Bible Wars!

One of the most wonderfully provocative (there are many) of Stanley Hauerwas's books that I read a long time ago was his Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America, which begins by saying that no Bibles should be left lying about for untrained people to pick up and attempt to read for themselves. Hauerwas says nobody--not kids at their confirmation or graduation, not adults in church--should be able to just pick up a Bible and decide for himself what it means. We are all too corrupted by the reading habits of modernity to be able to do that and we need to submit to the Church to learn how to live in peace with one another before opening the Scriptures together under the authority of the Church.

That book came back to me in reading of a forthcoming study later this spring: Stephen Batalden, Russian Bible Wars: Modern Scriptural Translation and Cultural Authority (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 360pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Although biblical texts were known in Church Slavonic as early as the ninth century, translation of the Bible into Russian came about only in the nineteenth century. Modern scriptural translation generated major religious and cultural conflict within the Russian Orthodox church. The resulting divisions left church authority particularly vulnerable to political pressures exerted upon it in the twentieth century. Russian Bible Wars illuminates the fundamental issues of authority that have divided modern Russian religious culture. Set within the theoretical debate over secularization, the volume clarifies why the Russian Bible was issued relatively late and amidst great controversy. Stephen Batalden's study traces the development of biblical translation into Russian and of the 'Bible wars' that then occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Russia. The annotated bibliography of the Russian Bible identifies the different editions and their publication history.

Ottoman Iconodules?

The contemporary outbursts of Islamic iconoclasm are not all reflective of Islamic history when it comes to art, a point that Emine Fetvaci makes in his new book released just last month: Picturing History at the Ottoman Court (Indiana University Press, 2013), 332pp.  

About this book the publisher tells us:

The Ottoman court of the late 16th century produced an unprecedented number of sumptuously illustrated chronicles. While usually dismissed as imperial eulogies, Emine Fetvacı demonstrates that these books commented on contemporary events, promoted the political agendas of courtiers as well as the sultan, and presented their patrons and creators in ways that helped shape the perspectives of their elite audience.Picturing History at the Ottoman Court traces the simultaneous crafting of political power, the codification of a historical record, and the unfolding of cultural change.

A Little Bit of Churchillania

In a different life, I probably would have been a military historian. As it is, my bedtime reading for nearly a decade now has basically run from 1853 to 1945, that is, from the start of the Crimean War to the end of World War II, with special attention on World War I. Each of those conflicts, of course, would have major implications for Eastern Christians in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere; but I don't read about these events for that so much as for their own sake--and also to understand what my maternal grandparents lived through in the Battle of Britain while working and living alongside the River Clyde in Scotland, then the scene of the largest ship-building works in the whole of the British Empire and therefore a target of frequent Luftwaffe bombing.

Like many Britons of her generation, my grandmother regaled me as a child with stories of several narrow escapes from bombing raids, and also the stirring oratory of Churchill on the wireless. As an adult, I decided that I needed to read more by and about Churchill to understand better who this man was who, my grandmother said, "united the whole country." I began of course by reading his six-volume The Second World War, which won him the Nobel Prize for literature. From there I backtracked to read his history of the First World War, The World Crisis, 1911-1918, a book about which one of his detractors rather archly said othat "Winston has written an enormous book about himself and called it The World Crisis." Arthur Balfour, prime minister of Britain from 1902 to 1905 and a sometime nemesis of Churchill, said that he was reading Churchill's "autobiography disguised as a history of the universe." Both histories are rather sui generis: part history, part autobiography, part memoir, part political tract written with present politics firmly in mind--a point made by David Reynolds' really splendid and enormously enjoyable In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War.

Reynolds' careful archival research has revealed in fascinating detail how Churchill worked as an author, and how he tendentiously put together especially the sixth volume with an eye to contemporary relations with Eisenhower, newly changed from supreme Allied commander to US president.

After reading Churchill himself, I began tackling Sir Martin Gilbert's biography of Churchill, starting with his helpful one-volume Churchill: A Life and then reading Gilbert's multi-volume authorized biography, which, with its official documents, runs to many thousands of pages in multiple volumes. Along the way, I enjoyed Gilbert's own self-reflective book--similar to Reynolds in some respects, though not so narrowly focused--In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey. Last Christmas, while driving across the country, I listened to the audio version of Gilbert's Churchill and America.

All this is just prelude to mention that I have just finished another very recent book about him that was immensely enjoyable: Barbara Leaming, Churchill Defiant: Fighting On: 1945-1955.

Haunted by the staggering electoral loss of July 1945, Churchill resisted, right up until the very last days, numerous and repeated efforts by everyone--friend, family, and foe--to get him to retire from 1945 onward. He felt he wanted to win an election on his own merits (he came to the premiership in 1940 when Neville Chamberlain resigned and advised King George VI to send for Churchill rather than Lord Halifax) and even more he felt that if he had power again he could mitigate the Cold War by arranging a three-power conference involving himself, Stalin, and Eisenhower, the latter of whom wanted nothing to do with such a tete-à-tete. Churchill, in his late seventies now, finally clawed his way back to government in the narrowly won 1951 election, and hung on until April 1955, surviving several strokes and continually going back on his word to his chosen successor, Anthony Eden, as to when he would retire.

Leaming's book is more blunt in some respects and does not shy away from some of the more ruthless aspects of Churchill's character. It is a helpful counterpoint to read alongside another book covering the same time-frame, a book that is written with a more moving and intimate portrait from Churchill's last private secretary and strong loyalist, Anthony Montague Brown: Long Sunset.

