Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology

Earlier this year, in a long review of a fascinating new collection, I drew attention in particular to the work of Radu Bordeianu on Dumitru Staniloae, widely regarded as Romania's pre-eminent theologian of the twentieth century. Now the latter again occupies the former's attention in a welcome new book to be released later this year:

Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology (Ecclesiological Investigations) (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2011), 240pp.


  About this book, the publisher says: 

Widely considered the most important Orthodox theologian of the twentieth     century, Dumitru Staniloae (1903-1993) contributed significantly to an ecumenical understanding of these themes. Because of his isolation by the Romanian Communist regime, his work still awaits its merited reception, especially given its potential contribution towards Christian unity.

In Staniloae's understanding the Church is a communion in the image of the Trinity. Because there is a continuum of grace between the Trinity and the Church, the same relationships that exist among trinitarian persons are manifested in creation in general, and the Church in particular. In this way, the Trinity fills the world and the Church, determining their mode of existence. Intratrinitarian relationships are manifested in the relationships between humankind and non-human creation, the Church and the world, local and universal aspects of the Church, clergy and the people, and among various charisms.

We also have the table of contents:

Introduction
Part One - Ecumenical Ecclesiology
Chapter 1 - Open Sobornicity: Staniloae's Interaction with the West
Chapter 2 - Filled with the Trinity: The Relationship between the Trinity and the Church
Part Two - Filled With the Trinity
Chapter 3 - Adoptive Children of the Father: The Relationship between the Father and the Church Chapter 4 - Body of Christ: The Relationship between the Son and the Church
Chapter 5 - Filled with the Spirit: The Relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Church
Part Three - Communion Ecclesiology
Chapter 6 - Priesthood Toward Creation
Chapter 7 - The Priesthood of the Church: Communion between Clergy and the People
Chapter 8 - Locality and Universality: Eucharistic Ecclesiology
Conclusion
Bibliography

I greatly look forward to reading this, reviewing it for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, and discussing it on here--as well as interviewing the author in the weeks ahead. 

The Development of Christology

Many people today, alas, know little history, and even less Christian, specifically doctrinal, history. They are as a result often upset to hear of the vigorous debates--not to say fights--that embroiled many Christians between the third and eighth centuries especially. Along comes a new book surveying the development of Christological doctrine and challenging some of the assumptions about that development: 

Charles Talbert, The Development of Christology During the First Hundred Years: And Other Essays on Early Christian Christology (Brill, 2011, 200pp.).

About this book the publisher says:

Entering the debate about the development of Christology among Jesus' earliest followers, this volume critiques both the traditional evolutionary view that posited an elementary early Jewish Christology that developed in complexity as it was increasingly Hellenized and the more recent attempt to see a full-orbed Christology both as early and as Jewish, not Hellenistic, in its categories. It contends that during the first 100 years Jesus' followers employed four models from their milieu, Jewish and Greco-Roman, both to understand and to communicate their Christologies. These models were … read moreappropriated because they were appropriate vehicles for expressing the impact of Jesus on them, past, present, and future

Desert Fathers and Mothers

Interest in the Fathers, especially those of the deserts of Egypt, remains high. In the last decade more than a dozen books have appeared. Especially noteworthy are several volumes by John Chryssavgis, including In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers; and Tim Vivian, ed., Becoming Fire: Through the Year with the Desert Fathers and Mothers.

Now another book has been released just last week: David G.R. Keller, Desert Banquet: A Year of Wisdom from the Desert Mothers and Fathers (Liturgical Press, 2011), 256pp.

About this book, the publisher says:

The wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers lies in their experiences of solitude, prayer, community life, work, and care for their neighbors. Their goal was transformation of their lives through openness to the presence and energy of God in Christ. They taught by example and by sharing narratives and sayings that reflect the deep human psychological and spiritual aspects of their journey toward authentic human life. The venue for their transformation was the whole person—body, mind, and spirit. They emphasized self-knowledge, humility, purity of heart, and love of God and neighbor. Far from being naïve, their sayings and narratives reflect honest struggles, temptations, and failures. They also demonstrate the disciplines of prayer and meditation that kept them centered in God as their only source of strength. The daily reflections in Desert Banquet introduce readers to a variety of these early Christian mentors and offer reflections on the significance of their wisdom for life in the twenty-first century.

The noted Orthodox theologian John McGuckin, whose work we have discussed on here several times, has praised Keller's book thus:

"This delightful book presents a year´s daily readings from the Early Christian Desert tradition, with a very helpful spiritual commentary for each date. It is a veritable pocket Philokalia, such as we hear about in The Way of the Pilgrim. Fr. David Keller has done a great service in providing this very profound source of lectio divina for those seriously interested in the spiritual path."

The Copts and the Muslims

Those of us who have spent 2011 very anxiously watching events unfold in Egypt cannot but have an increasingly sickening feeling that initial suspicions are being borne out and things are going from bad to worse for the Coptic Christians in that country.

Too many journalists, bloggers, and even would-be academics such as Walter Russell Mead cannot bother to bestir themselves to understand the situation of the Copts beyond mindlessly repeating demonstrably false and thoroughly discredited slanders, the grossest and most lamentably common of which is that, in the mid-seventh century, the Copts "welcomed" invasion by Arab Muslims, supposedly with open arms. Serious historians who know what they are talking about have shown this to be false--but to paraphrase Robert Taft at Orientale Lumen in June, why bother studying history when instead you can just make it up?

Most recently this absurd myth of Coptic welcoming of Muslim conquest has again been debunked by Sidney Griffth in his essay "The Syriac-Speaking Churches and the Muslims in the Medinan Era of Muhammad and the Four Caliphs," part of a collection edited by Dietmar Winkler and entitled Syriac Churches Encountering Islam: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives (Pro Oriente Studies in the Syriac Tradition). I have noted the contents of this book before and hope to have a long review of it posted in the weeks ahead.

Griffith, author of The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, in the above-noted essay shows that the idea of Coptic welcome of invasion stems from a notoriously misquoted and misunderstood letter from Isho'yabh III (d. 659), patriarch of the "Church of the East." When read in context, that letter, on "closer inspection reveals that the writers were not so much voicing a welcome for what we recognize in hindsight as the onset of the Islamic conquest as they were invidiously comparing even Arab rule, which they disdained, to the oppressive conduct of their previous governors....[T]he Christians of all denominations unanimously regarded the conquest as a disaster"(28; emphasis mine). May this pernicious fiction die the death it deserves. And more important, may the Copts soon obtain that freedom from persecution that they have for too long been denied.

