Book Reviews

James K. Beilby and Paul R. Eddy (eds), Justification: Five Views , SPCK: London, 2012; 336 pp.: 9780281067343, £15.99 (pbk)

The doctrine of justification has claimed an especially significant role in recent theological reflection in the light of contemporary reformulations – through, for example, the ‘New Perspective on Paul’ advocated by N. T. Wright and others – and events such as the issuing of the ‘Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification’ between Lutherans and Roman Catholics in 1999. With that in mind, this edited volume offers a welcome and insightful overview of a topic that is critical for lay people, clergy and professional theologians alike.

This work explores the doctrine of justification by presenting multiple views through representative essays and responses by each author to the other views. At its best, this provides an opportunity for genuine theological dialogue between Christians regarding divisive issues. The book opens with two chapters that survey the doctrine of justification in both historical and contemporary theological perspective. Turning to the five different views, Michael S. Horton represents the traditional Reformed view, which emphasizes the distinction between justification and sanctification – while maintaining their inseparability – and the forensic nature of justification through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Michael F. Bird offers an essay from the ‘progressive Reformed view’, which concurs in many respects with the traditional Reformed perspective, but reshapes the definition of terms such as ‘righteousness’ and ‘imputation’ in order to focus less on personal salvation and more on the overarching history of salvation.

One of the primary proponents of the ‘New Perspective on Paul’, James D. G. Dunn, describes the emphases of this multifaceted view, which include a renewed interest in understanding the Judaism of Paul’s day, the social dimensions of justification and the rather striking conclusion that for Paul ‘salvation is in some degree conditional on faithfulness’ (p. 200). Although he is neither Lutheran nor Orthodox, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen offers an essay that represents the deification view, which – on the basis of dialogue between Finnish-Lutherans and Russian Orthodox and the development of the so-called ‘Finnish School’ – suggests that Luther’s view of justification includes both declaring and making righteous and even contains elements that correspond to theosis. Finally, Gerald O’Collins and Oliver P. Rafferty offer a joint essay that presents the Roman Catholic view of justification, which follows Trent in arguing that it includes not only the remission of sin but also sanctification such that humanity must cooperate in the process of salvation. Collectively, these essays and the authors’ responses offer a helpful, orientating overview of this contentious issue.

As with every work, there are some shortcomings with this book. Most notable is the fact that there is no confessional Lutheran perspective represented among the essays, a glaring omission that is not defensible with the explanation that it is ‘functionally identical’ to the Reformed view (p. 10). Nevertheless, this work provides needed insight into a doctrine that has been debated throughout the Church’s history and, it seems, will continue to be.

David McNutt

University of Cambridge

Oliver Crisp, Revisioning Christology: Theology in the Reformed Tradition , Farnham: Ashgate; Burlington, VT, 2011; 176 pp.: 9781409430056, £17.99 (pbk)

In this volume Oliver Crisp offers a further array of Christological explorations to accompany those undertaken in his earlier works Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered (2007) and God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (2009). It provides a series of soundings in the Reformed theological tradition of thinking about Jesus Christ, with each of the six chapters focusing on a particular aspect of one theologian’s Christology. From Donald Baillie on the paradox of the incarnation and John Calvin on its motivation, the volume moves through Jonathan Edwards’s Idealist Christology and William Shedd on the person of Christ, to John Owen on Spirit Christology and Kathryn Tanner on incarnation as atonement. Taken together, then, the chapters both engage a diverse range of topics of Christological interest and represent each of the six centuries of the tradition. Crisp’s primary purpose, however, is neither esoteric nor historical; instead it is constructive and contemporary, attempting explicitly to offer an exercise in Reformed theological ressourcement.

Each investigation follows a broadly similar pattern: a brief introduction to the theologian and issue under review, followed by a concise and careful presentation of their handling of that issue, and concluded by a critical assessment of the value of their proposal, together with suggestions on how that proposal might be strengthened. Throughout these theological interrogations, Crisp draws not only on the insights of Scripture and the tradition but also – as he has before – on the tools of analytic theology, seeking to deploy the techniques and rigour of analytic philosophy in the domain and to the benefit of systematic theology. The result is an interdisciplinary work which regularly invokes patterns of method and categories of thought not frequently encountered in theological writing, but which does so for the purpose of testing and strengthening doctrinal claims against the broader background of fides quaerens intellectum.

How does one assess such a volume? The work certainly has many strengths. Materially, it offers a genuinely interesting set of Christological explorations, and evidences a welcome determination to identify the Reformed tradition and its citizens in an expansive sense, with reference to a shared commonality of vision. Formally, it is written in Crisp’s usual elegant and concise prose and, barring a small number of rather dense passages and rather distracting illustrations, demonstrates Crisp’s talent for rendering complex conceptual terrain easily navigable. Finally, methodologically, it offers concrete evidence for the ways in which the tools of analytic theology may not be antithetical to the methods and purposes of systematic theology. At the same time, perhaps by dint of the analytic method pursued or the propositional argumentation advanced or the particular topics covered, the volume occasionally seems somewhat to elide the narrative and historical dimensions of Christology. And there is a corresponding sense in which – ironically, given that much of the text focuses on the person of Jesus Christ – it occasionally seems somewhat to occlude the doctrine’s personal dimensions. But no one volume can do all things: for that reason, Crisp’s further Christological explorations are to be warmly anticipated.

Paul T. Nimmo

University of Edinburgh

Scott R. Swain, Trinity, Revelation, and Reading: A Theological Introduction to the Bible and Its Interpretation , T&T Clark: New York and London, 2011; 168 pp.: 9780567265401, £16.99 (pbk)

In Trinity, Revelation, and Reading, Scott R. Swain presents a coherent introduction to the theology of Scripture. Swain is not particularly concerned with ‘biblical theology’ in this text. Rather, he focuses on Scripture and the reading thereof as theological topics in and of themselves. Swain explains in his introduction that these topics are best understood in the context of God’s triune nature and God’s covenantal interests. Thus, the themes of Trinity, communication and covenant are intentionally integrated throughout the rest of this work.

From here, the book is divided into five chapters, followed by a brief conclusion. In the first chapter, Swain asserts that communication is an ontological feature of God’s identity. Accordingly, God actively pursues communication with creation throughout history. Swain demonstrates this point by surveying three major ‘acts’ in history (creation, redemption and consummation), and how God’s communication unfolds in each act.

The next chapter explores Scripture’s role as an agent of God’s communication. Swain notes that God occasionally communicates directly, but most often he uses other agents, including prophets and apostles. However, human agents have considerable time-and-space limitations. These limitations are problematic because God desires to communicate with all people, in all places, throughout all of time. The written word addresses this problem, and serves as ‘perpetual verbal testimony’ to God’s glory and his covenantal promises to humanity (p. 58).

In the third chapter, Swain addresses the doctrine of divine inspiration. He discusses this doctrine in terms of fellowship between God and people: through covenantal fellowship, God sanctified the minds of the human authors. This sanctification freed them from spiritual blindness and empowered the authors to testify faithfully and truthfully in Scripture. In this way both humans and God were full participants in the construction of the Bible – neither side was suppressed or coerced in the process.

The final two chapters are on reading Scripture. Swain encourages Christians to read the Bible in a covenantal manner. This involves prayer, explication, meditation and application. The task can be intense and even ‘arduous’ at times (p. 119). By faithfully engaging in this kind of reading, however, believers are transformed by God’s truth and grow in covenantal obedience to him.

An unfortunate absence in this text is any discussion regarding the closed nature of the biblical canon. While the selection of works and subsequent closing of the canon is a historical fact, it is also a theological stance of the Christian community. Some mention of it would have been worthwhile in a text like this. However, this is a minor criticism in comparison to what Swain achieves in this work. He does an exceptional job of introducing the subject matter, while integrating complex themes such as Trinity and covenant. Swain’s lucid writing style and clear format make this book an excellent primer for novice theologians. At the same time, he maintains a level of intellectual sophistication that keeps the content engaging and worthwhile for even the most veteran theologians – an uncommon feature in introductory level texts.

