Short notices

Abstract

Martin Claes, On Christology, Anthropology, Cognitive Science and the Human Body (London: T&T Clark, 2022); 136 pp.: 9781350296091, £75 (hbk); 9781350296084, £24.99 (pbk)

This is the latest addition to the distinguished series Reading Augustine (see further Short Notices in Theology, Vol. 121, no. 5, pp. 396–7, Vol. 124, no. 6, p. 465 and Vol. 125, no. 3, p. 238). Dr Martin Claes teaches in the School of Catholic Theology at Tilburg University. At the outset he states: ‘I invite the reader to participate in the experiment to read specimens of Augustine’s insights in dialogue with the perspective of unity in the human body in contemporary philosophical theology and human sciences’ (p. 9). At various points he notes that, in a sense, ‘we are all in’ on such issues today as climate change and the Covid pandemic. He sees a link here with Augustine’s notion of eschatological human perfection (pp. 35, 85). He also insists that: ‘Social function in the development of Homo sapiens made religion acceptable for those who focussed in research on ethical effects of religion’ (p. 54). He then asks: ‘Are [cognitive science research (CSR) and theology] able to complement each other? No, when it comes to a confrontation between Augustine’s knowledge and medical science and contemporary neurobiological research on hardware of the human brain. Yes, when it comes to a functional analysis of what Augustine and CSR scholars aimed for in their investigations on religion’ (p. 120). A bold, but rather vague, claim. I am more persuaded by philosophers and theologians – such as Roger Trigg and Sarah Coakley – who argue more vigorously that purely functional analyses of religion or religious values, whether in CSR or socio-biology, work only up to a point but not at any great depth.

Michiel Leezenberg, Anne-Marie Korte and Martin M. van Bruinessen (eds), Gestures: The Study of Religion as Practice (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022); 660 pp.: 9780823299621, $40 (pbk)

This interesting but diffuse collection of essays states:

This concluding volume of the Future of the Religious Past series approaches contemporary religion through the lens of practice: the rituals, performances, devotions, and everyday acts through which humans do religion. In spite of predictions about the inevitability of secularism, religion in the twenty-first century remains stubbornly resilient, and Gestures: The Study of Religion as Practice offers a new vantage point from which to see the religious as a category shaped and reshaped by modernity and to encounter religion not as something bounded by doctrines and sacred texts but as lived experience.

Clearly, this aim goes considerably beyond the concept of ‘gestures’, although in the opening essay Yvonne Sherwood (until recently at the University of Kent) does explore some of the fascinating hand gestures in paintings of Abraham’s sacrifice (or, rather, non-sacrifice) of Isaac in Genesis 22. Michiel Leezenberg (University of Amsterdam) provides a fine introduction outlining some of the recent trends in the study of religion and modernity. Sander Van Maas (also University of Amsterdam) has an interesting essay on Messiaen’s final opera on St Francis and its posthumous production by Sellars. And there are other topics covered, ranging from the Kama Sutra, Islamic dress and fashion to Pussy Riot’s punk prayer, suicide terrorism and much else – including a reprinted 2011 essay by Judith Butler on bodily street demonstrations. Diffuse indeed, but with some gems.

David Thomas (ed.), The Bloomsbury Reader in Christian–Muslim Relations, 600–1500 (London: Bloomsbury, 2022); 333 pp.: 9781350214101, £75 (hbk); 9781350214095, £24.99 (pbk)

David Thomas is an Anglican priest and academic who has spent decades studying historical texts that relate to (often deeply fractious) relationships between Muslim and Christian medieval scholars. During his career at Birmingham University and now as Emeritus Professor of Christianity and Islam there, he has led a project with the publisher Brill that has resulted in 20 impressive, but hugely expensive, volumes on Christian–Muslim Relations: a bibliographical history (CMR). In this Bloomsbury Reader he draws on this extensive research by many international scholars to provide an affordable and compact taster. From a recent interview with Brill he explains that this CMR project has both historical/intellectual and ecumenical aims:

The works described and analysed in the volumes of CMR are generally dark in their depiction of Christian–Muslim relations. It is often possible to see in current events involving the two faiths the same prejudices that can be witnessed in very early works in Arabic, Greek and other languages. CMR often makes clear that these were frequently invented for the sake of explanation rather than being derived from the authority of scripture (e.g. Muslims held that the four Gospels were written by disciples after the original divinely authored single Gospel revealed to the human prophet Jesus by God had been lost or destroyed, in order to give historical substance to brief allusions in the Qur’an of scriptures being altered; Christians held that the Prophet Muhammad was an associate of the Devil in order to explain his apparent success in attracting followers and winning a vast empire). CMR shows that these stories were products of particular times and contexts. The series could thus help people see that historical attitudes often have no greater authority than their longevity, and that fresh reflection on authoritative scripture could lead to very different perceptions of the religious other than have persisted to now … It will also remind researchers of the long traditions of stereotype images of the other that were generated in the fierce polemical exchanges of the early Islamic period, and were gradually taken to be accepted without question. But most have only tenuous relations with scripture itself, the source of reliable authority in both religious traditions. CMR might provide the reasons for Christians and Muslims to abandon these images and the prejudices derived from them, and to begin to accept one another afresh as partners in faith and morality. (<https://blog.brill.com/humanitiesmatter/thomas_christian_muslim_relations.html>)

