Religious booknotes:

...In sum: on a scale of one to ten I would give this work about a six...

...nor does Abraham...

...Brown's book would be of interest to anyone who seeks to see a lucid argument for the fruits of biblical scholarship put to the service of the Christian theological tradition...

...His disdain for the "Jesus Seminar" circle is patent...

...Let the potential buyer compare.t...

...and (c) that mysticism be understood as that process or preparation by which a person prepares for, and is conscious of, the direct experience of God...

...Second, by discussing mysticism in the context of the Christian community as it historically evolves, he "demystifies" mysticism, allowing us to see two things: its close connection to the larger reality known as the Christian faith and, second, how certain motifs and insights deriving from the mystical tradition still exert their power on our lives today...

...As the resident "expert" in Catholic trivia, I usually get these questions...

...In his detailed consideration of persons like Gregory, Bernard, William of Saint Thierry, and the Victor-ines he is at pains to discuss them as theologians while not losing sight of his primary objective, which is their desire for the immediate knowledge of God...

...Brown begins with an introductory section on the range of Christological interpretations available today, that is, from nonscholarly conservatism through both scholarly and nonscholarly liberalism to moderate scholarly conservativism...

...It is also clear that he wishes to show, in a nonpolemical fashion, that certain highly touted contemporary books about Jesus are based on little evidence, much guesswork, and not a little media hype...

...The extensive publication list of now classic works like his commentary on John and his work on the infancy and passion narratives did not keep him from writing both on spiritual topics (biblical reflections on the liturgical seasons) and particular studies of interest to students of the New Testament...

...His work, however, has been complemented by a lifelong attempt to mediate the best results of biblical research to a broader audience...

...RELIGIOUS BOOKNOTES Knowing God, Jesus & the church Lawrence S. Cunningham In the first volume of his history of Western Christian mysticism {The Foundations of Mysticism [1991]), Bernard McGinn set out by insisting, as he restates it in the present volume, that mysticism should (a) be understood as an aspect or element in concrete religious communities and/or traditions and not as something discrete...

...The third point is most useful because it permits McGinn to sidestep or bracket those largely interminable and never quite conclusive debates about whether author X is or is not a mystic if that author did not leave behind some firsthand autobiographical account of his or her experience...

...In a brilliant chapter on Bernard of Clairvaux, McGinn sets out the Bernardine doctrine of love of God as Bernard develops it in his synthesis of Christology, theological anthropology, and exegesis...

...What connections are there or could there be between "high Christologies" like that found in John's Prologue with Christologies found in the synoptics...

...A subsequent chapter treats William of Saint Thierry, and a third treats the other Cistercian masters...

...The editors themselves preferred to emphasize more modern figures (Dorothy Day, John XXIII, Thomas Mer-ton, etc...

...Heirs to a tradition that went back as early as Origen, Christian writers believed that one could come to an experience of God through an intense encounter with the Word of God, LAWRENCE S. CUNNINGHAM chairs the theology department at the University of Notre Dame...

...The entries on doctrine were reliable and "middle of the road...

...There was, in short, right through the period McGinn surveys, an intimate nexus between exegesis and mysticism...

...What consciousness did Jesus have of his divinity...

...and, also, if the ineffability is described oxymoronically (for example, the Sanjuanista todo y nada) is the experience the same for all mystics...

...Furthermore, after the article on the Dominican Order there is an entry on one congregation of Dominican Sisters (why just that one...

...In passing, Brown then makes judgments about the work of both exegetes and systematic theologians...

...Raymond Brown is, of course, one of the premier Catholic biblical scholars of this century...

...Hence the emphasis on reading (lectio) in the monastic tradition...

...What is the significance of "pre-ministry" Christologies (that is, the infancy of Jesus...

...In that sense its value is exemplary not only for Christology but for its power to correlate New Testament research to theological reflection...

...It is from that prejudicial angle that I make this assessment...

...Indeed, theologia mystica meant nothing esoteric...

...500 to 1200) is that Christian mystical writing was largely a product of monastic culture...

...The very brief annotated bibliography is a thermometer of Brown's own predilections: he would identify himself with biblical scholars like James Dunn, Joseph Fitzmyer, John Meier, and Reginald Fuller as well as theologians like Walter Kasper...

...his youth...

...as a later writer would put it, reading leads to contemplation...

...Having been involved with more than one encyclopedia project, I am keenly aware of the difficulty of deciding what entries to include in a one-volume reference book...

...Let the potential buyer compare...

...that is, sacred Scripture...

...Glazier and Hellwig have entries on all but Halloween and Saint Joseph's lily...

...1200...

...A close reader of McGinn will get more than one hint as to how one might meld biblical study to spiritual enrichment...

...There is, finally, abroad in the theological world today an attempt to bring systematic theology closer to spirituality...

...First, this is a work of deep scholarship...

...The second fact about this period (roughly a.d...

...I can easily see it as a text for serious, nontechnical classes in the New Testament...

...Nonetheless, one sees, inevitably, some oddities and lacunae...

...400-700...

...It is impossible in the short space of this column to do an adequate description of the comprehensiveness of this work in progress...

...In sum, this second volume is a worthy companion to the first...

...The second half of his book focuses most expansively on the Cistercians, for it is among them that, to use McGinn's formulation of it, experience becomes paramount: "I believe that I might experience," and that "experience" is the love of God...