Vanessa L. Williams

Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota

Stephen H. Webb, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter , Oxford University Press: New York, 2012; 352 pp.: 9780199827954, £40.00/$65.00 (hbk)

Over the course of nearly 300 pages (and not a few lengthy endnotes), Stephen Webb argues for something that many, if not most, will simply find counterintuitive and, indeed, ridiculous: that God has a body. Moreover, Webb will surely attract criticism or scorn from some quarters on account of his finding resources for his thesis in Mormon teachings about Jesus. So given Webb’s stance on divine corporeality, and given his acceptance of the legitimacy of at least some Mormon doctrines as a conversation partner for mainstream Christian theology, is this monograph truly worthy of serious attention?

Before answering this question, let me summarise Webb’s position: God the Father has a kind of body composed of the perfection of matter. God the Son is anthropomorphically corporeal, and so the source, plan and goal of all other (and especially human) material bodies. The Holy Spirit, who is the love between the Father and the Son, is also the love that drives matter to adopt particular forms. Such an account of God means, for Webb, that God the Son has always been the man Jesus Christ – or, put another way, the man Jesus Christ, and the material stuff of which he is made, eternally exists.

Webb is aware that this so-called ‘heavenly flesh Christology’ has been a minority position in the history of Christian theology; but he explains that, until Origen of Alexandria first argued for divine immateriality, the idea that God had a body of some kind was common-sensical and widespread. The downward path, as Webb sees it, from divine materiality and corporeality to divine immateriality and incorporeality is a product of a world-view that effectively equated matter (and so the body) with evil. God had to be conceived as having no body or any constituent parts if God were to avoid the stain of evil. However, what was an essential development for theology in the early Christian centuries is something that can now be reformulated. Thus Webb believes that a change in metaphysics is needed, a change rooted in the eternally existing Jesus Christ. It is an intriguing and often persuasive proposal.

Jesus Christ, Eternal God is not an especially easy read. This is not to say that Webb’s style is difficult; far from it, in fact; but those with a postgraduate-level interest in Christology in particular will benefit most from Webb’s lively analyses. Too much space, perhaps, is given over to building and strengthening the case: Webb discusses, among others, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth and Mormon theology, and tackles the Nestorian and Monophysite controversies, at times pushing the logic of these personalities and debates to the extreme; but seemingly fails adequately to address the implications of heavenly flesh Christology for, say, liturgy and gender issues. These things noted, and to return to my earlier question, there is no doubt in my mind that this near extraordinary monograph is worthy of serious, sustained attention. Its radical claims about Jesus mean that it should not be ignored.

Terry J. Wright

Spurgeon’s College, London

Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids/Cambridge, 2011; 224 pp.: 9780802865427, £12.99 (pbk)

This book is an intriguing one to have been written by the J I Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, because it proposes to evangelicals a theological ressourcement. The aim of this is to recover the Christian-Platonist sacramental synthesis, which the author identifies as characteristic of the Great Tradition, before its dissection by the ‘scissors of modernity’ (p. 68).

The narrative here is familiar to anyone who has followed the rise and flourishing of Radical Orthodoxy: the Platonism characteristic of the Fathers gives way in the high Middle Ages to a disastrous divorce between nature and the supernatural, begun in the assertion of the univocity of Being in the ontology of Duns Scotus and brought to a baleful maturity in the Nominalism of Occam and his disciples. The Reformers therefore inherit a Catholicism shorn of its sacramental-doctrinal integrity, and accentuate the problem with their forensic account of justification, which leaves no place for what Boersma calls the ‘cosmic tapestry’ characteristic of Christian living in a properly sacramental order.

How do we get back, and to what? Although Boersma allows that a return to the Great Tradition might well be undertaken through the sacramentally minded divines of the Anglican Caroline revival in the seventeenth century, he gives his attention in the second portion of the book to the French theologians of the so-called Nouvelle Théologie, whose struggle with the rigours of neo-Thomism in the 1950s led at first to doctrinal censure and then to rehabilitation and a place in the sun at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Characteristically, the principal emphasis here is on the work of Henri de Lubac, whose attack on the concept of ‘pure nature’ in his seminal work The Mystery of the Supernatural is the crucial moment in the history of the ressourcement movement. We hear too about other familiar landmarks: Yves Congar’s ecclesiology of Tradition, the recovery of the text of the Fathers through the Sources Chrétiennes project, and the recovery of Thomas Aquinas from the grip of the neo-Thomists in the work of Marie-Dominique Chenu.

This has pretty drastic consequences for evangelical theology, and Boersma encourages his readers to take the plunge by pointing out how the proposed return to the sources is as demanding for Catholics as it will be for Protestants. The problem here though is the same as the one encountered by Radical Orthodoxy: how can a theological ressourcement be at once highly ecclesial but at the same time posit a fundamental rupture in the transmission of doctrine which has taken seven centuries to put right? Boersma declares the Reformation to have been a failed attempt to reweave the sacramental tapestry, which is fundamental to our participation as Christians in the life of Christ. It remains to be seen if contemporary evangelicals will allow their own hermeneutic of rupture to be transferred from the sixteenth to the fourteenth century in this way.

Robin Ward

St Stephen’s House, Oxford

Peter Ochs, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews , Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, MI, 2010; 288 pp.: 9780801039409, $27.99 (pbk)

In Another Reformation, Jewish theologian Peter Ochs, the Edgar Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, presents a comparative analysis of post-liberal Christian theologians’ approaches to theological inquiry that he terms ‘another reformation’.

For Ochs, the theology of George Lindbeck, Robert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, Daniel Hardy and David Ford marks a third epoch of Jewish-Christian relations that overcomes the failures of two previous epochs: the period of formation during which each community defined the other as an offence to their self-definition; and the Enlightenment period during which each community sought to overcome mutual exclusion by assimilating their traditions into a religion of reason.

Post-liberalism overcomes these failures through pragmatic reasoning and the rejection of supersessionism, or replacement theology. Ochs’s thesis is that these theologians’ rejection of supersessionism correlates with their post-liberal patterns of reasoning ‘100 percent of the time’ (p. 2). Ochs’s secondary thesis supports his first: the theology of John Yoder and John Milbank are exceptions that prove the rule. Ochs demonstrates his first thesis through an analysis of trends in the theology of Lindbeck, Jenson, Hauerwas, Hardy and Ford. These trends are described as a ‘reparative theory’ (p. 53) of doctrinal reformation aimed at unifying the Church by removing obstructions such as ‘supersessionist hermeneutics’ (p. 62). Especially illuminating is Ochs’s comparison of Hauerwas’s reparative reasoning to the reasoning of the prophet Amos. For Ochs, Hauerwas and Amos see ‘the disorder of the nation as symptomatic of the nation’s sin or error’ (p. 101). Hardy’s post-liberalism contains a similar concern for division and the Spirit’s healing of supersessionism. Likewise, Ford sees supersessionism as a hermeneutical failure.

Yoder and Milbank are the exception that proves Ochs’s thesis. Ochs demonstrates that Milbank’s supersessionist claims stem from liberal tendencies, such as the belief that the universality of Christ can be demonstrated against ‘advocates of any other truth’ (p. 236). Yet Ochs’s argument that Yoder is supersessionist is problematized by an anachronistic use of the term to describe Yoder’s views that Diaspora Judaism is preferable to Mishnaic Judaism, which Ochs’s says Yoder delegitimizes (pp. 150, 160). Terence L. Donaldson points out that the term supersessionism is helpful only for describing the relationship between Israel and Church after the period of formation, where each is defined as a separate entity. Only after this period does a ‘replacement’ of one entity by another entity make sense. Yoder’s privileging of Diaspora Judaism is therefore more akin to the reparative reason that Ochs identifies in Amos and Hauerwas – a reasoning that identifies error and disorder yet avoids supersessionism. If Yoder manages to avoid supersessionism, and if Ochs is right that Yoder relies upon liberal patterns of reasoning, then it seems Yoder is either the exception to Ochs’s thesis or Yoder’s reasoning is more post-liberal than Ochs realizes.

