Short notices

Renie Chow Choy, Ancestral Feeling: Postcolonial Thoughts on Western Christian Heritage (London: SCM Press, 2021); 192 pp.: 9780334060901, £19.99 (pbk)

Renie Chow Choy was brought up as a Christian in Hong Kong before her family emigrated to Canada; she then studied at Oxford and is now Lecturer in Church History at St Mellitus Theological College. In this very personal book, she reflects upon her double Eastern–Western heritage and the tensions of postcolonial Christian faith, especially the tension between her ‘religious genealogy (European) and family genealogy (Chinese)’ (p. 83). She looks ‘to find a way to think historically to foster a more inclusive memory, one that allows my ethnic heritage to bear on my Western Christian heritage’, arguing that ‘there are certain things that we must unlearn about how we think of our Christian ancestry, components of the language of lineage which we need to discard as they keep ethnic minority Christians in a peripheral and marginal position vis-à-vis the centrality of Europe’ (p. 186). In the context of increasing scholarly interest in non-Western forms of Christianity, this book is a timely reminder.

Jeremy Morris (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism. Volume IV: Global Western Anglicanism, c.1910–present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); 470 pp.: 9780198822332, £33.99 (pbk)

William L. Sachs (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism. Volume V: Global Anglicanism c.1910–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); 466 pp.: 9780198822325, £33.99 (pbk)

All five volumes of this ambitious history of Anglicanism, originally published in 2017 as £110 hardbacks, are now available as more affordable paperbacks. Paul Avis, very helpfully, has written review articles on the first three volumes (Theology, Vol. 123, no. 3, pp. 198–203; Vol. 123, no. 5, pp. 370–5; Vol. 124, no. 1, pp. 40–5), but he contributed a full and knowledgeable article on ‘Anglicanism and Christian unity in the twentieth century’ to Volume IV and has already reviewed the fifth elsewhere, so he very properly excuses himself from writing another review article on them. In any case, five years have now elapsed since their original publication. These two final volumes add impressively to this magnificent project, but the division between them is a bit odd, as their overlapping subtitles suggest. African Anglicanism appears prominently in Volume IV (as well as V), despite the word ‘Western’, and William Sachs contributes an article on ‘Sexuality and Anglicanism’ to this volume – focusing very specifically on homosexuality, despite its title, and largely summarizing his 2009 book Homosexuality and the Crisis of Anglicanism – and then edits Volume V. There is also quite a bit of overlap between two of the best articles by the postcolonial historian Sarah Stockwell on ‘Anglicanism in the era of decolonization’ in Volume IV and by the late social historian Jeffrey Cox on ‘The dialectics of empire, race and diocese’ in Volume V. Like other articles across the five volumes, some authors, such as Stockwell and Cox, contribute genuinely new and challenging perspectives, whereas others, such as Sachs, simply summarize previous research. However, Volume V in particular does engage with a huge variety of Anglican contexts – including Oceania, Latin America, China, East Asia, West, East and South Africa and South Sudan – so I can only echo Paul Avis’s conclusion that, in these five volumes, when taken together, ‘the coverage is encyclopaedic and it is all very well done’ (Theology, Vol. 124, no. 1, p. 40).

Laurence Wuidar, On Mystery, Ineffability, Silence and Musical Symbolism (London: Bloomsbury, 2021); 150 pp.: 9781350228795, £75 (hbk); 9781350228788, £24.99 (pbk)

This book (originally published in Italian) joins the very interesting Bloomsbury series ‘Reading Augustine’ (see Short Notices in Theology, Vol. 121, no. 5, pp. 396–7; Vol. 124, no. 6, p. 465). It should be read alongside Carol Harrison’s important On Music, Sense, Affect and Voice (2019) in the same series. Laurence Wuidar is considerably less theological and systematic than Harrison. A musicologist by background, Wuidar also has esoteric religious, mystical and even astrological interests – which sometimes make for less than comfortable reading – but her book is still well worth the effort, not least because she fills the gap on ‘negative theology’ noted by Erik Kenyon in his review of Harrison (Theology, Vol. 123, no. 3, p. 227). Very fortunately, Miles Hollingworth, the editor of the series, offers explanatory interventions in square brackets at various points in Wuidar’s elliptical text. I found this one, in particular, theologically resonant:

[Music] is the only art, which can be perfectly followed … it’s the only art which can be scored. It is the only art which possesses the consistencies (the ratios and intervals) to be scored; score in this case referring quite directly to number. You could not have stood by Picasso and scored his painting and handed on the sheet afterwards to another painter sufficiently trained, and watch [her] produce the same result … Music becomes therefore the perfect representation and the perfect symbol, of the God who on the one hand created the universe with a goodness that is expressed in eternal rhythms, but on the other hand who can and does act in all directions, in a way that can only be depicted … against such rhythms, as freedom’s silence. This is music’s mystical aspect to which Laurence refers. (pp. 17–18)

Isn’t that quite splendid?