Orthodoxy in the Spiritual Marketplace

Twice in as many years, I have heard lectures by Amy Slagle of the University of Southern Mississippi, and both were fascinating. Both were delivered in the context of the ASEC conference, which is really one of the most outstanding academic conferences I've attended, marked by a wonderful spirit of collegiality, thanks in no small part to the leadership of the lovely and delightful Jenn Spock, an historian of Russian monasticism teaching at Eastern Kentucky University under whom the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture (ASEC) goes from strength to strength. At the most recent conference, held at Ohio State University (whose Hilandar Research Library and Resource Centre for Medieval Slavic Studies, under Dr. Predrag Matejic's leadership, really is an outstanding place) October 7-8, Slagle gave another paper on the role of Seraphim Rose in contemporary American Orthodoxy.

Slagle has just recently published her first book, based on her doctoral dissertation: The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity (Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 207pp.

This is a superlative study, and I warmly recommend it. I think that sociologists of religion, anthropologists studying religious communities, and of course Eastern Christians themselves, perhaps especially pastors and hierarchs looking to understand the mindset of many converts to Orthodoxy today, would benefit greatly from reading the only study of its kind in North America today.

One of the several happy aspects of this book is how wonderfully it is written. Slagle--unlike too many people trained in the methods of the modern social sciences--writes with great lucidity and cogency, eschewing the often jargon-laden, leaden, and lethal prose one so often finds in social-science journals and books. Slagle herself said to me that the book is a fast read, and indeed it is; but one should not allow the speed with which the pages turn to distract one from the many and significant insights she weaves into her analysis of the fascinating stories of the forty-eight converts to Orthodoxy whom she studied in different parts of the country and in different Orthodox churches. This is a ground-breaking book, and in its care to tell stories honestly and analyze them without imposing an ideological agenda, Slagle sets the bar high for future studies--and notes the need for such studies because hers has not, she is at pains to say, been "a complete, comprehensive, or generally representative portrait of  'the conversion experience' of American-born converts to Orthodox Christianity" (37).

After two introductory chapters--the first on Orthodoxy in general, the second on Eastern Orthodoxy in the context of late-modern North American pluralism--Slagle turns, in chapter three, to the diversity of practices used to receive converts into Orthodoxy, depending, inter alia, on whether they were baptized before or not; and if so, from which tradition they may be coming. There is, as John Erickson and others have noted, no consistent practice on how other Christians are received into Orthodoxy. Chapters 4-6 are the heart of the book, exploring the meaning and motivation of conversion, the perspectives of converts on Orthodox liturgics and ritual, and then the convert's perspective on the question of ethnicity in Orthodoxy.

One of the many fascinating insights Slagle uncovers through structured interviews with her subjects, and through participant-observation of Orthodox parish life, is that "even in their embrace of Orthodox tradition, converts retain generalized American assumptions that religion should promote interior growth, fulfillment, and psychological comfort" (15). Many of them come to embrace Orthodoxy through a quintessentially modern American method of  "church shopping" in which "church affiliation [is] more a matter of personal taste than an imperative to find the doctrinally true" (47). I was especially fascinated by Slagle showing that even for those converts for whom some notion of objective truth was ostensibly their motive for converting, a "subjective view of religion as a kind of handmaiden to the needs of the self was not easily shaken" (48). The paradoxes of modernity, and the The Triumph of the Therapeutic, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to outwit. (In the memorable words of the late Richard John Neuhaus in his The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World, converts are often those who "exult in the freedom to submit to authority with wild abandon"!) This idea of "religion" as therapeutic, aimed towards my happiness, runs smack into "one of the most common informant responses to the question of difficulties they [coverts] had encountered in becoming or being Orthodox," namely fasting.

Slagle's chapter on ethnicity and converts is full of surprises (as are her findings of the differences in how converts by marriage are treated vs. converts who come as seekers from other traditions) on the part of the attitude both of the converts, and of the parishioners and clergy in their new-found communities. The stories of converts, and the reactions of priests and cradle members of parishes, are all told with Slagle's careful, unobtrusive, and very even-handed manner.

In her conclusion, Slagle notes that "these conversions defy simple characterizations" (157) and are often not the end of the story: "many converts...leave the Orthodox Church for other religious options" (161). Let us hope that Slagle will next turn her hand to exploring these converts who leave Orthodoxy, and their reasons for doing so, for that would make for another welcome book, as likely as fascinating and well-written as The Eastern Church in the Spiritual Marketplace: American Conversions to Orthodox Christianity.

Author Interview: Christopher D.L. Johnson

Last weekend, at the very rich and rewarding ASEC conference, I met Christopher Johnson, author of Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer: Contesting Contemplation (Continuum Advances In Religious Studies, 2010, 224pp.). I interviewed him about his book

AD: Please tell us about your background. 

I am currently an instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. I received my B.A. in Philosophy and Religious Studies from Rhodes College (Memphis, TN) and my M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Edinburgh. My research agenda focuses on the ongoing interpretation and adaptation of Orthodox Christian beliefs and practices both within the Church and in other settings.

Tell us why you wrote this book:

I wrote this book for several reasons. I had a very vague idea of what the Jesus Prayer was growing up and, after reading J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, The Way of a Pilgrim, and other works, it became clear that there was an interesting struggle at work over the proper use and interpretation of the practice. This fascinated me and gave a concrete direction for my dissertation, providing a methodology that dealt mainly with issues of hermeneutics, reception, and appropriation. Another reason for writing the book was that there is practically nothing written about hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer that is not explicitly theological or comparative. While I value these approaches, I felt my role as a scholar within religious studies could be put to use in beginning to fill such a gap and extending the discussion beyond its traditional boundaries.

For whom was the book written—did you have a particular audience in mind?

The book is written for those with a scholarly interest in hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer. It is also, more generally, for those who study Christian mysticism and contemplative practices in Christianity, the reception and adaptation of religious practices, or Byzantine/medieval Christian history and theology and its impact on contemporary spirituality. While it is aimed at a scholarly audience, I believe the general idea of the book will be of interest to those wanting to learn about contemporary spirituality and Orthodox Christianity.