For this reason, I found the correlation thesis distracting from Ochs’s helpful mapping of these post-liberal theologians’ rejection of supersessionism and their concern to reread the sacred page in ways reminiscent of Aquinas’s engagement of Maimonides’s interpretation of the literal meaning of the Mosaic Law. Nevertheless, Ochs’s work is a major contribution to Christian theology because he identifies a form of theological reasoning that is clearly helping to repair Jewish-Christian relations by rereading Scripture in the light of theological matters of first importance, such as the election of Israel.

Matt Tapie

The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC

Peter Tyler, The Return of the Mystical: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Teresa of Avila and the Christian Mystical Tradition , Continuum: London and New York, 2011; 304 pp.: 9781441104441, £18.99 (pbk)

Tyler’s book is like a rather exotic dish made up of various, rather unusual ingredients. The ingredients are: recent reflection on the notion of the mystical that seeks to distance itself from any sense of the ‘mystic’ as some sort of spiritual adept; some very deep stuff about the history of the Areopagitical tradition in the Western Middle Ages; a lively and fresh approach to one of the archetypal ‘mystics’, St Teresa of Ávila; and, finally, an informed understanding of one of the giants of twentieth-century philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Each of these on its own would be enough for a monograph; the combination promises something exciting. That promise is largely fulfilled: Tyler relates ways of thinking most at home in one or other of his ingredients to other ways of thinking that seem to belong elsewhere – the cross-referencing and cross-pollination of ideas is impressive.

We begin with a lively and reliable discussion of the progress of the notion of the ‘mystical’ from its recent beginnings to the latter part of the last century. It is clear that, on its own, it is not a satisfactory category, usually employed in a question-begging way. Another ingredient concerns the fate of the Dionysian tradition in the later Middle Ages. Tyler ploughs a rich furrow here, and he is to be forgiven for having missed some scholars who might have helped him (for instance, Fr Simon Tugwell); it is, however, a rather isolated furrow and some reflection on the rest of the field might have clarified matters. A main ingredient is the Spanish ‘mystic’, St Teresa of Ávila. Tyler is an expert on the Spanish mystics, and speaks here with authority; his presentation of Teresa is fresh and full of insights, particularly through his attention to style. The fourth ingredient, Wittgenstein, is rather like salt or yeast, pervading the whole. Tyler is well aware of the difficulties the interpreter of Wittgenstein faces (his discussion of this is wonderfully succinct); he is, of course, interested in das Mystische, keen to preserve it as a significant notion in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and sensitive to the danger of allowing the ‘mystical’ to slip into any conventional categories. What he focuses on is the idea of what cannot be said, but can be shown, and uses this distinction to interpret the earlier tradition. He is particularly interested in the way in which the ‘apophatic’, the dimension of denial, can function as a way of destablizing the intellect, thus enabling the person, body as well as soul, feeling as well as thought, to be open to that which cannot be captured in categories and concepts.

All this is welcome, but is it at all original? I did not find myself convinced that the appeal to Wittgenstein led to any insights not already encountered elsewhere. A more serious problem seems to me that Tyler remains trapped by the individualism that the development of the Dionysian tradition he explores reinforced in the Western tradition. However, this is a thought-provoking book.

Andrew Louth

University of Durham

Peter Dula and Chris K. Huebner (eds), The New Yoder , Lutterworth Press: Cambridge, 2011; 336 pp.: £23.25 (pbk)

In this volume of essays, the editors have collected fifteen pieces related to the work of John Howard Yoder. They selected these essays as representatives of a new generation of Yoder scholarship. According to the editors, the older generation of Yoder studies tended to be written by Mennonite scholars on topics of war and pacifism, and with reference to Yoder’s own interlocutors within Christian Ethics such as Troelstch and the Niebuhr brothers. By contrast, the new generation is characterized by authors from a wider variety of contexts (including from outside Christianity) who consider Yoder as a resource for a wider variety of subjects and in dialogue with authors and movements Yoder himself did not read or address. While the earlier generation was often focused on questions of whether Yoder was too illiberal or sectarian, this generation has long since been convinced that he was not, which is taken for granted, and the conversation moves forward from this assumption.

Authors of the essays include several scholars who earned their doctorates under Stanley Hauerwas, and, while it is not exclusively a collection of Hauerwasian perspectives, the book bears the clear influence of a generation of people who were introduced to Yoder by Hauerwas or have learned and written about Yoder in conversation with Hauerwas. The authors undertake readings of Yoder alongside authors such as St Augustine, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Paul Virilio, Michel de Certeau, Edward Said, Jeffrey Stout and Rowan Williams. These dialogues between Yoder and various interlocutors cover subjects including Judaism, postmodernity, exile, forgiveness, trauma, outsiders, democracy and mission. Many of the essays share the particular commonality that they are not only ‘much more philosophical than Yoder himself was’ but also in fact ‘more philosophical than he ever would have wanted to be’ (p. xix).

This is an engaging and important collection which shows promising signs of new ways of responding to and working in conversation with the immensely important and influential work of Yoder. However, it may perhaps appeal to a somewhat narrow readership. It is not an introduction to Yoder; it is in fact not ‘about’ Yoder. The editors make it clear that the essays ‘are not first of all intended as interpretive efforts designed to make sense of Yoder’s work’ (p. xv). Thus the book is not the place to begin for those who are not already familiar with Yoder’s work and influence. Yet those who are most deeply familiar with Yoder and scholarship about Yoder may find that up to two-thirds of the essays are already familiar to them, especially as many of them were previously published in Yoder collections. But for readers in between these two groups – those who are familiar with Yoder but not avidly so – this collection is commendable indeed. If you have ever wondered what might have happened if Yoder had read postmodern Continental philosophy, or engaged positively with Augustine, or been influenced by post-colonialism, this collection is a must-read.

Elizabeth Phillips

Westcott House, Cambridge

Bernadette McNary-Zak and Rebecca Todd Peters (eds), Teaching Undergraduate Research in Religious Studies , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 208 pp.: 9780199732869, £35.00 (hbk)

This is a rare and important find. It is one of the first collections to name, and then epistemologically, theoretically and practically examine, ‘Undergraduate Research’. While a common feature of Theology and Religious Studies curricula, Undergraduate Research is seldom discussed as distinct pedagogy and/or practice. The volume is highly commendable on several counts. It opens with two chapters delineating Undergraduate Research, capitalized by the authors to identify it as a distinct student learning experience, comprising creativity, originality, collaboration and public dissemination, which generates academic independence. While these are also the hallmarks of advanced study, recognizing undergraduate work as ‘research’ (rather than ‘just’ extended pieces of coursework) identifies expectations, criteria and appropriate theoretical and methodological tools for supervisors and students. Moreover, these terms are questioned and critiqued in subsequent chapters, generating lively dialogue which engages the reader in thinking through the possibilities of working with undergraduates on their research.

Teaching Undergraduate Research is well balanced in representing disciplines across Religious Studies. As well as featuring chapters on historic and text-based projects, Paul O. Myhre draws on his supervision of a Native American cosmology dissertation by archival research; Jeffrey M. Brackett considers an ethnography of a Buddhist community; and Carolyn Jones suggests ways to encourage students to become ‘reading professionals’ when working in religion and culture. These are useful case-studies, and are easily transferred into other subjects, within and beyond Religious Studies as they contribute to mapping the management and processes of Undergraduate Research.

Interwoven throughout, and emphasized in Ann Marie Leonard Chilton’s closing chapter, are student reflections on their experiences of undertaking research: from the personal and academic gains made by working on independent projects to the general and specific aspects of the process. These narratives not only highlight the significance of Undergraduate Research for students’ academic learning and personal development, but are also useful prompts for supervisors to reflectively examine their approach and practice to working with undergraduate researchers. While situated in the US context, and primarily aimed at dissertation supervisors, this volume also offers insightful resources for students. In particular, Robin Rienhart’s chapter, ‘Thinking about Method’, is highly accessible for undergraduates, and I will encourage my students to consider how Reinhart traces the different stages involved in selecting appropriate research topics and apposite methods.

