Schillebeeckx.

I received the galleys of the Oxford Companion to the Bible a month or so before a new semester was to begin. Rather than browse through it ad libitum, which is my usual style, I decided to look up pertinent entries as I reworked my class notes for an introductory Bible course I teach. Large entries were first target: Genesis/Exodus/Wisdom Literature/ect. These drew me to ones near them and to the cross references. I found the material well writen, cautiously fair in its judgment, and comprehensive in scope.

Unlike the estimable Harper and Row Dictionary of the Bible (1985), the Oxford volume deals not only with key ideas, names, and phrases but with a whole series of cognate subjects. I enjoyed, for instance, the essay on "popular culture and the Bible," "curious Bibles," "children's Bible," - to name just a few. Each entry points to related subjects, provide signs for words within an entry that are discussed elsewhere and an index of terms which do not have their own entries but which are discussed in the text.

The longer articles are capacious. The history of interpretation has four subheadings on Jewish, early Christian, medieval/Renaissance, and contemporary interpretation. The entry on Jerusalem has both a historical essay and one - excellently done - on the symbolism of the city. Reginald Fuller did the well-balanced article on "Jesus Christ."

The OCB is not, obviously, as exhaustive as the six-volume Anchor Dictionary of the Bible (reviewed in this column, November 20, 1992) but it is thorough and reliable. It should be on the reference shelf of every decent library and, given its modest price, serious readers of the Bible will be well tempted to acquire a copy.

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (second edition, 1990) is one of the premier American biblical achievements. Its major editors (Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Roland Murphy) have been leaders in the renewal of biblical studies in this country. Liturgical Press has now provided us with a much briefer work culled from the NJBC. The stated aim of this handbook is to put into the hands of religious educators and other interested persons a resource which provides brief introductions to each book of the Bible, illustrations and photographs of biblical material, maps, and condensed summaries of the major topical subjects (biblical inspiration, hermeneutics, etc.) which are extensively treated in the NJBC.

Who would be the target audience for this book? It certainly provides basic information about each book of the Bible but does not (could not) treat the text exegetically. The information that it provides is in the nature of background. In that sense it does not go much beyond what is available in the reading guide which prefaces The Catholic Study Bible from Oxford University Press (the edition I use with my first-year students), but it does have the advantage of providing ancillary materials (the maps are quite good) and the specialized topics about biblical subjects. The Handbook, then, would most likely find its target audience in high school classes, CCD courses, and study groups. It certainly would find its place on the reference shelf of high school libraries.

Philip Kennedy, a young Dominican theologian from Australia, has written an extremely fine introduction to the work of the Flemish theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx. This is no mean achievement since Schillebeeckx has been an extremely prolific writer and not a particularly systematic one. There is the further complication that much of his writing is in Dutch (and mounds of it not published at all). In addition, Schillebeeckx has had his unhappy moments with the Roman authorities who are neither amused by his identification with left-wing currents of the Dutch church nor by his writings, especially on Christology and, more recently, the theology of ministry. Kennedy insists, however, that much of Schillebeeckx's theology comes from his lifelong engagement with Saint Thomas (as befits a Dominican) mediated by his long study of continental philosophy. In an extremely interesting biographical chapter, Kennedy traces these intertwined interests as Schillebeeckx imbibed deeply from the philosophical tradition of Louvain and the theological culture of his years with the Dominicans in France where he was deeply influenced by the historically minded scholars (especially the late Pere Chenu) at Le Saulchoir.

Ultimately, time will judge how well Schillebeeckx's theological vision stands up. In the interim, we can say that he has provided our theological discussion with some profound themes and approaches. Kennedy writes compellingly of the centrality of creation as a theological motif in Schillebeeckx; of Schillebeeckx's vision of Jesus Christ as the compression of who God is; of his subtle use of the via negativa to emphasize the humanity of Jesus as a counterbalance to the Chalcedonian emphasis on divinity; and of his long-time meditation on the notion of encounter as it relates to human relationships with the divine and, in the order of salvation, in the sacraments.

This inexpensive volume makes a nice companion piece to The Schillebeeckx Reader (Crossroad) edited by Robert Schreiter in 1984 and the volume on Schillebeeckx's theology edited by Schreiter and Mary Catherine Hilkert under the title The Praxis of Christian Experience (Harper, 1989). With those books and this one by Kennedy as background, interested persons might be ready to read some of Schillebeeckx's more demanding and lengthy works. They repay the effort.

The word "seasons" in the subtitle of Gross's book comes, evidently, from Daniel Levinson's developmental description of the seasons of a person's life analogous to Shakespeare's "seven ages" or Erik Erikson's stages. What Gross has done is to retell the story of Teresa of Avila in the context of developmental psychology with some side glances at Jungian and Freudian psychology. He further juxtaposes that life to the life journey of Dorothy Day (with reliance on Robert Coles) and Gandhi (Erikson) with dollops of everyone he has read from Winston Churchill to Doctor Seuss and Maurice Sendak. On top of all that, we get auto-biographical asides and some of the author's (not very impressive) poetry.