What about your own background led you to the writing of this book? 
 

The Jesus Prayer was somewhat familiar to me from a young age since I grew up in an Orthodox Christian environment. I only became more aware and interested in the practice while in college. My master's thesis was on the relationship between the philosophical phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the phenomenology of religion promoted by Mircea Eliade, arguing for an embodied understanding of Eliade's terms 'sacred' and 'profane'. My doctoral dissertation, which was the seed of this book, continued several themes from my master's thesis, but was a departure in its focus on Eastern Orthodox prayer. I spent two months on Mount Athos during 2008 to immerse myself in the historical epicenter of the practice of the Jesus Prayer and this obviously had both a profound academic and personal impact in relation to the book.

Were there any surprises you discovered in your writing?

It is surprising that there are so few scholars working on this topic! As I wrote, I also began to see many themes in my research that reoccur in other settings, usually in different ways. One example of this would be the discourse on appropriation. Some feel non-Orthodox use of the Jesus Prayer is a dangerous and disrespectful appropriation while others feel justified in using this practice outside of an Orthodox context without approval since they do not see the practices as owned by anyone. This is a topic relevant to many contemporary debates, such as that over the appropriation of Native American spirituality, but the way it plays out in relation to the Jesus Prayer is unique and not reducible to any general model of appropriation. This is something I touch on at the end the book, but hope to elaborate on more fully in a future study.

Are there similar books out there, and if so, how is yours different? 

Most available books on this topic deal with questions such as the history of hesychasm, how to pray the Jesus Prayer, and how the prayer is similar or dissimilar to other religious practices. In other words, existing works are typically historical, theological, or polemical. I have tried to adopt theories and methodologies from the social sciences and humanities instead to consider the interplay between the past and present of this contemplative tradition. There are several related studies that have come out recently that add significantly to this subject area, such as Daniel Payne's The Revival of Political Hesychasm in Contemporary Orthodox Thought: The Political Hesychasm of John Romanides and Christos Yannaras and Irina Paert's Spiritual Elders: Charisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy among others. Veronica della Dora's recent book Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to World War II also takes a similar methodological approach by studying the various ways in which Mount Athos has been represented and imagined in its history. These are welcome contributions to what is, I hope, a burgeoning area of study.

Sum up briefly the main themes/ideas/insights of Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer: Contesting Contemplation:

The main idea of the book is that, as hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer have spread and become globalized, they have also become inevitably contested (thus the title). While these were originally monastic practices passed along orally and then through monastic texts, when the writings were compiled and published for a general audience in the eighteenth century, the practices gradually made their way into the awareness of the general public. This shift from the controlled interpretive environment of oral monastic instruction to a pluralistic situation where various interpretations vie for legitimacy has caused a multiplication of competing uses and views of the practice. I argue that each such view of the Jesus Prayer and hesychasm can be best understood by considering its overall worldview and conception of religious authority, tradition, and ownership.

Augustine of Hippo and Orthodoxy

Too many Orthodox polemicists and apologists, who--as the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has himself admitted--invariably know very little about what they are railing against and have almost never read the sources they fatuously criticize (and do not have the languages to read those sources in their originals), are fond of holding up Augustine of Hippo as one of the worst offenders in Western theology's supposed long trajectory into heresy and outer darkness and ultimately separation from the East. To be able to sum up thus the unspeakably vast and complex corpus of Augustine's works is a little breath-taking. (That is not to say that there are not aspects of Augustine thinking unworthy of criticism--indeed there are.)

The place and understanding of Augustine came up last weekend at the outstanding ASEC conference where Amy Slagle--on whose wonderful new book I shall have more to say next week I hope--presented a paper on the influence of the late Seraphim Rose. In the discussion after her lecture, I asked for her thoughts on why, in some respects, Rose seemed to return to Augustine each year for the former's Lenten readings when (a) Rose seemed to rather severely misunderstand Augustine; and (b) Rose was so highly critical of many other aspects of Latin Christianity.

I read Rose many years ago now and put him out of my mind as an obvious crank whose interpretation of Augustine (to whom he always referred with strange circumlocutions and epithets), inter alia, was, to put it charitably, sui generis. But in misunderstanding Augustine, Rose is not at all sui generis in many respects. Augustine is, in fact, regularly (tendentiously) misunderstood by some Eastern Christians today, though if they attended to three recent studies many of the misunderstandings would be cleared up. First, more than ten years ago now, there was Myroslaw Tataryn's Augustine and Russian Orthodoxy, a careful study that still repays attention today.

Then in 2008, we had two important studies. The first was a very lucid and compelling article by Peter Galadza, “The Liturgical Commemoration of Augustine in the Orthodox Church: An Ambiguous Lex Orandi for an Ambiguous Lex Credendi,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52 (2008): 111-130.

The second was a very welcome, and widely praised, collection of articles by George E. Demacopoulos and Aristotle Papanikolaou, eds., Orthodox Readings of Augustine (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2008), 304pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us that it

not only presents Eastern Orthodox readings of the great Latin theologian, but also demonstrates the very nature of theological consensus in ecumenical dialogue, from a referential starting point of the ancient and great Fathers. This collection exemplifies how, once, the Latin and Byzantine churches, from a deep communion of the faith that transcended linguistic, cultural and intellectual differences, sang from the same page a harmonious song of the beauty of Christ. Contributors are: Lewis Ayres, John Behr, David Bradshaw, Brian E. Daley, George E. Demacopoulos, Elizabeth Fisher, Reinhard Flogaus, Carol Harrison, David Bentley Hart, Joseph T. Lienhard, Andrew Louth, Jean-Luc Marion, Aristotle Papanikolaou, and David Tracy. 

In the last review he ever wrote for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, the noted Augustine scholar J. Kevin Coyle--before his untimely death a year ago--noted of Orthodox Readings of Augustine that "all the volume’s entries are thoughtfully written and rarely does the reader’s mind wander" and in sum this book constitutes "a welcome contribution to dialogue between East and West on Augustine."