This dedicated combination of scholarship and ecumenism is reminiscent of the pioneering work of the eminent Arabic scholar and Anglican priest Professor William Montgomery Watt (1909–2006) at Edinburgh University (who was still active when I was a junior lecturer there). The extracts are all put into context, but many are uncomfortably acerbic. Yet some of the criticisms raised by Christians and Muslims against each other retain an element of veracity – i.e. that stories told in separate Gospels appear inconsistent, that some Trinitarian models verge on tritheism, and that Islam is unusual in having such a warlike prophet as its leader. In a world still troubled by religiously inspired conflict, this Reader is very welcome indeed.

François Déroche, The One and the Many: The Early History of the Qur’an (New Haven CT and London: Yale University Press, 2021); 307 pp.: 9780300251326, $35 (hbk)

This volume addresses an issue featured in the Bloomsbury Reader (above) – namely, that of the textual accuracy of Scripture. As David Thomas notes there: ‘Muslim apologists in the early centuries accused Christians of either deleting references to Muhammad’ from the Bible or of ‘interpreting passages to conceal predictions of him’ (p. 10). In short, these apologists believed that the text of the Bible had been distorted. In contrast, for them (and for many Muslims today), the text of the Qur’an has been pure and unchanged throughout one and a half millennia. This scholarly book by the authoritative professor of the history of the Qur’an at Collège de France finds that (unsurprisingly) the Qur’an, like the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, has a long and varied textual history. Jewish, Christian or Muslim scriptural literalists in the modern world face an obvious and uncomfortable problem long known to Western textual critics – namely, that scribes copying long, holy (or secular) texts by hand tended to make multiple mistakes and were also tempted to make deliberate changes in order to harmonize inconsistencies of fact or ideology. He concludes as follows:

Islamic orthodoxy, by its selective account of the historical transmission of the sacred text, attaches supreme importance to the unique and immutable character of the Qur’an … By contrast … the information that has come down to us from medieval scholars regarding the history of the Qur’anic text during the first decades of Islam, in combination with what we are able to learn from the earliest surviving manuscripts, make it clear that the genesis and initial transmission of the text, both oral and written, was characterized above all by plurality, by a multiplicity of interpretations. (pp. 230–1)

In a rare value judgement, he argues that the eventual enforcement of a single ‘authoritative’ text of the Qur’an ‘amounted to permanently depriving the Muslim community of prophetic teachings that, by virtue of the many different versions that had survived, incontestably enjoyed a considerable importance in the lives of the faithful’ (p. 234). In contrast, he argues, Muhammad himself was more relaxed about differing interpretations of the Qur’an.

Ian Tarrant, Holy Communion at a Distance (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2022); 28 pp.: 9781788272353, £3.95 (pbk)

My colleague in Gibraltar has written a very useful and timely Grove booklet describing and reflecting upon the various forms of eucharistic worship deployed virtually during Covid lockdown – including spiritual communion, bubble eucharist and remote celebration. On typically solitary spiritual communion, he recalls Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘soul being nourished’ through imaginative prayer at sunrise in the Ordos Desert in China, but he regrets the absence of formal prayers authorized by Synod. On bubble eucharists, especially those celebrated without an ordained priest, he suggests that people can benefit from them spiritually, but he is cautious about continuing them beyond emergencies. On remote celebrations, he has an extended and fair discussion of Professor Richard Burridge’s Holy Communion in Contagious Times (Cascade Books, 2022), with its controversial suggestion that the eucharist can sometimes be validly celebrated in the virtual reality of cyberspace – a position supported by Bishop Pierre Whalon in Theology’s May issue (Vol. 125, no. 3, pp. 190–6). Like Professor Paul Bradshaw (Church Times, 22 April 2022), Dean Ian Tarrant has reservations about this suggestion – for him, the problems include ‘the disunity of the elements at the start of the service’ and the fact that ‘it does not allow for anonymity’, whereas for Bradshaw it ‘overlooks the importance of physical contact and human touch’. I share their reservations, but err on the side of believing that in emergencies (and for the permanently housebound at all times) mutually shared, remote celebrations can bring spiritual benefit. This is another thoughtful, short guide by Grove Books to an important but confusing topic.