Religion Booknotes
Cunningham, Lawrence S.
~ aybe he looked indeed/ much as Rembrandt envisioned him" wrote the late lamented Denise Levertov, but, in fact, we will never know. However, there is no end to those who wish to provide...
...15 percent, 12 times...
...Berdiaev and Sergius Bulkovsky) and later was connected to that institute as well as a lecturer at the Institut Catholique in Paris and the ecumenical study center in Switzerland...
...Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry edited by Robert Arwan, George Dardess, and Peggy Rosenthal Oxford University Press, $35, 595 pp...
...I loved this book...
...Haughton's extended meditation on how a house gets rebuilt is, of course, a story of transformation and/or conversion for the individual and for society...
...In the final analysis, Tully's book is only a "good read," but for that we should be minimally grateful...
...10 percent, 6 times...
...It would make an excellent retreat companion...
...McFague's solution, in my estimation, is somewhat sentimental and theologically thin...
...Manuscripts Wanted MANUSCRIPTS WANTED...
...Visa and Master Card accepted...
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...This new full version of his book Ages of the Spiritual Life is most welcome---it provides another resource for English speakers to read the work of a person deeply imbued with the Russian theological tradition...
...Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame...
...Evdokimov was acutely aware of the fashionable "existential" intellectual world in which he lived in Paris...
...However, there is no end to those who wish to provide us a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth...
...Evdokimov himself concentrates on the traditional monastic vows, but his concept of "interiorized monasticism" is similar to the recent writings of, say, Kathleen Norris...
...In fairness to Tully, he is not reductionist...
...This wide spectrum includes Korean, Japanese, Latin American, and even Muslim poets from the Middle East...
...favor a biography written about her...
...The good news about this book is that it is immensely readable, and even moving in places...
...Those not well acquainted with the Orthodox world will find this a user-friendly volume...
...Evdokimov (1901-70) belonged to that extraordinary circle of Russian Orthodox writers who found themselves in Paris after the Russian Revolution...
...New University President WASHINGTON THEOLOGICAL UNION is a Roman Catholic graduate school of theology for ministry...
...Indeed, Northcott can give the reader a good sense of the state of the question, as well as some possible trajectories for developing a theological perspective on ecological matters...
...etc...
...The editors organized this book according to the chronology of the Gospels, anchoring each incident, as they say, with poems that most literally follow the text of the Bible...
...interiorized by all believing Christians as they mature in the practice of their faith...
...One of this book's most interesting arguments is Evdokimov's conception of "interiorized monasticism...
...Saint Francis, for one, never uses the word) on a par with love of God and neighbor...
...Discounts 5 percent, 3 times...
...Jesus, of course, is also a person social activists could use to strike out at middle-class religion...
...10115...
...In the final analysis, the assimilation of these virtues, whether it be asceticism correctly understood or the experience of contemplative prayer, all lead to one end: "we are invited to live our faith, to see what is not seen, to contemplate the wisdom of God in the apparent absurdity of history, and to become light, revelation, and prophecy...
...We urgently need an account of Christian theology that embraces a sense of stewardship for the natural world and sees that same world as a sacrament of God's presence...
...Kroll demonstrated an ability to change old structures into new ones while paying tribute both to the former space and contemporary needs...
...Mark Tully's text derives from a fourpart series he did for BBC television on the search for the authentic meaning of Jesus...
...and a timely topic...
...This wonderful anthology of poetry inspired by Jesus and his life demonstrates both the polysemic nature of Jesus as he is understood in the tradition and the ways in which his life has been read throughout the centuries by people of various cultures...
...Super, Natural Christians: How We Should Love Nature by Sallie McFague Fortress, $16, 207 pp...
...This book is not a systematic treatise, so it can be read in an unsystematic fashion...
...What Rosemary Haughton does in this wonderfully satisfying work is to tell us, in a deep and fundamental way, what the words "decent" and "place" and "to live" really mean...
...Commonweal 3 0 September25, 1998...
...The less good news is that the highly suppositious theories of the various scholars do not add up to a coherent whole...
...For those poets who are unknown to us, the full bibliographies in the credits provide further resources to discover...
...The thesis is simply stated: we can reimagine our lives, individual and social, by using the image of the house or home and reflecting on how the "houses of our lives are built and therefore how they can and can't be altered without disaster...
...Volunteers Needed CHEERFUL, RELAXED SISTER(S), laywoman, couple, needed to share ministry of listening, hospitality, prayer, outreach to community, gardening, library, office...
...McFague is open to the charge David Cunningham (no relation) made recently in his incisive study of trinitarian theology, These Three Are One: "...much of this recent 'eco-theology' is composed of roughly 95 percent ecology with theological considerations entering the picture only in order to buttress a position that was already ecologically warranted...
...This anthology also has a nice balance between the contemporary and the past...
