Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001 RellglaueScudiesRevlew/8

GREENING THEOLOGY AND ETHICS:

FIVE CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES
possible in the confines of one review essay. The books reviewed
EARTH COMMUNITY, EARTH ETHICS
By Larry L. Rasmussen here illustrate five prominent approaches to ecological theology
Maryknoll, NY:Orbis Books, 1996 and ethics: Protestant ecojustice, ecofeminist, interfaith, ecumeni-
Pp. xvi + 366. Paper, $20.00. cal Christian, and Christian animal welfare. Identifying these ap
proaches provides a “map” of an importantpart of the contemporary
WOMEN HEALING EARTH: THIRD WORLD WOMEN ecological landscape. These volumes were selected not only be
ON ECOLOGY, FEMINISM, AND RELIGION cause they represent approachescritical to the current North Ameri-
Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether can debate but because of their promise for classroom use.
Maryknoll, NY:Orbis, 1996 Larry Rasmussen’s Earth Community, Earth Ethics (1996),
Pp.vi + 186. Paper, $17.00. which won the 1997Grawemeyer award for best book in religion, is
THE GREENING OF FAITH: GOD, THE ENVIRONMENT, an excellent example of a Protestant approach to ecological ethics
AND THE GOOD LIFE that manifests a passion for “ecojustice.” The “Protestant
Edited by John E. Carroll, Paul Bmkelman, and Mary Westfall ecojustice” approach is characterized by its mtedness within the
Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997 Protestant mainstream (and usually a particular tradition, i.e.; Re-
Pp.viii + 228. Cloth, $45.00; paper, $19.95. formed, Lutheran, Anabaptist), its openness to other secular and re-
ligious traditions, and its justice-oriented vision. Rasmussen him-
SUPER, NATURAL CHRISTIANS: HOW WE SHOULD self works out of the Lutheran tradition, deepened by his expertise
LOVE NATURE in Bonhoeffer scholarship, and broadened through a decades-long
By Sallie McFague involvement with the ecumenical movement.’
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997 Rasmussen begins by changing the subject. His book is decid-
Pp.ix + 207. Paper, $16.00. edly not, he claims, a work in “environmental ethics”:
ANIMALS ON THE AGENDA: QUESTIONS ABOUT The “environmental crisis” does not adequately describe what ails
ANIMALS FOR THEOLOGY AND ETHICS us....The true state of affairs ...is far more interesting and intimate....
Edited by Andrew Linzey and Dorothy Yamamoto The world around us is also within .... Earth is bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh. This is not “environment” so much as the holy
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998 mystery of creation. made for and by all earth‘s creatures together
Pp.xx + 297. Paper, $2 1.95. (xii).
Rasmussen’salternative, adapted from Bonhoeffer,is “earth and its
Reviewers: William Greenway distress.” “Earth and its distress” describes the globalizing culture,
Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary which is in and of nature, yet runs full grain against it. Given this sit-
Austin, TX 78705 uation, Rasmussen calls for nothing less than a thorough reforma-
tion of all religious faiths. Asserting that religious traditions are es-
Janet L. Parker sential to healing earth’s distress and at the same time inadequateto
Union Theological Seminary the task,he argues that “all religious and moral impulses of what-
New York, NY 10027 ever sort must now be matters of unqualifiedearthboundloyalty and
care. Faith is fidelity to earth and full participation in its ecstasy and

T he proliferation of books and articles in ecological theology agony” (10).

and ethics over the past two decades testifies to a profound Rasmussen’s greatest contribution may lie in his methodology,
shift occurring in human societies at the end of the second mil- which integrates empirical analysis of the crisis, theological and
lennium. A dual breakdown in the realms of “nature” and “culture” ethical reflection, and concrete proposals for action. The book is or-
is calling forth a revaluation and reformation of our religious and ganized around these three dimensions. Part I, “Earth Scan,” pre-
ethical traditions. An increasingly deadly deterioration of earth’s sents a surprisingly detailed description of “earth and its distress”
support systems,induced by human activity, manifests itself in such through an interdisciplinary survey of the historical, cultural, eco-
diverse forms as global warming, extinction of species, ozone de- nomic and scientific aspects of the current crisis. “Earth Scan” in-
pletion, environmentallycaused disease and starvation, and defor- troduces two key questions: 1 ) how to move from the
estation.The breakdown of the natural environmentis matched by a unsustainability of human cultures and practices into a sustainable
rupture in the Western mentality of modernity, which posited the relationship with earth; and 2) how to restructure human power ac-
transcendence of culture over nature, human over nonhuman, and cording to the demands of justice, in relation both to humans and to
the mechanical over the organic. An ecological consciousness is other living creatures and structures. Both moves are necessary,
emerging that apprehends human culture as embedded within the since, as Rasmussen notes, sustainability is a virtual synonym for
natural world, resituates the human as a member of the wider earth comprehensivejustice (348). Furthermore,the magnitudeof human
community,and reinvests the earth with sacred meaning. power to reshape and damage earth’s processes has led to “the as-
The wealth of material now published in ecologicaltheology and cendancy of ethics for our era” (5).
ethics is so diverse that a comprehensiveoverview of the field is im-
4 / Religious Studies Review
In a clear departure from traditional Christianethics, Rasmussen
argues that humans are now morally accountablefor their treatment
of (the rest of) nature. Anthropentrism in ethics must give way to
biocentrism,for the central empirical reality we must face is that hu-
mans, other life forms, and earth comprise a single community.
Rasmussen’s “Earth Scan” ambitiously addresses a wide variety of
factors contributing to earth’s distress, including the key human
revolutionsthat brought us here (agricultural, industrial, and infor-
mational), the colonizing expansion of the West, the globalizing
economy currently overtaxing earth’s systems, and political ar-
rangements resulting in environmentalracism. Along the way, Ras-
mussen distinguishes between two constructive proposals for ad-
dressing the crisis: “sustainable development” and “sustainable
community.” He rejects sustainable development, which revolves
around economiesand their growth, in favor of sustainablecommu-
nity, which focuses on the health and well-being of communities.
Part 11, “Earth Faith.” identifies symbols and fragments of in-
sight from the repository of human religious experience that can
help transform religious faiths and life philosophies into genuine
Earth Faiths. Rasmussen argues convincingly that only religious
consciousnesshas the power to engender the deep cultural transfor-
mation required for humans to live sustainably, and thus to live at
all, past the next century. The key insight in Part 11is Rasmussen’s
assertionthat ‘‘the spiritual crisis rests in the alienated way in which
we conceive ourselves, apart from nature” (1 82). Thus Rasmussen
sets out to test human religious symbols, both within and outsidethe
Christian faith, that might help heal our alienation from earth.
