Newman and His Age

...The biggest deficiency of this work is that the selections are too brief...

...that essay will lead one, in turn, to cognate essays which will provide a relatively broad sketch of a topic...

...I do think, in sum, that the ABD is a major contribution to biblical scholarship and it will prove itself to be a valuable asset to those who encounter the Word of God and attempt to make sense of it in a serious manner...

...She subdivides her material into ten large categories and prefaces each with a brief introductory Readings in Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition, edited by Barbara J. MacHaffie, Fortress, $12.95, 238pp...

...More central writings were part of an English literature course, and when I moved on to philosophical studies Newman's mind and example were there to assure me that there could be something more to Catholic thought than the rationalism of the neoscholastic Cursus Philosophiae by Charles Boyer (not the actor) we read in the seminary...

...The list of contributors reads like a "Who's Who" of biblical scholarship...

...Manning and Newman, linked by contemporaries as inCommonweal separably as Gladstone and Disraeli, Dickens and Thackeray, Browning and Tennyson, were "the Martha and Mary of the Victorian Catholic church...

...The editorial preface tells us that the ABD reflects the current interests of biblical scholarship...

...Major articles (e.g., "Resurrection" or "systematic theology") run about five or six pages of text...

...The final section gathers significant affirmations of Evangelicals...

...The article on "sex and sexuality" makes no mention at all of the New Testament...

...There is a decided tilt toward essays of interest to social historians...

...The recovery of the intellectual and spiritual riches of the patristic era eventually led him to turn to Rome as the heir of that patrimony, and throughout the last half of a very long life he was able to offer to an at times ungrateful church the service of a matchless mind and pen, pioneering in the exploration of the development of doctrine, the role of the laity, and the psychology of faith, seeking in all these areas to offer his age an image of a church broader and richer than a merely antimodern structure of authority...

...Gnostic texts...

...Furthermore, one suspects that there will be no serious competitor to it within the foreseeable future (these works are just too expensive and time-consuming to do frequently) so that it will be a standard work to cite...

...It is about Newman, but it is also about his age...

...If the other volumes are as useful, I would judge the series to be off to an auspicious start...

...Newman has, then, been present throughout my adult intellectual life...

...one does find a subsection on "prophetic experience" in the large entry on "postexilic Hebrew prophecy" and a few paragraphs on inspiration at the end of the article on "canon") or "inerrancy" or "fundamentalism...

...pseudepigrapha, etc...

...Gilley focuses more on the public controversies and on the twists and turns in Newman's many personal relationships and somewhat neglects Newman the pastor...

...part 2, by contrast, provides the major Roman Catholic statements beginning with the crucial Evangelii nuntiandi (1975) of the late Pope Paul VI marking the tenth anniversary of the conciliar statement on missions...

...Thus, for example, the two-page article on "Pentecostalism" refers the reader to Evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Holy Spirit, popular religion, and sanctifi-cation...

...The ABD will find an honored place beside my copy of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament but it will not replace it...

...It strikes me as the sort of work that students could be sent to get a broader vision of the history of the Christian tradition...

...If he does not hide his admiration for Newman—"the greatest of English theologians, ...after Bunyan, at once the most profound and passionate of our religious pilgrims"—he neither romanticizes nor idolizes him...

...In just over one hundred succinct essays, the basic Christian theological vocabulary was explicated...

...For some odd reason one of the first essays I read was his study of the patristic notion of the Antichrist, and I can still recall the seductive power of Newman's prose...

...My years in Rome were also the first two years of Vatican II, "Newman's Council," as more than one commentator put it...

...The basic notion of the handbook goes something like this: pick a big topic and find the appropriate essay...

...the Apologia had the unintended effect of making Newman "both the Virgil and the Aeneas" of the Oxford Movement...

...One does find an entry on "ecstasy" which is a good deal more satisfactory than the very disappointing and perfunctory one on "mysticism and the Bible" by the same contributor...

...Conversely, there is a wonderfully full article on early Christian worship but none on Judaism...

