Religious booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES This hefty volume of Luther's theological writings is one of those valuable books which every theologian and/or theological student should welcome. The editor had a clear idea...
...Since these books will undoubtedly find classroom use, there ought to be standards set for the apparatus to make the books "user friendly...
...Furthermore-and this is a very nice touch-the editor wants the prospective user of this book to regard Luther as a doctor ecclesiae and not as a polemical sectarian...
...What I do like very much is its insistence on a spirituality (there is much good spiritual writing coming from these authors today) which is rooted in actual experience and its drumbeat insistence that we as North Americans approach our classics from a somewhat privileged position...
...I have always lovedhis observation that the relationship of faith to the complexity of life may be seen in an analogy with polyphonic music: thecantusfirogy with polyphonic music: the cantusfir-mus (i.e., the "bottom line") is the love of God and the other voices are all of the intricate interweavings of life as we lead it individually and socially...
...Bonhoeffer stands as an exemplary person not only because of the moral quality of his life (but surely for that reason) but because he was a model of what a theologian in the church ought to be...
...Clifford Green's volume on Karl Barth, in the same series as the Harnack and Bonhoeffer volumes noted above, undertakes to do the near impossible: excerpt from the mountain of Barthiana a representative sample of the great theologian's Karl Barth...
...I checked some of his translations against the Latin and found them accurate enough, but it is clear that McDermott edited heavily even in the running text that is supplied...
...Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45), who died at the hands of the Nazis just weeks before the end of the war, has been well served by biographers, thanks to the author-itative study of his intimate friend Eberhard Bethge published in 1970 and the earlier (1968) life by Mary Bosanquet...
...It stands as a good alternative to the serviceable anthology of John Dillenberger, which is now more than a generation old...
...It is in those books where the great themes of biblical contemplation, pastoral concerns, and prophetic witness came together in a time of great crisis...
...The reader, then, can read unsys-tematically in this volume...
...That this reaction is not academic is, unhappily, proved by recent events in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central and Latin America...
...Some of Harnack's observations shed light on contemporary problems...
...What McGovern has done-and for this I am equally grateful-is to help me see that my ambivalences (about their teutonic approach to social theory for instance) reflect a different intellectual background and a different cultural disposition...
...If I had a criticism of this useful volume it would be to lament the confusing citation apparatus in the introductory essay and headnotes, as well as the pathetically inadequate index...
...Reading some of Barth's writing from this period (Green supplies a generous dollop) does lead one to believe that his socialist instincts led him to a naive evenhandedness of East/West issues that woefully underestimated the horror that was Stalinism, even if one vis-cerally accepts the theological rectitude of his antinuclear strictures...
...Luther was not a systematic theologian but an occasional one...
...His most recent book, from Crossroad, is Catholic Prayer...
...Theologians of several stripes Lawrence S. Cunningham The Lutheran emphasis on the Word produced a vigorous theological tradition in the German-speaking world...
...He strongly resisted national socialism just as he lamented the superpower struggle of the cold war era with its ominous threat of nuclear destruction...
...Not to put too fine a point on it: McGovern is favorably disposed to liber-ationist theologies while cognizant of their shortcomings, both social and theological...
...There is the languid (1968...
...It would not be The Letters and Papers from Prison, once almost tal-ismanic in theological circles, that strikes me as worth a first second look...
...The latter accomplishment served as a position against which his illustrious students, preeminently Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth, could react...
...the year of his death) essay entitled "Concluding Unscientific Postscript on Schleiermacher," which is a kind of intellectual autobiography, as well as the 1956 retractio under the title "The Humanity of God...
...All scriptural and other quotations are in italics but the references are relegated, irritatingly, to the RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES back of the book...
...His analysis, for instance, of the Roman Catholic church's cultural relationship to the Roman Empire (Harnack believes that the former replaced the latter) makes for interesting reading in the light of Karl Rahner's suggestion that the Second Vatican Council marked a sea change away from those cultural roots toward a "World Church" (Weltkirche) less in debt to its Roman cultural past...
...Liberation theology is now nearly a generation old for the English-speaking world which first encountered it through Gustavo Gutierrez's path-breaking A Theology of Liberation (1973), a book that reflected a decade of theological work south of the border...
...What keeps that tone from being pompous is his own good humor and self-deprecating wit...
...Hence, there is an ecumenical orientation to this volume which tends to emphasize not only Luther's stance on, say, Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings edited by Timothy F. Lull, Fortress,$19.95,752pp...
...The author cites, with judicious brevity, from enough of Bonhoeffer's writings and sermons to make this reviewer want to go back and reread those writings...
...Nonetheless, it was a moving experience to read this short recent biography by Edwin Robertson who has been so closely identified with the English corpus of Bonhoeffer's writings...
...His treatment of critics like Michael Novak is balanced, but tough on people who haven't Liberation Theology and Its Critics: Towards an Assessment, by Arthur F. McGovern, SJ., Orbis, $14.95...
...In his own copy of the Romerbrief Green tells us, Barth jotted down a quote from Luther advising a writer who thinks he is great to touch his own ears and, in so doing, he will find that he has a "splendid pair of big, long, shaggy, asses' ears...
...Those same ambivalences come from the Vatican where we have watched papal approbation of some of its ideas as well as curial misgivings about others...
...The former allows him to outline the divergent strands of the libera-tionist movement and the latter permits him to see both the value and the pitfalls of its social analysis...
...281 pp...
...The publisher should also be thanked for setting a reasonable price on such a hefty book...
...This is a capacious anthology of Luther's theological writings and, as such, there is little of Luther the exegete in these selections...
