Religious booknotes

...Those causes are part of his preaching so that amid the sonorities of his homiletical style there are embedded barbs of criticism and concern...

...It is blessedly free of footnotes but each chapter has an annotated bibliography of pertinent works in English...

...3) a belief that all worldly wealth is the common property of all and the attendant right of the poor and disadvantaged to make a claim on it...

...One can relate aesthetics to theology by juxtaposing four aspects of theology (theology's concern with truth and meaning...

...Everyone interested in the relationship of theology to matters economic would benefit from a reading of this careful survey...

...Extreme views about private property or the currently obnoxious notion that "greed is good" is at total variance with the early Christian tradition...

...In a brief book, fashioned from addresses she has given over the years, Johnson surveys the current state of Christology...

...As a consequence, such fertile areas as Byzantine theories of the icon or medieval views of sacramentalism and symbology (think of Abbot Suger's explanations of the rebuilding of St...

...One of my students put it inelegantly but well: Christ was not just God in a Jesus suit...

...Johnson covers familiar terrain (e.g., the impact of biblical studies on Christology...

...sources...

...Jr., Princeton, $27.50.222 pp...

...This McLellan does with a sense of fairness and a clear expository style...

...If these sermons have value, then, it is in their capacity to demonstrate how one can transmute profound scholarship into liturgical proclamation...

...Those who may be a bit intimidated by the sheer bulk of his projected trilogy might wish to begin with these occasional pieces in order to find out what this contemporary theological master is about...

...Denis), or even the renaissance/baroque theory of the concetto get no mention at all...

...hi the 1950s, Catholic theologians began to turn their attention to the question of whether everything that the fifth century Council of Chalcedon defined about Christ (two natures, human and divine, in one person) ended any further need to reflect theologically on Jesus the Christ...

...It is only from a bit of distance that one can appreciate the interconnections between her earlier and later intellectual preoccupations...

...Unlike Martin, he is sensitive to context, and, as a consequence, one finds frequent references to worship and liturgy...

...After a straightforward historical survey from the Bible to Wittgenstein there was a Cook's tour of Eastern aesthetics folRELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES lowed by a consideration of an 1978 UNESCO conference on the ends and purposes of art which produced-as one might have guessed-from Martin's gloss on it, some rather gaseous generalities...

...Anyone wishing a balanced view of current Catholic writing on Christology (she comments on everyone from the current pontiff to the liberationists) would find a steady guide in this little work...

...As a response to the needs of the oppressed...

...Gonzalez not only comes to conclusions but points to other areas of research still to be done...

...The main thrust of the book's argument is to show the points of contact between art theory and theolog-ical theory with a final plea that art history/history of religion as well as aesthetics/theory of religion continue the dialogue...

...Cents & incense Lawrence S. Cunningham tions of the day while repeating warnings about the dangers of wealth...

...Their answer was that we had a real need to recover the full humanity of Christ...

...Readers may forgive my emphasis on Weil by taking note of this new biography which I think is very good indeed...

...When the church gained its freedom after Constantine we see a whole literature emerging which worries about the financial support of the state and makes passionate pleas in behalf of the impoverished masses...

...the current debate over salvation in the non-Christian world) but with passion for her RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES subject and competency in her judgments...

...She was, as he notes in the conclusion of his study, peculiar, a "French version of Kafka, this cross between Pascal and Orwell remains unclassifiable...

...She writes both as a professional theologian (she is a professor at Catholic University) and as a committed churchwoman...

...Recent approaches to Jesus Christ tend to emphasize "low" Christology (beginning with his humanity) rather than "high" Christology (a consideration of his divinity) and "ascending" Christology (beginning with Jesus in his earthly mission and then moving toward transcendental claims about him) as opposed to "descending" Christology which begins with the Logos before creation and then moves to a consideration of his earthly life...

...McLellan rightly notes that Weil's first works were mostly religious ones...

...This literature reflected the actual condiLAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...