...Thomas Aquinas may think that curiosity springs from laziness, but my notion is that it is a safe and sane remedy for busyness...

...References & resources Lawrence S. Cunningham about games or sports in the Bible but no such entry existed under either term (one finds "games" in the one-volume Harper's Dictionary of the Bible) nor was there an entry under "dice" or "lots" or "running" or "racing" or "wrestling" or anything else I could think of that would help...

...What a contrast there is, for example, about some theological discussions on the unique role of Christ in salvation and the unvarnished declarations of the Evangel icals on mission...

...When an enthusiast, preaching in his place at Saint Mary's, proposed that animals also be required to observe the fast days, Newman expressed the hope that the man might "have a fasting horse the next time he goes steeple-chasing...

...The latter article would be a useful first reading, for example, for any beginning theological student who would be inclined to argue for a full-blown doctrine of the Trinity or who expected too refined a Christology in the New Testament...

...Sheridan Gilley's book is, I believe, the fifth or sixth biography of Newman I have read, and perhaps it is enough praise of it to say that it repays a reading even for those familiar with the best of them: Wilfrid Ward's defense of Newman in the midst of the Modernist crisis, Maisie Ward's emphasis on the young Newman her father had somewhat neglected, Muriel Trevor's two-volume love letter, and Ian Ker's recent excavations in the treasures of the thirty-one volumes of Newman's letters and diaries...

...A careful comparative study of some of these documents would help a great deal in setting out the tension points still unresolved in ecumenical discussion...

...sketch, a note on the source of her document, and, where appropriate, a biography of the person in question...

...One could pass a few leisurely hours browsing in this fashion...

...An excellent series of articles under the general rubric of "Christianity" provides a wealth of historical material about the spread of the faith in the apostolic period...

...Conversely, the editors felt no need to duplicate the work of other reference works with exhaustive word studies like those found in standard volumes like that of Kittel...

...At the news that he might be named a cardinal, he recalled that Caligula had made his horse a consul, and wondered "would not the pope be reviving by his proceeding the memory of that extravagance...

...raphy and references, again, to other articles...

...For serious students of the Bible it would seem well worth the investment...

...At any rate, the ABD has 6,000 entries written by 1,000 contributors who turned in, roughly, 6 million words...

...Standing behind these differences are differences in more fundamental issues of, say, Christology and ecclesiology...

...To begin an ec-clesiology with the doctrine of the pope, he said, "is to begin to build Saint Peter's with the cross and ball...

...I hope that it enjoys the same success as the original work...

...Even on subjects as murky as "deconstructionism" or as formal as Commonweal 20 November 1992:29 RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES "theological hermeneutics" there is a genuine attempt to explain and clarify for the nonexpert...

...Part 3 gathers together some very fine public affirmations and position papers of the Orthodox church (which are especially good on the relation of worship to mission...

...This first volume basically gathers together major contemporary institutional statements...

...He does not pay enough attention to Newman's pastoral ministry, whether in his early years as an eager Evangelical minister at Saint Clement's or later as a leader of the Oxford Movement at Saint Mary's (the one great body of Newman's work that is still unpublished are hundreds of his Anglican sermons) or, still later, as superior of the Birmingham Oratory...

...There is an entry on biblical scholarship in Japan but none on such scholarship, say, either in India or Africa (India itself merits a short article...

...These were small disappointments compared to the terrific things I did discover, rather serendipitously, like the article by Marvin Pope on euphemism and dys-phemism in the Bible (there are plenty of both) with a concluding section on sanitizing strategies used over the centuries on biblical language...

...Gilley distinguishes his work from those of earlier biographers in two ways...

...Africa does not get an entry as such...

...Significant cities and institutions (e.g., Corinth or the temple in Jerusalem) receive exhaustive treatment accompanied by useful schematics, maps, etc...

...The Handbook of Christian Theology (1958) was a standard on the shelf of the theological tyro...