...It would be ungracious not to pay tribute to the labor that went into the making of this book...
...Among the great giants of this tradition was the historical theologian Adolph Von Harnack (1851-1930), whose reputation rests on the dual accomplishments of his erudite scholarship in matters historical and his passionate espousal of that form of liberal theology which came to be known as Kulturprotestantismus...
...work...
...Besides, I like reading Aquinas...
...The Shame and the Sacrifice: The Life and Martydom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Edwin Robertson, Collins Religious Publications, $7.95 paper, 288pp...
...The main objection (apart from its staggering cost) is that one is not reading Aquinas, but a version of Aquinas filtered through the sensibility of one person...
...Much of Barth's writing derived from his position as a university theologian, but his work never had a purely academic tone to it...
...Timothy McDermott has telescoped the Summa into a single volume by eliminating the objections and their answers from each Summa Theoiogiae: A Concise Translation, edited by Timothy McDermott, Christian Classics, $78, 651 pp...
...McGovern's most conspicuous merits are his comprehensive reading in the sources and grasp of political philosophy...
...The net result of this compression is that the Summa becomes a quick read, but the character of the work gets lost...
...article in Aquinas and editing the heart of the response into a running series of paragraphs...
...I want to work through The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, works written when Bonhoeffer maintained the seminary-in-exile in 1937 at Finkenwalde...
...Likewise, Harnack's intervention into the issue of historical creeds (he thought the church should compose new ones) is not irrelevant to contemporary discussions about the status of creeds...
...One misses the push and pull of Aquinas's dialectical mind at work just as one misses the force of the objections (which may, at times, be ornamental but elsewhere really tell us what the argument is all about) with which he begins each article...
...Above all, even in translation, there is Luther's unmistakable voice: blunt, passionate, and full of love for God and his revelation in Christ...
...Robertson points out repeatedly the concern that Bonhoeffer had for the church of his birth as well as for the larger life of the entire Christian church...
...LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...The Freedom of the Christian) and unexpected gems like Luther's touching Little Catechism, and generous servings of his occasional writings...
...His political convictions were socialistic...
...There is a great deal more here than Walter Farrell 's old pocket version of the Summa but, obviously, less than what one finds in the corpus...
...There is a kind of sonorous majesty to his prose (he may have loved Mozart but he always sounds Bachian to me) heightened by his unflagging emphasis on the godliness of God and the centrality of Christ...
...This column has concentrated on the German theological tradition, but it is not out of place to mention Thomas Aquinas here: his family, after all, had Hohenstaufen connections and his own teacher was the famous Cologne master, Albert the Great...
...he wrote in response to need...
...Readers may be interested to know that the general editor (John De Gruchy) of "The Making of Modern Theology" series also has a Bonhoeffer volume: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (1978...
...I did just that and found much pleasure...
...The editor had a clear idea of what he wanted to do and a set of criteria to accomplish his ends...
...The volume has the still powerful Barmen Declaration against the Nazi coop-tion of the church hammered out by Barth while he was, as he later said, "fortified by strong coffee and some good Brazil cigars," as well as selections from his study of Anselm and selected sections of the monumental Church Dogmatics...
...faith and justification but also writings on ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and pastoral issues...
...Theologian of Freedom, edited by Clifford Green, Cotlitis Beiigioas Publications, $19.95,348 pp...
...Even so, many more people will find this a useful book for college or seminary courses because of the range of texts offered...
...One finds in this volume both standard selections ("The Ninety Five Theses...
...Here in the U.S...
...He was deeply Lutheran in his background and in his learning, but he was also a pioneer explorer of the Catholic tradition...
...Arthur McGovern's book is an exemplary survey of the state of the question today...
...Rumscheidt's volume, part of the series "The Making of Modern Theology," gives us a good introduction to Harnack's life Adolph Von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height, edited by Martin Rumscheidt, Collins Religious Publications, $19.95, 329 pp...
...Liberation theologians like Gutierrez and Galilea have helped me read the Scriptures in a more sapiential manner...
...Barth is not a la mode today but it would be churlish to dismiss his writings out of hand as some are wont to do...
...Barth saw himself as a theologian of the church (he preached regularly at the city jail in Basel) and for the larger world...
...My own reaction to liberation theology is mixed...
...He rebuts the common criticism that liberation theology is reheated Marxism, deficient in any sense of the transcendent...
...and thought as well as a generous selection of his great torrent of writing...
...there were (and are) enthusiastic variants of its methodologies employed by native Americans, women, blacks, and Chicanos while the conservative right viewed it with fear and loathing...
...Above all, he was a person of great faith who was nourished on the Bible...
...The merit of McDermott's version is that one can read the Summa as a continuous whole in a translated style that is more accessible to the untrained reader than, say, the more literal and complete Blackfriars translation...
...Throughout the selections Rumscheidt intersperses excerpts from Harnack's classic, What is Christianity!', and provides essays on historical methods as well as some evidences of his historical writing...
...Harnack had an enormous impact which still has its place in the world of scholarship...
...The reception of this theology makes a fascinating study in its own right since it managed to provoke everything from wild adulation to outright hostility...
...done their homework, like the polemicist Richard Neuhaus...
...Robertson's biography does not provide the finely observed detail of Bethge's work, but it is a readable and succinct first entry into Bonhoeffer's life...
...Readers of Commonweal have received a sample of McGovern's book (November 3,1989), but the whole deserves a reading for its comprehensive overview of a move-for its comprehensive overview of a move...
...Green gives us a fair taste of what Barth was about...
Vol. 117 • January 1990 • No. 2