Clayton Crockett and Catherine Keller (eds), Political Theology on Edge: Ruptures of Justice and Belief in the Anthropocene (New York NY: Fordham University Press, 2021); 288 pp.: 9780823298129, $35 (pbk)

The ‘edge’ in the title of this – perhaps overambitious – collection is the challenge arising from current climate change, neoliberal capitalism, racism, police brutality and COVID-19. Clayton Crockett is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas and Catherine Keller is Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University (where these papers were first delivered). Sixteen contributors, a mixture of young and established (including Michael Northcott and Kelly Brown Douglas), are drawn variously from religious studies, applied theology and political studies. In a striking opening chapter, William E. Connolly, Professor of Political Theory at Johns Hopkins University, challenges key assumptions in the current ecological debate and, in a later article, Larry L. Welborn, Professor of New Testament at Fordham, revisits 1 Corinthians in the context of critiques of neoliberal capitalism (not unlike Richard A. Horsley’s You Shall Not Bow Down and Serve Them: the political economic projects of Jesus and Paul, which was discussed in Short Notices in the previous issue of Theology). Much to contemplate here.

John Wyatt and Stephen N. Williams (eds), The Robot Will See You Now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith (London: SPCK, 2021); 256 pp.: 9780281084357, £14.99 (pbk)

Fifteen, predominantly evangelical, essays consider the implications for ‘the Christian faith’ (note the singular here) and ethics of modern developments in artificial intelligence. Topics range from robots playing chess better than human beings, robots as substitute friends or even sexual partners, and robots making human manual workers, creative artists and even soldiers redundant, through to surveillance devices monitoring our public and even private actions. The editors admit that their remit could have been wider still, or, alternatively, deeper and more focused. However, there are plenty of thought-provoking examples given already – including the theologically resonant science fantasy film Ex Cathedra (note its deliberate loss of an initial Deus). Some, but not all, contributors heed the late Ian Barbour’s warning in Ethics in an Age of Technology (1992) that many forms of technology, past and present, can be used for good or ill, and surely artificial intelligence is no exception. Nigel Cameron, for example, notes that robots taking over human work might free people to devote more time to churches and charities. And Robert Song notes, wisely, that it is the reductionist claims of some scientists – to the effect that robots demonstrate that human beings are ‘nothing but’ robots themselves – that are more threatening to Christian faith than the actual robots. Yet another example of what Mary Midgley wonderfully termed ‘nothing-buttery’. Plenty to relish here.

Graham Tomlin and Nathan Eddy (eds), The Bond of Peace: Exploring Generous Orthodoxy (London: SPCK, 2021); 208 pp.: 9780281082834, £25 (pbk)

Thirteen articles on ‘generous orthodoxy’, first delivered as lectures at St Mellitus College, are included in this collection and introduced by its president, Bishop Graham Tomlin. In the opening article, David Ford traces the term ‘generous orthodoxy’ back to his doctoral supervisor Hans Frei, who in 1987 wrote that ‘we need a kind of generous orthodoxy which would have in it an element of liberalism, and an element of evangelicalism’. Ford apparently asked Frei where he placed himself compared with other theologians; he responded that it was somewhere between the more orthodox Barth and the more generous Schleiermacher. In turn, Ford has extended this generous orthodoxy into his laudable scriptural readings with scholarly Jews and Muslims. In a later article, Katherine Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary) adds that ‘Frei used to say that a faith without orthodoxy was no good for theology; but an orthodoxy without generosity was simply no good at all’ (p. 48). In another article, Jane Williams sees connections between the creeds, located emphatically within worship, and the sheer generosity of God within creation. And Simon Cuff’s article adds the significant point that, having four different Gospels, ‘Scripture itself hints at a divergence of views within Christian orthodoxy which did not feel the need to iron out into uniformity in the formation and closing of the scriptural canon’ (p. 115). The unmentioned elephant in the room of this collection is the contrast between ‘generous orthodoxy’ and ‘radical orthodoxy’. The latter appears nowhere, but ‘generosity’, sadly, has not always been its hallmark. Thankfully, generosity does thrive in this interesting collection.

Henry Martin, Vincent van Gogh and The Good Samaritan: The Wounded Painter’s Journey (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2021); 174 pp.: 9781913657345, £12.99 (pbk)

What a delightful little book this is. It reflects thoughtfully on one of van Gogh’s final works of art – The Good Samaritan – painted less than a month before his suicide. Given his rejection of Christianity over his final decade, this painting’s religious theme is remarkable in itself. Henry Martin brings it to life with his own translation of van Gogh’s diary entries, interweaved with speculations about how van Gogh’s friendships, failed love relationships and complex family life intermingled with his deteriorating mental health and artistic genius. A gem.