...One notes in passing, probably due to financial considerations, that there are few illustrations and none in color...

...Of them all Gilley's book is also the one I would recommend to anyone beginning a study of the great man...

...The texts are arranged chronologically from the Bible down to recent times...

...He wished "to put flesh on Newman's ideas, showing the relation of spirit to intellect, love to reason, mind to heart," but at the same time "to place Newman's intellectual and spiritual development in its historical setting...

...The editors of A New Handbook note that Roman Catholics, women, and a lot of other people did not appear in the 1950s' version...

...Honesty compels me to admit to not having read all the entries but I have browsed through each volume with some small degree of thoroughness...

...opponents get a fair hearing, and Newman criticism when Gilley believes it deserved...

...In that sense it will surely be the standard reference work on the shelf of every public and academic library...

...The entries on essential biblical places as well as the books of the Bible get authoritative treatment by leading scholars...

...Gilley tells this familiar story very well, but he is particularly good at placing this personal drama against the move-ments of the nineteenth century...

...expanded coverage of articles on books outside the canon (scroll literature...

...The entry on "iconography and the Bible" seems strangely uninterested in the New Testament (although there is a good entry on early Christian art and architecture where iconography features rather prominently in the body of the article...

...Later, while studying theology in Rome, I was attracted to the thought of Bernard Loner-gan in good part because he represented the ideal of a Catholic intellect that I feared had died with Newman...

...There is only one thing missing in the story Gilley tells...

...The general article goes up to the time of increasing institutionalization and the rise of criteria for orthodoxy/heresy (roughly the period of the Pastorals) while essays follow which consider the growth of the Christian church in Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, North Africa, Rome, and Syria...

...Gilley has a knack for the telling phrase: Maria Giberne, Newman's close friend, was "the Pallas Athene" of his movement...

...Reviewers cannot resist telling authors how anthologies should have been done and this reviewer is no exception...

...One could go on citing both the significant strengths and the small disappointments of the ABD, but let me summarize my impressions...

...RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES | or the past month or so the six thick volumes of the Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD) have sat on the edge of my desk giving me intense pleasure in their heft and solidity...

...Gilley takes pains to explain the various battles in which the struggle was engaged, often offering helpful analogies from twentieth-century developments...

...That would permit me to read an article and follow up with the suggested cross references and having turned to them go on to their references, etc...

...MacHaffie's project, in short, is imperfectly realized but, one hastens to add, is still useful...

...First of all, it is an extremely important reference tool both because of the solidity of the contributions and the abundant bibliographies...

...My first attempt to find something in the ABD rather alarmed me...

...There are other oddities of this sort...

...The first section reproduces the major affirmations of the World Council of Churches over the last generation...

...By and large, however, some issues of interest to the theologian are not promi28: 20 November 1992 Commonweal RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES nent in the ABD although the two articles on God in the Old and New Testament are panoramic and helpful...

...The Evangelical emphasis on direct witness and proclamation stands in counterpoint to the Orthodox insistence on the witness of the eucharistic community at prayer and/or the Roman Catholic interest in Christianity as an inculturated experience...

...MacHaffie had the good idea of producing, at reasonable cost, an anthology of original sources that deals with the role of women in the history of Christianity...

...For reasons too complicated to explain, I wanted to read LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM '.v most recent book, from Paulist, is Thomas Meiton: Spiritual Master...

...Finally, since this work is quite clearly destined for class30: 20 November 1992 room use, it would have been helpful to have added a bibliography, apart from the sources cited for each selection, since recent books on women in the Christian tradition have poured off the presses...

...Again, one notes the oddity of an article on "prayer" in early Judaism but none on prayer in the New Testament or in early Christianity...

...Elgar's music for "The Dream of Geron-tius" "might be called strangulated Wagner in an English chapel...

...On the other hand, however, the ABD does not substitute for (nor does it make any pretension of doing so) other works which pay far more attention to specific exegetical and lexicographical issues which help one with more precisely theological tasks...

