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The Downside review | 2009
David Foster
freedom which burst upon the world forty years ago. The Resurrection Effect is an effect that renewed the Church in Council. The process is irreversible. Attempts to classicize Vatican II reveal themselves as Canutes pretended resistance to the tide. Further, the Resurrection Effect takes you inside the Eucharist, which has in consequence a luminosity that overpowers the false dichotomy of meal and sacrifice-how tired those words in controversy become!this all looks provincial in the new light which the Resurrection Effect sheds on His ritual with bread and wine. Suddenly this whole way of thinking-which of course is classical-looks small. DOM SEBASTIAN MOORE
The Downside review | 2009
David Foster
Following on the work done by Conrad Leyser, Andrea Sterk and Claudia Rapp on the role of bishops in Late Antiquity and the ways in which, by the end of the sixth century, culture was beginning to shift towards something more characteristic of the Middle Ages, this book studies five authorities whom the author believes to have been influential in that process. He begins back in the early fourth century with Athanasius, working in the aftermath of the legalization of Christianity, and then considers Gregory ofNazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, John Cassian and Pope Gregory the Great. This is not a work in spirituality or in spiritual direction in the conventional sense ofthe term. By spiritual direction the author means the pastoral strategies or mechanisms by which the leader ofa Christian community provided that leadership; to some extent thisis reflected, the author argues, in the criteria used for selecting leaders. But above all,he examines the techniques used in achieving pastoral goals. The working hypothesis is that there is a difference between two styles of leadership. On the one hand, in the mainstream Church, leadership is exercised through doctrinal instruction, the distribution of charity and the ministry of the sacraments very much as we see the Apostolic Church in Jerusalem of the Acts of the Apostles, not least in its decision to introduce the diaconate. On the other hand, there are the ascetic traditions of leadership we see emerging in the Egyptian tradition above all, between the abba and his disciples, in the cultivation of a true ascesis and especially of the virtue of discretio, discernment. Two different strategies for two very different styles of community, which sometimes even felt the tension between them almost as an opposition. And yet, as monks began to be ordained priests and to be selected as bishops, they themselves had to struggle with the personal sense ofconflict between their two ways oflife and, as Demacopoulos shows, some ofthe methods of the desert began to enter the mainstream of the Churchs pastoral life. One of the signs of this development is the emergence ofa new genre ofliterature, the
The Downside review | 2009
David Foster
Each prophet is discussed quite briefly. There is enough to gain the gist of a prophets theology, and a few snippets from the text, but this can be no more than the briefest ofintroductions, and is only just enough, even for an A-Level student. It is notable that Deuteroand Trito-Isaiah are considered together. McKenzie and Kaltner admit the variety ofauthors, and here follow more modern trends in putting them into one section. It is, however, unfortunate that the nature of this book did not (it seems) allow for them to discuss this issue in a little more detail. The Writings are considered at the end of the book. Job is introduced, and againit is fortunate that the writers have taken pains to explain that the fatan of Job is not a proper name. This may prevent a number of misconceptions. The content of Job is presented with admirable clarity. This is not an easy book to summarize, but the main themes of the arguments issuing from his comforters are beautifully presented. In a similar vein the book of Proverbs is also well introduced, and Qoheleths difficulties are neady summed up in the phrase, most of the units, if they exist at all, are very hard to identify (p.321). This is the only book the present reviewer has come across where the section on Qoheleth makes mention ofThe Byrds musical rendition of 3:1-8 in the 1960s. Perhaps the main value of this book lies in two principal features: firstly, it is written in very clear, simple English. It avoids all jargon, and necessary technical terms are clearly explained. McKenzie and Kaltner have certainly obeyed St Benedicts injunction that the weak should have nothing to run away from. It also contains very good references to other texts of the Ancient Near East, which are frequently used to illuminate the Old Testament, e.g. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enuma Elish. Ideal for the beginner, therefore, but he or she shouldnt stop here: this should be enough to whet the appetite, however! DOM ANSELM BRUMWElL
The Downside review | 2006
David Foster
Part IV deals with Interpreting the Work of Raymond Brown. It contains an excellent paper from Ronald Witherup SS on The Pastoral Writings of Brown. Raymond Brown was no scholar in an ivory tower. He always saw his work as building up the Body of Christ: anyone who ever heard him speak and observed his exquisite courtesy to his audience can never be in any doubt of this truth. He was a great man and this book, assembled by his peers, is a worthy celebration of his achievement.
