Abstract
Gillian Clark,
Commentary on Augustine
City of God,
Books 6–10
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024); 249 pp.: 9780198870081, £90 (hbk)
This is the second volume of the detailed commentary on Augustine’s City of God by the highly respected scholar of late antiquity, Professor Emerita Gillian Clark. This project was originally funded as a multi-author, interdisciplinary project, but now continues as a series of monographs entirely written by Clark. The first volume appeared in 2021 and was well received by other scholars. Taken together, the two volumes cover Part One of City of God; with some two-thirds still to go, it is an ambitious/optimistic work of dedication but, perhaps, not entirely a work of love. At the outset of the present commentary, Clark expresses frustration with Augustine and, particularly, with his selective critique of positions opposite to his own: ‘In the late medieval and early modern periods, Augustine’s learning was greatly admired. It should not be overestimated … Augustine’s challenges to his opponents can be repetitive and frustrating to read’ (p. 9). Unlike a number of contributors to the otherwise stimulating Bloomsbury Reading Augustine series, she – thankfully, some might conclude – identifies herself as an historian and ‘liberal Anglican’ rather than as a committed Augustinian theologian: ‘I offer frequent warnings about Augustine’s selection and treatment of a limited range of sources’ (p. 14) – and that, indeed, is what she does in her commentary.
Webb Keane,
Animals, Robots, God: Adventures in the Moral Imagination
(London: Penguin, 2024); 179 pp.: 9780241613207, £20 (hbk)
I much enjoyed this book (which I reviewed for Church Times). Written by a Michigan anthropologist, it is very accessible and jargon free. It is not particularly theological, but it does offer many telling examples of differing moral decision making about the propriety of modern technology leading up to AI. It also argues, in its conclusion, that this does not inevitably end in moral relativism, but it does question whether Western ethics matches moral decision making in other cultures as recorded by anthropologists.
John D. Zizioulas,
Remembering the Future: Toward an Eschatological Ontology
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 2024); 335 pp.: 9781936773954, £50 (pbk)
Nicholas Denysenko,
This Is the Day that the Lord Has Made: The Liturgical Year in Orthodoxy
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 2024); 163 pp.: 9780227180006, £21 (pbk)
Two recent books on Eastern Orthodoxy, which work well together, published by James Clarke. I have already reviewed the first at greater length (in Church Times), but not the second. The book by Bishop John Zizioulas (1931–2023) is his long-awaited magnum opus, now published posthumously. Those who have read his highly influential Being as Communion (1985) will recognize many of the themes that he repeats and expands here, offering a powerful combination of Communion, Eucharist, Orthodox liturgy and eschatology. Because he spent some two decades teaching first at Edinburgh University and then at Glasgow, before returning to his native Greece as a bishop, his writings displayed a wide knowledge of theologians from other Christian traditions. Professor Nicholas Denysenko, of Indiana’s Valparaiso University, makes some passing comparisons with Roman Catholic liturgy, but he is primarily concerned to explain the varied intricacies of the liturgical year within Eastern Orthodoxy, arguing that: ‘Several factors contribute to the growth of the calendar. These include solar events, historical mimesis, theological development, sacred topography, and the dedication of churches’ (pp. 92–3).
Norman Wirzba,
This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024); 263 pp.: 9781009012584, £23.99 (pbk)
This book, published as a hardback in 2021, is now available as a less expensive paperback. It is fluently written, passionate and accessible. Wirzba’s
Donald Mackinnon,
Borderlands of Theology: And Other Essays
(Cambridge: James Clarke, 2024); 240 pp.: 9780227180365, £25 (pbk)
This is a reprint of 18 essays by Donald Mackinnon (1913–94) on theology, philosophy of religion and ethics. He was renowned for his sharp intelligence and personal eccentricity. This collection was first published by Lutterworth in 1968 and can still be bought second-hand.
Andrew Macintosh, David Frost and John Emerton (eds),
The Cambridge Liturgical Psalter
(Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2024); 204 pp.: 9780718897710, £20 (pbk)
This is another Lutterworth reprint, albeit with a new Introduction by Andrew Macintosh, of a 1967 translation of the Hebrew text of The Cambridge Liturgical Psalter (used in the 1980 Alternative Service Book) by eight very distinguished Hebrew scholars and one literary scholar.
Rupert Shortt,
The Eclipse of Christianity … And Why It Matters
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2024); 356 pp.: 9781399802741, £25 (hbk)
Rupert Shortt, the religion editor of The Times Literary Supplement until 2020, has similar skills in sophistic journalism to Nick Spencer of Theos. Without being formal academics themselves – disarmingly, Shortt admits that his book is ‘impressionistic’ (p. 32) and emphatically not ‘a theological manual’ (p. 91) – both identify salient points in, say, the dense, diffuse but deeply inspirational analyses of present-day religion made at length by Charles Taylor and the late David Martin, or the famously opaque theological prose of Rowan Williams (whom Shortt quotes at length, albeit, tellingly, for the most part from his interviews rather than books). They also enjoy interviewing a host of academics, picking their brains and turning their ideas into readable prose. And both swim against the current tide of intellectual atheism. Shortt’s latest book does all these things and does them well. He is convinced that churches in Britain and many other Western countries are declining both numerically and in terms of their immediate influence. Yet, like Spencer – and in accord with current sociologists such as Hans Joas, Hartmut Rosa and Grace Davie – he detects abiding Judaeo-Christian values in the West that are weakly defended (if they are defended at all) by intellectual atheists. This is an important insight that is set out elegantly, even if polemically, in this spirited book.