Montague is also interviewed by Churchill's grandaughter, Celia Sandys, in her Chasing Churchill: The Travels of Winston Churchill, a book that was later turned into an enormously enjoyable and deeply affecting documentary by PBS: Chasing Churchill.

Finally, I should mention that I'm looking forward to reading a new book Cita Stelzer has just published: Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table. I heard the author interviewed a few weeks ago by Lynn Rossetto Kasper on her delightful radio program The Splendid Table.

Orthodox Constructions of the West

Few things are more tedious than the ignorant potshots too many Orthodox "apologists" take at "the West," the "Western Church," "Western Christianity," etc. These are invariably without irony, without self-awareness, and certainly without any real or serious knowledge of, inter alia, history, theology, etc., etc.

But, happily, we are living in a time when intelligent and critical but charitable and informed discussion can be had by and among Eastern Christians about the Western world we all inhabit, and between Eastern and Western Christians. As I noted with the recent publication of Marcus Plested's splendid book about the reception of Aquinas in Orthodoxy, we seem to have turned a corner and are entering a time of very productive historical research and scholarly debate whose net effect should be to clear away a lot of the bad history and tendentious cant we have allowed to disrupt Christian relations and efforts towards Christian unity. 

Along comes another book that will deepen this process. Fordham University Press tells us that at long last we will, in June, see the publication of a very welcome volume of conference proceedings edited by Aristotle Papanikolaou and George Demarcopolous:  Orthodox Constructions of the West (June 2013), 352pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The category of the "West" has played a particularly significant role in the modern Eastern Orthodox imagination. It has functioned as an absolute marker of difference from what is considered to be the essence of Orthodoxy, and, thus, ironically, has become a constitutive aspect of the modern Orthodox self. The essays collected in this volume examines the many factors that contributed to the "Eastern" construction of the "West" in order to understand why the "West" is so important to the Eastern Christian's sense of self.

And about this book, St. Vladimir's Professor Peter Bouteneff tells us:

This book represents a significant step in the direction of self-reflection and self-criticism that has almost completely eluded Orthodox identity narratives colored by centuries of political oppression and demographic challenges. After too long a wait, such an initiative is all the more remarkable: it approaches the prophetic. Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou are to be recognized for having assembled a world-class array of scholars in diverse fields to produce a compilation that is fascinating, accessible, and at points highly challenging. It will inspire heated debate, and will surely become a staging point for future work.

I look forward to reading this upon publication and will have more to say in due course. Bravo to the editors and contributors for taking this project on!

The Life of C.S. Lewis

Some Eastern Christians, especially converts, tend to ignore or scorn Western Christian thinkers, but C.S. Lewis seems to be an exception, especially for those Orthodox coming out of an Anglican or evangelical background where, in some cases, Lewis reigned almost supreme.

Alister McGrath last month published a new biography of Lewis, C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Tyndale, 2013), 448pp.

About this book we are told:

Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker.

In C.S. Lewis—A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King’s College of London, paints a definitive portrait of the life of C. S. Lewis. After thoroughly examining recently published Lewis correspondence, Alister challenges some of the previously held beliefs about the exact timing of Lewis’s shift from atheism to theism and then to Christianity. He paints a portrait of an eccentric thinker who became an inspiring, though reluctant, prophet for our times.

You won’t want to miss this fascinating portrait of a creative genius who inspired generations.

McGrath is a busy fellow with a strong interest in Lewis because next month he also has coming out what looks to be a more academic work: The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 208

About this book the publisher tells us:

Marking the 50th anniversary of Lewis’ death, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis sees leading Christian thinker Alister McGrath offering a fresh approach to understanding the key themes at the centre of Lewis’ theological work and intellectual development.

• Brings together a collection of original essays exploring important themes within Lewis’ work, offering new connections and insights into his theology
• Throws new light on subjects including Lewis’ intellectual development, the uses of images in literature and theology, the place of myth in modern thought, the role of the imagination in making sense of the world, the celebrated 'argument from desire', and Lewis’ place as an Anglican thinker and a Christian theologian
• Written by Alister McGrath, one of the world’s leading Christian thinkers and authors; this exceptional pairing of McGrath and Lewis brings together the work of two outstanding theologians in one volume

 

Post-Soviet Religious Policy in Russia

Unlike a lot of other Eastern Christian countries, Russia does not want for scholars studying her history, her Church, her culture, and much else besides. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, we have seen an ever-growing number of books on Russian religiosity appear, and late last year another such book appeared: Geraldine Fagan, Believing in Russia - Religious Policy after Communism (Routledge, 2012),  320pp.

This book, we are told:

presents a comprehensive overview of religion in Russia since the end of the communist regime, exposing many of the ambiguities and uncertainties about the position of religion in Russian life. It shows how religious freedom in Russia has, contrary to the widely held view, a long tradition, and how the leading religious institutions in Russia today, including especially the Russian Orthodox Church but also Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist establishments, owe a great deal of their special positions to the relationship they had with the former Soviet regime. It discusses the nature of everyday religious life in Russia, contrasting the internal life of faith communities with the public discourse of their leaders. It examines the flowering of religious freedom and the burgeoning of new sects in the years immediately after the end of the Soviet regime, showing how freedoms were subsequently curtailed, but only partially, by the important law of 1997. It discusses how far Russian Orthodox Christianity is related to Russian national culture, demonstrating the unresolved nature of the key question, Is Russia to be an Orthodox country with religious minorities or a multi-confessional state? and concluding that Russian society has so far failed to reach a consensus on the legal status of religion and its role in public life, contrasting the position in Russia on this with the position in other former Soviet republics including Belarus and Ukraine.