The authors are also honest about the challenges of working with students at this level of study, identifying disciplinary, institutional, personal and professional challenges and limitations to the process. The intensity and heavier workload involved in mentoring Undergraduate Research is balanced with pragmatic teaching tools and techniques, and careful reflections on the different ‘teacher/facilitator/mentor/coach’ (p. 70) roles a supervisor adopts. There are several imaginative suggestions for enhancing the experiences of both student and supervisor, including possibilities for dissemination, collaborative publication and undergraduate training.

This is a very useful, enjoyable collection of essays from experienced and imaginative contributors, which innovatively marks what Undergraduate Research contributes to students, supervisors, Religious Studies and the academy.

Dawn Llewellyn

University of Chester

Lauren A. S. Monroe, Josiah’s Reform and the Dynamics of Defilement: Israelite Rites of Violence and the Making of a Biblical Text , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 224 pp.: 9780199774166, £45.00 (hbk)

For most of the last two centuries, one of the assured results of biblical scholarship has been the association between the book of the law discovered in the temple during the reign of Josiah (and that king’s attendant religious reforms) and the book of Deuteronomy. Much more recently serious doubts about the historical reliability of the account of that discovery in 2 Kings 22—23 have led many to despair of ever making any use of this text for historical reconstructive purposes, and few who have attempted such an endeavour have succeeded in persuading many beyond the already converted. Monroe’s new volume, however, raises the possibility that constructive work may yet be undertaken on this text.

The basic argument of Josiah’s Reform is that the description of Josiah’s destruction of elements of the Jerusalem and Bethel cults in 2 Kings 23 resounds not with the deuteronomic or deuteronomistic language but with the priestly language of the Holiness Code (ch. 1). In particular, Monroe argues that the destruction in 2 Kings 23 is depicted as a series of priestly apotropaic rituals, whose primary object is the elimination of impurity through the ritual defilement of sacred space (ch. 2). This version of 2 Kings 23 originated in a Jerusalem-based holiness school and was intended to present Josiah in the role of a priest, thereby asserting his authority over the Jerusalem priesthood. Monroe associates the deuteronomistic use and development of this base text with an exilic desire ‘to cast Josiah in the garb of Joshua, Israel’s great ḥērem warrior’, although the term ḥērem is itself not used in 2 Kings 23 (ch. 3).

Chapter 4 discusses in some detail the proposed editorial processes by which this deuteronomistic revision of the holiness base text occurred; those less interested in redactional minutiae may wish to skim this chapter but would be ill-advised to skip it entirely, as it details not only how this process might have occurred but also much of Monroe’s understanding of why it was undertaken. Among the theory’s most notable implications is that the proposal eliminates the need for a pre-exilic version of the Deuteronomistic History which included the reign of Josiah; Monroe suggests instead that a version of Kings, not necessarily deuteronomistic, which ran through the reign of Hezekiah was compiled around the same time as the holiness account of Josiah’s reforms (ch. 5).

Overall, this is a lucid and refreshingly innovative approach to one of the most discussed texts in the Hebrew Bible. Given the subject, it is noticeable that it is relatively lightly annotated, which frequently leaves the reader wondering as to the rationale for a particular assertion (particularly with regard to redactional matters outside 2 Kings 23), but this – along with the use of endnotes rather than footnotes – is perhaps an insignificant criticism for the more lay reader, for whom these decisions leave an approachable and easily readable main text.

C. L. Crouch

University of Nottingham

H. G. M. Williamson, He Has Shown You What Is Good: Old Testament Justice , Lutterworth Press: Cambridge, 2012; 128 pp.; 9780718892982, £15.00 (pbk)

In this book, based on lectures given by the author at Trinity Theological College, Singapore, in 2011, Hugh Williamson asks how we can know in any situation what is the just thing to do, and whether the Old Testament can help readers to make such choices. To answer it, he primarily examines Old Testament texts concerning ‘justice and righteousness’, a common hendiadys which he takes to equate in effect to ‘social justice’. He notes particularly texts which seek to secure justice for the marginalized in society, typified by widows and orphans.

Finding the Old Testament’s ideas about justice echoed in texts from ancient Israel’s neighbours, he argues as a central thesis that the biblical writers advocate what might be called ‘natural justice’. That is, biblical justice does not have to be specially revealed by God; rather, it is knowable through human observation and reasoning. The development within Old Testament law, visible in the successive Pentateuchal law codes, is one evidence of changes in the way in which justice was humanly understood (pp. 38–41).

In Wisdom literature, the book of Proverbs has a concept of Wisdom that is ‘in effect, a form of natural law’ (p. 56). The same is true of the Prophets, whose preaching is not based on the law revealed to Moses at Mt Sinai but rather on commonly accepted standards. Both Proverbs and Isaiah testify to the widely acknowledged obligation of kings to act justly, the latter through the traditions of Zion (pp. 55, 72). In Amos, the concept of justice derives from ideas closer to Wisdom (pp. 73–5).

Williamson argues that justice does not look the same in every time and place. He shows how concepts of it are influenced by considerations such as hierarchy and social class. The Old Testament does not depict a society in permanent crisis because of a scourge of oppression and poverty, a concept of it that might owe more to critiques of modern capitalism; rather, a certain level of ‘poverty’ might be considered quite normal within the hierarchical society of ancient Israel.

Finally, considering ‘Messianic justice’, Williamson thinks that the ‘servant’-figure in Isaiah 40—66 testifies to a developing understanding of justice, which is even taken up by Jesus when he applies Isaiah 61.1–3 to his own ministry (Luke 4.16–21) (pp. 101–3). And this is the basis for his final suggestion to the reader, that the Old Testament’s concept of justice leaves space for adaptation and re-application in ever-changing circumstances.

While there is much to commend in the argument presented, I think the Old Testament is arguably more contrarian than the notion of ‘natural law’ allows. And there is room to explore further how far the political, social and economic structures attested in the Old Testament might be brought into critical engagement with modern patterns, as part of an analysis of the relevance of Old Testament justice today.

Gordon McConville

University of Gloucestershire

Craig A. Evans, Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence , SPCK: London, 2012; 192 pp.: 9780281060979, £12.99 (pbk)

This fascinating new book is about archaeological discoveries from the world of Jesus. The author is an internationally renowned ‘Jesus scholar’ who aims to make information about key archaeological finds available to non-specialists. In an easy-to-read style, with black-and-white pictures, readers are introduced to artefacts mainly from the Holy Land. Evidence from Pompeii, Vindolanda and elsewhere also features. The book helps to put Jesus in his context and will be of interest to general readers, students, scholars, visitors to the Holy Land and ‘Jesus questers’ of any stripe.

Five chapters deal with specific areas. First, discoveries made at Sepphoris, a city near Nazareth never mentioned in the New Testament. We do not know whether Jesus ever went there but the question bears directly on who we think he was. Sepphoris is often portrayed as predominantly Greek but Evans shows that the presence of Miqva’ot (immersion pools for Jewish purification rites) and the absence of pig bones indicates that it was more Jewish than is often claimed. He also discusses and rejects the idea that Jesus was a Cynic.

Second, synagogues at the time of Jesus and whether there really were any. Discussing the remains at Capernaum, Gamla, Herodion, Jericho, Magdala and Masada, Evans argues against a recent proposal that there were no synagogue buildings in Jesus’ day. He concludes, rightly in my view, that there were community centre buildings used for different purposes rather than full-blown Byzantine-style synagogues.

Third, literacy, reading and writing. The author argues that literacy was much higher at the time of Jesus than is often supposed and concludes that Jesus himself was probably literate though not formally trained. Fourth, the Jerusalem temple and its practices. Among other things, this chapter discusses the temple warning on the wall of separation, the Caiaphas Ossuary and Miqva’ot in the area. And finally, Jewish burial customs at the time of Jesus. Evans looks at a number of different tombs in Jerusalem and argues (against those such as Crossan) that there is no evidence to support the idea that Jesus was never buried.