Religion and Russian Foreign Policy

Last weekend, while at the fantastic ASEC conference at Ohio State, I listened to Lucien Frary present on his research into the role of Orthodoxy in shaping Russian foreign policy in the nineteenth century, especially vis-à-vis the Ottoman Empire and its many Orthodox Christians, for whom Russia felt some solicitude. The role of religion in Russian politics and policy continues to come in for fresh examination, including now in a forthcoming book by Alicja Curanovi: The Religious Factor in Russia's Foreign Policy (Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series, 2012, 400pp.).


About this book, the publisher says that it

examines how religion interacts with Russian foreign policy, arguing that religion is an important and neglected factor in shaping Russia’s outlook towards international relations. It surveys the importance of religion in Russian social life - past and present - and considers the range of attitudes which are affected by religion – such as Russian nationalism, notions of Slavic solidarity, the divine mission of Russian Orthodox civilisation, Russian imperialism, and Russia’s special approach towards Islam. The book discusses how religious organizations, especially the Russian Orthodox Church, operate in international relations, pursuing, through ‘religious diplomacy’ their own interests and those of the Russian state; explores how religious ideas and culture linked to religion impinge on Russian attitudes and identity, and thereby affect policy; and demonstrates how policy influenced by religion impacts on Russian foreign policy in practice in a wide range of examples, including Russia’s relations with other Orthodox countries, non-orthodox Western countries, Muslim countries, Israel and the Vatican.

Ressourcement

For Christians of all traditions, the Catholic-led ressourcement movement has to be counted among the great achievements of the twentieth century. Those who were a part of this movement included many French Dominicans (such as Yves Congar, left) and Jesuits (such as Henri de Lubac,right).

Their work contributed to a renewal of theology not only in the Catholic Church, where it paved the way for the Second Vatican Council, but in Orthodoxy and increasingly Protestantism as well. Now a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press promises to examine this movement anew: 

Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray, eds., Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-century Catholic Theology (2012), 584pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology provides both a historical and a theological analysis of the achievements of the renowned generation of theologians whose influence pervaded French theology and society in the period 1930 to 1960, and beyond. It considers how the principal exponents of ressourcement, leading Dominicans and Jesuits of the faculties of Le Saulchoir (Paris) and Lyon-Fourviere, inspired a renaissance in twentieth-century Catholic theology and initiated a movement for renewal that contributed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. The book assesses the origins and historical development of the biblical, liturgical, and patristic ressourcement in France, Germany, and Belgium, and offers fresh insights into the thought of the movement's leading scholars. It analyses the fierce controversies that erupted within the Jesuit and Dominican orders and between leading ressourcement theologians and the Vatican. The volume also contributes to the elucidation of the complex question of terminology, the interpretation of which still engenders controversy in discussions of ressourcement and nouvelle theologie. It concludes with reflections on how the most important movement in twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology continues to impact on contemporary society and on Catholic and Protestant theological enquiry in the new millennium.

Chapters of particular interest to Eastern Christians will include:

• 22: Brian E. Daley, SJ (University of Notre Dame, USA): Knowing God in history and in the church: Dei Verbum and 'nouvelle théologie'
• 25: Paul McPartlan (Catholic University of America, Washington DC, USA): Ressourcement, Vatican II, and eucharistic ecclesiology 
• 29: Paul D. Murray (Durham University, UK): Expanding Catholicity through Ecumenicity in the Work of Yves Congar: Ressourcement, Receptive Ecumenism, and Catholic Reform
• 31: Andrew Louth (Durham University, UK): French ressourcement theology and Orthodoxy: a living mutual relationship?

Look for this to be reviewed in 2012 in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. 

Saint Katherine of Alexandria

Alexandria has long been in the forefront of Christian scholarly centres, with many illustrious names attached to her prominence--Origen, Clement, Athanasius, and others, including perhaps the most famous woman whose life has long captivated many Christians, both East and West. that life was famously told six hundred years ago in a book now newly translated:

John Capgrave, The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria, trans. Karen Winstead (ND Texts Medieval Culture) (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 168pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

The fifteenth-century scholar and Augustinian friar John Capgrave took as his subject the virgin martyr Katherine of Alexandria, who was an anomalous cultural icon, a scholar, and a sovereign whose story unsettled traditional gender stereotypes yet was widely popular throughout Western Europe. Capgrave’s Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria (ca. 1445) stands out among the hundreds of surviving vernacular and Latin narrations about the saint by its intricate plotting, its moral complexity, its obtrusive Chaucerian narrator, and its attention to psychology, history, and theology. The Life of Saint Katherine is a bold literary experiment that transforms the genre of the saint’s life by infusing it with conventions and techniques more often associated with chronicles, mystery plays, fabliaux, and romances. In Capgrave’s hands, Katherine emerges as a sensitive and studious young woman torn between social responsibilities and personal desires. Her story unfolds in a vividly realized world of political turmoil and religious repression that, as Capgrave’s readers were bound to suspect, had everything to do with the England they inhabited and its recent past. Katherine’s debate with her lords anticipates arguments for and against female rule that would be made in Tudor England, when the ascensions of Mary I and then Elizabeth I made gynecocracy a political reality, while her debate with the philosophers is a daring exercise in vernacular theology that flouts the censorship then current.

Winstead’s translation—the first into idiomatic modern English—brings to life Capgrave’s sharply drawn characters, compelling plot, and complex, unsettling moral. Its promotion of an informed, intellectualized Christianity during a period known for censorship and repression illuminates the struggle over the definition of orthodoxy that was excited by the perceived threat of Lollard heresy during the fifteenth century. This volume also includes an appendix with passages of Capgrave's original Middle English and literal translations into modern English, providing a valuable tool for teachers and students.

Orthodoxy and Human Rights

A few years ago, in a long review essay I wrote of new books on Orthodoxy and sociopolitical questions, I noted the fact that Orthodoxy is almost invariably ignored in any recent attempts to ask "What do Christians think about social, economic, or political issues?" If attention is paid, it is usually to slag Orthodoxy as being hopelessly, helplessly bound up with some configuration of "Caseropapism" or other, notwithstanding the fact that no serious scholar accepts that label today.

