Religion Booknotes

...The roster includes theologians, hymn writers, missionaries, evangelists, church leaders, hierarchs, etc...

...Thielicke's memory is blessed because of his resistance to Nazi ideology, Notes from a Wayfarer, by Helmut Thielicke Paragon, $29.95,422 pp...

...Written from a decidedly conservative Protestant angle, the book is full of people I have never heard of (and that is delightfully instructional in itself), but whose influence from within their Twentieth Century Dictionary of Religious Biography, edited by J. D. Douglas Baker, $24.95,439 pp...

...Philip Sheldrake is one of the more sophisticated writers in the area of Christian spirituality...

...What is does provide, however, is an overview that frames the issues intelligently (for example, the difference between theoretical and practical atheism...

...This leads them to seek their spiritual sustenance from Catholicism...

...the need for personal conversion...

...Michael Paul Gallagher works with the Pontifical Council for Culture in the Vatican...

...He stays close to the sources, has a good eye for historical nuance, and a winsome prose style...

...an event which, in his mind, ruined the German university system in the name of democracy...

...Those responses might well be diverse: from a Barthian proclamation of the revealed word to an unbelieving world to a deep encounter with the challenge of atheism...

...Finally, although the attention of this spirituality to the natural world has been romanticized in "green" (that is, ecological) terms, Sheldrake notes that the ancient Celts did not worry themselves about nature (such a modern anxiety relflects our own alienation from the natural world), but they did meditate profoundly about how to live with the natural world since, as he writes, "they lived in constant contact with it and could not afford to be disrespectful of it...

...Mustered out of military service because of chronic health problems, he not only pastored a church but became a celebrated preacher in Stuttgart (which brought him into conflict on more than one occasion with the Gestapo), and, immediately after the war, a controversial figure because of his critique of the denazification processes of the Allies...

...His little work is a survey of recent writings on unbelief (he begins with Henri de Lubac's 1945 book The Drama of Atheistic Humanism...

...Gallagher indicates what the problematic is and points out how two generations of Catholic thinkers have attempted to come to grips with it...

...In 1954 he went to Hamburg to found a theological faculty (interestingly enough, the establishment of a theological faculty was seen as a necessity to make Hamburg a "real university...

...the partial attempts of Vatican II to discuss the issue of unbelief...

...now turns his hand to the problem of unbelief in the contemporary world...

...What most caught my attention in this very informative work were McGrath's remarks about the need for a deepened Evangelical spirituality...

...Unfortunately, examining the entries for Roman Catholic persons reveals the unevenness of this volume...

...I have been reading desultorily here and there in Douglas's dictionary which, the blurb informs me, contains over 700 entries about people who "have touched the course of modern church history...

...Early tradition held that Gamaliel was a Christian...

...Among the French, how can one omit the late Pere D. M. Chenu or Jean Danielou or Yves Congar or Henri Massignon...

...I believe those leaders in the Jewish community who have refused to meet with Farrakhan should reexamine what they hope to accomplish thereby...

...It taught me a good deal...

...and gives some indications of how the church should respond to the problem...

...McGrath writes some elegant pages distinguishing Evangelical Christianity from fundamentalism while arguing that liberal Christianity has had its day and that the future of the (Protestant) church rests with the Evangelicals...

...We might note en passant how those events shaped a number of European intellectuals (Joseph Ratzinger comes immediately to mind...

...McGrath is not overly parti pris with respect to his fellow Evangelicals, noting their tendency to schism, rigidity, and lack of interest in their historical and spiritual roots...

...He has shown that he is the single black leader who can mobilize African-Americans after decades of inertia...

...As far as I can tell, no recognizable Catholic scholar was among the writers/contributors...

...Living between Worlds reminds us that Christian spirituality is a complex reality whose study recovers for us forgotten or neglected insights in the living out of the gospel...

...Evangelical," of course, is a protean term, but for McGrath it means the Christianity which affirms the supreme authority of Scripture...

...The most interesting part of the book treats of Thielicke's life during the Nazi years...

...Besides de Lubac, who wrote with an eye on the French existentialists, Gallagher has a separate chapter on Karl Rahner's many essays on the "deep" meaning of the loss of a sense of transcendence...

...For, as he said, "if this movement of theirs is of human origin, it will break up of its own accord...

...but if it does in fact come from God you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God...