Pope Francis and His Namesake

In watching Pope Francis emerge on the loggia, I was struck by several things, but one thing seems to have escaped the notice of almost everyone: he opened with an unacknowledged quotation from perhaps the most famous saying of St. Ignatius of Antioch, referring to the Church of Rome as the church "which presides in love." That good note was quickly followed by others: his reference to being bishop of Rome (the most important title, as the Orthodox rightly note) and his concern to meet and care for the Christians of his new see-city; his bowing low and asking the people for prayers that the Lord would bless him; and his simpler vesture. 

Speculation grew as to whether his namesake was St. Francis Xavier (a fellow Jesuit) or St. Francis of Assisi. The Vatican spokesman, Fr. Lombardi, made it clear that it was the latter. Needless to say, this only endeared the new pope further to many of my colleagues: I work in a university run by very lovely Franciscans, viz., the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, founded in Germany until Bismarck chased them out and they came to the Mid-West to run hospitals and schools. (Our department just spent a lovely retreat last weekend at the sisters' motherhouse in Mishawaka, IN.)

Among the more idiotic things you hear among some self-appointed fringe apologists for Orthodoxy on the Web is an attack on St. Francis for his supposed prelest, that is, his spiritual and likely demonic delusions which led him to believe he had the stigmata. But these are, as I say, foolish fringe voices, and by no means representative of all Eastern Christians.

A decade ago, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, of which I am editor, published a fascinating and wide-ranging article written by an Orthodox theologian looking at the question of sanctoral cycles and hagiographic devotion across many Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Eastern and Roman Catholic, and Protestants traditions. Written by Ron (Serafim) Grove, it was entitled "Whose Saints? How Much Can We Recognize Holiness beyond the Pale?" Here is the abstract I wrote for the article, published in vol. 43-45 (2004):

The author examines what might be called “cross-confessional” or “trans-jurisdictional” sanctity, i.e., figures accounted as “saints” in one Church who are also venerated as such by another Church which may not be in communion with the canonizing Church and may indeed even be otherwise vigorously opposed to their theology and practices. The author explores this often-contradictory phenomenon as it is found in Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Churches, Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches, and in Protestant bodies, analyzing particularly the liturgical calendars of each. In addition, and by means of contrast, the author also provides a brief analysis of “saint-making” as it occurs in some secular circles and non-Christian religions, especially Judaism and Islam. This analysis reveals several things: that veneration of holy figures is a catholic practice not confined to explicitly religious people but seems almost globally humanly ingrained; that such veneration often proceeds quite independently and “democratically” as people venerate holy figures irrespective of decisions made about them by their leaders; and that such veneration highlights (sometimes almost comically so) a theological incoherence that can be nonetheless ecumenically useful as people today seek out spiritual relationships with those once accounted heretics and enemies. The author concludes with a salutary warning not to assume too blithely that “if our saints are true, yours must be false” because in the search for Christian unity accommodations will eventually have to be made in hagiographical canons and liturgical calendars.

Among those analyzed by Grove in this fascinating survey was of course St. Francis of Assisi, to whom a wide array of Eastern Christians--and Muslims, among others--have a deep devotion. A couple of Orthodox friends asked me about Francis in the last few days, and I in turn asked colleagues of mine in the department more conversant with Francis and all things Franciscan for some recommendations on books for those who are interested in learning more about the man whom the new bishop of Rome has chosen as his patron and namesake. 

Here are a few, thanks to Sr. Anita Holzmer and Dr. Lance Richey. Of these, I have myself only read one, viz., Mark Galli, Francis of Assisi and His World (IVP, 2002). This is a charming and very accessible biography, made all the more so by its relative brevity and the fact that the author is not a Catholic. 

Other recommendations include:

• William J. Short, Poverty and Joy: The Franciscan Tradition (1999). 
• Dominic Monti, Francis and His Brothers: A Popular History of the Franciscan Friars (2009).
• Julien Green, God's Fool: The Life of Francis of Assisi (1987). The concept of holy fools is, of course, one that is widely recognized in the East, as I noted previously. About this book, my colleague Lance Richey says that "this is one of the first books I read and still one of my favorites:  beautifully written, no footnotes, and it really captures something special about Francis." 

More recent treatments would include Lawrence S. Cunningham's Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel of Life (2004) and last year's historically rigorous biography by a Dominican of all people: Augustine Thompson, Francis of Assisi: A New Biography.

 

The Cross and the Kremlin

Late this year, Eerdmans is bringing out a new history of the Russian Orthodox Church: Thomas Bremer, Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia (Oct. 2013), 192pp.

About this book we are told:

Russian political history and Russian church history are tied together very tightly. One cannot properly understand the overall history of Russia without considering the role of the Orthodox Church in Russia.

Cross and Kremlin uniquely surveys both the history and the contemporary situation of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first chapter gives a concise chronology from the tenth century through the present day. The following chapters highlight several important issues and aspects of Russian Orthodoxy -- church-state relations, theology, ecclesiastical structure, monasticism, spirituality, the relation of Russian Orthodoxy to the West, dissidence as a frequent phenomenon in Russian church history, and more.

Christianity in Iran

Iran is of course regularly in the headlines over the question of its nuclear capacity and what threat if any that poses to others. Iran, since at least 1979, has often been portrayed as an exclusively Muslim country, but there is a long presence of Eastern Christians there, as a book published in 2009 in hardback and more recently in paperback suggests: Mark Bradley, Iran and Christianity: Historical Identity and Present Relevance (Continuum, 2011), 210pp.

