Abstract
Two striking articles open this issue of Theology. The first is by the psychiatrist and Anglican priest Professor Christopher C. H. Cook of Durham University on ‘Mental health in the kingdom of God’. The second is by Dr Khegan Delport of Stellenbosch University on ‘devotional doubt’. Separately and together – drawing on very different resources – they help deepen our understanding of Christian pastoral approaches to those living with an acute sense of personal vulnerability. The ‘Difficult text’ that follows, tackled once again by Canon Anthony Phillips – examining how Job, eventually and despite contrary advice, was ‘able to accept his miserable lot’ – has affinities with Delport’s notion of devotional doubt.
In a change of tack, Professor Paul F. Bradshaw, now Emeritus Professor of Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, returns with another authoritative contribution on liturgy. This time he raises an important question about what principles (other than archaism) should guide future liturgical revision. And Professor John Goldingay and Kathleen Scott Goldingay offer a very timely and scholarly reflection on Covid-19 that is causing chaos around the world today. The Old Testament has much to say about plagues.
This is followed by two review articles on books that metaphorically refuse to be covered by a 500-word review. Dr Paul Avis reviews the very substantial first volume of The Oxford History of Anglicanism. And I survey the first ten volumes of the Spanish–Indian Catholic theologian Raimon Panikkar’s Opera Omnia, published impressively by Orbis Books and with another eight volumes still to come.
Readers of Theology will be aware of T&T Clark’s equally impressive commitment to the writings of and about the Flemish Dominican theologian Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009). On the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth, they published The Collected Works of Edward Schillebeeckx in 11 volumes (reviewed in Vol. 118, no. 3, pp. 196–200) and since then they have published a series of ongoing studies based on his work (reviewed in Vol. 121, no. 1, pp. 1–2, Vol. 121, no. 4, p. 319 and Vol. 122, no. 4, pp. 310–12). Now they have published a splendid multi-author Handbook that adds much texture to an appreciation of this courageous theologian’s writings.
Stephan van Erp and Daniel Minch (eds),
This Handbook is divided into four parts: ‘Sources’; ‘The Second Vatican Council and its aftermath’; ‘Theological themes’; and ‘Theology of culture’. The second part is the most poignant. Schillebeeckx worked closely with the Dutch bishops ahead of Vatican II and accompanied them to the Council itself. He founded the forward-looking theological journal Concilium in 1965 with Karl Rahner and Yves Congar, amongst others, and worked closely with them at Vatican II. Unlike them, however, and because his orthodoxy was already under investigation by the Vatican, Schillebeeckx was not appointed as an official peritus at the Council. Following Vatican II, his orthodoxy was investigated on three further occasions by the Vatican (spurred on by Cardinal Ratzinger). In 1989 he concluded sadly in his Church: the human story of God that: ‘Delight in belonging to [the Roman Catholic] church, a delight which increased greatly during the Second Vatican Council and the years immediately following, has been sorely tested over the last decade’ (p. xxi). The essays on this crucial time pre- and post-Vatican II – crucial both for Schillebeeckx personally and for the Roman Catholic Church at large – capture the hopes, excitement and, finally, divisions that it variously displayed, divisions that still plague Pope Francis.
The first part of the Handbook traces some of the important influences on Schillebeeckx’s theology. His early writings were, like those of many Dominican theologians at the time, heavily dependent on Aquinas. The influence of Aquinas remained but was tempered by his more radical philosophical engagement with phenomenology and existentialism (under the influence of Rahner) and, beyond Rahner, with sociology. His theology, in turn, was tempered by engagement with ecumenical biblical criticism and interpretation – especially in his key 1974 book Jesus: an experiment in Christology. The critical exegesis and hermeneutics of the latter were quite simply miles ahead of the simplistic deployment of biblical texts within contemporary papal encyclicals.
The third part of the Handbook explores a number of theological themes that were important to Schillebeeckx: God’s nature; creation; sacraments; theological anthropology; soteriology; grace; resurrection; and eschatology. Many of the essays here note tensions in Schillebeeckx’s thinking as he tried to balance Dominican spirituality with his understanding of a changing world. At several points his sharpest critics were some of his fellow Dominicans. Yet for him hermeneutics were fundamental – Christian belief and practice are, for him (and for me), always interpreted belief and practice within specific and changing social contexts.
The final four essays explore themes that look to the future: ‘Christ and culture’; ‘Schillebeeckx and the path to a liberation theology’; ‘Religious pluralism’; and ‘Creation faith and the politics of nature’. He could see clearly towards the end of his long life that secularism was increasing, as was religious pluralism, and that important questions about politics and ecology were emerging. He remained thoughtful and influential to the end – as T&T Clark recognizes and exemplifies with its magnificent trove of Schillebeeckx books.