...Hardly a week goes by without somebody calling our department asking for a point of information...

...It also gets away from conundra like those which ask: if mystical experience is totally ineffable how can it be described adequately...

...To put it plainly: to understand how one marries contemporary biblical studies with the ongoing tradition of theology one must develop a sense of history to avoid (I think the phrase is Michael Novak's) "ahistorical orthodoxy...

...More detailed questions are laid out in a series of appendices...

...This encyclopedia is no exception to that generalization...

...Most of the things I first thought to look up were in this encyclopedia...

...It was Benedict's Rule that would, in the Carolingian period, become the best known, but much earlier Pope Gregory the Great (540?-604), drawing on Benedictine sources (it was from him that we know anything at all about Benedict), crafted a wonderfully coherent theory and vocabulary of contemplation and its nexus to the apostolic life...

...This present work, I suspect, is to help the nonspecialist understand the current debates about the person and meaning of Jesus Christ as the New Testament presents him...

...He follows that with a series of chapters which show, among other things, that one must sort out various Christologies (there is no such thing as one New Testament Christology) and what these facets of understanding indeed teach us...

...Here are some recent topics of inquiry: angels, stigmata, apparitions, the origin of Saint Valentine's Day, Halloween, and, most recently, why Saint Joseph is often depicted holding a lily on a staff...

...Thus, his historical study provides background and context for those contemporary efforts of writers who attempt to envision a truly Christian spirituality that is faithful to the biblical witness...

...In addition, as McGinn shows, Erigena emphasized in the West (largely through his knowledge of the Eastern fathers) the sophianic character of Christ, the power of divine grace to "deify" us, and the dialectical character of our knowledge/nonknowledge of God...

...Well, four out of six is not bad...

...The ressourcement of the last fifty years, for example, in biblical studies, has brought not only a better grasp of how the Bible is constructed but has spawned an intense interest in biblical study and biblical spirituality...

...For Catholic reference books I have a very simple rule of thumb: can one find basic information that someone (like a reporter) might wish to know about the phenomena of Catholicism...

...It is for that reason alone that I anticipate with eagerness his next volume (tentatively titled The Flowering of Mysticism), where he will consider the period of the scholastics-a period when much of theology shifts from the cloister to the university lecture hall...

...The period after the reforms initiated by Pope Gregory VII (1020?-1085) saw an outbreak of new orders, both eremeti-cal and cenobitic, which is surveyed by McGinn...

...The great bridge builder of the early Middle Ages is John Scotus Erigena (died 877), an incredibly learned Irishman who, among other things, translated the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius into Latin and thus, in a stroke, started a stream of "dark" or apophatic theology which would leave its mark on every major medieval thinker as well as subsequent figures like the great mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila...

...It belongs on the shelf of every serious student of the Christian enterprise (and in all theological libraries) and will be, I am sure, the standard work on the subject for decades to come...

...Why this little flair of national pride when the book is published at a distinguished abbey founded by German-speaking monks...

...The book ends with a consideration of the Parisian Victorine school, whose masters would be so important in the transition period when theology shifts to the university...

...There are some "boxes" to amplify entries (a list of all popes at the entry on "pope" and a list of the various Eastern churches with their populations under the entry "Eastern Churches"), and both black and white and color illustrations...

...Again, there is an entry on a minor Irish poet, Patrick Kavanaugh, but nothing on writers like Paul Claudel, Francois Maur-iac, Georges Bernanos, et al...

...However, to avoid appearance of any conflict of interest, I should confess to being an associate editor of another one-volume Catholic encyclopedia, published by Harper San Francisco...

...Within that discussion, he assesses a series of perennially asked questions: Does the New Testament call Jesus "God...

...McGinn's work is of inestimable help in that enterprise...

...These are not uninteresting questions, but as McGinn shows in an elaborate appendix to his first volume, there is no unanimity on these and many other topics and, finally, it is not his topic...

...b) that the proper way to approach Christian mysticism is through historical study as mysticism develops in the tradition...

...The two hundred pages of notes, bibliographies, and indices not only provide a resource for further study but McGinn has cited all of his primary works, quoted in the text, in their original language so that those so inclined might check his translations against the original...

...Volume 2 surveys the Christian West from roughly the end of the patristic period down to circa a.d...

...What Brown intends, in short, is to show that one can be at home with the historic-doctrinal tradition of Christology without attempting to read retrospectively into the New Testament insights and dogmatic formulations which took the Christian community centuries of thought and reflection at which to arrive...

...At the same time, he is explicitly aware that a certain naive fundamentalism is unhealthy...

...but none after the Franciscans...

...On the broader topics to which I receive queries such as birth control, abortion, etc., the encyclopedia does better...

...Again, after the article "Catholicism" there is another one on "Catholicism, Irish" but none on "Catholicism, Italian or Polish" or whatever...

...First, oddities: an entry on "mosaic" that turns out not to be about an art form but an adjective for Moses (who does not get an entry...

...it meant speech about God deriving from an authentic understanding of the hidden (mys-tikos) meaning of the Bible...

...at the expense of older figures in the tradition...

...However, there are a few points worth emphasizing...

...As McGinn notes, over thirty monastic rules were written between a.d...