What follows are some marvelous chapters that move in a tele-
scopic narrowing of focus from universal religious symbols drawn
from nature (trees, for example), to symbols and stories common to
the Jewish and Christian heritage, to a particular Christian tradition
(Lutheranism), to an individual expression of that tradition
(Bonhoeffer). By initially casting a wide net and then focusing in
upon his own tradition, Rasmussen affirms both the necessity of en-
listing all earth citizens and faiths in the project of earth healing and
the unique gifts proffered by a particular earth faith. The result is a
theology and ethic that are unapologetically Christian while at the
same time appreciativeof the gems gleaming at the bottom of other
wells.
Rasmussen brings this ambitious effort to a close with Part 111,
“Earth Action.” Composed of three short chapters, it is the least de-
veloped section of the book. Rasmussen acknowledgesthe prelimi-
nary nature of his effort to outline concrete proposals and guide-
lines; nonetheless, Part 111 contains some excellent insights into
“what on earth is to be done?“ Drawing upon a number of compel-
ling examples of community efforts to achieve sustainability, Ras-
mussen offers several conclusions. Perhaps the most basic is the
hardest to learn: ‘“Comm-unity’ is nature’s way. All that exists, co-
exists” (324). Given the absolute embeddednessof human society
in nature’s great community,the second lesson is that sustainability
emerges only from a careful mimickingof nature’s design. Human-
ity’s Promethean attempt to live against the grain of nature must be
recognized as futile.
Third, however, and paradoxically, human moral action cannot
simply imitate nature. The human ethical task remains distinctive.
Humans necessarily intervene in nature to prevent and relieve suf-
fering in ways unknown to nonhuman nature, for nature is “too ca-
sual about suffering” (346). Rasmussen ends by calling for a
“postmodern ethic of total value” or a “comprehensive communi-
tarian ethic” (346).Based upon a biocentric valuing of all forms of
Volume H Numbex 1 / January 2001
life and rooted in the apprehension of life as the Great Community,
this ethic requires the enactment of justice and power-sharing as the
essence of sustainability. Thus, “the direction overall is a down-
ward distribution of economic and social power and a heightened
status for all forms of life, human and other” (348).
Rasmussen’s book functions as a programmatic effort to con-
struct an agenda for his own future work and the work of others
deeply concerned about “earth and its distress.” Earth Community,
Earth Erhics lays out a map indicating which directions need to be
pursued in our ongoing theo-ethical-political work of healing the
complex crises of nature and culture. The reader will not find a de-
tailed development of a Lutheran ecological ethic or a comprehen-
sive discussion of constructive proposals for the road ahead. In-
stead, one finds an excellent overview of the “big picture”
characterized by a rare blend of empirical analysis, theo-ethical re-
flection, and poetic evocation. Earth Community, Earth Ethics
would make an excellent addition to a seminary or undergraduate
cumculum. Students new to the issues will need some guidance but
should benefit greatly from the effort.
An increasingly prominent approach to the global environmen-
tal crisis in recent years is that of ecofeminism. Emerging in the
1970s. ecofeminism first focused on the relationship between the
oppression of women and the exploitation of nature within patriar-
chal society. In the 1980s and 1990s,it expanded to address the real-
ities of white racism, neocolonialism, and economic injustice. To-
day ecofeminism spans the globe with representatives in widely
diverse theoretical, ethnic, religious, and economic locations.
Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Femi-
nism, and Religion (1996) bears witness to the marvelous diversity
now present within ecofeminismand the unique contributions it can
make to the wider environmental and feminist movements. Al-
though not all of the contributors identify themselves as
ecofeminist,the way the book integratesecology, feminism, and re-
ligion is characteristic of an ecofeminist approach.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, the editor of WomenHealing Earth,
is herself a prominent ecofeminist theologian. In 1992. she pub-
lished her first book on ecofeminism, Gaia and God: An
Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (HarperSanFrancisco).*
Women Healing Earth offers an anthology of “Third World”
women’s perspectives on ecology and religion for a “First World”
audience. In fact, one main purpose of the book is to facilitate
“cross-cultural communication and solidarity between women in
the ‘First World’ and women in those countries that are struggling
against the effects of Western colonization”(1). Ruether emphati-
cally asserts, however, that another purpose of Women Healing
Earth is to provide a forum for women from the South to collaborate
and communicate with one another. By editing this book, Ruether
makes excellent use of her position as a privileged “First World”
scholar and engages in a concrete act of solidarity.
An example of this solidarity is the strong challenge she poses to
Northern (i.e., “First World”) ecofeminism, warning, “A Northern
ecofeminismthat is not primarily a cultural escapismfor an affluent
female elite must make concrete connections with women at the
bottom of the social-economicsystem” (5).The differencebetween
an ecofeminism rooted in “Third World” realities as opposed to
“First World” affluence is that “women from Asia, Africa, and
Latin America ... are much less likely to forget that the base line of
domination of women and of nature is impoverishment” (6). The
struggle against the pernicious effectsof Western colonization,eco-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
nomic exploitation,and cultural dislocation is a thread uniting all of
the essays in the book.
Women Healing Earth is divided into three sections: Latin
America, Asia, and Africa. Five essays in each section explore the
connections among the struggles of women, the degradation of the
natural environment,and the religious and spiritual resources that
women bring to their defense of the earth. Writers from all conti-
nents express a desire to recover indigenous spiritualities and prac-
tices that could aid in healing the damage suffered by women and
the earth from centuries of Western exploitation. The five essays
making up the section on Latin America exhibit the heavy influence
of Christianityon that region; only one does not address the Chris-
tian presence in Latin America. Brazilian ecofeminist theologian
Ivone Gebara writes the most explicitly Christian essay, “The Trin-
ity and Human Experience,” which calls for the reconstruction of
the doctrineof the Trinity in a way reflective of cosmic realities and
human experience.
Contrastingwith Gebara’s attempt to reclaim Christian doctrine
for the purpose of life, Gladys Parentelli of Venezuela excoriates
the Catholic Church for its participation in “the same patriarchal
system as its economic and political counterparts” (31). She argues
that, rather than religious institutions, the greatest source for the re-
covery of life and health in Latin America lies with poor women,
who are “inherent guardians of life and of the earth’s resources”
(33). Mary Judith Ress of Chile charts a middle course between ac-
ceptance and rejection of the continent’sCatholic heritage. Arguing
that Latin American women need to honor both their dark and white
grandmothers, she calls for relativizing Christianity as one experi-
ence of the divine and reclaiming the indigenous spirituality that
still survives in the region.
