Religion Booknotes.

Four Cultures of the West began as a series of lectures at the University Notre Dame. I had the privilege of attending the lectures, but despite my best efforts, I could not write fast enough to note down John O'Malley's many excellent points. So I looked forward with keen anticipation to reading this book.

Four Cultures of the West

John O'Malley, SJ

Harvard University Press, $24.95, 272 pp.

O'Malley's thesis is that that there are four broad cultural currents running through the ocean of Western civilization, and that their two main sources are biblical revelation and Greek wisdom. The first stream is the "prophetic" current, which encompasses the cry for renewal and reform that has its fountainhead in Jeremiah. The second is the "academic" current, or the thirst for understanding that was the hallmark of thinkers like Aristotle and Plato and is the raison d'etre of the modern university. The third is the "humanistic" current, which springs from the tradition of rhetoric, and the fourth stream runs through the culture of "art and performance." Of course, these are not the only currents evident in Western civilization. But O'Malley offers them as a thought experiment in intellectual and cultural history.

What makes these essays so interesting is O'Malley's analysis of his four currents in relation to the church. For example, he notes that before Pope John XXIII, the modern papacy took a strong "prophetic" position against post-Enlightenment culture. At Vatican II, though, church leaders adopted a more open, "rhetorical" style. (Earlier councils favored a more rigid, "academic" approach.) This rhetorical style is one reason why there are varying interpretations of the documents of Vatican II. As O'Malley says, "the documents of the council often read like a commentary or homily by one of the [church] fathers--or by Erasmus."

True to his own formation in classical rhetoric, O'Malley has attempted to write his book in the genre of the epideictic--that art of praise and blame in which there is room to highlight both achievement and shortcoming. One of the phrases the author returns to time and again is the "common good." This book invites the reader to think of our common intellectual inheritance. Four Cultures of the West is an intellectual treat and a cautionary study, brilliantly written and seductively argued. It is as good in the reading as it was in the listening.

Ignatian Humanism

Ronald Modras

Loyola University Press, $16.95, 346 pp.

Ronald Modras uses the term "humanism" to describe that movement in Western culture that developed as part of the Renaissance. To be more precise, I think he means the humanism in Northern Europe that produced, among others, John Colet, Thomas More, and Erasmus of Rotterdam. These thinkers argued that learning could be an engine of church reform, and that Catholic scholarship should focus not just on medieval scholars, but on the Bible and the church fathers. Ignatius Loyola, who was born one hundred years after the start of the Renaissance, drew on humanist scholarship in his work. This book traces that influence--though Modras only mentions in passing that Ignatius was also profoundly influenced by the devotio moderna and by Cistercian and Franciscan spirituality.

Modras contends that, like the humanists, Ignatius and his followers viewed the culture as benign, which allowed them to interact with it and learn from it. This approach, he argues, made it possible for Matteo Ricci, Teilhard de Chardin, and Karl Rahner to become the kind of thinkers they were. This book includes chapters on all of these figures, as well as a moving portrait of Pedro Arrupe, the heroic late Jesuit general who lived, in his last years, under the less-than-benign gaze of Pope John Paul II. Modras's book does not add much to what is already known about these men, although it includes a powerful account of Arrupe's experiences in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped.

What I found most interesting about Ignatian Humanism was the portrait of the Jesuit moralist Friedrich Spee (1591-1635). Spee was the only person to speak out against the persecution of witches in his part of Europe. He argued that the conventional wisdom about witches was based on specious reasoning or simple ignorance. Spee did not deny that witches existed, but he contested the notion that they were prevalent. He also argued against the use of torture, and believed that most women burned at the stake were innocent.

Other parts of this book are also instructive. The chapter on Rahner, which demonstrates how the Spiritual Exercises fundamentally shaped the theologian's character, is quite well done. The portrait of Ricci in China is also lucid and informative. The book's only weakness is the final chapter, in which Modras contrasts "humanism" and "spirituality." Modras's understanding of spirituality seems uninformed by the many excellent studies on the subject written in the past thirty years. He mistakenly characterizes spirituality as a pallid Platonic flight from the world or some kind of interiorized religious stirrings. This book is an intelligent analysis of Ignatian humanism, but it would have been much improved had Modras enlarged his understanding of Christian spirituality.

Constants in Context

A Theology of Mission for Today

Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder

Orbis, $30, 488 pp.

Constants in Context is a survey of missiology, or the ways the church carries out its mission in the world. The book begins with the necessary point that "mission" is inherit in the concept of Christianity. By "mission," of course, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder aren't talking about someone in a pith helmet preaching in the jungle. Their book examines the idea that the church is an extension of Christ and, as such, has a duty to further God's reign in the world. The "constants" referred to in the title are six doctrinal themes essential to the church's mission: Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, salvation, anthropology, and culture.

The authors examine these themes as they are treated in three types of theology: "orthodox/conservative," "liberal," and "radical/liberationist." Each of these types puts its own emphases on the "constants" listed above. The authors argue that this method of comparison is a useful way to analyze complex material. I found it overly schematic, though not fatally flawed.

