Abstract
The “New” Cosmology is not new. Since the earliest days of civilization Indigenous peoples had a sacred relationship with all creation and understood all creation to be interrelated. Creation embodied the Sacred One whose presence was celebrated through rituals, dances, chants, and even laments. The cosmic universe(s) was alive and well, revered and celebrated. As time elapsed, however, certain cultural norms and attitudes such as anthropocentrism, androcentrism, and patriarchy were inscribed into the fabric of life and even inscribed into various biblical texts, including the Genesis 1–3 creation narratives, whose mythic qualities make the deity appear as an all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, super-natural being. Like the “New” Cosmology, “religious” life and its values are not new either. For millennia, people in all different faith traditions and no faith tradition have lived life in communities, for example, Taize, Qumran, the Amish, Christian and non-Christian monastics, among others. The concepts “New” Cosmology and “religious” life frame Laurie B.’s volume, whose goal is to revision Roman Catholic vowed “religious life” in relation to ecology and the New Cosmology. Drawing on the thought of paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and cultural historian and geologian Thomas Berry, the volume’s central concern is the impact of the emerging science and theology on the vowed life.
After a brief introduction (xxiii–xxxv) that outlines B.’s argument for the timeliness of this study, the volume is then divided into three sections: I: “Chapter of Faults: Naming Our Diversity” (1–69); II: “Chapter of Affairs: Responding to the Signs of the Times” (71–158); and III: “Chapter of Elections: Choosing a Future for Religious Life” (159–232). A conclusion (233–44) envisions community as “the Holy Preaching,” embracing a traditional model of congregational living that resembles how vowed women religious lived “back in the day.” The volume also includes a foreword by Dianne Bergant, CSA (ix–xi) and an afterword by Sarah Kohles, OSF (245–47). This review comments on three specific topics emerging from this study: the concept of “religious” life, Jesus Christ and the Cosmic Christ, and the use of Scripture.
With respect to religious life, B. discusses it extensively within the confines of vowed celibate life, the tradition of Roman Catholicism, and the institutional Roman Catholic Church. Despite B.’s detailed portrait of this lifestyle, she neglects to define the term “religious life.” She does, however, view it through the lenses of three different age-related cohorts that comprise religious life. The data collected indicate that each cohort has its own understanding of the New Cosmology, that cohorts differ in social location and worldviews, and that the cohorts’ experience of church throughout time has had marked effects on them.
The second topic is Jesus Christ and the Cosmic Christ. B. rightly points out that the place of Jesus Christ within the context of the New Cosmology remains a concern among younger sisters who fear that more traditional understandings of faith are going by the wayside or being replaced. The older two cohorts are less concerned about Jesus and his place in the New Cosmology. B. offers some thought on the Cosmic Christ, but the theological development of this portrait needs further work. B. waffles back and forth between the historical Jesus Christ as portrayed in the Gospels and the Cosmic Christ. The study does not develop a systematic Christology around the Cosmic Christ, nor does it unpack the understanding of this christological image so prominently featured in the work of Roger Haight. B.’s theological and christological views are as limited as her understanding of “religious” life, all of which need to be re-visioned for the twenty-first century.
The third point is how the volume uses Scripture. Throughout the study, B. reads “with the grain” of biblical texts, and often prooftexts to substantiate certain points. While this strategic use of Scripture has remained in vogue since before the Middle Ages, it is no longer helpful and neglects to consider that texts have no meanings by themselves. Readers, grounded in their social locations, interpret texts and create meanings, although staunch historical critics would disagree. The volume offers no critical and hermeneutical consideration of the cultures that shaped and are inscribed in various biblical texts, and too often takes the biblical text in an overly literal way, bordering on a fundamentalism steeped in the world behind and of the text.
Indeed, B.’s volume does make a contribution to the task of re-visioning religious life for the twenty-first century, but in general the volume’s content is forced into an artificial structure that mirrors certain experiences within traditional religious life. The volume tries to put new wine into old wineskins, but even the new wine lacks breadth, depth, and vision. Science, quantum physics, and the New Cosmology, all have possibilities for new ways of thinking about religious life but in the end, B.’s view of religious life is traditional. Her theological, christological, and biblical perspectives are typically Catholic without offering a nuanced challenge to wake up the cosmological imagination that shatters all boundaries and all ways of thinking, knowing, and understanding.