In each chapter, the author shows how archaeology can throw significant light upon the world Jesus lived in. There are two Appendixes, one rejecting the claim that Jesus’ family tomb has been found in East Talpiot near Jerusalem and the other discussing what Jesus looked like.

Writing against biblical ‘minimalists’ who underestimate the importance of archaeology Evans makes a strong case for taking it seriously. He is sometimes overconfident in dating archaeological material and he often cites the Gospels as if it were a forgone conclusion that they contain the ‘very words of Jesus’. There is no discussion here of the difficulties that abound in reconstructing what Jesus probably said. There are serious issues to be considered when basing connections between archaeology and Jesus on Gospel texts. Nevertheless, this enjoyable book will stimulate further interest and give helpful direction to anyone who wants to know more about the world Jesus inhabited.

Stephen W. Need

Essex

Tom Wright, Simply Jesus: Who He Was, What He Did, and Why It Matters , SPCK: London, 2011; 256 pp.: 9780281064793, £9.99 (pbk)

Much of Tom Wright’s writing addresses questions surrounding Jesus’ identity, purpose and meaning. Simply Jesus is a concentrated version of the same, but it is by no means a rehash or dumbing down of weightier studies. It is a fast-moving account of Jesus with its own coherence and integrity that energetically seeks to provide answers to anyone asking questions about this most intriguing of historical figures.

The book is set within the overarching analogy of ‘a perfect storm’. Referring to a confluence of meteorological forces that took place around the coast of Massachusetts in 1991, Wright pictures an historical, sociological and theological storm that gathers strength in first-century Palestine: the imperial pressure of Rome, the hopes of Israel and the movement of God’s purposes. The result is that now, in the time of Jesus, God comes to his world to take charge as its king, and that he does so through the person and action of Jesus, the embodiment of the presence, power and purpose of God.

As with his larger works, Wright is very clear that the reader should be given every help to enter the story of Scripture and to see the world as Jesus and his contemporaries would have seen it. So no one is quite safe in the storm that gathers pace as the book progresses. Those who have believed and followed Jesus, just as much as those who have denied and dismissed him, are likely to be buffeted by the winds but surprised, joyfully so, by the new vistas of God that they expose.

A number of themes that have preoccupied Tom Wright in other works come to the fore in this one. There is the temple and Jesus’ claim to be the new space in which heaven and earth meet. There is the sabbath and Jesus’ proposal that the future of which it speaks is fulfilled in him. There is the reality of the new creation impinging on the old as matter itself is transfigured by Jesus’ presence. With a number of historical parallels, Wright helpfully illustrates the tension, forced on preachers and exegetes alike, that the kingdom that this new space, time and matter reveals is both present and future. Judas Maccabaeus, Simon bar-Kochba and Simon bar-Giora all come into play as shapers of a religious culture conversant with the notion of a reality that has really begun and yet is also still to come. The death of Jesus in the eye of the storm is given a chapter’s attention and Wright is clear that the heart of Jesus’ vocation to establish God’s kingdom is to be found in his confrontation of the forces of destruction and evil with the higher power of divine love.

The final part of the book seeks to explain what it means to say that God is king through Jesus in the world today. I did not find that this section ran with the same pace and persuasion or leapt with the same energy as earlier parts. There were even moments when I felt – much to my own surprise – that the arguments were a bit too Anglican, too supportive of and a shade soft on the secular rulers and could have done with some more Anabaptist impatience with the world as it is, even more of a revolutionary spirit.

Nevertheless, for those who want to understand Jesus better, whether well-established Christians, new believers or serious searchers, I would have no hesitation in recommending this book by one of the Bible’s most illuminating scholars and one of the Church’s most effective communicators.

Christopher Cocksworth

Coventry

David M. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria: Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic, Father , Christian Theology in Context, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012; 256 pp.: 9780199210954, £18.99 (pbk)

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the most important figures of early Christianity. It will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable resource for historians and theologians alike, written as it is at a time when research has radically changed perspectives on the fourth-century context, as well as Athanasius’ own contribution to the received ‘binary’ account of the doctrinal controversies of that period. The core chapters take as their subject the four characterizations listed in the subtitle: bishop, theologian, ascetic, father. These are preceded by an introductory account of Athanasius’ life and writings, then succeeded by an exploration of his legacy and a brief concluding assessment. A chronological table, a considerable bibliography and an accessible style make this a useful entrée to Athanasian studies. The fact that certain reconstructions and interpretations may be controversial is not obscured, though the detailed grounds for adopting one particular viewpoint rather than another are rarely pursued in much detail – the series is after all meant for students and general readers.

That summary of the book should alert the informed reader to the nature of its particular contribution to the literature. This is not primarily a biography concerned to establish exact dates, influences and relationships, though it is careful to sketch the salient facts and accepted probabilities. Nor is this another history of the contentious issues that were debated in the first decades of the Christianization of the Roman Empire, conventionally known as ‘the Arian controversy’, though that context is never absent from consideration. Nor is it simply another interpretation of the theology of Athanasius, though it is marked by clear exposition of his thought. What it achieves is the creation of a portrait which allows the pastoral to modify the political, and the ascetic to ground the theological in the living practice of Egyptian Christianity in the fourth century. This portrait is the richer for the way it brings together that revised doctrinal and historical perspective already mentioned with pastoral and ascetic material which survives only in Coptic, offering a whole chapter, for example, which focuses on the Festal Letters. In this way the overview benefits from a whole range of recent research into what might once have been treated as too obscure for the student.

Perhaps the biggest problem of the approach adopted by this book is repetition. The brief summary of Athanasius’ life and writings is followed by another account of his career as a bishop, and then another review of the fourth-century theological controversies and Athanasius’ writings in response. One benefit of this, however, is that someone new to the subject will receive constant reminders, while another important outcome is that the reader is enabled to appreciate both why the doctrinal polemics were no mere academic exercise and how the legend of Athanasius, as the persecuted but indomitable defender of orthodoxy against Arianism, came to be formulated despite the complex reality of what actually went on during Athanasius’ lifetime.

Frances Young

University of Birmingham

Massimo Faggioli, Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning , Paulist Press: New York, 2012; 208 pp.: 9780809147502, $14.95 (pbk)

Faggioli provides a detailed and wide-ranging map outlining the many different interpretative approaches to the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council (1963–5). This book will interest anyone who is engaged in the question of how to interpret authoritative Church Councils.

The Council was seen by most of the Catholic and non-Catholic world as a turning point, the beginning of a new epoch, the Catholic Church coming to terms with the modern world after having rejected and condemned it for quite some time. Unlike Councils before it, it was marked by five striking novel elements that may in part have been responsible for the interpretative ‘battles’. The Council was not concerned to condemn errors and articulate doctrine in the light of controversy. It was attended by a global grouping of bishops – with Asia, Africa, Australia alongside the traditional European ‘powers’. Stylistically it was a pastoral Council. It produced more documentation than any other Council. Finally, it had extensive international media coverage. The laity were fed with intimate details of some very dramatic events. Media presence did not stop the sessions being conducted in Latin, despite the fact that quite a few of the bishops possessed little or rather rusty Latin. The documents produced at the Council said so many things about such different areas that differences of opinion were inevitable. Minor schism eventually resulted – and the Vatican authorities have been keen to mend the tear ever since.

Faggioli is ably qualified and a widely read guide. He outlines the different hermeneutical approaches with chronological sensibility. We see how feminists, liberationists, liberals, conservatives, historians, the Roman Curia, Augustinians and Thomists, bishops and popes all claimed, in differing ways, the keys to understanding the Council. We also see how the Asian and African churches bit off chunks and chewed; and have had some of their discoveries spat out by Rome. Faggioli sides squarely with the academic historians and is himself part of the Bologna School steered by Giuseppe Alberigo whose five-volume history of the Council is praised in almost every chapter. Faggioli carries out a sustained criticism of the present Pope and those who side with his interpretation of the Council. He argues that the Vatican has now totally taken control of interpreting the Council and avoids intellectual engagement with the ‘majority of scholars’. The battle in the subtitle is waged relentlessly (and sometimes repetitively) through the pages of the book.

