Short Notices

Malcolm Brown (ed.), Anglican Social Theology: Renewing the Vision Today , Church House Publishing: London, 2014; 226 pp.: 9780715144404, £19.99 (pbk)

Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs for the Archbishop’s Council of the Church of England, provides a thoughtful introduction and conclusion to this collection of essays mapping Anglican (mainly English) social theology from William Temple to the present. Alan Suggate provides an expert critical analysis of Temple himself. The late John Hughes gives a lively overview of more recent Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical social theologies (what a loss he is to political theology). Jonathan Chaplin focuses specifically on Evangelical social theology and finally Anna Rowlands, herself a Roman Catholic, compares (rather generously) Anglican and Catholic traditions. The essays work well together as a mapping exercise and are carefully cross-referenced. Yet they have two obvious weaknesses. At the outset it is acknowledged that the book ‘has its origins in the financial and banking crisis of 2007–8’, yet it has remarkably little to say and nothing much practical to propose (apart from credit unions) on this issue. Secondly, the engagement of some Anglican theologians with the disciplines of empirical sociology and economics also receives little attention.

Robin Gill

Paul Murray OP, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry , Bloomsbury: London, 2013; 288 pp.: 9781441107558, £16.99/$27.95 (pbk)

Paul Murray OP commends St Thomas Aquinas as a poet and mystic in this volume; seeking to counter the popular prejudice that the theologian was a cold, abstract intellectual who had no passion or desire. The contemplative whose whole life was an unrelenting pursuit of divine truth comes to life: a theologian who had the silence of the mystic, who wrote fine poetry and prayers which arose from the heart and the mind, encapsulating desire for God. St Paul’s letters and the psalms emerge as particularly rich inspiration to Thomas, and his rationality explored as a positive faculty. Murray shows, for instance, how Thomas continues to influence writers such as Flannery O’Connor. This book places Thomas Aquinas firmly and helpfully in an imaginative, literary tradition.

Frances Ward

Michael Ruse, Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know , Oxford University Press: New York, 2015; 304 pp.: 9780199334599, £47.99/$74.00 (hbk), 9780199334582, £10.99/$16.95 (pbk)

This lively book seeks to give a comprehensive account of atheism steering a path between the rhetoric of both ‘new atheism’ and its conservative theological critics. Michael Ruse is determined not to be ‘boring’, but as a result he oversimplifies parts of the recent debate. His conclusions always seek ‘to give comfort to the nonbeliever’, albeit without claiming that they conclusively ‘refute the believer’ (p. 210). A useful overview and statistics here, but not for the first time I found a purely evolutionary account of moral objectivity (crucial to his critique of religion as being indispensible for morality) thin.

Robin Gill

Clare Amos, Martyn Percy and Ian Markham, The Bible in the Life of the Church , Canterbury Press: Norwich; Morehouse Publishing: New York, 2013; 198 pp.: 9781848252288, £19.99/$28.00 (pbk)

This is an attempt to get different groups of Anglicans – Australian, British, East African, North American, South African and Sudanese – to reflect regionally upon the same passages of Scripture concerned with creation and justice. Tensions and differences of approach are obvious, albeit with some common ground and a general commitment to environmentalism. Rather too much about process but laudable nonetheless.

Robin Gill

Gerald O’Collins SJ and Mario Farrugia SJ, Catholicism: The Story of Catholic Christianity , 2nd edn, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2014; 448 pp.: 9780198728184, £16.99/$29.95 (pbk)

The first edition of this bestselling account of (Roman) Catholicism was published in 2003. Now it has been updated to include items judged by reviewers to be missing from the first edition (e.g. Dermot MacCulloch noted that ‘recent catastrophic revelations about child abuse’ were originally omitted), items resulting from recent political and papal changes, and updated statistics. Still good value.

Robin Gill

W. R. Ward, Evangelicanism, Piety and Politics: The Selected Writings of W. R. Ward , ed. Andrew Chandler, Ashgate: Farnham, Surrey, 2014; 238 pp.: 9781409425540, £65.00/$119.95 (hbk)

Andrew Chandler has gathered together thirteen essays (all previously published but some just in journals) by the late church historian and Methodist layman W. R. Ward and has written an affectionate introduction. Ward’s seminal book Religion and Society in England 1790–1850 first established his academic reputation.

