arise: what makes the churchdifferent from any other voluntary association? How do the practices of thechurch relate to what God is doing in the world? The challenge that Owenshas set himself is to answer these questions in ways that avoid the reductionismhe sees in many contemporary ecclesiologies, which he believes to be commonlyessentialist and thus taking insufficient account of our embodied, creaturely nature.In particular, he aims to demonstrate how Christ is meaningfully in this materialworld.

The modern ecclesiologies under inspection take one of two forms: overlyabstract formal doctrines, that pay little attention to living communities and riskportraying the church as a rather static presence of God, or overly interiorizedpietisms that sequester the centre of faith into a private personal realm where theimportance of public communal action and embodied living is unclear at best.Neither of these takes creatureliness seriously enough for Owens. He is concernedto readdress this deficiency by calling the emphasis back to the Chalcedonianorthodoxy that is the church’s touchstone for understanding human and divineinter-relation. This being the case, the church must be both human and divinein a way analogous to, though not identical with, Christ’s hypostatic union: itmust acknowledge its proper humanity as it acknowledges the humanity of Christand it must acknowledge its divine nature as it acknowledges the divinity ofChrist.

Owens’ chief argument against essentialist ecclesiologies is that they cannotgive an account of the material and shape of the church. Bodies have particularand visible shapes and the body of Christ must therefore have a particular shape inthis world. For Owens church practices, specifically the Eucharist and preaching,are God sharing his life, communicating with humanity. These practices constitutethe church because God communicates through them in a form humanity canunderstand. In his discussion of the Eucharist, Owens employs McCabe’s accountof the sacrament as a new language that brings an end to exclusion. Sharing inthe body and blood gives new tools of communication. These tools are the divinelife given in a form humans can accept. Because God is not limited like us, thisnew divine language opens up space for all and overcomes human predispositionsfor exclusivity. Christ’s body is present and unites all to him.

In preaching, what is proclaimed is not a transmitting of something that isabsent. Rather it is the same Word made flesh present in words heard and enacted.Owens argues for preaching as a central church practice on the grounds that itis not an independent trade of the pastor but an activity of the whole church.The preaching of the pastor is not the beginning of proclamation because thechurch, which already exists, calls for this preaching. All members preach, butthe pastor’s preaching is a specialised division of this. That Owens felt the needto argue for preaching as legitimately a central practice demonstrates sensitivityto the status it holds in various traditions. Given Owens’ commitment to arguingfor the material, visible, and concrete nature of the church it would have beenbeneficial to explore some specific examples of where these material, visible,and concrete communities disagree in practice. The discussions of Eucharist andpreaching would have been fertile soil for this.

That being said, the breadth of engagement with a diverse range of interlocutorsis a striking feature of this book. There are so many that the book cannot dojustice to them all whilst maintaining the shape of its argument. In particularSchleiermacher suffers a somewhat summary treatment, which occludes many ofthe interesting questions that led him to make the moves he did. More recentinterlocutors, Gustafson and Milbank particularly, receive fairer treatment. The


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attention paid to ancient writers however is very refreshing, particularly in abook on ecclesiology, which represents a challenge to the myopia of modernecclesiologies.

Furthermore the book clings tenaciously to its roots in living worshiping con-gregation and community. Evidence from Owens’ own church, where he is co-pastor, and from the specific history of his Methodist tradition, informs andelucidates what participation in the life of God looks like with regard to theconcrete practices of the church. This rooting in a real community will make thisbook revitalising for ministers and priests. Those with an interest in ecumenismwill find less here than may be expected from a book on ecclesiology but mayfind other sources within that will broaden their horizons.

On the whole this is a constructive, instructive and well-developed piece oftheology. The thought worlds that have dominated this area of theology havebeen successfully brought into question and the subject has been reconnectedwith roots in the ancient church and Chalcedonian thinking that is the benchmarkof all Christian speech and practice. There is more work to do in this area, morethan this text could attempt, particularly attention to the relationship betweenthe church’s participation in God and the rest of creation, but the debate hasmoved on considerably from where it was. Other theologians would do well toinvestigate the fields of enquiry opened up by this book because they impact onall areas of theology, given that it is concerned fundamentally with how God isin the world.

A.D.R. HAYES

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF FAITH edited by John Sullivan (MatthewJames Publishing, 2010) £14.95

“To live is to change,” writes John Henry Newman, “and to be perfect is tohave changed often.” This may appear to be a challenging declaration but, inproposing that faith is to be regarded as a dynamic, evolving, and vigorousvirtue that is open to change, it would be consistent with the sentiments ofthis book. In subscribing to the view that faith is a journey, the reader will, Ithink, come to appreciate how, as one seeks a greater understanding of God,faith will thrive, not on inflexible adherence to rules, but on one’s openness tochange.

This is a welcome book that should appeal to a wide readership. It includesa variety of perspectives from both Roman Catholic and Church of Englandcontributors. Thus, whilst the title of the book refers to ‘faith’, its primary interestis in the Christian faith. It brings together, in both an eclectic and an ecumenicalway, a broad collection of views that will be of interest to families, parishesand schools. Ostensibly, its scope would appear to be too diverse to satisfythe professional scholar, yet, paradoxically, in its range, it offers a stimulatingexegesis of the place and nature of faith development.