Even if one disagrees with Faggioli there is an enormous amount to learn from his account. While historians are indispensible in the task of interpretation, Faggioli at times seems to grant them exclusive and determinative rights of interpretation. In the modernist debate about the meaning of Scripture there was a battle regarding the relationship between history, theology and authority. While the Council is not Scripture, it nevertheless plays a pivotal authoritative role and there are faint echoes of that earlier unresolved debate playing itself out again.

Gavin D’Costa

University of Bristol

Mark Chapman, Anglican Theology , T&T Clark: London, 2012; 288 pp.: 9780567250315, £45.00 (hbk); 9780567008022, £14.99 (pbk)

Presumably a key skill for shooting grouse is the ability to focus on a moving target. Assuming the beaters have done their work efficiently, however, one can expect the fowl to be moving in the same direction. Mark Chapman’s achievement in this excellent scholarly and accessible analysis is to focus on constantly mobile targets entering the theological horizon from every direction. He identifies the problem at the outset by nailing a number of historiographical myths. These myths are the result of different ‘parties’ within the Church of England reading back their own interests both into the Reformation period and into the unfolding scenarios of succeeding centuries.

Chapman’s method is historical and he makes good critical use of the recent explosion of revisionist histories of the Reformation and its aftermath. Despite the oft-used term ‘Elizabethan Settlement’, he makes it clear that this itself cannot be seen as coterminous with ‘Anglican theology’. The graph of changing theological fortunes is traced through the Henrician, Edwardian, Mercian and Elizabethan periods. How would Elizabeth respond? Protestants were hopeful, but the very most that could be claimed was a moderate Protestantism flavoured by a conservatism which abhorred any further radical revision of the liturgy. Chapman offers a properly nuanced reflection on Jewel’s apology and points to its seminal influence in the development of what later became Anglican self-understanding.

Richard Hooker’s prominence in intra-Anglican apologetics is subjected to a sophisticated critique. What was Hooker really about? The key word polity is examined and there are interesting insights into Hooker’s radicalism, using that term both historically and theologically. Hooker’s distinction between order and doctrine became a key part of later debates about the nature of Anglican theological discourse. Chapman then adverts to the brilliant, albeit unsuccessful, contribution of William Laud. He indicates how Laud’s contribution would be an essential ingredient in the settlement following the restoration of the monarchy. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth century introduce one more element to the moving targets of Anglican theology with the Cambridge Platonists: Latitudinarians now entered the vocabulary of the Church of England.

The shadows of the nineteenth-century controversies with the publications of both the Parker Society and the History of Anglo-Catholic Theology linger throughout the book and act as a lens focusing on the different developing traditions. Finally, Chapman argues that a unique focus on English developments will not do. He points to the key contribution of William Reed Huntington, including the Chicago Quadrilateral. He also engages with those (like Stephen Sykes and Paul Avis) who have bemoaned the lack of one clear confessional Anglican theology, which he believes is little more than a chimera. Instead, Anglicanism’s identity has been fashioned by a productive abrasion between several different theological patterns. The truth might better be encapsulated in a title such as ‘Anglican Theologies’. Chapman admits that his analysis is not exhaustive: some more background on the wider European ferment would have been interesting. Nevertheless within its own chosen limits this is an essential addition to the growing literature on an ever more self-conscious Anglicanism.

Stephen Platten

Wakefield

Samuel Wells, Be Not Afraid: Facing Fear with Faith , Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, MI, 2011; 224 pp.: 9781587433023, £10.99 (pbk)

A famous Sufi story tells of Mulla Nasrudin throwing corn around the outside of his house. When questioned as to why he is doing this he says it is to keep the tigers away. The questioner persists: ‘but there aren’t any tigers here’. The Mullah proudly replies: ‘Well, it works, then, doesn’t it?’ Readers are left wondering how much of their own life is made up of throwing corn and what their own personal tigers are.

Those such as Freud, and in our own day Adam Phillips, have helped us see that, far from being exclusively a natural reflex, fear is also constructed out of an invisible history and often through the ways we protect ourselves from it. For this reason, maybe, Iris Murdoch suggested that to understand any philosopher’s work we must ask ourselves what he or she is frightened of. She might have added the theologian’s work too.

Sam Wells, the new vicar of St Martins-in-the-Fields church in London, has put together in this book thirty-one short pieces that broadly ask us not to be afraid – of death, weakness, power, difference, faith and life. It is a book to dip into, with each article self-contained and worthy of a reflective response. Wells is a profound and imaginative interpreter of biblical texts and works hard to enable us to make a lively connection between word and action, head and heart. Faith, he argues, is not a heroic journey but the acceptance of being found. Fears are the inverse of hope. Salvation is ‘the transformation of our past from a burden to a gift … and the transformation of our future from curse to blessing’ (p. 11).

Wells is a passionate and assured encourager, theologically insightful but reassuringly accessible as he constantly relates his belief to human experience and questioning. Whether he scrutinizes our fears with the scalpel precision that initiates the recognition that can often be the first step of such salvation is questionable, but it is a book with depth and with an evident pulse of theological energy and committed discipleship. Here, the Christian is not saved from the world but for the world. This makes the author’s work full of potential and possibility with many threads to weave rather than tie up.

For this reviewer the frustration with the book lies in its general tone rather than content. Each small chapter reads as an animated sermon and some clunky homiletic tactics are employed that dilute the written text rather than enrich it. His relating of some ‘real-life’ stories see him asking people questions designed to expose their superficial understanding as opposed to his own insight. This can sadly curdle the odd reflection with a self-righteous air. His preacher’s rhetoric can also translate badly onto the page – for example, ‘maybe he didn’t get the salary some people get paid these days, but as Son of God, you’ve got to say he was in a pretty high-status position’ (p. 23). Sermons often have very mixed audiences, books less so. This made me wonder who the target readership is for this book. A hint is given: ‘in the end, all the earned or honorary degrees you receive, the money you make or give away, the property you own or bequeath … aren’t going to matter’ (p. 20). However, thankfully, many of his stories seek to be relevant to life outside the campus and the City wall. It all makes for a bit of a disjointed collection but one well worth mining as there are veins of gold running through it.

Mark Oakley

St Paul’s Cathedral, London

Keith Lamdin, Finding Your Leadership Style , SPCK: London, 2012; 160 pp.: 9780281064786, £9.99 (pbk)

This is a book which tempts you to read it quickly but is best digested slowly. Its slim size and easy style disguise the depth of Lamdin’s erudition and experience. Misled by the title and chapters on leadership styles you might expect a self-help manual, but this is neither a systematic appraisal of the literature nor a presentation of one preferred approach. Rather, it is, as Lamdin describes it, a journey through the landscape of leadership during which we are invited to pause from time to time and reflect on the view.

A first read at speed is quite exhilarating, like a train journey fast-forwarded for effect. Some of the ‘styles’ pass by in a flash – under five pages for the contemplative, while others are given a more extended treatment – the monarch and warrior as dominant models of the day, for instance, though ones that the writer sees as problematic. Snatches of dialogue emerge, and since the track of the book winds its way into the subject rather than heading straight for the centre the reader is tempted, I suspect deliberately, to retrace the route and join the conversation.

This medicine man’s bag (Lamdin’s image) of experiences and theory offers an open-ended approach to learning that reflects the author’s own journey as an educator in the Diocese of Oxford and latterly at Sarum College, and is very much of its age.

Of its age too, though, is a less open-ended assumption that became my own tussle with the text. ‘Leadership … is about seeing what is wrong, and how it could be better, and trying to do something about it’ (p. x). Discontent with the status quo, a vision of how things could be better, and courage to bring these into the public arena become a leader’s key characteristics.