Happily, we are seeing better attempts today to be more rigorous and precise in analyzing Orthodoxy and its relations to politics and the state, and in particular that uniquely modern question of the nature of human rights. Two recent studies aid us in this task. The first is from the prolific John McGuckin, "The Issue of Human Rights in Byzantium and the Orthodox Christian Tradition." This essay may be found in a new collection, John Witte and Frank Alexander, eds., Christianity and Human Rights: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 400pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Combining Jewish, Greek, and Roman teachings with the radical new teachings of Christ and St. Paul, Christianity helped to cultivate the cardinal ideas of dignity, equality, liberty and democracy that ground the modern human rights paradigm. Christianity also helped shape the law of public, private, penal, and procedural rights that anchor modern legal systems in the West and beyond. This collection of essays explores these Christian contributions to human rights through the perspectives of jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and history, and Christian contributions to the special rights claims of women, children, nature and the environment. The authors also address the church's own problems and failings with maintaining human rights ideals. With contributions from leading scholars, including a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, this book provides an authoritative treatment of how Christianity shaped human rights in the past, and how Christianity and human rights continue to challenge each other in modern times.

Later this year, Peeters has a forthcoming book that will make for very interesting reading, treating the topic at length:  A. Brüning and E. van der Zweerde, eds., Orthodoxy and Human Rights (Peeters, 2011), x+387pp. 

The publisher provides the following blurb:

Orthodox theology and the Orthodox Churches had, and continue to have an ambiguous relationship towards the concept of Human Rights: principal approval often stands alongside serious criticism. This is especially true for those Orthodox Churches which have their centre in a country of the former Soviet sphere. On the one hand, especially since the fall of Communism they enjoy religious freedom that forms a central element within the framework of Human Rights. On the other hand, the transformation process of the 1990s and the challenge of pluralism and globalization have all confronted them with aspects of freedom that could not but affect their stance towards the Human Rights concept in general. This also means, that doubts and reservations related to this concept came to the fore again, which had yet existed already decades before. These reservations focused on such issues as Church and secular society, Church and state, furthermore on the understanding of central terms such as "freedom", "dignity", "rights" - central also for an Orthodox anthropology, that needs to be reconciled with the partly differing approaches behind the Human Rights concept.

The chapters of this volume try and explore as much the philosophical and theological as the social, historical and practical aspects of this complex relationship. Based either on the discussion of differing theological concepts, or on empirical and concrete case studies respectively, they clearly show the tensions and fractures that do exist. On the other hand, in this way they also hint at possibilities to overcome these tensions, to continue a dialogue that already has begun, and to avoid the numerous misunderstandings between East and West which currently tend to form a hindrance to this dialogue at various points.

I look forward to seeing this discussed on here, and reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. 

Diaries of Met. Maxim Hermaniuk at Vatican II

I am an unrepentant reader of diaries, especially, as it happens, of "controversial" but hugely entertaining Englishmen such as the greatest Catholic writer of his generation, Evelyn Waugh or the Tory cabinet minister Alan Clark: The Diaries 1972 - 1999, a racy collection by a man who could have rivaled Waugh for the political incorrectness award of the twentieth century. The genre of a diary was, of course, made most famous by that of another Englishman, Samuel Pepys. Many others have followed suite down through the ages. E.g., John Colville's The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939-1955 offers fascinating insights into the Second World War in general and Churchill's direction of it in particular. For the same time, The Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907-1964 are also fascinating, not least for Nicolson's very unusual marriage to Vita Sackville-West.

In theology, the diary is not a major genre, though there are arguments to be made that some of the classical literature of the Fathers, including much of the patristic literature of the desert, along with Augustine's Confessions come close to what we understand as a diary in the modern sense. But it is in the last two centuries in particular that we find more celebrated examples of theological diarists, including, once more, the greatest Englishman of his day, John Henry Cardinal Newman, a voluminous writer of letters, diaries, and other magnificent prose, most famously his Apologia pro Vita Sua. More recently still, in Mon journal du Concile the French Dominican ecclesiologist, ecumenist, and historian Yves Congar reveals fascinating details of his life at the centre of some of the great controversies in the Catholic Church in the twentieth century--before, during, and after Vatican II.

In an Eastern context, there are several recent examples, including The Diary of Mar Dionysios Georgios al-Qas Behnam, Metropolitan of Aleppo (1912-1992) (Dar Mardin: Christian Arabic and Syriac Studies from the Middle East); and Aleksandr Elchaninov, The Diary of a Russian Priest. But the best example remains, of course, The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983, published in 2000 by SVS Press in a redacted form.

More recently, the fuller version was published in French, and Michael Plekon discussed them in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies last year at this time. In his review, Plekon began by saying that

Before going on, let me plead that those in control of these texts allow them to be published in English translation—not the truncated collections of excerpts, but the full entries, and all of them. And let me further note that not only should the full journal see the light of day in English, but also his letters and perhaps earlier papers and memoirs. There is a wealth of tapes and transcriptions of the thousands of talks Schmemann recorded for Radio Liberty for broadcast to the USSR. 

Later this year, we should see the publication of The Second Vatican Council Diaries of Met. Maxim Hermaniuk, C.Ss.R. (1960-1965) under the editorship of Jaroslav Skira and K. Schelkens (Peeters, 2011). These promise to be fascinating as Hermaniuk was a major figure at the council and after, sometimes called the "father of collegiality."

He was forthright about certain developments after the council, voicing the disappointment of many that the "synod" of bishops Pope Paul VI ironically unilaterally created in 1965 was not a real example of Synod and Synodality but instead just "international study days for the Catholic bishops." (I review the nature and different types of synods in the East in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity). We will certainly be paying attention to Hermaniuk's diaries upon publication, discussing them on here and reviewing them in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, the scholarly revue of which Hermaniuk was editor-in-chief from 1993 until his death in 1996.

Expanding Muslims and Shrinking Byzantines

Books about the encounter between Muslims and Eastern Christians in the seventh and subsequent centuries continue to emerge, shedding helpful light on a period and events still too little understood today. A recent such book, from an acclaimed Byzantinist, is that of Walter E. Kaegi, Muslim Expansion and Byzantine Collapse in North Africa (Cambridge UP, 2010), 366pp.