...She was a precociously brilliant mystic like Pascal (whom, typically, she loathed) and, like her English counterpart George Orwell, a person of the left who had too much integrity to be captured by a party line...

...Even Clement of Alexandria's treatise in defense of the rich (Quis Dives Salvetur) was an admonitory treatise on the dangers of wealth and the foolishness in flattering of the rich for gain...

...McLellan (an English author-Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil, by David McLellan, Poseidon, $22.95,316 pp...

...It makes a fine narrative companion to Monika Hell wig's recent Christological survey in Theological Studies (September 1989) and, as such, gives us the status questionis on this central issue in theological discussion today...

...That strikes me as quite right...

...Simone Weil's life intersected with some of the most influential European thinkers of this century at a time when political, social, and religious ideas were in a state of flux...

...ity on Marxism) avoids the common temptations of "reading" Weil as a saint beyond criticism or as an unhealthy neurotic afflicted with eccentric intellectual notions...

...What Burch Brown sets out to show- and I think he shows it persuasively and with wit-is best said in his own words: "Using the Christian tradition and its theology as our primary frame of reference, we will feel confidence that we have located religious meaning within an aspect of art if this aspect can be shown to be positively connected with what Christians regard as ultimately meaningful, and hence meaningful with respect to relations deemed ultimately significant to and before God...

...They understood inflation, taxation, prices, etc...

...The first wave, to use Elizabeth Johnson's metaphor, which tried to do fuller justice to the humanity of Christ, in the late 1950s, was followed by a second set of waves: how does one incorporate an understanding of Jesus into the search for justice...

...He is to be thanked for that service...

...RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES Justo Gonzalez's tidy book on early Christian ideas about wealth is an attempt to describe the relationship between early Christian faith and what today we would call the economy...

...Her work has two conspicuous merits: it is briskly written and in command of the Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology, by Elizabeth A. Johnson, Crossroad, $14.95,149 pp...

...Since it was only in the Enlightenment that we get a philosophical discussion of aesthetics as opposed to religion, Martin seems anxious to get to that period where he feels most at home...

...At the end of an Epiphany homily, for instance, he remarks that the adoration of the Magi emphasizes the Eastern penchant for a "high" Christology so it must be seen in tension with Christmas (a more Western feast) where the emphasis is on the "low" Christology of a baby born in a stable...

...Schillebeeckx keeps his eye on that fact...

...It is a good suggestion in a good book...

...Schillebeeckx is sympathetic to the search for social justice, he is critical of the restorationist program of the current pontiff, and is a supporter of the liberal wing of the Dutch church...

...theology's subject matter and theological method) to theories of art...

...What Gonzalez makes quite clear is that one cannot anachronistically retroject into the early sources readings which would give comfort either to the contemporary Faith and Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use of Money, by Justo L. Gonzalez.Harperand Row, $19.95, 240 pp...

...I must confess that I found Martin's book austerely bloodless...

...Crossroad, $16.95,181 pp...

...Let me emphasize that word liturgical because, with few exceptions, these addresses follow the liturgical cycle...

...od to inquire into the relationship of aesthetics and religion...

...What I most liked about this book was the judicious fairness that he brings to his subject as well as his unwillingness to give RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES in to facile categorizations...

...The early "communism" of the Acts of the Apostles and the subsequent emphasis on "sharing" (koinonia) was a strategy to both succor the poor and to resist discrimination based on wealth...

...The book also had a curious structure...

...There was much discussion of theory but almost none about art...

...The biblical character of these sermons does not mean that they are innocent of the world outside the church...

...warnings which were as common in pagan literature as in that of the Christians...

...By using a wide range of examples from all the arts, Burch Brown manages to give an account of the religious character of what, to many moderns, are simply artistic masterpieces...

...In an earlier column of booknotes (March 9, 1990) I took account of two studies of Simone Weil but McLellan's biography was not then available to me...

...Nonetheless, Schillebeeckx's theological project of seeking to understand Jesus the Christ is at the heart of what he preaches...

...climbs into the pulpit on a regular basis...