...In addition, a candidate should hold an earned doctorate, preferably in theology, and be committed to promoting the significance of theology in the life of the church and its role in the preparation of the Catholic minister...
...Rosemary Haughton is one of my favorite writers on theology so it pleased me a few columns ago to note with Images for Change: The Transformation of Society by Rosemary Luling Haughton Paulist, $19.95,197 pp...
...to the young Nigerian poet Funso Avejina whose poetic sequence "And so it came to pass...
...Advance payment required...
...He was willing to engage that world and he also had a good sense of Roman Catholicism and of continental Protestantism...
...Not all of the poets wrote in a devotional mode...
...405, N.Y., N.Y...
...McFague argues for an attitude toward the natural world that is more sacramental, more dialogical (she is much in debt to Martin Buber), more oriented toward a community of care, and more attuned to a "loving eye" than to an exploitative one...
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...in Pastoral Studies), as well as a variety of continuing education opportunities including residential sabbatical programs for both men and women...
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...We hear Richard Horsley on Jesus as rebel and of the reductionist theories of John Dominic Crossan...
...She pays the obligatory nod to the creation account in Genesis and doffs her hat to Saint Francis of Assisi (seemingly depending almost exclusively on Leonardo Boff's somewhat idiosyncratic view of the saint), but I did not find any sustained theological reflection on the implications of her basic thesis...
...Jesus the Sage is constructed through both a meditation on early monasticism in Egypt (and the inevitable nexus with gnosticism) and a theory, made popular by a British scholar, that Jesus was like an ancient Cynic wandering teacher...
...is a prophetic critique of political and social corruption...
...Interested candidates for the position of President should possess a well-developed theological vision of education for pastoral ministry in the church of the next millennium...
...interviews with various experts...
...It was written as he rides a bus through his native city: "I look at the sky and I look at you/child of a beggarmother, Christ of Calcutta...
...Michael Northcott's The Environment and Christian Ethics (reviewed in this column, January 16) sorts out and offers a critique of the various "models" for such an integration...
...To accomplish that synthesis is not easy...
...an eschatological prophet...
...This book combines her considerable skills as a theologian with her experiences as a social activist and her passion for Christian hospitality...
...thus Sarah Cleghorn's final quatrain of a poem on the trial of Jesus: "Ah, let no local him refuse/Comrade Jesus has paid his dues./Whatever other be debarred/Comrade Jesus has his red card...
...whereas, in fact, the New Testament portrait(s) of Jesus are too complex and too elusive to narrow down to a single all-embracing snapshot...
...This evocative book has all of the trademarks of Haughton's style: she is a storyteller, a reader of cultural theory, a lover of literature, a perceptive student of the sacramental life, and dedicated to the poor and needy...
...The editors go back to early patristic auLawrence S. Cunningham thors like Ignatius of Antioch and Clement of Alexandria, provide a fair selection from the Syriac patristic tradition whose theology is almost always done in poetry and hymns, through the medievals like Dante and Jacopone da Todi to the early modern and into the modern period...
...Evdokimov combines a complete command of the traditional sources with an irenic way of writing...
...Write: Nazareth House, P.O...
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...ALL TYPES...
...The major arguments advanced are hardly new...
...a Wisdom teacher...
...The basic rebuttal would take the form of this question: Are we to love God, neighbor, and nature equally and, if not, what are the discriminations that are necessary to make sense of McFague's affirmation...
...McFague borrows heavily from nature writers like Annie Dillard and Bill McKibben, cites "ecofeminist" theorists and scientific writers like E. O. Wilson...
...an urbane host...
...A candidate should also possess fine communication skills and a collegial administrative style for working with a full-time support staff of twenty and fulltime faculty of approximately twenty-five...
...His theological world view was sensitive to the larger secular world while remaining rooted in the Orthodox world of spirituality, liturgy, and patristics...
...ucated, passionate about his topics, and a probing inquirer...
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...Special orders welcome...
...The value of McFague's book, at least for this reader, is that it serves as a catalyst for arguing against her thesis...
...She has been an author and an activist, and currently lives and directs a community in Massachusetts called Wellspring House which offers hospitality to abused and homeless women and their families...
...If the house serves as Haughton's central image, the virtue which she proposes as fundamental for rebuilding is that of hospitality...
...In fact, he ends by saying that all the portraits he set forth still cannot explain the church and that what matters in the end is the overarching myth of the Resurrection, by which it is even possible today to say "Christ is risen...
...One can love the world which comes from the hand of God without necessarily saying that one loves nature (whatever nature might mean...
...He spends time in the Holy Land in the company of the Dominican Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, a formidable scholar, as well as Rabbi David Rosen and Duke University's E.P...
...This book is, in the fullest sense of the term, "spiritual reading...
...Div., M.A...