The Downside review | 1993
David Foster
this to represent man in his situation. There are countless criss-crossing influences and events to make up the miscellany of the world, but they will have no identity unless there is a man at the point of intersection. It is man who gives reality to chance. It is the unrelated occurrences converging on us which afford us the power of choice in our individual lives, and this is so to a greater extent than we are often disposed to admit. But we are not a chapter of meaningless accidents.
The Downside review | 1992
David Foster
approach is ... a special kind of metaphysical intuition, a contuition, it has been calIed, of God-and-the-world-in-the cosmological relation (83). This I welcome as a move in the right direction, but a hesitant one. Then it is suggested that the philosophy of Martin Heidegger may be seen as an antidote to the forgetfulness of Being in our culture. That might do something, but Heidegger himself had no wish to be used for Nichols purposes. As for the writers discussed in other chapters, Pascal and Marcel count as Augustinians, John of the Cross and Chesterton as Thomists. But they are each very much his own man (John pre-eminently in his triumph over hideous maltreatment), and Nichols brings them fascinatingly before us, letting them speak with their own voices. And his sympathetic account of Kant and Kierkegaard made me wonder how they might have fared if they had not been brought up in the Protestant North. So I am very grateful to myoId friend.
The Downside review | 1989
David Foster
corpus of Pelagian literature and to piece together what can be attributed to other writers. In comparison with these articles one regrets the brevity of Decrets on Manicheism as part of the picture of popular Christian life and piety in North Africa. It is only eleven pages long. Decret points out the positive gains of Augustines as an auditor, a Christocentric spirituality, its fervent liturgical expression, and, not least, its way, albeit on a selective basis, of reading the Scriptures. At this point reference could well have been made to M. Tardieus article on Manichee New Testament exegesis; it is referred to later, by I. Hadot (p. 120). It remains to comment on Geerlings description of the status quaestionis of Augustines Christology, which, in the absence of any comprehensive study, is still governed by the platonic-biblical antithesis, here, of Scheels and van Bavels work; or was so until recent work has turned away from trying to assess Augustine by the terms of later Chalcedonian theology. The move has been made to the more soteriological approach characteristic of the earlier patristic method, to studies of Augustines use of Scripture, where H. R. Drobners work under Basil Studer has indicated the theological importance of a consideration also of Augustines method in exegesis, particularly with a view to the use of the category of persona. Studers own work in Augustinian Christology is mentioned only in reference to his 1985 book, Gott und unsere Erlosung im Glauben der alten Kirche; his various and extended articles on Augustine are overlooked. The symposiasts whose work is here represented deserve our gratitude for this instructive volume, and the editors for making it available to the world at large.