About this book, the publisher provides the following overview:

Who 'lost' Christian North Africa? Who won it and how? Walter Kaegi takes a fresh look at these perennial questions, with maps and on-site observations, in this exciting new book. Persisting clouds of suspicion and blame overshadowed many Byzantine attempts to defend North Africa, as Byzantines failed to meet the multiple challenges from different directions which ultimately overwhelmed them. While the Muslims forcefully and permanently turned Byzantine internal dynastic and religious problems and military unrest to their advantage, they brought their own strengths to a dynamic process that would take a long time to complete – the transformation of North Africa. An impartial comparative framework helps to sort through identity politics, 'Orientalism' charges and counter-charges, and institutional controversies; this book also includes a new study of the decisive battle of Sbeitla in 647, helping readers to understand what befell Byzantium, and indeed empires from Rome to the present.

The publisher further says of this book that it:

• Offers the first large-scale reinterpretation in English of the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the light of the Arabic, Greek and Latin sources, the latest modern scholarship, and visits to the sites with Maghribi scholars
• Surveys the cultural and historiographical dimensions of the end of Roman and Byzantine North Africa, with a separate chapter on 'historiographical hurdles' that block current understanding of Maghrib history
• Re-examines localities and terrain based on a reading of neglected Arabic sources and archives, travels, and on-site consultation

Kaegi is well known in treating these questions, having previously authored a book on Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium who oversaw the initial invasions and feeble military responses of the Byzantine Christians. In addition, Kaegi is the author of the groundbreaking study Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquest, also from Cambridge University Press (1995).

Author Interview: Ron Heine

Interest in Origen of Alexandria--almost universally considered the greatest of the Alexandrine theologians, notwithstanding a few problems that he (and/or his disciples) may or may not have gotten himself into--continues at a high level today. Many new studies continue to emerge on one of the most fertile and wide-ranging theologians of third-century theologians. A new book about him, Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church, has just come out from Ronald Heine, whom I interviewed about his work.


AD: Tell us a bit about your background:

I am Professor of Bible and Theology at Northwest Christian University in Eugene, Oregon.  Among my previous teaching and research positions are 17 years at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary in Illinois and 11 years as Director of the Institut zur Erforschung des Urchristentums in Tübingen.   In the latter position I worked with Otto Betz in co-leading a theological Kolloqium at the University for foreign doctoral students.   I received my Ph. D. from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana in classical philology with an emphasis on the literature of the Greek and Latin Fathers;  William R. Schoedel was the director of my dissertation.  I also have graduate degrees in New Testament and in Semitic languages and literature from the seminary in Lincoln.

My research has focused on third century Christianity, especially on Christianity in Alexandria, and more particularly on the use and interpretation of Scripture by the early Christians. In connection with the latter interest, I published a book called Reading the Old Testament with the Ancient Church: Exploring the Formation of Early Christian Thought (Evangelical Ressourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church's Future) in 2007. I have also published  work on the  fourth century Father, Gregory of Nyssa.  My most extensive research, however, has been on Origen.  I have three volumes of translations of his works in Catholic University of America’s Fathers of the Church series, and a volume published by OUP, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford Early Christian Studies).

My church affiliation is with what is sometimes referred to as the Stone-Campbell Movement.  This group is known variously as Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches, and Churches of Christ.  I am ordained in this fellowship.

Tell us why you wrote Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church

I must begin by saying that I was invited to contribute the volume on Origen in the Oxford University Press series, Christian Theology in Context.  This interested me because the series title ran parallel to an idea about Origen’s thought I had nurtured for several years, but never explored in detail.  This was that Origen’s thought had developed or even changed somewhat, both in conjunction with his age and his location.  Earlier studies of his thought had viewed him as having a rather monolithic mind.  He was presented as one who worked out his thought rather early in his life and never deviated from that early system.  Early works and late works were treated together without much differentiation concerning where they fell in Origen’s actual life experience.  I wanted to take an alternative look at Origen’s thought. Christian Theology in Context gave me the opportunity to spread Origen’s works out along the continuum of his life's settings to see how the different settings affected his thinking.

For whom was the book written—did you have a particular audience in mind?

I wanted to write the book so that it would be understandable and useful for both upper division undergraduate and graduate level students of theology and the early church.  I also tried to write it in a way that educated lay people, who are not theologians but have an interest in early Christian history and thought, could understand.  I attempted to avoid technical language as much as possible and to explain terms and concepts that I thought non-theological readers might not be familiar with.

What about your own background led you to the writing of this book?

I have been reading and working with texts of Origen for more than 35 years.  I was introduced to the Alexandrian tradition in my doctoral work, and while my dissertation was on Gregory of Nyssa, there were significant sections where I had to work with Origen’s thought to understand and present Gregory for he was strongly influenced by Origen in many ways.  Very few of Origen’s writings had been translated into English when I began working with him, so I focused on translating some of his major writings such as his Commentary on the Gospel of John.  I also became interested in the attempt to recover some of Origen’s lost works from their use in other writers such as Jerome (see my The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians) and Hilary or in the fragments quoted in the ancient catena commentaries.  All of this work on Origen’s texts provided the context for my interest in pulling together what I had learned about Origen for this book.

Were there any surprises you discovered in your writing?

It is probably not correct to call what you anticipated a surprise, but I think I was able to discover some significant differences in emphasis between the late Origen of Caesarea and the early Origen of Alexandria.  My close familiarity with Origen’s commentary on the Gospel of John was particularly helpful in this regard.  This commentary was begun early in Origen’s writing career in Alexandria and completed probably midway in his career in Caesarea.   In the Alexandrian books of the commentary one of Origen’s major concerns, and perhaps the reason his patron Ambrose had asked him to write the commentary, was to counteract the interpretation of this gospel by the Gnostic Heracleon.  In the books written later at Caesarea, however, Heracleon gradually fades from the picture until, in the last books, he is never mentioned.  What begins to appear as a concern in the later books is the conflict between the synagogue and the church and the salvation of the Jews. Caesarea was a major center of rabbinic education.

Are there similar books out there, and if so, how is yours different?

There are, of course, numerous books on Origen.  There are not however, many recent books which attempt to cover the whole of Origen’s life and thought.  I think I have already noted how my book differs from the earlier studies of Origen in my attempt to pay careful attention to the particular situation in which the various books of Origen were written.

Sum up briefly the main themes/ideas/insights of the book.