The essays from Asiareflect the strong impact of ecofeminismin
this region of the world. As Ruether writes, “It would be no exag-
geration to say that, in Asia, the leading form of ecological aware-
ness is social ecofeminism”(61). The leader in Asian ecofeminism,
and now a globally recognized advocate for women and ecology, is
the Indian physicist, philosopher, and activist Vandana Shiva.
Shiva’s essay explores the interconnections of Western colonial-
ism, Western patriarchal science, and the victimization of Indian
women and communities. Arguing for a “post-victimology” ap-
proach, however, Shiva focuses on women as defenders and pre-
servers of life. In similar fashion, two Christian writers from India,
Aruna Gnanadason and Gabrielle Dietrich, look both to women’s
struggles and to insights gleaned from Christian and Hindu tradi-
tions to constructan ecofeministtheology of resistance and renewal
of life. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a Filipina, is less optimistic about
Christianity’susefulnessin her context and calls instead for a return
to indigenous customs and rituals that undergird community and
reverence for the natural world.
The essays from Africa weave a vibrant picture of the ecological
implicationsof African religious cosmologies with concrete exam-
ples of women’s roles in caring for their natural environment. Per-
haps it is reflective of the continuing vitality of African religious
traditionsthat only the essay from South Africa moves outside of in-
digenous religions to address Christianity and Islam. This essay,
co-written by a Christianand a Muslim, is also the only one by white
women. The other four essays delve deeply into resources found
within African cosmologies and traditional practices that offer a
way forward to sustainable community.
For example, Tumani Mutasa Nyajeka draws upon the Mutopo
principle that organized the Shona society of Zimbabwe before
Religious studies Review/ 5
British colonization. Nyajeka writes that “The Mutopo principle
points to an intrinsic oneness or unity which translates into a status
of egalitarianism of all forms of nature....It begins by establishing
that humans, the deity, nature, time and space are of the same es-
sence” (138). Nyajeka argues that the Muropo principle, while im-
perfectly realized, helped to keep human and nonhuman communi-
ties in balance with each other. While traditional beliefs often serve
to protect the natural environment, Isabel Apawo Phiri’s case study
from Malawi provides a cautionary example to those who would
uncritically return to traditional customs. Phiri’s study demon-
strates the complex ways in which traditional beliefs can be both
empoweringand disempoweringfor women. Like some of the other
contributors, Phiri argues for a conscientious blend of traditional
cultures with modem conceptions of women’s rights.
The rich diversity of voices in Women Healing Earth is its great-
est strength. The editor’s desire to promote dialogue among “Third
World” women might have been better served if more explicit inter-
action had taken place among the authors, but the volume succeeds
in its goal of providing a readable, engaging, and informativeintro-
duction to the work women are doing on issues of feminism, ecol-
ogy, and religion in the “Third World.” It also succeeds in challeng-
ing “First World” ecofeminists to integrate the realities of poverty
and Western imperialism into their analyses and to make concrete
connections with women of different socioeconomic, ethnic, and
cultural backgrounds. Women Healing Earth is an excellent exam-
ple of a cross-cultural, religiously and culturally diverse,
ecofeminist approach to ecological theology and ethics. It is highly
suitable for classroom use at both the undergraduate and graduate
levels and could also be utilized well in some church settings.
The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment,and the Good Life
(1997) adopts an interfaith approach to ecological concerns. A two-
fold conviction unites the contributors: 1) the environmentalcrisis
is of unparalleled contemporary significance; 2) a wholesale spiri-
tual transformation in our envisioning of nature is required to re-
solve the crisis. The contributors agree that sciencemust play a role
in addressing environmental problems, but they contend that sci-
ence is not calibrated to discern the moral and spiritual dimensions
of existence. Modem science has yielded unprecedented knowl-
edge and power, but, as the environmentalcrisis illustrates, we have
become disoriented. The editors intend The Greening of Faith to
help us get our bearings by providing spiritual wisdom.
In Part 1, “A Call to Awaken,” the essayists delineate the sever-
ity of the crisis and alert us to its spiritual dimensions. They argue
that modernity’sloss of awe for creation lies at the root of the crisis.
Enlightenmentscience objectified the nonhuman. “Nature,” a term
that came to encompass that which is neither human nor a human ar-
tifact, was portrayed not as a wondrous communityofprocessesand
species (including humans) but as a spiritless machine with no in-
trinsic value. This viewpoint is not only ecologically but spiritually
devastating. Rabbi Everett Gendler quotes D. H.Lawrence:
We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth
and the sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery. because, poor
blossoms, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and ex-
pected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table (73).
Only recently have religious trajectories emerged contesting the
modern disenchantment of nature. The thirteen essays in The
Greening of Faith are directed at a North American audience, and
the essayists were selected with the intention of representing reli-
gions especially influential in North Ameri~a.~ Part 2, “Old Paths,
New Ground,” offers essays representing Jewish, evangelical
6 / ReUgious Studies Review
Christian,ecumenical Protestant, and Catholic perspectives. Part 3,
“In a Different Voice,” presents Buddhist, Abenaki Native Ameri-
can, and ecofeminist approaches. Part 4,“Broadening the Scope,”
contains three “eco-geological” perspectives. Notably absent,
given the editors’ interest in the North American context,are voices
representing Islam and fundamentalist Christianity.
The diversity is impressive. In other contexts, these essayists
would argue vigorously over politics and theology. But the editors
are concerned neither with putting the essayists into dialogue nor
with presenting a theoretically consistent ecological spirituality.
Rather, their goal is to demonstrate the constructive resources of
each of these religious trajectories for developingecologically sen-
sitive spiritualities, while implicitly suggesting that adherents of
these different faiths might unite in re-enchanting nature.
This is a promising volume for the classroom. The essays pro-
vide an excellent introduction to many prominent religious re-
sponses to the environmental crisis; North American students are
likely to discover insights that resonate with their own religious per-
spectives. The essays are accessible, moving, and creative.
CatherineKeller’s is representative.Her developmentof “compost-
ing” into a religious metaphor in relation to the distinct themes of
ecofeminism is rich and novel. The essay breaks no new conceptual
ground, but it provides an articulate and passionate introduction to
ecofeminism and would serve as an excellent springboard for dis-
cussion.