...As usual, alas, the Orthodox world is unnoticed, which is doubly a shame both because of what is happening in Eastern Europe and because of such interesting materials on women from that part of the Christian world...

...Her texts touch on various historical periods (patristics, medieval, and Reformation) and are generously ecumenical in that Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and marginal groups (e.g., Christian Scientists) are represented...

...It should come as no surprise that in a reference book of this size, major topics get extended treatment...

...If the author had omitted the biblical materials (easily accessible elsewhere) there would have been more space either to add significant persons omitted from this volume (e.g., HildegardofBingen, Clare of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, etc...

...New Directions is the first of what hopes to be a multivolumed sourcebook series on missions, evangelization, Christian conversion, inculturation, and world ministries considered from the angle of the different New Directions in Mission and Evangelization 1: Basic Statements 1974-1991, edited bv James A. Scherer and Stephan B. Bevam, Orbis, $16.95, 324pp...

...The history of Israel from the period before the monarchy until after the Babylonian exile takes up fifty pages of double columns with references to about sixteen other articles that flesh out and advance that history...

...A volume 1 ike this not only helps us see the status questionis but, implicitly, reminds us how serious the task of the deep ecumenical theological discussion really is...

...The six volumes may seem a bit costly but already I have seen discounted offers being made by various booksellers...

...But this is simply to say that, even after this fine book, there will be room for still more books on Newman...

...A volume like this is both a handy reference work for gaining a sense of the sweep of theological issues but could also be put to use as a kind of quick refresher course on contemporary theology...

...That is probably how I will make use of this work: not as a primary text but one that will be on the reserve shelf as a resource for further avenues of study...

...Joseph A. Komonchak I was introduced to Newman some thirty-five years ago by two professors to whom I will be eternally grateful...

...There are, of course, generous examples of Newman's memorable prose, both in sermons, in essays, and perhaps least familiar to many readers, in letters, which reveal the man beneath the public figure...

...Newman's lifelong campaign against what he called "liberalism in religion" was an effort to combat what today people call "secularization," the removal of religion from public relevance to the point that, as he regretfully noted toward the end of his life, religion was not to be allowed to be in any way "the bond of society...

...There are long articles on hermeneutics and the history of interpretation but, surprisingly, nothing on "inspiration" (not even prophetic inspiration...

...hence a freshly minted handbook begun from scratch...

...or staying with the current selections (one cannot include everybody) but making them longer...

...This collection is a very rich resource not only because it brings together widely scattered documents but because of its usefulness as an instrument of study for both theologians and pastoral workers...

...Christian responses to these issues...

...In the same volume as "Jerusalem," "Jesus Christ" gets twenty-three pages followed by lengthy articles on the quest for the historical Jesus, the actual words of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, and an extremely interesting article on the worship of Jesus and how that worship related to Jewish monotheism...

...The Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, Doubleday, 6 volumes, $360...

...Newman the man emerges clearly in the personal drama that led him from a bourgeois Anglicanism into an evangelical fervor that was not lost but only redirected when he became a leader in the Oxford Movement's attempt to revivify the Anglican church...

...only later did I learn how much Newman had influenced Lonergan...

...The entries I have read (honesty compels me to note that I am a contributor) are straightforward and nontechnical...

...thorough entries on archaeological sites...

...A volume of this sort is no substitute for reading original sources but as a handy tour of the theological horizon it is a useful and readable tool...

...Each article has a succinct bibliogA New Handbook of Christian Theology, edited by Donald Musser and Joseph L. Price, Abingdon, $19.95, 525 pp...

...Later, when I had to undergo the trial of a dissertation, the labor was relieved by my being able to do it on Newman's ecclesiology...

...That led me to the section on "humor and wit" which turned out to have separate long entries on humor in Egypt and Mesopotamia (the latter culture may have had professional jesters) as well as the Old and New Testaments...

...Reference books are a joy to one whose mind is as promiscuous as mine, so I would reward myself each time an odious but necessary task was finished by a dip into the ABD's pages ad libitum...