My question to the book, over a pint in the railway hotel, is whether to put things this way has already bought in too far to a modernist, instrumentalist framing (big words flow easily with the beer) that discounts the idea that change is something to be ridden not driven, and predicates an outcome-driven world, obsessed with betterments that it continually fails to achieve, or replaces with more easily measurable and attainable proxies that disappoint and distract.

Lamdin is alert to the problem, and stresses the importance of discernment before discontent is declared. But I would like to take the conversation further. If change, even for the better, is not our base category, then begin somewhere else. How about the cardinal virtues of desiring well, deciding well, daring well and distributing well, valorizing the process not its product? And the theological virtues of trust in God, his coming kingdom and his way of sacrifice as the midwives of desire? The conversation would be a good one – and that I suspect is the point of the book. Do read it, but slowly.

David Thomson

Ely

Thomas O’Loughlin, Making the Most of the Lectionary: A User’s Guide , SPCK: London, 2012; 176 pp.: 9780281065875, £12.99 (pbk)

It is not until half-way through his illuminating and wonderfully accessible account of the lectionary that Thomas O’Loughlin notes a widespread lack of interest in how the Scriptures are read in worship. Anyone who has read to this point will have discarded personal apathy and prejudice and may have begun to feel moved to convert others. This is a book which makes the lectionary not only comprehensible but also exciting.

The necessary background is elegantly covered, so that we are equipped with some idea of the complexities of the history and interpretation of biblical texts and the genesis of the three lectionaries discussed – the Roman Lectionary (1969), the Revised Common Lectionary (1992) and the Common Worship Lectionary (1999). This sets the scene for a lucid presentation of the three-year Sunday lectionary and the different principles governing ordinary time and the Advent–Christmastide and Lent–Eastertide cycles. A new word is always a joy, and eclogadic, the term describing readings chosen to articulate the themes of the seasons of the Christian Year, will be one to treasure and use on future occasions.

O’Loughlin’s point is that the lectionaries currently in use across a wide ecumenical constituency have a large architecture. Devoting a year to each of the Synoptic Gospel writers makes it possible to convey the particular approach of each of the authors. Clear tables demonstrate how Matthew, Mark and Luke develop their portraits of Jesus, Matthew emphasizing the kingdom, Mark the person and Luke the ministry. The importance of the Old Testament readings to this Gospel ‘spine’ is persuasively argued in terms of covenant as the reference point of the original writers and the key to understanding the new covenant that comes into being in Jesus. Readers are introduced with skill and economy to the differences in transmission that may make contemporary experience of the relationship between the Old Testament and Gospel choices hard to fathom: the Gospel writers relied on the somewhat loose translation of the Septuagint, while modern readers hear vernacular translations from the Hebrew Bible. The mysteries of the two-track scheme of Old Testament readings in the Common Worship Lectionary are helpfully unravelled.

Underpinning the book is the conviction that the use of the Bible in liturgy and in private Bible study are two very different activities. The Church is a community of interpretation and not a number of individuals living out their own ideologies in worship. This means that Scripture should be used formationally, but not catechetically in worship, although a programme of catechesis running parallel to the scheme of biblical reading offered by the lectionary can be used profitably to deepen the appreciation of Scripture in liturgical action. Always, the central requirement for proper engagement with the lectionary is persistence. Dipping in and out of the Sunday scheme, and transferring major festivals to the nearest Sunday both militate against any sense of continuity and unfolding. Perhaps the solution begins with putting this book in the hands of as many clergy, readers and theological educators as possible.

Bridget Nichols

Ely

Alexander Ryrie, The Desert Movement, Fresh Perspectives on the Spirituality of the Desert , Canterbury Press: Norwich, 2011; 256 pp.: 9791848250949, £16.99 (pbk)

It is over thirty years since Derwas J. Chitty’s posthumous work The Desert a City was published. It was something of a landmark study, introducing the vitality and variety of Egyptian and Palestinian monasticism to the hippie generation, long before the Red Sea and Sinai were on the holiday trail. Since then new texts have come to light and become available in translation. New translations of well-known texts have drawn in new generations of readers. Above all there have been some profound attempts to understand the context and culture from which early experiments in monasticism emerged.

This new introduction to the desert movement by Alexander Ryrie replaces Derwas Chitty’s pioneering work. Those wanting a factual, descriptive overview of the phenomenon of early Christian monasticism would be well advised to start here. The great virtue of this volume is that it goes beyond the familiar landscape of Northern Egypt and draws on evidence from Gaza, Judea, Sinai and Southern Egypt. There is also an additional note at the end about the monks of Syria and Cappadocia.

Our perspective on the desert fathers is skewed by the texts that have come down to us. We regard Antony and Pachomius as the great figures of fourth-century monasticism, but here we are introduced to a third pioneer of the spiritual life, the great Shenoute, who is revered to this day by the Coptic Church and was as influential as Pachomius in the development of the common life. Following recent interest in the role of women in the desert movement, Ryrie has a chapter on the desert mothers whose names have come down to us, Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora. He also rightly devotes a chapter to Evagrius and Cassian, Evagrius as the primary theorist of the life of prayer and Cassian as his disciple who brought his teaching to the West.

The organization of the book is a little strange, and though Ryrie’s prose is accessible it could have been more arresting. ‘Fresh perspectives’ suggests an unsuccessful search for a thesis or even a theme, and there is a sense in which the description of personalities and gazetteer of places does not quite add up to an argument that holds the attention. So there is a preface and an introduction, then some useful maps. The first part covers what the author calls ‘the early centuries’ and the second part considers ‘developments’. An epilogue follows, considering the desert fathers through modern eyes, and there is the additional note at the end. The text is laid out in conventional essay form, but suddenly on p. 120 there is a tabulated summary of desert spirituality in numbered points.

Both this somewhat uneasy style of presentation and Ryrie’s lack of engagement with issues of meaning were disappointing. Philip Rousseau and Peter Brown have contributed significantly to our understanding of desert spirituality since The Desert a City, and Pierre Hadot’s work, though not without its critics, has helped to clarify the purpose of monastic austerity as spiritual exercises – the legacy of ancient philosophy. Ryrie takes a more straightforward and literalist approach, which sometimes obscures more than it illuminates.

Angela Tilby

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Phil Zuckerman, Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 224 pp.: 9780199740017, £15.99 (hbk)

Those who wrestle with the issue of declining church attendance will be interested in a book whose title implies that there is a single explanation to the phenomenon. But Zuckerman does not claim that he is able completely to account for the rejection of religion generally. He acknowledges that there are many reasons why those who were worshippers abandon their practice and focuses on one group among them, those who consciously reject the belief they had. Based on interviews with eighty-seven people who were willing to discuss their ‘apostasy’, Zuckerman explores what it is that has caused these people (and by implication others like them) to turn from a faith which was once meaningful to them.

The conclusions to the study are tentative but revealing; humbly, Zuckerman admits that he is only scratching the surface. Most of the nine reasons for apostasy that are given in summary will surprise few who have discussed matters of faith with non-believers: people turn away from their religious practice because of the influence of their parents, or that of their partners and friends; because education, misfortune, or exposure to other faith systems causes them to see their own beliefs as untenable; because they are revolted by doctrines of eternal damnation or by the hypocrital misconduct of religious leaders; because the tenets of their faith seem incompatible with their political persuasion or because the religion attempts to deny them the sexual relationships they find life-giving. On the way to these conclusions, Zuckerman introduces us to many of his interviewees whose accounts of their change of heart (their, as it were, conversion stories) make moving and challenging reading and who appear to be happier and healthier human beings for having abandoned their faith.

In spite of his own reservations, Zuckerman posits the idea that some people are naturally’ agnostic or atheist. That and his well-argued case that a facile equation between religious adherence and personal morality is unsustainable are issues with which Christian apologetics needs to grapple. But beyond that, the value of this book to a British readership is limited. This is a study of irreligion in North America. For example, in the United States the relationship of faith to politics is very different from that which is experienced in Britain and there is no sense in Western Europe that atheists are stigmatized as Zuckerman claims they are in the United States. There is, however, one point which might currently give Church leaders in Britain pause: Zuckerman repeatedly cites the 2008 campaign in California against gay marriage as an episode that drove adherents from their churches. One reported that it was not the stand the Church took but the apparent obsession with the issue. Maybe this book can be useful to those who want seriously to consider why some people reject some religion.