The essays are more homiletical than academic, more position
statements than arguments. Calvin DeWitt, for instance, develops
his essay in relation to numerous biblical passages but does not en-
gage evangelical scholars who would disagree with his interpreta-
tions and does not offer the close argumentationthat would be nec-
essary to engage such critics constructively. He simply presents an
evangelical reading of scripture that attends to the whole of cre-
ation. Similarly,StephanieKaza and Catherine Keller are not going
to convince any skeptics that the dynamics involved in dominating
nature are continuous with the dynamics of men dominatingwomen
or North dominating South, but, like DeWitt, they present compel-
ling portraits.
The homiletical style adopted by these essayists distinguishes
this volume. Their success in conveying not only the essence of
their approaches, but in instilling a sense for the spirit of their con-
victions, justifies the lack of more technical analyses. Religious
scholars, for instance, are familiar with academic investigations
into the social and cultural dynamics of capitalism.But listen to Jay
McDaniel:
A religion is a way of organizing life. In our time the dominant reli-
gion of the planet is “economism.” Its god is endless economic
growth, its priests are economists, its missionaries are advertisers,
and its church is the mall. In this religion. virtue is called “competi-
tion” and sin is cal1ed“inefficiency.”Salvation comes t h u g h shop-
ping alone (105).
This will speak to students. Likewise, McDaniels’ descriptions of
“green” and “red” grace, Keller’s “composting,” Timothy
Weiskel’s “growthism,” and Thomas Berry’s talk of his genera-
tion’s ecological “autism,” are evocative and memorable. Essays
such as these are essential for conveying the spiritual passion that
enlivens greens.
The danger is that discussion may degenerate into emotive vili-
fying of those with whom one disagrees. Unfortunately,one essay-
ist, Albert Lachance, falls prey to this susceptibility with his in-
flammatory invectives against abortion (e.g., “women’s special
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
form of killing,” “assassins from the medical establishment,” “in
utero genocide” [ 191,2061). But this is the exception in this collec-
tion, and even it might be used constructively to discuss the bound-
aries of fair argument.
Three particularly notable and interrelated issues, each funda-
mental in the broader green community, surfacethroughout the vol-
ume. The first is identified by Jay McDaniel as a dividing line be-
tween “environmentalists” and “animal welfare advocates.”
Environmentalists stand in the “land ethic” tradition of Aldo
Leopold, whojudged an action right if it “respectsthe beauty, integ-
rity, and stability” of ecosystems and wrong otherwise (cf. Arne
Naess’s “deep ec~logy.”)~ The focus is primarily on ecosystems
and species, not individuals.Animal welfare advocates,by contrast,
focus primarily on individuals and are concerned that individualsof
any species avoid suffering and premature death and have the op
portunity to realize their respective ends (this is largely the Enlight-
enment “human rights” tradition expanded to includeother species;
think too of Albert Schweitzer’s “reverence for life,” which Steven
Rockefeller explicates-113). Picture a bounding antelope being
brought down by a powerful lioness. Environmentalists are not
blind to the pain of the antelope, but primarily they wonder at a mar-
velously balanced ecosystem. Animal welfare advocates are not
blind to the marvels of the ecosystem, but primarily they see a tragic
necessity.
These are very different primary intuitions, and they have pro-
found theological correlates. At root is the question whether there is
“natural evil” in a “fallen” world or whether what looks to be evil
when we focus on individuals will prove illusory when we begin to
see ourselves and others as but parts of a glorious whole. Intuitions
regarding this divide are intimately bound up with concepts of evil,
good, God, redemption, and salvation. Environmentalists, for in-
stance, tend to identify God with the processes of the world and sug-
gest redemption and salvation are to be found in eclipsing our ego-
centric perspectives, celebrating the wonders of the whole, and
acceptingjoyfully our place within it. Animal welfare advocates,on
the other hand, tend to distance God from the natural evils of the
world and insist that any salvation be all-encompassingand provide
for the redemption of every individual qua individual.
The second issue concernsthe relative valuing of human, (other)
animal, and plant life. This issue divides both McDaniel’s“environ-
mentalists” and his “animal welfare advocates.” Many environ-
mentalists see no justification for privileging humans over the rest
of nature, while other environmentalists privilege humans as the
highest achievement of nature. This background tension leads
Weiskel to distinguish himself explicitly from another essayist,
Thomas Berry, for he fears that Berry encourages us to think of our-
selves as the “crowning achievement of evolution” (25). Many ani-
mal welfare advocates attribute rights in proportion to an animal’s
approximation to human levels of sentience and perception, while
other animal welfare advocates argue that we have no basis for be-
ginning with human qualities as a standard. This is the background
tension to which Rockefellerresponds when he criticizes some fol-
lowers of Schweitzer for developing a “hierarchy of beings” in
which some are accorded more intrinsic value than others (56-59).
The third issue revolves around the rejection of the modem ten-
dency to value nature only insofar as it benefits humans. In contrast
to this anthropomorphic,utilitarian attitudeto nature, most environ-
mentalists and animal welfare advocates alike call upon us to recog-
nize the intrinsic value of nonhuman creatures and processes. A
complex argument continues to be waged over how exactly to as-
Volume 27 Number 1 /January 2001
cribe “intrinsic value” and how to relate it to utilitarian value. This
important debate is implicit in the essays, but the authors’ stances
are often difficult to discern. For instance, sounding like advocates
for the intrinsic value of the rest of creation, the editors “advocate a
positive position of moral responsibility founded on a spiritual
sense of our role and place within the deeper and encompassingre-
ality of nature,” but, sounding utilitarian, they then urge us to take
this position because “in the long run we will be safer and better
served” (4). Similarly, while the overall trajectory suggests that
“the good life” of the title refers to a good life inclusive of all crea-
tures, contextualclues frequently su est that some authors have in
mind only the good life of humans.%ofessors can use these com-
pelling and insightfulessays to help students clarify their stance on
each of these fundamental issues and to reveal the contrasting basic
intuitions lying at theroot of such profoundly disparate views about
just regard for plants and animals.
Instilling a non-utilitarian love for nature is the paramount goal
of Sallie McFague’s Super, Natural Christians: How We Should
Love Nature (1997). The volume is informed by feminist and pro-
cess thought, but its argumentturns on an appeal to a Christian ideal
of agape shared across the theological spectrum; thus it represents
an ecumenical Christian approach. McFague argues that Christians
“should relate to the entities in nature in the same basic way that
[they]are supposed to relate to God and other people-as ends, not
means, as subjects valuable in themselves, for themselves” (1).