The main contribution this book makes to Origen studies is to show that there are differences between the thought and emphases in Origen’s earlier and later works.  His earlier works were focused primarily on correcting Christian heresies, especially that of Gnosticism.  These concerns do not vanish completely from his later works, but his concern with the tension between the synagogue and the church and with the role of the Jews in God’s plan and their ultimate salvation come to play a major role in his later works.  There are also hints in his later works that he was rethinking some of his earlier viewpoints such as universalism.  One cannot say that he had abandoned these views completely, but he seems to have had some questions.  These questions seem to me, at least, to have arisen out of his stronger emphasis on the exegesis of the whole text of the Bible in his later period.  In his early period his commentaries indicate that he took up only those portions of the Bible that the heretics used in order to offer an alternate interpretation.  None of his early commentaries appear to have been on complete books of the Bible.  But in the Caesarean period we have his commentary on the whole of Romans, and fragments from commentaries on several Pauline epistles.  He produced commentaries on Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Song of Songs, and the Psalms in this period, most of which have perished except for three books of the commentary on the Song of Songs in Latin translation, and fragments from the other works.   He also produced a commentary on the whole of the Gospel of Matthew of which perhaps two-thirds is preserved, and he refers to working on a commentary on the twelve minor prophets, though that is lost in its totality.  This intense focus on the text of whole books of the Bible might be explained, it seems to me, by his contact with the synagogue and the rabbis in Caesarea and their continual debates about the meaning of the text of the Bible.

Middle Eastern History in the Middle Ages

Oxford University Press has just released what looks to be a fascinating and comprehensive treatment of the history of one of the most consequential periods in one of the most important parts of the world for Muslim-Eastern Christian encounters: James Howard-Johnston, Witnesses to a World Crisis: Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century (OUP, 2011), 576pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us the following:

James Howard-Johnston provides a sweeping and highly readable account of probably the most dramatic single episode in world history - the emergence of a new religion (Islam), the destruction of two established great powers (Roman and Iranian), and the creation of a new world empire by the Arabs, all in the space of not much more than a generation (610-52 AD). Warfare looms large, especially where operations can be followed in some detail, as in Iraq 636-40, in Egypt 641-2 and in the long-drawn out battle for the Mediterranean (649-98). As the first history of the formative phase of Islam to be grounded in the important non-Islamic as well as Islamic sources, Witnesses to a World Crisis is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand Islam as a religion and political force, the modern Middle East, and the jihadist impulse, which is as evident today as it was in the seventh century.

We are also given the table of contents:

1. George of Pisidia

2. Two Universal Chronicles

3. Seventh-Century Eastern Sources I: The History of Khosrov

4. Seventh-Century Eastern Sources II: The History to the Year 682 and the Khuzistan Chronicle

5. Supplementary Roman Sources of the Seventh Century I

6. Supplementary Roman Sources of the Seventh Century II

7. Later Historians: The West Syrian Tradition

8. Later Historians: Nicephorus

9. Later Historians: Theophanes

10. Later Historians at Work in Egypt, Iraq, and Iran

11. Early Islamic Historical Writing

12. The Life of the Prophet

13. Historians of the Middle East in the Seventh Century

14. The Middle East in the Seventh Century: The Great Powers, Arabia, and the Prophet

15. The Middle East in the Seventh Century: Arab Conquests

16. The Middle East in the Seventh Century: A New World Order

I look forward to having this expertly reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.

Serbian Orthodox Fundamentalism

As I noted earlier this year, the Greek theologian Christos Yannaras, in a hard-hitting address, spoke of the rise of anti-Western Orthodox fanatics and fundamentalists whose untamed zeal, combined with their often staggering ignorance not only of what they criticize but also of their own tradition that they purport to defend, ends up being very un-Orthodox in its nature and consequences. Now a new book has come along to look at the wider phenomenon of fundamentalism beyond, but including, Orthodoxy: Fundamentalism in the Modern World Vol 1: Fundamentalism, Politics and History: The State, Globalisation and Political Ideologies (Tauris Academic, 2011), 320pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

How does religious fundamentalism operate in modern global society? This book is the first in a two-volume set that analyzes the dynamics of fundamentalism and its relationship to the modern state, the public sphere and globalization. In this first volume, fundamentalism is approached from the perspective of state and community building, ideology and practices within the context of global society, and the ways in which fundamentalism is intertwined with issues of politics, state power, democracy, globalization, political activism and political ideology. Expert scholars in the field address specific contemporary and past fundamentalist movements that have emerged from within mainstream Islam, Christianity, Baha’ism, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism. This is an important study of an increasingly significant and controversial aspect of modern society, and will be essential reading in the fields of Religion, Politics and International Relations.

In particular, chapter six, by Milan Vukomanovic treats "The Serbian Orthodox Church: Between Traditionalism and Fundamentalism."

The Martyred Church of the East

We have, since the first Gulf War in 1991, and especially since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, seen an upsurge in publications treating the long-suffering Christians in the region. Christoph Baumer's The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity, published in 2006, was favorably reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies by Hugh Wybrew of Oxford. In 2008 we saw Mar Bawai Soro's The Church of the East: Apostolic & Orthodox. Philip Jenkins' 2009 book, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died talked about the Church of the East as well, albeit in a larger context and at times subject to a sui generis analysis. We have also seen a number of recent books treating the so-called Silk Road, on which I have commented earlier.

Now a new book, from a relatively new press, is set to emerge giving us further insights into what was once the largest, and most geographically wide-spread Church in Eastern Christian antiquity:

David Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East (East-West Press, 2011), 548pp.