...He takes us to India (where he was born and raised) to speak with Christians there, and this allows him to draw some intelligent parallels between Christianity and Hinduism through conversation with Ursula King, an Indologist who is a Christian...
...Fully accredited by the Association of Theological Schools and by the Middle States Association of the Commission on Higher Education, the school offers three degree programs at the Masters level (M...
...Who could not be struck by the tercet of the Bengali poet Nirenda Chakrabart...
...It is poems like that, written from an angle that is not Western and with a vocabulary that is unexpected, that please so much...
...Fax: 212-535-4052...
...This is a book to browse or, for the preacher, to mine...
...Hours: Tuesday- Friday, 10-6, Saturday 10-5 Call us toll-free: 888-311-8949...
...She contrasts the criterion of hospitality to the practice of charity (by which, in this instance, she means the voluntary giving of monies to alleviate problems...
...Send notice of interest by November 1st to: Chair, Presidential Search Committee, Washington Theological Union, 6896 Laurel Street, NW, Washington, DC 20012...
...Fuller said that the only thing Habitat gives away is "the opportunity for a family to have a decent place to live...
...Sallie McFague states the thesis of her book as follows: "Christian practice, lovCommonweal 2 9 September25, 1998 ~LASS I F I E | The Paraclete Book Center 146 East 74th Street, New York, New York 10021 Over 45 years of service to our customers throughout the world...
...The introduction is written by that master of "lite" spirituality, Thomas Moore...
...A wide variety of thoughtfully selected titles, including: FREE AND FAITHFUL: MY LIFE - - H~.ring ALL SAINTS - - EIIsberg GOSPEL LIGHT - - Shea FRIENDS OF GOD AND PROPHETS --Johnson Prompt, careful attention to your phone and gift orders...
...Tully is obviously well-edFour Faces: A Journey in Search of Jesus the Divine, the Jew, the Rebel, the Sage by Mark Tully Ulysses Press, $15, 237 pp...
...I know him mainly through the immense admiration Thomas Merton had for his writings and my own reading of his wonderful book on icons...
...a charismatic rabbi...
...Most of the usual suspects--Dante, Milton, P6guy, Hopkins, etc.--are here...
...I was much struck, for example, by a simple poem, brilliant in its artistic conceit, by the surrealist poet and social critic Jacques Pr6vert...
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...He writes of the Last Supper: "They are at table/they eat not/Nor touch their plates/and their plates stand straight up/Behind their heads...
...It also provides the opportunity to spend some time grumbling about the omission of one's favorite poems...
...Such poets range from the Swiss priest, Thomas Immoos, who has spent his entire adult life in Japan ("Lord, have mercy on us!/Have mercy on your children in the firestorm of Nagasaki...
...12 word minimum...
...At any rate, it is a wonderful read, full of new poems (at least, new to me) as well as welcoming the old poems which, once, everyone with any Catholic culture would have known at least in passing...
...I could not read the versions of Jesus proposed by the various scholars (some connected to the ballyhoo of the "Jesus Seminar" ) without agreeing with Luke Timothy Johnson's critique that the "Questers" are the left Commonweal 2 8 September 25, 1998 wing of the fundamentalist tradition: Jesus must be a Galilean peasant revolutionary...
...In developing this image she relies heavily on the visionary theory of the European architect, Lucien Kroll...
...For additional information call 212-662-4200 or write COMMONWEAL, 475 Riverside Dr., Rm...
...Apart from those who actually enter the monastic life, Evdokimov argues, there is a path in which the traditional monastic values can be (ought to be...
...Email: para@cybernex.netwww: http://www2.cybernex.net/-para/public/ ing God and neighbor as subjects, as worthy of our love in and for themselves, should be extended to nature...
...My major criticism of this work is that--save for a few final homiletical pages hither and yon--McFague is strangely silent about her passion for the world of nature from a theological point of view...
...What is true of the visual arts is equally true of the belletristic tradition...
...Charity, she says, denotes no need for social change, while hospitality forces us to think differently about both our personal house and our social one...
...Gift certificates available...
...I regard Haughton's book The Catholic Thing as one of the wiser books written on the Catholic reality...
...But what makes this collection so intriguing is how it introduces us to unfamiliar poets from unexpected places...
...Phone: 212-535-4050...
...I read the final pages on an airplane and happened to glance through the in-flight magazine which featured an interview with Millard Fuller, the head of Habitat for Humanity...
...These pages are studded with lines from the great patristic writers as well as from the liturgy, thereby giving the text an added thickness and depth...
...Evdokimov himself studied at their Saint Sergius Institute (under Nicholas Ages of the Spiritual Life by Paul Evdokimov Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, $14.95, 263 pp...
...The book reflects the excellent BBC format for documentaries of this sort: lots of scenic travel...
...Sanders...
Vol. 125 • September 1998 • No. 16