Jonathan Hustler

Wesley House, Cambridge

Nigel Rooms, The Faith of the English: Integrating Christ and Culture , SPCK: London, 2011; 176 pp.: 9780281061112, £12.99 (pbk)

The cover of this intriguing book – a red cross on a white-tiled background – coupled with the title might mislead some people, at least if the image they summon up is that of baying football mobs and the English Defence League. Nigel Rooms wants to reappropriate largely forgotten or traduced elements of English history and culture, but not in the interests of a narrow, romanticized nationalism or an ethnic exclusiveness. The sub-title is much the more dominant note in most of this book: the material is English history and culture, but the argument is essentially an attempt to delineate what a properly inculturated Christianity might look like – given, that is, the particular constellation of religious and ethnic pluralism which characterizes English society today.

Much of the book was developed originally as material for an adult education class, and there is an engaging clarity of style and liveliness running through it. Three sets of influences are kept in play: ethnography (particularly in the shape of Kate Fox’s perceptive and funny Watching the English); the literature of mission and inculturation (especially Lamin Sanneh); and the folk traditions of the English past, in particular the Robin Hood story.

In the end, it seems to me that Rooms promises much more than he delivers. He never quite rides the tension between a sense of English distinctiveness and the implication of the local theology he appears to endorse that it is only sheerly local identity that really matters. I missed a strong sense of the tribulations of English popular history, and of the dramatic changes that have swept over British culture since 1945. I suspect Rooms wants to hold on to much more than his own method appears to give him scope to do.

But it is a little churlish to end negatively, given the enjoyment and stimulation I derived from this book. It points to an area of theological reflection with which churches in Britain really ought to be able to engage, given all the public arguments about national identity and culture, the scope of the national curriculum and the place of Christianity in our history. It is an excellent resource to help Christians to get down to work.

Jeremy Morris

King’s College, Cambridge

Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism , Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2011; 384 pp.: 9780199812097, £17.99 (hbk)

The pre-eminent philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga has long championed the rationality of belief in God, but this book marks his first full-blown effort at grappling with the implications of modern science for religious belief. Where the Conflict Really Lies has a simple, compelling and tightly argued thesis: that ‘there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism’ (p. ix).

Naturalism, as Plantinga understands it, is a metaphysical world-view which seeks to answer essentially the same questions as religion but takes as its axiom that ‘there is no such person as God, or anything like God’ (p. ix). With his characteristic clarity, logical precision and gentle humour, Plantinga persuasively argues that it is not theism but, rather, the quasi-religion of naturalism that clashes with the scientific enterprise.

Plantinga begins by dealing with the notion much popularized by the New Atheists that evolution is somehow incompatible with theism. He effortlessly dismantles both Dawkins’s and Dennett’s bold claims to the effect that ‘evolution reveals a universe without design’ (p. 17). Neither thinker actually demonstrates such a thing, Plantinga shows, but at most that it is possible that unguided evolution produced this world of flora and fauna – a significantly less impressive claim.

Concerning miracles and science, Plantinga suggests scientific laws are best understood as the way nature behaves when left to itself. Science does not rule out miracles, then, because nature would not be left to itself in such instances. He also argues that Christian theism is not in conflict with either evolutionary psychology or historical biblical scholarship taken on their own, but only with the metaphysical add-on that God is illusory.

In the latter half of the book Plantinga explores areas of deep harmony between theistic religion and science. He makes a strong case that the Christian expectation that God would create a rational and orderly universe supplies both a powerful impetus and solid epistemological foundations for science – so much so that ‘Modern Western empirical science originated and flourished in the bosom of Christian theism and originated nowhere else’ (p. 266). This Christian world-view makes great sense of the way that humans are able to model the deep structure of the universe using elegant mathematical equations and the way physical laws seem ‘fine-tuned’ for life.

The book closes with an argument that will be familiar to readers of Plantinga. Natural selection, he contends, selects for survival-oriented behaviour, but not, as such, for accurate beliefs; provided beliefs lead to survival-oriented behaviour it doesn’t matter whether they are true. If this is correct – and there is, unsurprisingly, debate about that – the upshot is that the naturalist, who believes unguided natural selection constructed her reasoning faculties, lacks any reason whatsoever to trust those faculties! Far from harmoniously meshing with science, naturalism may end up sawing off the branch of rationality upon which science sits.

In summary, Where the Conflict Really Lies is a highly worthwhile contribution to the contemporary science-and-religion debate, and one which brings the much needed voice of this rigorous philosopher to bear upon the complex conceptual issues at stake – issues that are frequently glossed over by some prominent critics of religion. The book is relatively technical, but thanks to Plantinga’s generous use of examples and the relegation of the most technical material to smaller print, the non-specialist should have little difficulty understanding the thrust of this excellent book.

Max Baker-Hytch

University of Oxford

Susannah Clements, The Vampire Defanged , Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, MI, 2011; 208 pp.: 9781587432897, £8.99 (pbk)

At one stage, reading The Vampire Defanged, I momentarily developed a rather serious concern that the author might actually believe in vampires. While she acknowledges the presence of vampires in several ancient cultures, latterly adopted into christianized folklore, there is a feeling throughout the book of resentment at the ‘secularization’ of the vampire in the last generation – just as one might resent the banning of religious symbols in the work place, threats to the Lords Spiritual, or the banning of prayers before council meetings. One cannot suppose by ‘secularization’ she means demythologizing, disenchantment or falling away of vampiric or anti-vampiric practices, but it appears that she resents the loss of the ‘traditional’ vampire. This may mean the vampire of medieval superstition, but it seems more likely that this relates to the first really significant literary vampire – Bram Stoker’s Dracula of 1897.

Regardless of the various psychoanalytic, feminist, postcolonial and queer analyses (which are reduced to footnotes), Clements presses the sensus literalis of the text describing Dracula as a spiritual battle of good versus evil. She makes a rather forced attempt to accuse the vampire of the seven deadly sins and suggests that the novel reaffirms the power of Christian symbols, leading to a simple narrative of the power of Christ in men overcoming sin, temptation and bedevilment. The problem with this argument, however, is the unavoidable ambiguity of the Count. He is the apotheosis of anxiety for the decline of the imperial white, straight man – which is not to say that it is not also an adventure of spiritual battle – but, as might be wished of other Christian crusades, the novel uncannily destabilizes the parts of good and evil. The supposed hero Jonathan Harker literally mirrors the vampire, the vamped women uncomfortably parody the Victorian ‘New woman’, and the marginal places of madness and deviant sexuality are painfully aroused in the good and the bad.

A great deal of the rest of Clements’s book is taken up in describing the often long-running series of novels, television programmes and films that make up the vampire genre. For the initiated this becomes tedious repetition, for the newly blooded it is so many spoilers, but at times the reader is left more with a sense of amazement that such attention is given to what is often mediocre entertainment.

The overarching thesis is that Christian symbols and themes are replaced by social concerns – hence secularization, though claims of the ‘theological foundation’ (p. 84) or ‘theological significance’ (pp. 102, 112) of vampires seem a little overstated. In any case, from the ‘perverse bisexual oral-anal-genital sado-masochistic timeless orgy’ of Dracula (Maurice Richardson in ‘The Psychoanalysis of Ghost Stories’, The Twentieth Century 166 (1959), pp. 419–31), through the camp of Hammer Horror to the feminism and gay-rights of Buffy and True Blood, vampires have always been defined by the social issues of their day. The most explicit common theme is that of hidden violence, which is of necessity both theological and social. That we should resent the stripping from vampires of their Christian imagery is debatable; that we need to maintain a representative of Manichaean evil to reinvigorate our spiritual imagination and hunt it down is certainly questionable.

Brutus Green

London