Implicit in such a wide-ranging book, are contradictions and conflicts, but theseserve to provide a comprehensive and inclusive picture of the language of faith ina variety of contexts. Within the Catholic tradition, of course, there are inevitabletensions at the interface between the teaching church – as represented by theoffice of the magisterium – and the learning church. Significantly, learning is akey recurring theme that runs through the book.

Throughout, Sullivan, in conjunction with the other contributors, provides adiscriminating exploration of concepts such as evangelisation, catechesis, andreligious education. With a refined discernment, he elegantly elaborates upontheir similarities and differences. He skilfully and convincingly argues that, whilst


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there may be tensions between education and evangelisation, there is an overlapwhere the two are in harmony. He proposes that, whilst inherently there is acomplex and multi-faceted relationship between them, there is also a great dealmore coherence and compatibility than is often assumed.

Identifying different languages of faith, Sullivan distinguishes between sub-jective and objective dimensions. Thus, there is also a place here for personalreflection in both family and pastoral contexts, illustrating the importance of com-munication in the development of faith in the experiences of people in everydaylife.

In a globalised, post-modern world, characterised by moral relativism, secu-larism, consumerism. and materialism, these are challenging times for those offaith. In the light of rapid social and technological change, there is dissatisfactionand impatience with the educational status quo. It is pertinent, therefore, that thisbook should address the need for a radical review of faith learning. One implica-tion of these developments is the compelling assertion that education should beregarded as a lifelong activity. Within this context, it seems to me, schools, col-leges, and universities are challenged to adapt to the notion of life-long learning,in which, in the language of the Second Vatican Council, “we journey toward theconsummation of human history” (Gaudium et Spes 45).

The range and quality of the discourse is impressive. Daniel O’Leary’s charac-teristic enthusiasm, for example, is inspirational. His homely language is a finecounterbalance to the more erudite musings of other contributors. His approachis intuitive rather than cerebral: his is a language of celebration. For O’Leary,God is a God of love and compassion. One should not neglect to mention alsoPeter Shepherd’s timely and welcome chapter, which explores the complexitiesof communicating faith not only in Church of England schools but also in otherChristian (including Catholic) schools.

This book is recommended for all those who are engaged in learning andteaching faith. The term ‘discipleship’ may be construed in a variety of waysbut, essentially, a disciple is a learner, a pupil of a teacher, one who submits himor herself to a discipline of learning. We are reminded, too, that as disciples ofChrist we have a duty to give witness.

The book is concerned with the pedagogy of faith, which is informed bythe communication of God’s revelation. Thus, the Christian disciple sets out to‘follow Christ and learns more and more within the Church to think like Him,to judge like Him, to act in conformity with His commandments, and to hope asHe invites us to’ (Catechesi Tradendae 20).

Although at times Sullivan can be over-wordy, protracted, and prolix, there ismuch in this book to be commended. For the pedant, however, it would havebeen appreciated if the book had been subject to a more rigorous proof-readingso that words and phrases such as ‘practicing’ (p. 20), ‘comprised of’ (p. 21),‘an inbuilt crap detector’ (p. 30), ‘fulfill’ (p. 151), ‘it’s also and amphetamine’(p. 213) and ‘some many month after it actually happened’ (p. 267) could havebeen revised.

Overall, though, these are minor blemishes in a very enjoyable book. It makesa clear statement that there is no such thing as a value-free and neutral per-spective. It demonstrates that communicating faith is a complex process that issubject to development and formation. The conversation is conducted with poiseand balance. Predictably, Sullivan is thoughtful, reflective, and studious. Affirm-ing a faith perspective in the face of contemporary challenges, he displays hisscholarship with a modest humility and the book is informed and “underpinnedby prayer and attentiveness to God’s holy spirit” (p. 180).

DAVID FINCHAM


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DO WE NEED RELIGION? ON THE EXPERIENCE OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE by Hans Joas (Paradigm, Boulder, 2008) Pp. x +152, £45.00 hbk / £22.99 pbk

In contemporary Britain and in the mass media in particular, religion has takena battering. Of late, it has come to be treated as disreputable and divisive. Thecelebration in 2009 of the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversaryof the publication of On the Origin of Species were occasions employed tocelebrate the hegemony of science over religion. Oddly, despite a rapidly growinginterest in religion in sociology and philosophy, there has been a curious silencewithin these disciplines over the imperialising and polemical ventures from somezealots within the natural sciences.

One reason might be a sense of deja vu in sociological circles. Methodologicaldisputes occurred in the late nineteenth century over the autonomy of the culturalsciences from the explanatory claims of the natural sciences. Culture was tobe characterised in terms of understanding and empathy, and religion was abeneficiary of these stipulations. The rise of post-modernity also marked a longretreat from deference to the absolute claims of reason that have been invoked todiscredit religion. Set in the context of these culture wars, where religion is verymuch a site of battle, this collection of essays is to be warmly welcomed.

