Deluded or Divine?
Chris Ruddy is assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. a frequent Commonweal contributor, and (as intrepid readers of this blog know) a pen pal of Cathy Kaveny. He is also a discerning reader who generously recommends to his friends not-to-be-missed articles and books.
His latest recommendation, which I enthusiastically second, is the new book by N.T. Wright, Simply Christian (Harper San Francisco). Wright is Anglican bishop of Durham, England, and New Testament scholar extraordinaire. His writing abounds with welcome wit and is devoid of academic obfuscation.
The pivotal paragraph of his new book occurs on p. 111, at the close of his discussion of the gospels’ passion narratives:
Nothing in all the history of paganism comes anywhere near this combination of event, intention, and meaning. Nothing in Judaism had prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy. The death of Jesus of Nazareth as king of the Jews, the bearer of Israel’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns. Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter.
I plan to use the book in my introductory course, “Exploring Catholicism,” at Boston College in the Fall. It would also serve wonderfully well for parish adult study groups.
Extremely gratifying to see an Anglican bishop’s book be the focus of “Exploring Catholicism” in a Catholic college. It is ecumenism at its finest.
Gratifying? I would expect any professor to do the same, i.e., choose a book for a class without undue attention to community the author was a member of. It is what professors (are supposed to) do. What is interesting is that the the best choice is a book by an anglican bishop. What are our own dear bishops doing?
Right, Joseph, I know just what you mean. Anglican scholars, Presbyterians, and Lutherans, and in more specific areas Orthodox (perhaps unfairly not including Jaroslav Pelikan, whom I cannot help but consider Lutheran), have written scholarship of terrific importance in biblical studies, early Christian literature and Church history. It would be a disservice to Catholic students, and indeed to all the Catholic Church, to discourage them from using such authorities. And more and more Jews have been contributing fascinating work on Christian origins.
In biblical scholarship, since the work of such pioneers as Joseph Fitzmeyer and Myles M. Bourke, there is now a large number of good workers. The amazingly prolific Raymond Brown, in the spirit of his Sulpician charism no doubt, wrote books of different sizes and levels, including introductory texts that he envisioned could be used well in Catholic educational contexts. Whether it was his experience that the use of materials by non-Catholic authors was regularly resisted in seminaries and Catholic colleges, I do not know. He himself never failed to acknowledge his debt to non-Catholic scholars, nor would he ever have suggested that his Catholic students could get by without reading them. In fact I suspect he considered it one of his saddest duties, to have to comment on the off-the-wall interpretations and recreations of Scriptural matters by Catholic authors who were still working with overly literalist or traditionalist assumptions.
On N. T. Wright: I think I read only one thing by him, nearly 15 years ago, “The NT and the People of God”: idiosyncratic, and a bit hard to follow, but still enjoyable and worthwhile. He has a reputation for being “conservative,” but I have no clue what that is supposed to mean.
Marcus,
I glided over the fact that N.T.Wright is conservative and that is the reason that some Catholics are opening up to him. Something like the Baptists and Rome getting together on fundamentals. Pun intended. Politics (dogma) makes strange bedfellows. Raymond Brown was good but Catholics have so much further to go in scriptural scholarship. Here is a nifty discussion with N.T. Wright and other people most of us know. http://ntgateway.com/xtalk/debate.html
Well gosh, Bill, thanks for the link. Sure could use some editing: having to read pages and pages and pages on-line can be mighty wearing.
On N. T. Wright, aka Tom: Well, what an eye-opener. If he is still going on in 2006 the way he was going on in 1996, when this curious transcribed teleconference took place (or somewhere around then), apparently without any generous appreciation of the difficulties of the source material that we have to work with, then I have grave doubts after all whether he should be put into the hands of our Catholic students, who deserve the very best of critical historical thinking. Robin Lane Fox’s “Unauthorized Version” would be much more useful.
Clear enough it is, though, why Tom might be popular among “conservative Catholics.” Remarkable, how that vampire of triumphalism keeps standing up in its coffin.
On the sentence “Raymond Brown was good but Catholics have so much further to go in Scriptural scholarship”: He would agree entirely, but he might not mean the same as you. On his “goodness”: That is almost a banal understatement. It is not possible really for anyone who does not know the study of ancient texts, or what it takes to comment on them, or what it takes to be an example as well as a resource to new students in the field, or what it takes to teach all this in a doubtful environment, to appreciate how superlatively good he was, and is.
On “so much further to go,” that admits of a lot of interpretations. So much further to go, because there is still so much left to do? — that would be Brown’s understanding. So much further to go, because the Protestants are so far ahead of us? So much further to go, because the self-regarding cutting-edge JPII Catholics have established priorities of a not altogether scholarly sort for which Brown’s style of scholarship is ill-suited?
On the quest for the historical Jesus: I think we should all step back and look over what is what. Raymond Brown was not a theologian, and had no theological agenda. He had great confidence, I believe, in John Meier, whose “Marginal Jew” volumes are highly acclaimed. Meanwhile, I must say I feel bullied from both sides, both by those who insist on the importance of our establishing “the historical Jesus” — which is surely a legitimate goal, but not a criterion for Christian faith — , and those who say we already know all we need to know about the historical Jesus, just read the [4, and only those 4] Gospels.
Interesting that Brown is suspected by liberals because of his appointment to the Pontifical Biblical Commission and is derided by conservatives who say he did not deserve such an honor. A present day successor to Brown as Catholic professor at Union Theological is Roger Haight who has been silenced by the Vatican. His present book Christian Community in History (two volumes) is real history compared to what many ‘Catholic’ historians have offered us.