Robin Gill

Nicholas M. Healy, Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich., 2014; 154 pp.: 9780802825995, £16.99/$23.00 (pbk)

This book is an early contribution to the Eerdmanns’s series Interventions and works remarkably well. The Catholic theologian Nicholas Healy takes on the influential American Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. He does so courteously but rigorously, displaying a careful reading of Hauerwas’s extensive writings. His criticisms are not especially novel – many others have argued that Hauerwas’s church-centred ethics are far too rhetorical, idealized and lacking realistic accounts of congregations as they actually are – yet he is incisive and clear. The cover is splendid: a cowboy belt, bullets and holster from which an olive branch, rather than a six-shooter, emerges!

Robin Gill

John Drury, Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert , Penguin Books: London, 2013; 9780141043401, £9.99 (pbk)

This much-praised book was first published in 2013 (Allen Lane: London; 416 pp.: 9781846142482, £25.00 (hbk)) but is now out as an inexpensive Penguin paperback. It combines a biography that avoids hagiography with a beautifully sensitive appreciation and explanation of George Herbert’s poetry. John Drury, formerly Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and now well into retirement, remains Chaplain and Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. This is a mature and wise book to be read slowly and relished.

Robin Gill

John Berman and William C. Mattison III (eds), Searching for a Universal Ethic: Multidisciplinary, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Responses to the Catholic Natural Law Tradition , Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Mich., 2014; 340 pp.: 9780802868442, £23.99/$35.00 (pbk)

Twenty-four essays comment upon and evaluate the Roman Catholic International Theological Law Commission’s 2009 document In Search of a Universal Ethic. The latter (reproduced in full here) was initiated in 2004 by Pope John-Paul II and chaired throughout by his successor. As many of the respondents note, it has some powerful features, including a concern for ecological issues and meaningful ethical dialogue across different religious and secular positions. But it also has some obvious weaknesses, such as a tendency to play down incommensurable differences between these positions or even to show how political bodies in modern, pluralistic societies can now use even modified natural law claims. A thoughtful collection.

Robin Gill

Robin Gill (ed.), A Textbook of Christian Ethics , 4th edn, Bloomsbury T&T Clark: London, 2014; 592 pp.: 9780567621641, £75.00/$128.00 (hbk), 9780567595928, £24.99/$42.95 (pbk)

For over thirty years this ‘textbook’ has provided students and teachers with an unrivalled resource, enabling them to compare, contrast and critique a range of classic and contemporary texts from all the major traditions of the Church. The book is divided into five sections: (1) ‘Methodology’; (2) ‘Politics, Economics and Justice’; (3) ‘War and Peace’; (4) ‘The Environment’; (5) ‘Human Life and Interpersonal Relationships’. Representative extracts from primary sources are reproduced throughout the book, and for each of these Gill employs a system of analysis that provides the reader with information and tools for understanding the relevant background, key issues, ethical arguments, distinctively Christian features, social determinants and social significance. For this fourth edition five new extracts have been incorporated (one for each of the above sections), all of them by women, offering additional or enhanced discussion of post-colonial, feminist, interfaith and even (more speculatively) post-human dimensions of key areas of ethical research and debate.

Philip Law

Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason and Following Christ , Christian Theology in Context, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2013; 360 pp.: 9780199213146, £60.00/$110.00 (hbk), (2013) 9780199213153, £18.99/$31.00 (pbk)

Compared with the other two books considered in this short review, this is altogether weightier; but it seeks a similar end, to commend Thomas Aquinas to today’s generation, despite any prejudices that might be attached to his name. Bauerschmidt explores the central theme of the relationship between grace and nature, and describes his book as ‘an essay in Hillbilly Thomism’, intriguingly also drawing upon Flannery O’Connor’s fiction to emphasize his assessment that ‘Thomas has more in common than is usually thought with the Christ-haunted, apocalyptic, backwoods preachers that populate O’Connor’s fiction, and that her stories of restless hearts and disruptive grace are not incompatible with Thomas’ view that grace perfects and does not destroy nature.’ But this is not Hillybilly Thomism, but a thorough and systematic introduction to the central tenets of Aquinas’s philosophical theology, dealing not only with the relation between grace and nature, but also between faith and reason, Christology, salvation and eschatology. The book is well written and accessible, careful and well researched, and offers a sound introduction to Aquinas’s philosophical endeavour, which is firmly made subject to Christ.

Frances Ward