The meat of the book is a history of "mission" from the New Testament through the twentieth century. This presentation is comprehensive in scope but lacks much historical analysis. For example, Modras's book is a better place to learn about the Chinese rites. To their credit, however, Bevans and Schroeder pay attention to the Eastern Church, both in antiquity and in the modern period. It is easy to forget that Christianity spread to the East in its earliest period, not only to the West. The authors also, laudably, give space to Evangelicals, Pentecostalists, and modern Native Christian traditions.

For me, the third part of the book is the most instructive. The authors offer three models of "mission" using three Roman documents. Vatican II's Ad gentes describes "mission" as participation in the triune life of God; this is an understanding congenial to modern Orthodox thinkers. Paul VI's Evangelii nuntiandi--one of the most fecund documents to come from Rome in the post-Vatican II period--sees "mission" as liberating service of the reign of God. The third model of "mission" is epitomized by John Paul II's encyclical Redemptoris missio, which emphasizes Jesus Christ as universal savior. This approach is shared by many Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Of course, in practice these models do not always appear in pure form.

At the end of the book, Bevans and Schroeder propose their own theology of "mission," which they call "prophetic dialogue." Under this model, the church must teach with authority, yet it also must be open to dialogue, since the authors believe that the gospel must be inculturated in order to be understood. Furthermore, the authors argue that this "prophetic dialogue" must be directed both at the church itself and at the larger culture.

This is not a book to be read in large gulps. It took me some weeks to assimilate the authors' arguments, reading a chapter or two a day. This is not because the arguments are overly abstruse (quite the opposite), but because the authors cover so much terrain that I was nearly overwhelmed by names and facts. That the authors were able to organize this material into a coherent whole is one of the book's merits. As a Catholic statement of missiology, it is almost encyclopedic in range.

When Jesus Came to Harvard

Harvey Cox

Houghton Mifflin, $25,352 pp.

For nearly two decades, Harvey Cox taught a very popular course at Harvard College on Jesus and the moral life. (He is a professor at the divinity school.) This book is a product of that course, which, judging from Cox's account, was a highly original endeavor. Cox once staged a debate between a New Testament scholar and the law professor Alan Dershowitz on the legality of the trial of Jesus. In another class, he played Mozart's Requiem and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion.

The book follows the story of Jesus from the genealogies in Matthew and Luke to the Passion narratives. Cox confesses that for a few years he did not teach the Resurrection out of deference to the many non-Christians in the course. Although Cox is a theologian, he is not a Scripture scholar, so this book does not examine the Gospel texts in any depth. (He accepts without question the findings of historical-critical scholarship and admits to a penchant for the work of John Dominic Crossan.) The only position he takes concerns the Jewishness of Jesus, which he emphasizes repeatedly.

Cox seems more interested in using the Gospels as a launching pad to discuss other subjects. For example, he uses the healing stories of Jesus to talk about the relationship between belief and healing, and the temptations Jesus faces in the desert to discuss the presence of the demonic in our time. In many ways, the book is a series of sophisticated sermons. This is not to say that Cox is not an astute reader of texts. He is. Yet the main purpose of the book is to tackle perennial ethical conundrums: How do we handle prosperity without becoming morally corrupt? What are our duties to others and to the poor? What do pain, abandonment, and death tell us about the human experience?

The problem with this approach is that it privileges Jesus the man over Jesus the Christ. Cox's class was made up of students from all parts of the world; some were religious, some were not. As a result, he presented Jesus as an exemplar of the "moral life" rather than as the son of God. For Christians, this distorts the historical Christian understanding of Jesus as a reflection of the power, wisdom, and glory of God. This is a readable and intelligent book about Jesus, but it is incomplete and should be read as such.

Christians in the West are familiar with the Orthodox tradition. Few, though, know about the "Oriental Orthodox," who are not in communion with Orthodoxy. These non-Chalcedonian churches--those that did not accept the fifth-century doctrinal formulation that Jesus was "two natures in one person"--have an ancient lineage. They include the Armenian Church, the Egyptian Copts, the Syrian Church, the Indian Malankara, and the Ethiopian and Eritrean churches. The Syrian Orthodox Church, which still has a strong although diminishing presence in Iraq, uses the language Jesus spoke (Aramaic). The Armenian Church traces its history to the third century when Armenia, once much larger, embraced Christianity.

Prayers from the East

Traditions of Eastern Christianity

Edited by Richard Marsh

Fortress, $15,145 pp.

Richard Marsh learned of these traditions while working as an ecumenical officer for the archbishop of Canterbury. That experience inspired him to put together this anthology of prayers. Marsh provides a brief introduction to each tradition, and the prayers include short explanations of customs and terminology. Some of the prayers come from the liturgy; the rest were written for other occasions. Most of the prayers draw on scriptural themes. For example, a prayer of intercession addressed to the saints reads: "Martyrs! As in the time of deluge, when the righteous Noah protected the beasts that entered with him into the ark, let your intercession protect us from the tides and stormy winds that encircle this world." Not surprisingly, the anthology contains many beautiful prayers in honor of the Virgin Mary and, in the Egyptian Coptic tradition, a profound veneration for the Holy Family.

I have a bookshelf full of prayer books because I believe that prayers are a fundamental theological resource. I plan to add this book to my collection because it offers a glimpse at alternative Christian traditions. I hope others will enjoy these prayers as much as I did.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.