About this book we are told:

In this enlightening study Mark Bradley looks at the growing underground church in Iran. Given the hostility of the regime, it is often assumed that Christianity is withering in Iran, but in fact more Iranian Muslims have become Christians in the last 25 years than since the seventh century, when Islam first came to Iran. Beginning with an in-depth look at the historical identity of Iran, religiously, culturally and politically, Bradley shows how this identity makes Iranians inclined towards Christianity. He goes on to look at the impact of the 1979 revolution, an event which has brought war, economic chaos and totalitarianism to Iran, and its implications for Iranian faith. The study concludes with an analysis of church growth since 1979 and an examination of the emerging underground church. 
This is a fascinating work, guaranteed to improve any reader's knowledge of not only Iranian faith and church growth, but of Iranian culture and history as a whole thanks to the thorough treatment given to the country's background.

Russian-Jewish Encounters

I just received a long review-essay that will run in a forthcoming issue of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. Authored by Robert Slesinski, the essay very carefully discusses a recent and very important, if difficult and controversial, collection by Dominic Rubin treating the explosive questions of Judaism, anti-Semitism, and Russian Orthodox theology: Holy Russia, Sacred Israel: Jewish-Christian Encounters in Russian Religious Thought (Academic Studies Press, 2010, 400pp.).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Holy Russia, Sacred Israel examines how Russian religious thinkers, both Jewish and Christian, conceived of Judaism, Jewry and the 'Old Testament' philosophically, theologically and personally at a time when the Messianic element in Russian consciousness was being stimulated by events ranging from the pogroms of the 1880s, through two Revolutions and World Wars, to exile in Western Europe. An attempt is made to locate the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian, Russian and Western, Gnostic-pagan and Orthodox elements in Russian thought in this period. The author reflects personally on how the heritage of these thinkers little analyzed or translated in the West can help Orthodox (and other) Christians respond to Judaism (including 'Messianic Judaism'), Zionism, and Christian anti-Semitism today.

The Copts in Egyptian Politics

As we continue to watch the sad decline of Egypt and the sadder plight of her Coptic Christians, a new book reminds us that it has not always been this way: B.L. Carter, Egypt: The Copts in Egyptian Politics (Routledge, 2012), 344pp. 
 
About this book we are told:

This book explores the political relationship between the Muslim majority and Coptic minority in Egypt between 1918 and 1952. Many Egyptians hoped to see the collaboration of the 1919 revolution spur the creation of both a new collective Egyptian identity and a state without religious bias. Traditional ways of governing, however, were not so easily cast aside. Some Egyptians held tenaciously to the traditional arrangements which had both guaranteed Muslim primacy and served relatively well to protect the Copts and afford them some autonomy. Differences within the Coptic community over the wisdom of trusting the genuineness and durability of Muslim support for equality were accentuated by a protracted struggle between reforming laymen and conservative clergy for control of the community. The unwillingness of all parties to compromise hampered the ability of the community both to determine and to defend its interests.

The Copts met with modest success in their attempt to become full Egyptian citizens. Their influence in the Wafd, the pre-eminent political party, was very strong prior to and in the early years of the constitutional monarchy, and their formal representation was generally adequate and, in some parliaments, better than adequate. However, this very success produced a backlash which caused many Copts to believe, by the 1940s, that the experiment had failed: political activity has become fraught with risk for them. At the close of the monarchy, equality and shared power seemed motions as distant as in the disheartening years before the 1919 revolution.

On this Most August of Anniversaries

It was two years ago this month that the world held its breath until Amazon delivered into its hands the first copies of my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity from the University of Notre Dame Press. If you have been in a coma, on the moon, or dead, you would have a legitimate excuse for not having read it in the last two years, but in case it slipped your notice, it is still happily in print.

It may be worth revisiting the book in view of the number of churches who have new patriarchs: the Greek patriarch of Alexandria was recently installed; the Coptic Church elected a new pope-patriarch last year; and the Ethiopian Church has just elected its new patriarch. One of the things my book does is to examine in more detail than anyone else did the powers of patriarchs, the processes for choosing them, and related matters--including the patriarch of Rome, whose office is of course currently vacant.

The book has been praised by all the right sorts of people in the best sorts of journals--Theological Studies, Religion in Eastern Europe, America, Catholic World Report, One in Christ, Journal of Ecumenical Studies.

And the rest? Here I'm reminded of an anecdote told about Evelyn Waugh when asked about a slashing review of his Brideshead Revisited in the 1940s by the enormously self-regarding critic Edmund Wilson of New Yorker fame. Waugh, with a mischievous glint in his eye rather archly and ironically sniffed to his interlocutor "Isn't he an American?" (thus suggesting that Wilson could be safely ignored as a colonial hick). Waugh knew full well who Wilson was for Wilson had previously praised Waugh as a first-rate comic genius, but Wilson found Brideshead unbearable because it had the vulgar temerity to mention God, for which Wilson savaged Waugh. Waugh later got his revenge when Wilson contacted him saying he was coming to London and asking Waugh to show him around. Waugh initially agreed but then, as he confided to his magnificent Diaries, he never showed up: "chucked appointment to show London to some insignificant Yank." Quite.

"Fearful of My Joy"

By dint of familial circumstance, I needed to begin to cook when I was 12, at first very ploddingly and dutifully obedient to every dictate of simple recipes. Later and more recently cooking has become far more adventuresome and a great joy. I involve my children when possible: they love to help with the chopping and stirring and smashing and peeling, and I like to think I am imparting some skills to them that will be of use later in life, especially in what Eric Schlosser has written about so alarmingly and depressingly: our Fast Food Nation.

