Abstract
Gareth Atkins (ed.),
Making and Remaking Saints in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016); 283 pp.: 9780719096860, £75.00/$110.00 (hbk)
This splendid collection provides abundant evidence to support Clyde Binfield’s dictum that the nineteenth century was ‘hagiology’s high noon’. Obviously the Tractarians were keen on saints but so, this book argues, were evangelicals with their new ‘saints’ such as William Wilberforce and Elizabeth Fry. Most of the contributors of the 15 articles are younger scholars as is the editor. The medieval historian Nicholas Vincent is more seasoned. He became newsworthy during the Magna Carta celebrations in 2015 by unearthing fresh primary sources in Lambeth Palace Library showing the devious political role that Archbishop Stephen Langton played. Here he maps the changing assessments made in the nineteenth century of the most widely known archbishop of all, Thomas Becket – ranging at one extreme to the claim that he was just a papist defender of clerical privileges to its opposite that he was a heroic champion of freedom from an over-powerful monarch. As other authors also show the making and remaking of saints is often an ambiguous business – rich territory for research and this collection whets the appetite for more.
J. Gordon McConville and Lloyd K. Pietersen (eds),
Conception, Reception and the Spirit: Essays in Honour of Andrew T. Lincoln
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 2016); 352 pp.: 9780227175996, £22.00/$44.00 (pbk)
This Festschrift honours the New Testament scholar Andrew Lincoln, who retired recently from Gloucester University, having previously held a chair in Toronto and a lectureship at Sheffield. It has ten essays on exegesis (including contributions from Philip Esler, James Dunn, Michael Gorman and Tom Wright), five on theological interpretation (including David Catchpole, John Rogerson and John Webster) and three on theology and embodiment (including Loveday Alexander and John Goldingay). I found new things to enjoy especially in Gorman’s exegesis and new translation of the crucial Philippians 2.5, Catchpole’s wrestling with New Testament ‘born of a virgin’ texts, and Alexander’s contextualization of New Testament sexuality texts (responding critically to the Pilling Report). A distinguished collection.
Jacques Picard, Jacques Revel, Michael P. Steinberg and Idith Zertal (eds),
Makers of Jewish Modernity
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2016); 680 pp.: 9780691164236, £29.95/$39.50 (hbk)
This substantial book gives profiles of 44 Jewish intellectuals who contributed significantly to Jewish modernity – artists, film-makers, philosophers, political theorists, scientists, social scientists and (occasionally) religious thinkers. Among the former are obviously Einstein and Freud, but among the latter are Martin Buber, Avraham Kook, Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil. It weaves together accounts of both the thoughts and lives of these varied but influential twentieth-century Jews.
James D. G. Dunn,
The Acts of the Apostles
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016); 393 pp.: 9780802874023, $32.00 (pbk)
This is a straightforward reprint of James Dunn’s very accessible commentary, originally published in 1996. The only additions are little more than a page commenting on subsequent bibliography on Acts and a gushing, uninformative, but affectionate, two-page foreword by one of Dunn’s former students. Yet, if you do not have the original, this is still good value and well worth buying.
Walter Brueggemann,
The Bible Makes Sense
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2016); 133 pp.: 9780232532545, £9.99 (pbk)
This is also a reprint, although the 2003 original was published only in the United States, so it is published now for the first time in the UK. Brueggemann’s many fans will already know how influential are the books of this eminent Old Testament scholar. In this short study-book he sets out and defends his covenantal–historical way of understanding the Bible (NT as well as OT) and Christian living, offering careful summaries and points for further reflection. It might, though, be beyond many parish-based discussion groups. In the opening pages, for example, he introduces concepts such as ‘the existentialist model’ and ‘the transcendental model’. But for the well-educated, even if uninitiated, reader he does offer careful and accessible explanations even of these.
Jack O. Balswick, Pamela Ebstyne King and Kevin S. Reimer,
The Reciprocating Self: Human Development in Theological Perspective
, 2nd edition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016); 402 pp.: 9780830851430, $45.00 (pbk)
The first edition came out in 2005. The three authors, all connected to Fuller Theological Seminary, have considerable expertise in family developmental studies in the social sciences but bring to them strong theological commitments. In this new edition they have brought the developmental parts up to date and given the work a sharper Trinitarian focus derived from their reading of Moltmann and Volf. Despite a somewhat ‘chatty’ style in places, the book works remarkably well. They point out (as others have done) that developmental studies too often lack any teleological framework (or, like Piaget, Kohlberg or Fowler, present typologies with implicit but largely undefended teleologies). From an explicitly Christian position, they argue that ‘God’s intention for humans is to develop as distinct individuals in mutual and authentic relationships with divine and human others – for God’s glory’ (p. 351). They show at length how such relationships are possible and how they can develop over the different stages of a human life (with frequent references to supporting secular evidence). There is much wisdom to be found here.
David Edmonds (ed.),
Philosophers Take on the World: Exploring Moral Issues Behind the News
(Oxford: Oxford University Press); 250 pp.: 978019875378, £12.99/$17.95 (hbk)
This energetic book has 62 short, accessible articles on a wide variety of current moral topics. Most originated from blogs written for Oxford University’s Centre for Practical Ethics (the Uehiro Centre directed by the utilitarian philosopher and bioethicist Julian Savulescu). Some are nutty (‘counter-intuitive’ is the politically correct term) some are very sensible. Among the latter is Roger Crisp writing first on the moral status of suicide bombers and then on the naked rambler, and among the former are speculations about virtual punishments for prisoners or even (I think suggested ironically) that prisoners would be safer if they were allowed to carry arms. These provocative articles – many reacting to items in the press, themselves sometimes quite wacky – are a delight to read. I doubt if they will send you to sleep last thing at night, but they might wake you up in the morning.