The introduction tells us that the style of the book is "casual and breezy" because he did not want to "dull up a manuscript about a lively lady in the interest of scholarship." Furthermore, the author intends the chapters to be read as "case studies," "each from a different psychological perspective." Now there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach; indeed, even wrongheaded books of this kind (e.g., Erikson's Young Ma Luther) have provided valuable insights as have fine, less adventuresome studies like Robert Coles's work on figures such as Simone Weil and William Carlos Williams.

My problem with Gross's book is that it seemed too much like a piling up of psychological theory, strained analogies, and odd literary juxtapositions without any clear direction or focus; the case studies don't seem coherent. When he writes straightforward biography, he has a lively style, but his odd ruminations act like jelly over a lens: the picture gets hazy and purple. Furthermore, his "casual and breezy" style leads him to odd errors (I doubt his story about the Mexican who left the church but didn't "lose his mind" and become a Protestant; that old wheezer is right out of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist; nor do all "theologians mistrust mystics," etc. - that sort of thing). Finally, it strikes me as odd that in a book this size there is only a fleeting glance at John of the Cross who was one of Teresa's most important friends and collaborators.

I opened this book with some anticipation (having regularly taught Teresa's writings in class) but found it rather wanting as a serious or reliable guide to one of the doctors of the church. Alas, I cannot recommend it for serious inquirers into the mind and heart of the great mystic of Avila.

By contrast, Ingrid Peterson's study of Clare of Assisi is highly recommended. The conventional view of Clare runs something like this: Francis calls her from her aristocratic home to leave wealth and comfort to begin a new life of poverty and prayer. What Peterson argues is that this story is always told from the perspective of Francis. She notes that well before Francis begins his converted life, Clare had already attained a reputation for holiness. Indeed, one can detect in the sources a pattern to Clare's life that was burgeoning generally in the twelfth century: that of holy women who, without entering traditional religious orders, had carved out a new kind of living as an alternative to either the cloister or the marriage bed. Clare was not a Beguine but her form of life was not unlike that of her sisters to the north. That she and Francis ended up as spiritual friends is, in itself, an edifying story since, as Peterson makes clear, Clare came from an aristocratic Ghibelline family whose antipathy to the merchant class from which Francis came was unyielding and often bloody.

What makes Peterson's study so attractive is her determination to tell Clare's story from Clare's perspective. She reminds us that Clare's mother had been a pilgrim (when pilgrimage meant far more than merely going on a journey to a shrine), and it was probably the mother who had the most influence on Clare's own conversion and her spiritual life. She also notes that later, Clare struggled for some independence in the way she wrote her rule of life (she was the first woman in the history of the church to do so) and ever so subtly corrected the one imposed on her by Rome. To this day, the Poor Clares follow either the emphasis of the papal rule or the one developed by Clare herself.

The written sources by Clare (a few letters and a testament) as well as reliable ones about her (e.g., the documentation or processus for her canonization) are thin, but by putting the vast corpus of medieval scholarship to use in fleshing out the texts we do have, Peterson gives us a panoramic look at Clare in particular and at women's spirituality in her age.

This is not a work of technical scholarship but it is one that uses such scholarship to good purpose. The book has a good bibliography, a thorough index, and some useful appendices. It is an excellent example of a work that uses the best of contemporary scholarship (especially in the area of women's studies) to refocus our attention on one of the great figures of medieval Christianity.

One final note: Peterson's work is published by the Franciscan Press (with its home at Quincy University) - a publishing effort which seeks to revitalize the old Franciscan Herald Press (Chicago) on a more professional basis. The quality of this volume augurs well for the press's future. Books of this quality should find an audience for those who desire to explore in depth the Franciscan charism in the church.

Both Teresa and Clare belonged to religious orders. Monasticism and religious institutes growing out of them have always been a part of the Catholic tradition. The literature on monasticism is voluminous but short, readable histories of the phenomenon are rare. Most beginners rely on David Knowles's Christian Monasticism (1969). Knowles focused on monasticism in the strict sense of the term so it is an advantage that we now have Frank's work (ably translated from the German by his former student, Joseph Lienhard, S.J.) which treats other religious institutes like the mendicants, clerks regular, canons, religious institutes of women, etc.

Frank's history was written in the early 1970s but the translator has updated the bibliographies and, in addition, added a chapter, in the form of a postscript, bringing the story down to the early 1990s. The approach is historically oriented with the precise aim to describe the "forms which religious life took in the course of history." The book has a useful bibliography but, irritatingly, no index.

With Greater Liberty concerns itself mostly with developments in the West although it does have a chapter on Eastern monasticism which picks up on the earlier historical material presented in the beginning of the book. Frank could not touch on every form of the vowed life, but he does present a rather comprehensive overview. The only conspicuous omission that I noted was a lack of any discussion of those medieval lay movements (e.g., the Beguines) which adopted some monastic practices; this is unfortunate since they are now the focus of much interest among historians of spirituality.

With Greater Liberty should prove a boon for classroom use, especially for those working in church history or in the area of spirituality. I would also see it as a handy volume in classes in spiritual formation for religious institutes. Cistercian Publications offers an inexpensive ($13.95) paperback edition which should make the work even more attractive for class use.