McFague traces the development of the modem view of nature
qua machine and notes that its consequence is that nature, like any
other machine, comes to be valued only with respect to its utility for
humans. In place of this modern “subject-object” model for envi-
sioningour relation to the rest of creation, she suggestswe develop a
“subject-subjects”model. The “arrogant eye,” which knows nature
only as object, should be replaced with a “loving eye,” which at-
tends carefully to other natural entities in all their distinctiveness.
With this deceptively simple shift, McFague points us toward a
wholly postmodern and inclusive ecological sensibility, one that
expandsour ethical community to include all living things. Accord-
ingly, she numbers animals and plants among those unjustly impov-
erished and persecuted.
Within the parameters of this model, the question of how rela-
tively to value plants and animals (including humans) leaps to the
fore. When she speaks concretely, McFague sounds much like Al-
bert Schweitzer. She contends, for instance, that “our own will to
survive and prosper” may lead us to kill the AIDS virus but notes
that under the loving eye this is done only with a sense of respect for
the independent worth of the organisms we kill (152). McFague
does not articulateprecise principles for adjudicating the claims of
various life forms. She does, however, draw out the broad parame-
ters within which the issue must be discussed, attempting to use her
subject-subjectsmodel to stake out a position between the extremes
of deep ecology and animal rights.
Insofar as McFague’s model attends to individual subjects in all
their distinctiveness,it avoids the deep ecologists’ tendency to lose
all respect for individualitythrough their singular focus on the eco-
system writ whole. But insofar as it is inextricably relational, it
avoids the tendency toward hyperindividualismthat haunts the hu-
man rights tradition upon which animal welfare advocates draw.
The shiftfrom the arrogantto the loving eye, then, entails respecting
all earth others and working for the evolution of sustainableecolog-
ical communities.
Religioue stuaies Review / 7
McFague’s basic thesis, that we should adopt a subject-subjects
model, is easily comprehended, but conversion, not comprehen-
sion, is her goal. Thus she dedicates considerable space to helping
her readers discern the subtle ways in which the arrogant eye of mo-
dernity pervades their lives, and she offers many suggestions for
fostering the concrete love for others that distinguishes the loving
eye. For instance, she discusses how taking photographs can be a
way of distancing and controlling nature and how the modem habit
of making sight the source of dominant metaphors for knowing can
create a sense of distance between us and the world. A f f i i n g the
truism that “we cannot love what we do not know,” McFague re-
minds us of children’s desire for connection to earth others, invoke
the wonders of nature as unveiled by science, and introduces us to
nature through the loving eyes of writers Sharon Batula, Sue
Hubbell, and Annie Dillard.
Those in urban contexts may find this book particularly helpful.
McFague laments the profound loss of experience of nature among
urban teens, but she is hopeful about the possibilities for restoring
such experiences. For instance, she distinguishes the experience of
wilderness from “wild” experience of nature and explains how, if
one attends to the distinctiveothernessof all natural entities, “wild
experiencescan be had in walks through acity park. She also distin-
guishes between the true wilderness of “first nature” and the hu-
manderived garden of “second nature” in order to begin to talk
about how cities might become places people and nature co-inhabit
respectfully. McFague perhaps too quickly dismisses the unique
value of wilderness experiences, but her beginning investigations
into possibilities for experiencing the wild in urban contexts are
very promising.
McFague’s work has the potential to appeal to a diverse religious
audience. While she notes that feminist epistemology and process
philosophy were key influences on her thought, one need not be a
feminist or process theorist to feel the power of McFague’s argu-
ment. To the contrary, it pivots on an ideal of love shared across the
theologicalspectrum. Becauseof the breadth of her appeal, scholars
from other religious traditions are likely to find it easy to utilize
McFague’s subject-subjects model within their own contexts.
Animals on the Agenda (1998) is fairly technical and distinctly
Christian. Because its arguments regarding animals are drawn from
scriptural and theologicalprecedents, and not based on modernity’s
human rights tradition, it presents not an animal rights but a Chris-
tian animal welfare approach. The twenty essays constituting the
volume are tightly argued, often technical, and well written. The
volume is divided into four parts: “Understanding Scriptural Per-
spectives,” “Wrestling with the Tradition,” “Disputed Questions”
(which takes up controversial debates about “Nature and Provi-
dence,’’ “The Fall and Predation,” and “Souls and Redemption”),
and “Obligations to Animals.”6
A particular strength of these essays is their willingnessto attend
carefully and respectfully to thinkers and scripturesthat most chal-
lenge the idea of including animals on the theological agenda. The
section on scriptural perspectives, for instance, includes reflections
on the significance of animal sacrifice and investigatesJesus’ serv-
ing and eating of fish and casting of demons into a herd of swine.
The section on theologians treats not Francis of Assisi and Albert
Schweitzer but Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and some of the more
difficult aspects of traditional Catholic teachings.
Many of the essays attend to familiarmaterial but help us discern
neglected insights. Richard Bauckham,for instance, in an essay on
the teachings of Jesus about animals, directs our attention to Mat-
8 / Religious Studies Review
thew 12:11-12: “Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls
into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not lay hold of it and lift it out?
How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is
lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Bauckham describes the divi-
sive debate in first- and secondcentury Judaism over how righ-
teously to treat an animal that has fallen into a pit on the Sabbath.
Since in these scenarios the animal would survive whether rescued
on the Sabbath or the next day, the animal’s worth as property was
not the issue. Thus what animated the discussion was concern over
the animal’s suffering (37-38). Bauckham concludes that Jesus’
concern was for the well-being of the sheep itself. Furthermore,Je-
sus’ assumption that his appeal would convincehis interlocutorsre-
veals, first, that both he and they stood firmly within the Jewish
stream of thought that considered animals to have legitimate inter-
ests independent of human ends and, second, that both he and they
considered the human responsibility to aid such animals to be more
important than the prohibition against Sabbath labor (37-38).
It would not be surprising for scholars initially to be skeptical of
Bauckham’s chances of clearly discerning anything about Jesus’
teachings on animals, yet the conclusions he draws from this famil-
iar passage are so significant and straightforward that the reader
may be startled not to have noticed them previously. This dynamic
recurs throughout the volume and is a sobering reminder of the de-
gree to which our current reading of scripture is conditioned by an
Enlightenment mentality that has disenchanted nature.