Cooking (which, bizarrely, people watch constantly on TV but rarely do themselves) is of course far more than a utilitarian necessity. It is a deeply, uniquely human activity the absence of which increasingly today can only be greeted with alarm--not only because of what its lack does to us psychologically as families and communities, but also physiologically: some studies have recently shown that the failure to cook regularly not only has deleterious effects on the family as such, but also on our physical health through the rise of diabetes and obesity even in very young children. The failure to eat together as humans is equally destructive in related and different ways.  

But I am not here, schoolmarm-like, to hector you about nutrition. Such busybodies are the most tiresome people around. As an unabashed fan of Evelyn Waugh, I firmly believe with him that "food can and should be about enjoyment. As for 'nutrition'--that is all balls." And I would note that when Jennifer Patterson, one of the two gloriously grand, uproariously funny and hugely incorrect "Two Fat Ladies" died of lung cancer in the summer of 1999--while still smoking in the hospital and eating caviar and drinking champagne apparently--I used some of their recipes to make a special dinner for some of my friends in honour of Patterson--a devout Catholic and parishoner at the glorious London Oratory of which I have such fond memories from a 1997 visit. (During that dinner, and too many others, I have often bored myself by quoting Chesterton too frequently: "Catholicism is a thick steak, a frosted stout, and a good cigar!")

Some days I am tempted to write a book "Towards an Eastern Christian Theology of Feasting and Fasting" but you will be spared the dyspepsia that would come from reading such a turgid volume because I think it has largely been done better by others, including Robert Farrar Capon (an Episcopalian theologian actually) in his Food for Thought: Resurrecting the Art of Eating and his The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection.

Among Eastern Christians, the best person to write on the connections of food-feasting-sacraments is of course Alexander Schmemann in his For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy, which I have been reading this semester with my students. Schmemann beings by observing that

man must eat in order to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table…. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life (11).

I recently tried to illustrate the centrality of the banquet by watching with my students a charming movie from 1987,  Babette's Feast. If you've not seen it, go and watch it. It's a marvelous illustration of the importance not only of feasting, but of the very sacramental nature of human life even in ways not often thought of in those terms--opera, dancing, music, and of course the preparing and enjoying of both food and wine. It also wonderfully illustrates the joy of cooking good food and, in doing so, the joy of giving joy to others--the joy of gracious hospitality graciously conveyed and received. (Mary may think she had the "better part" but there's a lot of delight for the Marthas of this world being in the kitchen.) 

The movie raised some difficult questions for my students--and I daresay for most of us today in our absurdly over-busy age--not least because of its languorous pace: each course (of seven) is focused on as each diner enjoys every bite slowly and deliberately. How rarely, they admitted, do they feast like that--even on a much less grand scale--at such a pace, and without doing so while texting, watching TV, or playing on the computer. What are we losing by not doing this regularly? Why do we deprive ourselves of one of the most basic and joyful of human encounters qua human? (One answer to that was provided many decades ago now, but all the more important today: Joseph Pieper's splendid work Leisure: The Basis of Culture.) Good food, wine, and conversation: what more could one ask for? Why would one absent oneself from that or pick oneself up from the table only to hurry back to what--the Internet or some ghastly bit of ironically so-called "reality" TV?

At one point in the movie, one of the sisters, Philippa, is very nearly rescued from her very dour Danish preacher-father and very bleak upbringing by a Parisian ("papist"!) opera singer, who convinces her father to let her take singing lessons with a view to going off to Paris to make it big. But the passion the music--Mozart's Don Giovanni--arouses frightens her and she discontinues the lessons, leaving M. Papin to return to Paris alone and heartbroken. The words Philippa sings are deeply revealing: "I'm fearful of my joy." That, it seems to me, is the most succinct summary possible of a life that refuses to be sacramental. How sad. Instead of fear, these brief experiences of joy in feasting should make us long all the more for the heavenly banquet, where the food and feasting truly will be unforgettable--and where, with Jennifer Patterson devoutly interceding for us, there will never be too much double-cream:

Proto-Byzantine Cypriot Reliquaries

I have fond memories of my trip to Cyprus in 1993 for a meeting of the World Council of Churches. A recent book helps us understand the depth of the island's Christian culture and history: M.C. Comte, Les reliquaires du Proche-Orient et de Chypre à la période protobyzantine (IVe-VIIIe siècles): Formes, emplacements, fonctions et cultes (Brepols, 512pp. + illustrations).  

The publisher gives us a bilingual overview of this book:

After the Peace of the Church, the cult of martyrs, which had previously been forbidden and observed only clandestinely in cemeteries, was officially recognised and practised in churches. The first reliquaries of Palestine and Syria became particularly abundant in the 5th and 6th centuries, both in these provinces and in the province of Arabia. Numerous discoveries during the last forty years have increased our knowledge of these liturgical objects, during a period in which the Christian cult was being established, and provide confirmation of well-known texts and literary sources. They shed new light on the purpose of reliquaries and on the different phases of development of the cult of martyrs in the patriarchates  of Jerusalem and Antioch.

The book is divided into two parts: an Overview (first part) and a Catalogue (second part). Drawing on examples from the catalogue, the author discusses the physical appearance of reliquaries and their location in the church, and the changes that are believed to have occurred in the veneration of saints. Notable differences exist between provinces and bishoprics. The location and installation of mobile reliquaries, which vary within the three provinces of Palestine, are often repeated with minor differences in the liturgical practices of the province of Arabia; there are similarities also in the form of the reliquaries and the method of veneration.