As Catholic professors get too good or begin to publish they end up at Union or other notable Protestant schools. No wonder the Protestants are ahead of us. There are many excellent Catholic theologians today who are adroit at not publishing their views to avoid the Vatican ax. Many wonder how Elizabeth Johnson avoids the CDF as she does publish but avoids condemnation. She seems to manage it the way Brown did. Or maybe the Vatican likes the fact that Andrew Greeley criticized her for her writing on Mary.
Poor Roger Haight; I feel sorry for him, for the shivery treatment his book on Christology got from John Garvey. And as for his being at Union, I do not know what to think. Sure, there is a charming quadrangle, and a wonderful library. But how much longer can it last? It is more and more a precious boutique of the Columbia religion department. Hard to see how it will remain “notable” for very much longer.
At least for now Haight has found there a kind of Wartburg (though it is perhaps not prudent to go with that metaphor). You do well to praise him and his books, in light of the current regime in the Capital, and its terrors.
I am afraid I do not know Elizabeth Johnson. Has she published in Commonweal? Or is that too desperately dangerous a question to ask?! I shall look her up.
But that raises another question, an historical one, the answer to which I am surprised I do not know: How did Raymond Brown ever end up at Union? Surely not in the same hierarchical meteorological conditions as we see today? Surely the weather fronts scudding in from the Vatican were not then so thick, so sullen, so forbidding?
Marcus (seu Marce?), Bill,
Scholarship is never ending–although the desire to attract attention, get tenure, and get promoted, results in an overabundance of ephemera, some of it better aborted than carried to term–but Brown’s work is far from dated at this point. I would like to see more commentaries like those of Brown and Fitzmyer. Brown’s 101 Questions and Answers on the Bible should be required reading for the clergy–at least those whose homilies I have suffered. I was recently treated to a harmonization of the Resurrection narratives in the Parish Bulletin that managed to include a bit of Scriptural “evidence” for the authenticity of the Turin Shroud! One fellow always announces “the Gospel according to SAINT Matthew [et al.]” which is neither in the English translation of the text nor was ever in the Latin.
As for Brown not being a theologian, he would have readily conceded that he was not a systematic theologian but he can surely be called a biblical theologian. His work certainly transcends philology and the merely historical.
I gather you disagree with something in John Garvey’s review of Roger Haight’s book on christology. I wonder. Do you say that Garvey failed to understand the book or misrepresented it? Or do you say that Garvey understood the book but failed to agree with it? I can only say that if Garvey was accurate, I found myself siding with Garvey.
I guess we can easily characterize Garvey’s review as juvenile. I’ll try to stop there. However, over at Pro Ecclesia the theology is more detailed even if the journal seems to have a defensive agenda which is to uphold the christology of the Nicene Council. It would be refreshing if they allowed a response from Haight. I have to read some more issues of PE before I comment further.
For the record, Haight does acknowledge and appreciate the triune tradition in the church. It is the way that it is expressed where Haight differs.
Ah, to be a iuvenis again, but knowing what I know now! : )
No, I would not call John Garvey’s review “juvenile.” But I had exactly the same reaction as did the letter-writer in the latest Commonweal, that he was not the right person to write the review. It is very very important for us to understand where all Catholics, and all Christians, are coming from; and I am afraid Father Garvey, in the interest of Orthodoxy perhaps, kept Haight closely muzzled.
In fact, Saint Athanasius is a hero of mine. I attended a grade school named for him in Philadelphia, and his soteriology is at the center of my Christian faith (cf. the often sotto-voce prayer during the Offertory, “By the mystery of this water and wine”: very Athanasian, and I love it). And I love the ancient Councils. So in fact I agree with John on lots and lots.
(No doubt knowing that will help him sleep better.)
Still, I feel I am sinfully remiss in not paying attention to what Roger Haight has to say to us. And I suspect he has something of value to offer, which I do not conclude from John’s review.
On the Shroud of Turin: Oh, the whole thing is wonderful, an example of what I call “blessed fiction,” and God bless us with many such fictions, so long as it does not become a shibboleth. The image of wounds as from a crown of piercing thorns is clearly consistent with Western European Gothic imagery and religiosity — the crown of thorns is not meant to be an instrument of torture in the Gospels, only a sign of mockery, it was apparently removed before the Crucifixion, and it does not appear in Orthodox icons of the Crucifixion — , so I am convinced the Shroud is a late-Medieval Western artefact, done with some carefully contrived chemicals, with a real model, on a real ancient linen cloth from the Middle East, in a camera oscura.
Marcus, your hero is undergoing some image changes as we know more about him. T.T Barnes paints a devious picture of Athanasius. As a person who lies and has people beat up who are his adversaries. The emperors might have good reason for exiling him.
OK, so there are heroes and then again there are heroes. He was a child of his time. Just like Augustine, another hero of mine, calling in the troops against the Donatists.
It was a repeating punch-line, in Richard Norris’s lecture (at Union Theological Seminary, the first church history intro) on 4th-century politics: “And once again Athanasius of Alexandria was sent into exile.”
(Who was it who came up with the cultic phrase, “Athanasius Contra Mundum”?)
So sure, he knocked together some heads. But meanwhile he found time to write an international best-seller: “The Life of Antony.”
But thanks, Bill, I shall look at Barnes. No doubt about it, the Lord of the church in Alexandria was definitely not Jesus Meek and Mild. From our perspective, I would have no problem with canonizing Saint Hypatia, Virgin, Martyr, and Really Tough Math Teacher.
Bill,
It is unseemly for you to call Garvey’s review juvenile, unless perchance you meant that it was full of youthful high spirits, without giving a reason. Abuse is so far from being refutation that it rather suggests that the abuser is at a loss.
Joe
Marcus,
I am open minded about the Shroud of Turin, but repelled by clerics who find it in the Gospel accounts.
By the way, one can be a iuuenis up the age of 45.
Josephus, iuuenis olim iuuenisque futurus