Another strength of the volume is the restraint of the contribu-
tors. In her essay on Augustine, for instance, Gillian Clark carefully
works through the philosophical presuppositions regarding ratio-
nality that frame Augustine’sdiscussion of animals. By laying bare
the essence of Augustine’s reasoning through exegesis of key pas-
sages, Clark exposes how completelyhis argumentsand biblical ex-
egesis turn on Platonic premises. But Clark does not slide into blan-
ket condemnation of Platonism. Noting that Augustine’s
contemporary Porphyry, an esteemed Platonist, authored a treatise
advocating vegetarianism, On Abstinencefrom Animate Food, and
that the desert father Antony, whose biography was otherwise influ-
ential in Augustine’s life, was vegetarian and included animals in
his vision of Paradise (77-78),Clark looks finally to the main cur-
rents of contemporary popular culture to explain Augustine’s lack
of considerationfor animals. Clark issues no condemnationof Au-
gustine and closes with no dramatic statement in support of animal
rights; she simply delineates Augustine’s reasoning clearly and
thoroughly-and in the process exposes the inadequacy of this bril-
liant man’s reasoning regarding animals.
When the essays on biblical and theological themes are consid-
ered collectively, a relatively uniform interpretation of biblical un-
derstandingsand major Christian doctrines emerges. The doctrines
of creation and fall (typically in conjunction with Isaiah’s picture of
a vegetarian and harmoniouseschatologicalage [Isaiah 11:1-91)are
used to articulate the conviction that the creation we know is not the
creation God intended. This correlates with an affimation of natu-
ral evil in relation to the predatory relations intrinsic to the world‘s
ecological balance. When the authors combine this affirmation of
natural evil with their (Western)Christian concern for individuals,
then the severe sufferings and early deaths of untold multitudes of
individual animals (including humans) lead to a pivotal either/or:
either wejudge the world as irredeemablyevil or we postulate an es-
chatology in which this sufferingis not the final wordfor those indi-
viduals. This either/or leads even process thinker Jay McDaniel to
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
contend that for individuals there may well be growth toward
wholeness in a “life after life” (1 14).
The biblical picture of creation is interpreted hierarchically: hu-
mans are closer to God and more valuable than earthwormsor even
higher animals like dolphins. If one’s life were at stake, one would
be justified in killing a dolphin for food. Despite this hierarchy,
however, the affirmationthat every aspect of creation is valuable in
its own right precludes humans from frustratingother plants or ani-
mals from achieving their own ends withoutjustification (although
there is considerable disagreement over what might constitute such
justification). In any case, even justifiable destructive acts are not
thereby judged good, although they may be the best possible option
within a fallen order. While there are significant variations in their
doctrines of God, creation, and fail, the contributors to Animals on
the Agenda suggest that this basic pattern of interpretation may be
emerging among a wide array of Christian animal welfare advo-
cates.
Over the past two decades, it has become increasingly obvious
that we have created an environmental crisis of epochal propor-
tions. There is now widespread recognition that our practices must
change if we are to preserve a livable habitat for ourselves and our
children.This is a scientific realization, and it is perceived as signif-
icant because its impact on human well-being is potentially cata-
strophic. That is, this general awareness is scientific and anthropo-
centric. But a scientific solution that leaves an anthropocentric
perspective intact would fail to alleviate the spiritual dimension of
theenvironmentalcrisis. It would still leave us, in D. H. Lawrence’s
memorable phrase, “bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off
from the earth.” A religious response to the environmental crisis is
critical.
This response should have at least four trajectories. First, it
should awaken a sense for the spiritual dimension of the environ-
mental crisis. To this end, it is important for religious scholars to
mount not only technical arguments that address the intellect but
also evocative arguments that open the heart. The books reviewed
here manifest a passion and style furthering this goal.
Second, the response should identify ways in which mainstream
Western exegetical, ethical, and theological work over the past few
centuries has been skewed by the background assumption that non-
human creation has no intrinsic worth. This concern is addressed,
for instance, when essayists in Animals on the Agenda reformulate
the doctrines of redemption and salvation to include all creatures. It
should prove especially beneficial to listen to those whose religious
understandingshave not been determined by a radical humanityha-
ture split. Thus, learning from the insights of Third World and in-
digenouspeoples and from ecofeministsbecomes especially impor-
tant as we seek to transform our mainstream Western religious
traditions into genuine “earth faiths.”
Third, it should bring neglected voices into the mainstream of
ecological theology. These voices witness borh to the earth-healing
ecological wisdom residing within non-Western and nonwhite tra-
ditions und to the human dimension of the environmental crisis and
its disproportionate impact upon the poor and marginalized. As
Rasmussen and the contributors to WomenHealing Earth contend,
creating a just and sustainable future will require meeting the basic
demands of human justice.
Fourth, it should bring the insights of a non-anthropocentricreli-
gious ethic of humadnonhuman relations into contemporary scien-
tific and political discussion. The power of such insights to initiate
critical ethical reformulation is evident, for instance, in Rasmus-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January $3001
sen’s argument for shifting from an ideal of “sustainable develop-
ment” to an ideal of “sustainablecommunity”(a “community,”no-
tably, that includes nonhuman creatures). Such fundamental
reformulationswithin the political sphere are crucial if our response
to the environmentalcrisis is to address not only its scientificbut its
spiritual dimension.
The books reviewed here admirably further each of these four
goals. Despitetheir diversity,they share the convictionthat the spir-
itual dimensionof the environmentalcrisis can be addressedonly if
we emerge from our self-imposed isolation and regain a sense of
connection with, and respect for, the rest of creation. Empowered
by this conviction, these volumes powerfully challenge people of
faith to undertake the hard scholarly and political work required to
restore human societies to right relation with our fellow creatures
and the earth.
Religiolls studies Review/ 9
Notes
1. Other scholarswho draw on an ecumenical Protestantecojusticeapproach in-
clude James Nash Loving Nafure: Ecological lntegriry and Christian Responsibiliry
(Abingdon, 1991); Jay McDaniel. Earth, Sky, Gods, Mortals: Developing an Eco-
logical Spirituality (Twenty-Third Publications. 1990); and John Cobb (with
Herman Daly), For the Common Good (rev. ed., Beacon, 1994). and The Earthist
Challenge to Economism: A Theological Critique of the World Bank (St. Martin’s,
1999).
2. Another recent ecofeministanthology is Ecofeminismand the Sacred, Cam1J.
Adams, ed. (Continuum, 1994).
3. A good collection of essays reaching beyond North American parameters is
Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy, and the Environment, Mary Evelyn
Tucker and John Grim. eds. (Orbis, 1994).