The mountains of northern Syria are a special case, because the reliquaries are large, many have been found in the same room, and they are never found in the apse, but always in a small room attached to the church (the martyrion). “Flowing Oil” is always a feature. Syrian influence can also be found in the neighbouring provinces of Euphratesia and Cyprus.
The Catalogue comprises examples of more than 250 reliquaries from the Near East and Cyprus. Where possible, entries are classified by Roman province, and include a description of the reliquary and details of its origin; some of these are still located in ancient Christian monuments. In addition, some examples which are now in museums are described, a few of them never having been classified, and not all of them having a known origin.

 C’est à partir de la Paix de l’Église que le culte des martyrs jusqu’alors interdit et caché, limité aux cimetières, s’est développé de façon officielle, prenant place dans les églises. Les premiers reliquaires apparus en Palestine et en Syrie connurent un grand essor aux V^e et VI^e siècles dans ces provinces ainsi qu’en Arabie. Les nombreuses découvertes effectuées au cours des quarante dernières années ont considérablement augmenté notre connaissance de ces objets liturgiques, pendant cette période de mise en place du culte chrétien, confirmant ainsi les textes, et sources littéraires connues et ajoutant des informations complémentaires, sur leur fonctionnement et sur les phases d’évolution du culte des martyrs dans les patriarcats de Jérusalem et d’Antioche.

L’ouvrage se compose de deux parties : un texte de synthèse (première partie) et un inventaire sous forme de catalogue (deuxième partie). Se fondant sur les exemples du catalogue, l’auteur a procédé à l’étude des reliquaires en fonction de leur forme, de leur emplacement dans l’église et des modifications supposées être intervenues dans le culte des saints. Selon les provinces et les évêchés de rattachement, des variations notables sont en effet décelables. La position variable des reliquaires mobiles dans les trois provinces de Palestine et les installations qui les accompagnent se retrouvent avec quelques différences dans certains des arrangements liturgiques de la province d’Arabie. Les formes adoptées et les modes de vénération sont proches également.

La région des jébels de Syrie du Nord constitue un monde à part, à la fois par la taille considérable des reliquaires et leur nombre important dans la même pièce, ainsi que le système de « circulation d’huile », unanimement adopté pour la vénération. L’influence de cette région est sensible dans les provinces voisines : Euphratésie, Phénicie II et à Chypre.

Le catalogue est constitué d’un corpus de plus de 250 reliquaires provenant du Proche-orient et de Chypre, classé par provinces romaines, donnant le détail des lieux de trouvaille et de la variété des objets parfois encore en place dans les monuments chrétiens. S’y ajoutent des exemples conservés dans les musées, certains inédits, dont la provenance est plus incertaine.

Holy Trinity Jordanville Publications

Holy Trinity Publications in Jordanville, New York, recently sent me a number of books both new and recent including How to Live a Holy Life by Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg (2005; 150pp.).

This is a small book, the size of one's hand, containing a series of very practical reflections on how to pray, how to work, how to deal with problems and people in life. The publisher further elaborates:

This pocket-sized book, originally published in Russian in 1904, is a short but comprehensive work offering guidance to the Christian on how to conduct himself through the course of the day. In a eminently straightforward manner the author describes how to conduct oneself in the morning, in relation to God, in common situations of life, in daily work, during meals, during the afternoon rest, in the evening, before sleep, and during sleeplessness. He concludes with a consideration of prayer and guidance and on how to spend Sundays. A biography of the author, Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg (1784-1860), concludes the work.

Published in 2011 is a book by Mikhail Chevalkov, Testament of Memory: A Siberian Life (xix+146pp.). This book, the publisher tells us, is a:

remarkably simple and yet profoundly deep narrative, this translation is an introduction to the remote world of the 19th-century Altai: a mountainous region of southern Siberia possessing unique flora and fauna and peaks rising to nearly 15,000 feet. Native Altai tribesman Mikhail Chelvalkov vividly describes the physical beauty of the region while chronicling many of the encounters that took place throughout his life as the population transformed from competing nomadic pagan tribes to a settled and harmonious Orthodox Christian culture. One of the first native disciples of the Russian Orthodox missionary priest Makarii Glukharev—who was made a saint in AD 2000—Chelvalkov’s testament provides invaluable insights for students of Christian mission, ethnography, geography, and botany.

Last year, Holy Trinity brought out the second edition of a book they first published in 1970 with a foreword from then-Archimandrite Kallistos Ware: Ignatius (Brianchaninov), The Arena: Guidelines for Spiritual and Monastic Life (xxiii+ 282pp.).
About this book we are told:

One of the most important and accessible texts of Eastern Orthodox Christian teaching on the spiritual life, this book draws upon the ascetic and mystical doctrine of the Greek Fathers and greats of the Orthodox Christian church. In an age alienated from spiritual culture and rooted in materialism, these teachings pose both a challenge and an invitation to those seeking heightened spirituality. This book is essential reading for anyone who desires a profound spiritual journey based upon an encounter with Christ as God.

And finally, published just last month is another small handbook originally written by St Innocent of Alaska:  Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven: An Introduction to Christian Life (xii + 82pp.). About this book we are told:

Originally published in the Aleut (Eskimo) language in 1833, this book is a simple yet challenging introduction to Christianity from one of the greatest teachers of the Russian Orthodox Church: sainted Russian Bishop and missionary Innocent Veniaminov. Timeless and universal, this updated edition—which includes a new section entitled "Points for Reflection" at the end of each chapter—discusses what it means to know God and have a relationship with Jesus. It will appeal to those seeking to understand their own faith more fully.