...It is, I am afraid, actions like this attempt to suppress discussion of difficult questions that give rise to what Pius IX saw as "the pest of indifference," especially about the church's teaching authority...

...From the North American perspective, Gallagher rightly brings to the center of his discussion Michael Buckley's fundamental book, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (1987...

...He made clear why this march was so successful, and the role Farrakhan plays in the African-American community, a community that has been besieged in this country by slavery, Jim Crow, economic subjugation, political impotence, inept do-gooders, a disastrous and hated welfare system, and, today, drugs, violence, and continued economic limitations...

...and History (Crossroad, 1992), already praised in these notes, is now a standard work...

...indeed, his reputation as a preacher probably outshines his reputation as a seminal theological thinker, although he was an early (and very perceptive) critic of Karl Barth...

...and the importance of Christian community...

...CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 4) cil, but rather a Vatican office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that has decided to claim to throw the cloak of infallibility around a particular practice...

...A goodly number of pages are devoted to a litany of important lectures given, prominent people met, and alliances made with industrialists to raise monies for academic enterprises...

...particular denominations I have no reason to doubt...

...This is a very brief work which makes no claim to an au fond discussion of this vexing issue for the world of believers...

...That deficiency most likely explains the conspicuous omissions and, alas, indicates that not everything is done these days with an ecumenical evenness...

...Two other chapers sketch out attempts to enter into dialogue with the world of unbelief with particular efforts made in Canada and France, as well as the contributions made by Hispanic theologians who have brought the perspective of liberation theology to the table...

...Thielicke pays no attention at all to the theological significance of the Holocaust (indeed, he barely acknowledges the persecution of the Jews beyond what he personally saw during the war years...

...Wycliff scored a knockout...

...The result is a highly readable book which may lead the reader to seek out other works mentioned in the brief bibliography...

...I was particularly impressed by his lifelong fidelity to an academic and a church vocation...

...yet we have to measure the ability and intent of those who have shown evidence of anti-Semitism to do real harm, and to judge whether, in fact, there is also evidence of a sincere desire to move beyond past positions and assertions...

...His present volume derives from his research interest in the relationship of spirituality and place...

...The winner is Wycliff In the David R. Carlin-Don Wycliff face-off on Louis Farrakhan [November 17,1995], I think Mr...

...the necessity of both personal and social evangelization...

...JOSEPH D. POLICANO Luquillo, Puerto Rico...

...Part of Paulist's series What Are They Saying about..., this book provides a overview of a half-century of writing by theologians on the culture of atheism...

...Buckley argues, persuasively, that the modern attempt to "prove" God's existence, apart from any consideration of religious experience or Christology, had the unexpected consequence of narrowing the discussion into a philosophical argument whose cogency diminished with the rise of science-an argument not unlike that made by James Turner, in his work on American unbelief, whose conclusions were not that different from Buckley's, to wit, that the guardians of belief undermined credibility...

...A brief epilogue highlights the efforts of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in Milan to evangelize his diocese within the context of the culture of unbelief...

...In that same chapter, Gallagher briefly adds the work of Johannes B. Metz, Walter Kasper, and the Protestant, Dorothy Solle, who refine the work of Rahner...

...If this work notes the late ecumenist Gustave Weigel (as it should) how does one explain the absence of John Courtney Murray, the architect of Vatican II's doctrine on religious liberty...

...Peter Maurin...

...After the war he held a professional chair at Tubingen and for a time served as rector...

...For that reason, McGrath himself is at work on a foundational study of spirituality which, when completed, should be a book worthy of serious attention...

...He notes that those who commit themselves to an Evangelical life (he is writing of his students at Oxford) tend to find little spiritual nourishment from within their own tradition...

...Sheldrake is correctly resistant to strolling into such green mists...

...Christian (monastic) life was located in seclusion, but not so isolated as to forbid interaction with people, just as it organized itself in a pattern that reflected the social construction of the population as a whole...

...Perhaps those who believe in the imposition of authority rather than free discussion should turn to Acts 5:34-39, and read about the wise Gamaliel, who warned the Sanhedrin to take no action against the Christians...

...the lordship of Jesus Christ as man and God...

...McGrath is a much-published Evangelical theologian who teaches at Wy-cliffe College (Oxford...

...However, what is somewhat surprising is how little space is given to theological comment on the shaping events of his time...