4. For a good summary of the origins and philosophy of Deep Ecology, see
George Sessions. ‘Peep Ecology as Worldview,”in Tucker and Grim (1994).
5. For an excellentanalysisof the debate over intrinsicvalue in the N o d Ameri-
can context from Leopold to the present, see Daniel Cowdin, “The Moral Status of
Otherkindin ChristianEthics.” in Chrisrianiryand Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being
of Earth and Humans,Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether. eds. (Har-
vard University Press,2000). 261-90. This promising work, and its companion vol-
umes, which consider Buddhism and Confucianism, were released too late for
inclusion in this review.
6. See also Good News for Animals? Christian Approaches to Animal
Well-Being,Cwles Pinches and Jay McDaniel, eds. (Orbis, 1993).
10 / Religious studies Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

thinking about the social role of belief ov$ the past four decades,
FAITHFUL SOCIOLOGY: PETER BERGER’S especially on the theory of secularization.
RELIGIOUS PROJECT Over the years, Berger has grown less reticent about confessing
his own beiiefs-his perduring faith in the divine (a faith that he
THE NOISE OF SOLEMN ASSEMBLIES: CHRISTIAN regularly confesses before either integrating or bracketing, depend-
COMMITMENTAND THE RELIGIOUS ing on the intent and audience of a particular piece of scholarship)
ESTABLISHMENT IN AMERICA and his long-suffering faith (of an admittedly different order) in his
Garden City: Doubleday, 1961 colleagues and students, a manifest respect for the mature intelli-
Pp. 189. gence and impassioned interest of those who would read his socio-
logical contributions to the ongoing understandingof evolving reli-
INVITATION TO SOCIOLOGY: A HUMANISTIC gious cultures in America. Berger chose early on to be a professor
PERSPECTIVE who professed belief in the unnameable,the incomparable,the inef-
Garden City: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1963 fable, God.He further chose to examine religious belief and to culti-
Pp. 191. Paper, $10.95. vate a rigorous and critical analysis of religious expression in vari-
TBE SACRED CANOPY: ELEMENTS OF A ous segments of society, employing in this sustained effort the
SOCIOLOGICALTHEORY OF RELIGION questions and tools of sociology. At a time when other sociologists
Garden City: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1967 of religion were taking great pains to appear “objective” and to re-
Pp. vii + 230. Paper, $10.95. frain from acknowledgingtheir personal interests and agendas in an
effort to be “fair-minded”and scientific, Berger had the audacity to
A RUMOR OF ANGELS: MODERN SOCIETY AND THE state honestly his a priori, his intentions, and his discomforts. This
REDISCOVERY OF THE SUPERNATURAL academic candor has formed and informed a dual purpose in much
Garden City: Anchor BookdDoubleday, 1969 (Pp. 129), 1990 of his scholarship:edification and iconoclasm. If there is an obvious
(Pp.187). and sustained personal reverence for the holy throughout much of
THE HERETICALIMPERATIVE: CONTEMPORARY his writing, there is also a steady laying bare of hypocrisy, mal-
POSSIBILITIESOF RELIGIOUS AFFIRMATION adroitness,and the culturally myopic qualities of all too human reli-
Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979 gious organizations. Yet true to his Lutheran heritage, his intellec-
Pp. xv + 220. tual project has been one of reformation, not destruction. Certainly,
in his cleansing of the temple, not a few tables have been upset, al-
THE OTHER SIDE OF GOD: A POLARITYIN WORLD though there is neither a sectarian defensiveness nor a systematic
RELIGIONS anticlericalism in his writings. Indeed, the intended audience for
Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981 many of his books was not only academic colleagues and students
Pp. viii + 304. but also and especially “ministers of religion [and] thinking people
A FAR GLORY: THE QUEST FOR FAITH IN AN AGE OF in the pews” (198 1,26). As an unaccredited theologian (and a good
CREDULITY one, despite his frequent, humble denials), this former seminarian’s
New York: The Free Press, 1992 ecclesiology is marked by the paschal mystery of dying and rising.*
Pp. 218. $27.95. It would seem that the pattern set by Christ is to be constantly re-
lived by those social institutions that would be his members. Berger
REDEEMING LAUGHTER: THE COMIC DIMENSION has studied these patterns of demise and rebirth and has mapped
OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE them out in systematic sociology. As we shall see, a prime example
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997 of this paschal pattern has been that of the sociological understand-
Pp.xvii + 215. $23.95. ing of religiosity per se.
THE DESECULARIZATION OF THE WORLD: The end of religion was widely predicted in Western societies
RESURGENT RELIGION AND WORLD POLITICS (by many with a certain glee, by others with sad resignation) at least
Edited by Peter Berger as far back as the French Revolution. Secularization as a social the-
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999 ory was born simultaneouslywith secularismas a political program,
Pp. 135. Paper, $17.00. both children of the Enlightenment. The former describes the pro-
cess whereby religion becomes less important in ever more sectors
of social life; the latter actively speedsthis process through political
Reviewer: Paul J. Fitzgerald and economic attacks on churches, their officers, doctrines, and
Santa Clara University privileges. If one takes France as the paradigmatic case, then secu-
Santa Clara, CA 95053 larization was formulated by Voltaire, who predicted the day when
the last king would be strangled with the guts of the last priest; secu-

P eter Berger (born 1929), University Professor of Sociology

and Theology and Director of the Institute for the Study of
Economic Culture at Boston University, is an astute observer
of the interactionof society and religion. In many books and articles
over the decades, he has made numerous invaluablecontributionsto
the scientific study of religion, principally in the North American
context, and has done so with keen intelligence,ready wit, and deep
faith. This review essay will consider some of the fruits of his re-
search and scholarly synthesis and indicate the trajectory in his
larism reached an apex in France during the Inventories of 1905,
when the Third Republic completed the dispossession of the church
begun under the Terror more than a century before. Yet neither the
political marginalization of the clergy nor the social denigration of
Catholicism has succeeded in completely secularizing French soci-
ety. The current ambiguity of church-state relations is to be seen in
the curious public religious affairs surrounding FranGois
Mitterand’s recent death, when the French Republic paid the stole
Volume 27 Numbex 1 / January N)O1 Religious stlldies Review / 11

fee for a Catholic “Massof the Resurrection”for the deceased presi- source of revolution to a vehicle of redemption” (1963, 115). His
dent at Notre Dame (a church owned and maintainedby the munici- purpose being to illustrate the extent and limitation of sociology’s
pality for the exclusive use of the Catholic cardinal). Examples truth claims, Berger refrained from making statements about theol-
could be multiplied,and one will find a wealth of them in Berger’s ogy but amply demonstrated that theological questions are neither
later writings to show that religion, far from fading away, has per- posed nor solved in a social vacuum.
dured, evolved, and found new forms of vitality throughout the pe- In his 1967 study of religion and society, The Sacred Canopy,
riod wherein many sociologists and not a few theologians antici- Berger went beyond the traditional distinction between the sacred
pated the “death of God.” and the profane, suggesting chaos as the opposite of sacred order.