As the Max Weber professor at the University of Erfurt, Germany and alsoholding a chair in sociology at the University of Chicago and there, a member ofthe influential Committee on Social Thought, Joas, a Catholic, is well qualifiedto offer an unexpected defence of the need for religion. His range of publicationsis formidable, covering European values, war, social actions and human nature,and the American sociologist, G. H. Mead. Strangely little on German sociologyand religion comes over the English Channel, hence this collection is especiallywelcome. Its eleven essays were written between 1998 and 2003 and they stillhave a topicality. In his preface, Joas acknowledges the stimulus provided byCardinal Lehmann in publishing the collection. He has been well served by histranslator, Alex Skinner.

The collection is in three parts: on religious experience; on ‘between theologyand social science’; and on human dignity. The first essay, which provides the titleto the collection, was the ‘main lecture’ for a combined congress of Catholics andProtestants held in Berlin in 2003 with 100,0000 taking part. This first essay startsbrilliantly with reference to a poem by Bertolt Brecht, written in 1943. Entitled‘Embarrassing Incident’, it refers to the deep discomfort felt in Hollywood, whencelebrations for Brecht’s friend and colleague Alfred Doblin were marred by hisannouncement to those gathered that he, a well known Jewish intellectual, hadbecome a Catholic (pp. 3–5). The issue of whether Brecht or Doblin was weakover this conversion is well put. All the time, Joas complicates assumptions thatmodernity and secularisation combine to strangulate religion. Somehow, renderingreligion extinct never quite succeeds, for the issue of self-transcendence remains,of openings to God, but also to what is to be designated as a sacred, or as areligion, for as Joas notes, all the time the self faces its finitude but also theimpulse to go beyond this limitation. He makes a surprisingly good defence ofthe need for faith (pp. 15–18).

In his second essay on ‘religion in the age of contingency’, where Bergermakes frequent appearances, Joas makes a striking point that faith has to emergefrom ‘the self-intimidation anchored in secularization theory’ (p. 33). This is avery pertinent point to make in the context of the United Kingdom, where faithis presented as a discredit, not a credit. The third essay in this first section dwellson Castoriadis.

The second part of the collection is by far the most interesting and substantial,containing essays on key texts in the sociology of religion, and on Milbank,


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Taylor, Ricoeur, and Habermas. Those seeking a concise account of the sociologyof religion need look no further than chapter 4. As he rightly suggests in dealingwith religion, sociology runs along a narrow ridge between proclamations ofdisinterest in issues of belief and what he terms ‘cryptotheology’ (p. 62). Chapter5 provides a rare sociological response to Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory.At a time of multi-disciplinary dialogue, Milbank’s study achieved widespreadprestige in theology; in sociological circles it was completely ignored, beingtreated as an opaque, idiosyncratic caricature of the discipline. The futility ofthat study illustrates the perils of mere cleverness. Listing six steps of objections,Joas concludes ‘that Milbank, by offering such a distorted picture, cuts himselfoff, not merely from the rich tradition of sociological theory but also from theempirical research based on it’ (p. 76). By contrast, the sixth essay, on Taylor,provides a valuable contextualisation of his Catholicism. It is a gentle, searchingpiece.

Chapters 7–8 illustrate the importance of religion in the humanities. Aptlytitled, ‘God in France: Paul Ricoeur as theoretical mediator’, Joas reflects onthis deeply Christian philosopher who so helped to advance understandings ofthe application of hermeneutics to text. The embarrassment at the prospect of aChristian being elected to the College de France (echoing the start of chapter 1)is well brought out. Ricouer’s contribution to phenomenology and faith is wellappraised to show ‘with tremendous sensitivity how religious self-discovery ispossible through the reading of the sacred text, how the book becomes a mirrorfor the reader’ (p. 99).

Joas is especially good at turning the need for religion into an imperativeof belief and to that degree, invaluably opens out new horizons for theologicaldeliberation. These changing shifts in opportunity are well brought out in chapter8, where Joas’ close links with Germany come to the fore in an importantessay on Habermas and his ‘late’ discovery of religion. His speech in 2001 atFrankfurt, as Joas suggests, wrought a paradigm shift and the invention of a newterm, the ‘post-secular’, whose implications have been subject to much recentdebate. The term marks recognition of the inconvenient persistence of religionand the necessity of the state and intellectuals to accommodate to this realisation.A need to recognise the significance of the Judeo-Christian tradition recastssecularisation. Instead of seeking to destroy this tradition, Habermas argues thatsecular assumptions need to be recast to ‘salvage’ understandings and thus, asJoas suggests, ‘acknowledging the daily translation that believers have to performand to reciprocate’ (p. 108).

Part 3 contains three essays, on Avishai Margalit, on debate on bioethics (use-ful) and on ‘Human Dignity: the Religion of Modernity?’. This last essay hassome useful comments on Durkheim and the sacralisation of the individual. Thereis much to learn from this collection, which is very concisely written and unex-pected in its insights.

KIERAN FLANAGAN


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DO WE NEED RELIGION? ON THE EXPERIENCE OF SELF-TRANSCENDENCE by Hans Joas