The Downside review | 1986
David Foster
DURING 1982 and 1983, Doctrine and Life published a series of articles entitled The Churchs Spiritual Teachers. These essays form the basis of this book, and although a great deal has been amplified and new chapters added, nothing has been lost of the vivid and sensitive character of the earlier series. What has been gained is a number of more overtly theological discussions of issues raised by the authors subject matter, and to every chapter have been added exhaustive notes on sources and bibliographical information, so that the scholarship on which this book rests does not prevent an ordinary reader from getting a clear picture of what is being talked about. The first chapter presents some of the difficult questions about the consequences of Baptism and Christian life with which the Apostolic Fathers were concerned; and the Desert Fathers too are shown ultimately to have been concerned with very real questions about the transformation supposed to have been effected by Baptism in chronically sinful men. Chapters follow on Evagrius, the Macarian homilies and the approach taken to a theology of grace in the Eastern Church. Turning to the Latin tradition the monasticism mediated through Cassian is set in the distinctly western concerns about grace catalysed by Augustine, and the development of monastic rules is attributed to a potentially unhealthy obsession with purity of observance, a way monks had of coping with their continuous anxiety that they needed to be kept out of mischief, feeling, as ordinary people do, that they were rather less than they were supposed to be. Other monastic worries, and their more personal treatment by a spiritual father, which are documented in the correspondence of Barsanuphius and John, are also described. The sympathetic treatment which monastic life receivesat such length in these chapters is all the more valuable for its attention to its theological basis and its connections with Christian life in general, with Baptism and grace, rather than to a sort of antiquarian interest in monastic phenomena. I feel that this more speculative approach will help us to make a more critical and receptive return to the sources of the monastic tradition. A chapter on Francis of Assisi is set against one on the Dominican Humbert of Romans, an attractive diptych which draws out well the contrast between monks and friars, as wellas the distinctive concerns of the friars minor and friars preacher. After three chapters on the English mystics, concentrating on the Cloud and Julian of Norwich, Father Tugwell concludes with a pair of chapters on de Caussade and Therese of Lisieux, the only representatives of the period after the Council of Trent. Arising from his discussion of the Carthusian spiritual classic by Guigo II which bequeathed to Western spiritual writing the ladder of lectio meditatio oratio contemplatio two chapters follow which explore these concepts in considerable depth through the mediaeval tradition, to show that they came only late in the day to fit into a carefully mapped route across the landscape of Mount Carmel. These chapters also show how the changing mood of the period led to the dislocation and decline of the role of reading and thinking in the pattern of activities which belong with prayer
The Downside review | 1984
David Foster
DoCTOR LOUTHS earlier book Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition was reviewed in THE DOWNSIDE REVIEW in July 1981 (Vol. 99, pp. 230-3), and here the author reflects the concerns of that book, this time more specially on the issue of theological method. He is thinking much more freely and gives us a useful and personal survey of literature illustrating the pattern of his ideas across the whole field of method in arts and sciences. But this book is not, like the previous one, a dispassionate though sympathetic, introduction to its subject. Nor was that simply another effort in the safely enclosed world of spirituality or early Christian thought; for Christian mysticism was presented as theological; and if this is the fundamental epistemological orientation of faith, and something conventional studies in theological method fail to tackle, then it seems there is something wrong with the convention. Louth feels that to confine the nature of theology to the critical study of its monuments could issue in blindness beyond the professional hazard of a scholars myopia and we are all aware of danger to the intellectual integrity of faith when theology buries itself in its own academic department privately going about its own business. Discerning the Mystery indicates precisely the intention of the book and signals what Louth sees as forgotten, Evagriuss ideal of the theologian as one who prays truly:
The Downside review | 1981
David Foster
tion of created nature by uncreated nature on the obvious ground that, if it means anything in particular, it traverses the divine transcendence, although in the same place intentional identification is regarded as bound up with an inadmissible adaptation to the creaturely level (pp. 427-8). Bouyer concludes that the Holy Spirit is not in God as his personal love but that the love which is Gods life, the love which is the Father in his paternity itself, which is the Son as loved and loving in return, is completed in this Spirit of the Father which can only be the Spirit of filiation, which rests upon the Son as the Spirit of free reciprocity by which the Son is both supremely loving and sovereignly loved (p. 439). In an earlier passage reference is made to Gregory of Nyssas image of a torch giving light to a second one, which itself gives light to a third: thus the Father produces the Spirit by the intermediation of the Son, who is enabled in this way to be himself productive. The life of the Trinity is a life of diffusive love, for the Spirit too is productive as being the divine Person in whom we and our world are both created and brought back through the Son to the Father. ILLTYD TRETHOWAN