Fagerberg on Mills on Schmemann

Earlier I interviewed my friend, the Orthodox priest and theologian Bill Mills about his new book Church, World, and Kingdom: The Eucharistic Foundation of Alexander Schmemann's Pastoral Theology. 

I sent the book out for specialized review for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies (which is in an exciting period of growth and transition, and should soon have multiple options for on-line access available not only to academic subscribers, but to individuals also--stay tuned!).

Our reviewer for Fr. Bill's book was the distinguished liturgist and professor at Notre Dame, David Fagerberg, whose own scholarship, in books such as Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? has drawn heavily on Schmemann. Fagerberg wrote a very positive review, and we will be running that review in the spring issue of Logos along with our usual panoply of articles, notes, essays, and other reviews, both long and short. I will have more details in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

Two Popes? Peter and Paul in Rome Together?

The Roman priest Dwight Longenecker has a very interesting and even surprising column about how the Catholic Church could conceivably function with a retired pope and an active pope both calling the Vatican home. His proposal in essence is that the elderly pope would be the quiet, reflective éminence grise while the younger man could be the active global traveler and teacher. The former, "Peter" if you will, could give advice to "Paul" from time to time while both serve the Church in different capacities. Such an arrangement would be a very welcome and concrete reminder that the apostolic foundation of the Church of Rome rests not solely on Peter's shoulders, but equally on those of Paul: both, after all, went to, and were ultimately martyred in, Rome, though Peter is usually the only one to get any attention in Catholic ecclesiology and the Catholic imaginary, which is regrettable--as is the forgetting that Antioch is at least as much a "Petrine" see as Rome is.

This all put me in mind of a little book from 1990, unjustly neglected and deserving of renewed attention: William R. Farmer and Roch Kereszty, Peter and Paul in the Church of Rome: The Ecumenical Potential of a Forgotten Perspective (Paulist, 1990), 186pp.

The Papacy and the Law of Unintended Consequences

To read anything about the papacy, past or present, is, I have thought for years, to see numerous and exquisite illustrations of the law of unintended consequences. Too often practices that began with good intentions in one generation come to do harm in later generations; customs that were once helpful seem later to be harmful. And yet, as the longest institution of governance in the Western world--antedating all the crowned heads of Europe, all the constitutions of all the governments across Europe and North America--the weight of its history often seems to render the papacy incapable of shedding practices and customs that no longer do the good they once did. "We think in centuries here," the oft-heard Vatican slogan, is good if it takes useful account of the past, but if it is used also to restrict action out of consideration for what the future might think or bring, then such a long-term perspective would seem to make the papacy sclerotic in the present.

This thought came back to me in reading through a brand new book whose author could not have foreseen the events of the past weeks with the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, but which nonetheless--perhaps itself unintentionally--illustrates why the retirement turns out to have been a very good idea indeed: John Thavis, The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church (Viking, 2013). 

Thavis's book is not high theology, and pace the title, it is not a collection of the intimate and pithy thoughts one often associates with the word "diaries." Instead, it is a very cogently written work of solid journalism by a journalist who covered the Vatican and papacy for decades, and who, unlike almost all the others in the world on that beat (save for such as John Allen, e.g.), here reflects on the workings of the popes, Curia, and Vatican with critical but charitable intelligence. If the new pope--whoever he may be--has anything approximating a functioning brain in his head, he will immediately make Thavis director of the Vatican Press Office, for Thavis clearly understands how the media works, and in this book clearly sets forth, in a painful "syllabus of errors," how often the Vatican fails to understand the media and as a result ends up shooting itself in the foot, leg, thigh, groin, stomach, chest, both arms, and head.

Having read this important and very useful study, I am amazed that for an institution so deeply imbued with the Italian fixation on la bella figura, various figures in the Vatican have so singularly failed to grasp how badly the Church has appeared in the bungling of the many problems of the last eight years--child sex abuse, the Sodano-Schonborn public dust-up, the Holocaust denial of the SSPX's mentally defective bishop Richard Williamson, the AIDS and condoms debate, and the infuriatingly fatuous comments by someone like Fr. Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household who, staggeringly, compared the media treatment of the sex-abuse crisis to the Holocaust! Time and again in all these incidents--and others--Thavis notes that nobody vetted the comments of any of these figures. Making matters worse is the huge irony that, for all its focus on centralization, hierarchy, and control, the Vatican, as Thavis puts it wonderfully, "is more medieval village than corporate headquarters" (2). As he puts it equally well, the Vatican's "culture is founded on hierarchical order but swamped in organizational confusion" (2). As a result, few people talk to one another, and fewer still know what any other office or person is about to do or say. Consequently, people, above all the pope, are regularly blindsided by comments and events. Instead of being able to spread the good news, the Vatican is forever having to mop up the bad, confused news that gets printed in no small part because of a lack of (forgive the vulgar phrase) "message coordination."

Thavis brings a unique and welcome perspective to his work. Noting that most of his colleagues in the media view the Vatican with great skepticism if not disdain for its supposedly "medieval" and retrograde attitudes and practices, Thavis by contrast, in talking about the 2005 conclave, says of it that "it was undemocratic, it was nontransparent, and it was wonderful" (17; my emphasis). Thavis also has an ear for good stories and lines, and tells some hilarious ones, including an anecdote about that last conclave when many of these "princes of the Church" and their underlings were all standing around the famous, if obstreperous, smoke-producing stove in the Sistine Chapel arguing over how to get it to work better and to produce the right color of smoke. Quoting his colleague Cindy Wooden, Thavis records that this seemed like nothing more than a bunch of guys in the backyard debating the merits of charcoal over gas. Sic transit gloria mundi.