About this book, the publisher provides a lengthy overview:

This absorbing book deals with the Church of the East—the so-called ‘Nestorian’ Church—arguably the most interesting of all the Syriac-speaking Churches. Few Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with its name, let alone its history, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries the Church of the East was in geographical extent the largest Christian Church in the world, with dioceses stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The Church of the East, which began life as the indigenous church of Sasanian Persia, has been harried and persecuted throughout its history. The tragic story of this ‘martyred church’ is brought vividly to life in this impressive book. The book is organised into the following ten chapters:

• The Church beyond Rome (AD 36 to 502)

• Nestorians and Jacobites (503–633)

• Christians and Muslims (634–779)

• The Age of Timothy I (780–905)

• A Church at Bay (906–1221)

• The Mongol Century (1222–1317)

• The Years of Darkness (1318–1552)

• Nestorians and Chaldeans (1553–1830)

• The Age of the European Missions (1831–1913)

• The Calamitous Twentieth Century (1914–2011)

Each chapter contains an overview and a narrative history that describes major events and assesses the reigns of successive Nestorian and Chaldean patriarchs. The historical narrative is followed by thematic sections on ecclesiastical administration, monastic history, and literature and scholarship. The sections on ecclesiastical administration give ample space to the history of the Nestorian missions to Central Asia, India and China. The sections on monasticism chart the growth and decline of a distinctive form of worship that differed in important respects from monasticism in the Roman Empire. The sections on literature and scholarship pay particular attention to texts which are readily available in English translation, and are written partly with the aim of winning new readers for these texts.

The book gives due weight to the popular Sasanian and Mongol periods but also provides a detailed history of the Church of the East under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, a relatively neglected area of study in the English-speaking world. It is particularly strong on the history of the Church of the East under the Ottomans. Drawing on the research which underpinned his earlier work, Wilmshurst provides the fullest account of the history of the Church of the East between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries that has yet been published in English. He also provides a thoughtful Afterword, in which he discusses several possible futures for the Church of the East in the twenty-first century.

The author demolishes a number of fashionable myths about the Church of the East. In his exposure of the alarming amount of legendary material in its early history, his sober appraisal of the extent and effectiveness of its missionary role in the Middle Ages, and his insistence on the positive role played by the European and American missionaries in the development of the Nestorian and Chaldean Churches in the nineteenth century, he ventures onto sensitive ground. Not all readers may welcome his conclusions, but they will certainly find his arguments stimulating.

I look forward to having this expertly reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.  

Stanley Hauerwas on War

Stanley Hauerwas is one of the most important theologians in America today, famously put on the front cover of Time in its 11 September 2001 edition (planned and published before the attacks) for his views on war and peace, which are heavily influenced by the "pacifism" of the so-called peace churches of the so-called radical Reformation--the Mennonites in particular, whose best-known theologian in this country is the late John Howard Yoder, whose thought has heavily influenced Hauerwas, as the latter has regularly made clear for many years now. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Hauerwas's views attracted even more criticism than they usually do, not least because he refused to go along with the idea that going to war first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq was something a Christian could or should support.

Hauerwas's essay "To Love God, the Poor, and Learning: Lessons Learned from St. Gregory of Nazianzus" was published in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies in 2006 and remains one of the most insightful commentaries on the connections between academic life in a university and the Christian call to serve the poor; I regularly have my students read it. 

While apart from that essay Hauerwas does not often treat explicitly Eastern Christian themes, nevertheless much of what he has to say is enormously important for Eastern Christians in North America to hear for we live here in the same context and are confronted with many of the same issues as Western Christians. Only the most querulously sectarian Eastern Christian would refuse to hear what wisdom Hauerwas may offer (and such a refusal itself would, of course, be a very "un-Eastern" kind of stance to take). Those who have read him, as I have been doing for nearly two decades now, know that a very great deal of Hauerwas's thought inclines in a direction that a Catholic or Orthodox Christian would immediately recognize and strongly affirm, not least his overwhelming emphasis on the centrality of the Church qua Church, that is, as the Body of Christ that sacramentally brings everyone into communion together. This is a long-standing concern of Hauerwas to overcome the individualism of American culture in general and American Christianity in particular.

One of his other long-standing concerns, and closely tied to his ecclesiology, remains the question of violence, whether by religious people or agents of what Alasdair MacIntyre, long an enormous influence on Hauerwas, has called that "most dangerous and unmanageable institution, the modern nation-state" (see MacIntyre's essay "Poetry as Political Philosophy" in Idem, Ethics and Politics: Volume 2: Selected Essays).

Hauerwas has a new book just published that treats of these questions: War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Baker Academic, 2011), 224pp.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

How are American identity and America's presence in the world shaped by war, and what does God have to do with it? In this compelling volume, Stanley Hauerwas helps readers reflect theologically on war, church, justice, and nonviolence, exploring such issues as how America depends on war for its identity, how war affects the soul of a nation, the sacrifices that war entails, and why war is considered "necessary," especially in America. He also examines the views of nonviolence held by Martin Luther King Jr. and C. S. Lewis, how Jesus constitutes the justice of God, and the relationship between congregational ministry and Christian formation in America. Students and teachers of Christian theology and ethics, American church history, and American cultural studies will value this work.

Anton Baumstark and the Historical Development of Liturgy

Anyone who has even the remotest serious understanding of, or interest in, Eastern Christian liturgy (especially the Byzantine-Constantinopolitan tradition) will recognize at once the enormous debt owed to Anton Baumstark (1872-1948), a prodigious scholar of enormously wide-ranging erudition. This debt is constantly on display in Baumstark's greatest living "disciples" today, including the eminent Robert Taft, and many of Taft's students and colleagues, including Peter Galadza, Mark Morozowich, Vassa Larin, Alexander Rentel, and others. Baumstark pioneered methods for the study of the history and development of liturgy that have made Eastern liturgy come alive in our time in scholarly studies previously unprecedented in scope and scale.

At long last we have, forthcoming in December of this year from Liturgical Press, an English translation of one of Baumstark's earlier works from 1923: On the Historical Development of the Liturgy (Liturgical Press, 2011, 256pp).


About this book, the publisher tells us:

Anton Baumstark s On the Historical Development of the Liturgy (1923) complements his classic work, Comparative Liturgy. Together they lay out his liturgical methodology. Comparative Liturgy presents his method; On the Historical Development of the Liturgy offers his model. This book was written for one audience and valued by another. Written to lead adherents of the nascent German liturgical movement to a deeper religious appreciation of Catholic worship, its methodology and scope have won the appreciation of liturgical specialists for nearly a century. In describing the organic growth of the liturgy, its shaping and distortion, Baumstark s reach extends from India to Ireland, Moscow to Axum, Carthage to Xi an. He discusses the influences of language, literature, doctrine, piety, politics, and culture. While his audacity can be breathtaking and his hypotheses grandiose, his approach is nevertheless stimulating. In this annotated edition, Fritz West provides the first English translation of this work by Anton Baumstark.