...Sheldrake is not insensitive to the darker elements of Celtic life (its ferocious penitential elements) and is equally careful not to go beyond what the sources tell us (for example, about the links between Celtic Christianity and the Druids...

...behind these texts may well stand an older stratum of Celtic prayers and devotions...

...by Michael Paul Gallagher, S. J. Paulist, $6.95., 84 pp...

...Or figures like Dorothy Day...

...Drawing on the scholarly work of Nora Chadwick, Kathleen Hughes, and Lisa Bitel, this essay is an economical and highly readable meditation on the Christianity of Celtic culture...

...In 1964 he was called to Munich to a chair in which he would be the counterpart to his Catholic colleague, Karl Rahner...

...a resistance which cost him his chair at Heidelberg (he spent the war years as a pastor and preacher...

...With that combination of skills, he is able to be quite informative about Celtic monasticism (noting, for example, that such communities were, in instances, like villages which included married monks and their families), the character and role of Celtic crosses, the Celtic urge for pilgrimage and wandering as a dialectical counterpoint to monastic stability, and the lovely religious literature produced by these Christians...

...On my scale of one to ten, this not uninteresting compilation gets a four...

...Yes, his past statements are hateful, but I believe in redemption...

...to point out some dangers within the movement...

...One source I intend to look at is the recent edition of the Carmina Gadelica-a collection of texts that reflect the oral tradition of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland...

...All exercise intellectual influence to this day while the pop-ularizer Henri Daniel-Rops (who did make the list) is long forgotten.Where is the late John Tracy Ellis...

...Readers of these notes know of the soft spot I have for reference books, both for the offbeat bits of information they provide and for the pleasure they afford as one passes an odd hour or two in their perusal...

...His Spirituality Living between Worlds: Place and Journey in Celtic Spirituality, by Philip Sheldrake Cozvley,$9.95,U4pp...

...but whether Christian or Jew, he must have been a man of extraordinary common sense: a characteristic much more rare among us than claims to infallibility...

...Lawrence S. Cunningham is chair of the department and teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...

...the possible resources of apophatic theology...

...The emphasis on pilgrimage and self-exile is a complex reality that had penitential elements, missionary ones, and a strong sense of trust in Providence...

...His mature life spanned the tumultuous days of the Weimar Republic, the period of National Socialism, and the postwar reconstruction...

...Sheldrake is especially good on the tensions that existed in Celtic spirituality...

...the lordship of the Holy Spirit...

...Catholic colleagues at Tubingen and Munich are mentioned, at best, in a tangential fashion...

...It was while he was in Munich that he was traumatized by the student revolts of 1967-68...

...Anyone interested in one of the most vigorous strands of Christianity would find this a book full of good sense and written in an irenic style...

...Thielicke was very much the German professor, but it was only after 1968 that he could see that a younger generation found the German professorate both an honored and a troubling position to have...

...An Irish theologian whose writings on prayer I have much admired, he What Are They Saying about Unbelief...

...He is also a sympathetic, if critical, observer of Roman Catholicism...

...It is important to maintain eternal vigilance against hate...

...The Orthodox fare better, thanks, I suspect, to having Stanley Harakas among the contributors (but why did the brilliant Russian theologians, Vladimir Lossky and Paul Evdokimov, get omitted...

...There is a huge amount of romantic New Ageish blather written about Celtic religiosity...

...It would be foolhardy to think, however, that the evident religiosity of the American people negates the seriousness of the problem of modern atheism...

...In his account of the period of the 1960s he does not mention the Second Vatican Council...

...The "select bibliography" at the end of the volume would give a first beginning to those who would like to flesh out the survey which Gallagher gives us in this handy little book...

...That insight I can confirm from my own limited experience...

...Thielicke's memoir (for it is more memoir than autobiography) would interest anyone who would like a tour of German theological intellectual life in the twentieth century...

...Rahner moved from framing the issue of unbelief in terms of the problem of the concept of God to the more fundamental question concerning how the very meaning of God is being lost in modern culture...

...In this book, formed from a series of lectures he has given on both sides of the Atlantic, he sets out two tasks: one is both to affirm the intellectual and spiritual vigor of Evangelical Christianity and, second, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity, by Alistair McGrath InterVarsity Press, $16.95,209 pp...

...Or novelists like Flannery O'Connor...

...It was only by a fluke that he was not arrested with those who participated in the bomb plot against Hitler during the war...

...NICHOLAS R. CLIFFORD New Haven, Vt...