In recording his time on many papal trips on the papal plane from the late 70s until last year, Thavis makes one thing clear: the media are human beings, and a bit of good will, a bit of papal honesty and access, and a bit of good treatment go a long way. He records one story of a return from some papal junket only to have all the reporters herded on to the plane, starving and thirsting, but told no food or drinks were yet loaded and they would have to tough it out waiting for the pope, running behind as usual. But someone discovers a bottle of vodka and begins passing it around, and soon everyone is in much better spirits. Why should this be either mystery or scandal to anyone? If you want good press, or at least not a consistently hostile one, treating the media as human beings and adults--rather than as enemies--would seem to be a good place to start.

Thavis has a sick-making chapter on the scandals involving the now-disgraced Legionaries of Christ. What a vile organization that seems to have been. Viler still is how protected their founder was until after the death of Pope John Paul II--and even then Benedict XVI did not move with all dispatch in disciplining a figure of such iniquity. But Thavis lets go unremarked a stunning detail about one of the mass ordinations of priests that made the Legionaries so legendary in their heyday: the ordaining cardinal, Velasio De Paolis on Christmas Eve 2010, "never actually touched their heads--he held his hands an inch or two above their heads" (112)! According to Latin theology of the "matter and form" of the sacraments, such a failure should surely have rendered the ordinations invalid. I know of  one Catholic priestly ordination in the last decade where the bishop, about the soundness of whose mental faculties many people have long wondered, failed to put his hands anywhere near the head of the would-be priest, and as a result was forced to do the ordination over again--this time making tactile contact.
I won't go into detail about the other chapters--read the book for yourself--but let me conclude with Thavis's final chapter, "The Real Benedict." Thavis does not attend--or at least does not quote--any of the pope's thoughts about that office recorded over many years in his scholarly works. So Thavis does not always seem to have realized that he's stumbled onto the truth--he thinks, good journalist that he is, that there must be more. E.g., Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, asked about Benedict's modus operandi in public especially, says that Benedict wants to depersonalize the papacy. Quite so. That pithy sentiment covers a depth of thinking about the office over many decades, the net effect of which has been to call for a paring down of what the papacy is expected to do, and of how the pope is portrayed. "The pope is not an oracle" Benedict says to a group of young people (305), and that is exactly right. But too often the papacy and the Vatican, beginning under Leo XIII and ramped up to an unhealthy degree under John Paul II--for, again, commendable motives but with unintended, and unhelpful, consequences--has often allowed itself to be portrayed as an oracle, cranking out statements on everything from how to drive safely to infant formula, sexual morality, capitalism, war, doctrine, and everything in between. Little could W.G. Ward imagine when he tossed out his famous aphorism in the 19th century about demanding a papal bull at breakfast every morning along with the Times of London that a century later Catholics would be "treated" to just that.

One final thought acutely, indeed painfully, clear after reading the final chapter: nobody seems to have considered just how deeply Benedict is an introvert. Many of us academics are introverts--I certainly am--and being surrounded by people all day is tiring; magnify that tenfold or more in the huge masses of people the pope is forced to meet every day, and you can understand perfectly why Benedict found the job so utterly exhausting. He has my complete sympathy, and he certainly lasted longer in such an outsized, extroverted job than I would have.

This, surely, has to be something else the cardinals consider in the upcoming conclave. In addition to reconsidering their lack of a "media strategy," and in addition to extracting a promise from the new pope to hire John Thavis as Vatican press officer, the cardinals should consider personality and temperament before they vote. They do not need to haul in a couch from Vienna and make all the papabili lie on it and disclose their temperaments on the Myers Briggs Type Inventory, but surely Christian charity should stay their hand from electing someone who would find the papacy as crushing a burden as Benedict did. They should also consider that the office needs further critical examination in many ways--some of which I suggested in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity.

Fleeing Herod through Coptic Egypt

I have, long before it was on the radar (however desultorily) of the press today, maintained a deep interest in all things Coptic, in part because of the inspiration of my friend Iman Nashed, who was born in Cairo and came to Canada when she was 17, and introduced me to Fr. Markos of St. Mark's parish in Scarborough, Ontario, the priest through whom the Coptic Church was first established all across the North American continent. That parish, which I have visited and lectured at, is an incredibly dynamic place full of life and activity; and Fr. Markos gave me--when I was recuperating in hospital in 1996--a most beautiful Coptic icon of the Theotokos which remains my most treasured of Marian icons.

Later this month, a new book will be published that takes us at once through ancient and modern Egypt: James Cowan, Fleeing Herod: A Journey Through Coptic Egypt with the Holy Family (Paraclete Press, 2013), 260pp.

About this book we are told:

When the Holy Family fled to Egypt to escape the wrath of King Herod Antipas, they journeyed for three years throughout Egypt, mainly along the Nile, to keep Herod’s agents at bay. Using an ancient 4th century text written by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria as his guide, Cowan takes the reader on a fascinating journey through modern-day Egypt in the footsteps of the Holy Family, about the Delta region and up the Nile to a place called Mount Qussqam, where Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus resided for six months. The itinerary, according to Coptic tradition, was revealed to Theophilus in a dream.

Documenting his journey, Cowan finds himself in the midst of a spiritual revolution going on in Egypt itself. He meets with monks and health workers, desert mystics and visionaries, all of whom have a stake in the story of the Holy Family’s journey, as they know it. Through their eyes the reader is drawn into a dramatic story of escape and miraculous interventions.