...He traces, in broad strokes, the concepts of holiness and beauty from the biblical materials down to the modern peri-Beauty and Holiness: The Dialogue Between Aesthetics and Religion, by James Alfred Martin...

...What remains a constant, right through to the late patristic period, is (1) a rejection of usury...

...More recent Christological discussions, in short, wrestle not only with the humanity of Jesus but his relationship to the human story in its polyvalent complexity...

...While we await Schillebeeckx's final volume of his trilogy on Christology, it is good to be reminded that the Dutch theologian, obedient to the Dominican charism of being a friar preacher, still For the Sake of the Gospel, by Edward Schilleheeckx...

...on a pragmatic level, but as Gonzalez notes, the Roman Empire did not even have a budget until it was already in serious decline in the days of Diocletian...

...In relationship to the world of women...

...Martin's work is the more philosophical of the two...

...The later writings (some first introduced in France by Albert Camus) were political...

...One conspicuous omission in his survey is the work of David Tracy whose theory of the "classic" and its role in theology is not even mentioned...

...ideological Left or to the Right although the former would find more comfort than the latter...

...one might consider an aesthetic work to have its own artistic integrity while not severing that integrity from something more, i.e., religious significance...

...He gives equal attention to her socio-philosophical thinking and her religious experience...

...His book wrestles with the major theological texts on this subject (e.g., Tillich and Von Balthasar) as well as the more phenomenological works like those of van der Leeuw and Eliade...

...The author tells us that he wrote his book as a service to those interested in liberation theology...

...Burch Brown's book, by contrast, is an extremely satisfying work...

...If the early Christians did not speak exprofesso about the economy it is because neither they nor their Roman counterparts had a coherent theory of economic matters...

...A volume of collected sermons finds its proper place in a difficult genre: will it prove to be a classic like Newman's University Sermons or will it be one more dusty reminder of past piety or, as is sometime the case, a monument to the preacher's ego...

...Princeton University has issued two recent books on aesthetics and religion...

...Her prejudices were monumental (she hated the Old Testament and everything connected with Rome but loved the medieval Cathars), her learning prodigious but eclectic, and her compassion for the poor and downtrodden almost Franciscan in its intensity...

...She also rewards us with striking asides...

...McLellan takes account of, but is not distracted by, the oddity of her personality...

...She was a prescient critic of both nazism and Stalinism (when it was very unfashionable for the left to be critical) and her critique of Catholicism, eccentric in places, anticipated many of the issues which would be ventilated at Vatican II, two decades after her death...

...This is a profoundly useful book which should set the stage for future discussion on this important area of theology and culture.ion on this important area of theology and culture...

...Gonzalez helps us by tracing out both pagan and Jewish attitudes toward wealth in the period...

...A study of her ideas, then, is, almost of necessity, a study of her biography...

...Christmas without Epiphany can lead to sentimentality while Epiphany without Christmas can become ahistorical and abstract...

...Some day, she says, some bishop will be imaginative enough to consecrate a church under the protection of God the Good Homemaker instead of God the Good Shepherd (see Luke 15:1-10 to get her point...

...Later exhortations to the wealthy to take care of the needs of the poor and to avoid the traps of wealth did not have in them an explicit theology of social justice as we would understand it today...

...2) a warning against the accumulation of wealth as an end in itself...

...A trained theologian and a musician/composer, he sets out on the difficult path of showing how Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Meaning and Making, by Frank Burch Brown, Princeton, $27.50,225 pp...

...This second volume of his sermons gathers together representative homilies and addresses given in the 1980s...

...I would not claim the status of classic for these sermons (some of them reflect contemporary events and will soon reflect the weight of time) but they do have exemplary value in that Schillebeeckx, who has mastered modern biblical criticism as thoroughly as any theologian alive, knows how to transform its technical achievement into serviceable reflections for the Christian community...

...He understands, to cite an example of my own (see Commonweal, June 2,1989), that Griinewald's Isenheim crucifixion means something different when seen in its present setting in a Colmar museum than when it stood at the end of a hospital ward full of dying people which was its original setting...