Trained in the discipline of sociology at the New School for So- The sacred gives meaning to human life in contrast to, as a defense
cial Research (M.A. 1950, Ph.D. 1954), Berger came of academic against, and as a triumph over the elemental “nightmare threats of
age in a culture where the theory of secularization was widely ac- chaos.” He defined the role of religion in the human constructionof
cepted. In his life’s work, we see his own early appropriationof this society: “Religion implies the farthest reach of man’s
theory, the development of his own scholarly eye, and his break self-externalization, of his infusion of reality with his own mean-
with the theory in order to propose a differentand fuller understand- ings. Religion implies that human order is projected into the totality
ing of the enduring appeal of religion to human beings in commu- of being. Put differently, religion is the audacious attempt to con-
nity. While others were charting the course of the secularizationof ceive of the entire universe as being humanly significant” (1967,
society, Berger, borrowing from Thales of Miletus, maintained not 36-37). In this view, religion serves to legitimate social reality by
only that the “world is full of gods,” but that human beings are em- relating it to, and rooting it in, a cosmic reality that is universal, sa-
bedded in this world and thus embedded in the divine. cred, and ultimate. Berger draws his heuristic distinctionscarefully:
from the point of view of sociology, these nomoi are humanlycon-
I structed and then given a cosmic status; from the point of view of
theology, these human constructs (institutions and ideas) are re-
In the 1960s, Berger began writing in two distinct idioms for two sponses to a divine initiative preceding, yet necessarily expressed
different audiences.In an academic, sociological vein, he wrote In- within, human culture and language. These expressions are per-
vitation to Sociology ( 1963)and The Sacred Canopy ( 1967). in both force historical and developmental; they are, therefore,
of which we see evidencethat he accepted secularizationtheory as a secularizations (importations of the ageless into the ages, the
framework for his analysis. At the same time, he was also writing srecula) of the religious experience into human culture. Religious
for a wider audience of educated laypeople who were troubled by experience itself is ecstatic, a self-transcendentexperience of union
the decline of religion as a social influenceand who were open to a with the divine, yet this supracategoricalexperience must be trans-
sociologicalanalysisof this crisis. To these, he addressed The Noise lated into the categories and constructs of human language and hu-
of Solemn Assemblies (1961), the first in a series of books that man culture to gain practical and efficacious meaning, both for the
would, in thecontext of belief, bring sociologicalinsights to bear on ecstatic individuals and for the communities with whom they share
any number of ethical and ecclesial problems. Some reviewers of their insights.Taking Rudolf Otto’s observations in Mysticism East
Berger’s early work were taken in by his subtlety. Ninian Smart and West as a starting point, Berger sketches a circle of experience
faulted The Sacred Canopy for its methodologicalatheism, fearful that moves from the social to the mystical and back to the social: “In
that the “influential and eclectic” Berger was secretly prejudicing its ideal-type form, mysticism entails the claim that such union
the debate in favor of secularization.Certainly, Berger did describe [with the divine] has, indeed, empirically taken place-all individu-
religion as “the human enterprise by which a sacred cosmos is es- ality vanishes and is absorbed in the all-pervasive ocean of divin-
tablished.... [Rleligionis cosmizationin asacred mode” (1967,26). ity,’’ only to re-emerge in the very claim of said experience, a claim
Overlooked was Berger’s subtle adaptation of the sociological leg- that is made by a person to other persons in a culture (71).
acy of Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and Mircea Eliade There is also a linear movement in the history of religiousinstitu-
whereby he distinguishedbetween social religion and personal reli- tions in the Christian West, which placed a higher valuation on so-
gious experience. The divine object of religious experience is cial religious expressions than on their sources in personal mystical
totaliter aliter. The sacred is “a quality of mysterious and awesome experience. By its efforts to contain and control the ecstatic and the
power, other than man and yet related to him, which is believed to transcendentand by its emphasis on law and office, Catholic Chris-
reside in certain objects of experience.... [Tlhis reality addresses it- tianity contributed to secularization. The Protestant Reformation
self to him and locates his life in an ultimately meaningful order” furtheredsecularizationby even more sharplydefining religious ac-
(35). Berger here attempts a “scientific” definition of religion; the tivities and institutions over and against “the world.”
formulation is dictated not only by the “rules of academic sociol- The concentration of religious activities and symbols in one institu-
ogy” but also by theological constraints-Berger is writing about tional sphere ipsofucto defines the rest of society ... as a profane
the phenomenon of faith, in which grace is suggested but not im- realm at least relatively removed from the jurisdiction of the sa-
cred.... The logical development of this may be seen in the Lutheran
posed, both in the realm of analysis and in the order of reality. doctrine of the two kingdoms, in which the autonomy of the secular
Previously,while teaching at Rutgers, Berger had published In- “world is actually given a theological legitimation (128-29).
vitation to Sociology, an introduction to a humanistic sociology of
Others, notably Marcel Gauchet, would take up the question of the
knowledge. Remaining within the rubrics of sociology,he gave sci-
entific explanations for the ubiquity of religion, not as proof of its roots of secularization in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Berger pre-
metaphysical validity, but as evidence of religion’s social functions ferred to study the present, evolving state of the question.
Berger defined secularization as a “process by which sectors of
of providing stability and control in the face of pain and anxiety.
society and culture are removed from the domination of religious
Building upon Max Weber’s theodicy of suffering, Berger held that
religion “gives meaning to suffering, thereby changing it from a institutions and symbols.” Beyond the more obvious secularization
~ / R e d i g i o u SMies
s Mew
of social institutions(the separation of church and state, the expro-
priation of church lands, and the emancipation of education from
ecclesiastical authority), there was also a secularization of culture
(the decline of religious content in art, philosophy, literature, and
science). These changes brought about a secularization of human
consciousness. “Put simply, this means that the modem West has
produced an increasing number of individuals who look upon the
world and their own lives without the benefit of religiousinterpreta-
tions” (1 13). As we shall see,Berger would return to this last item,
revising his judgment as to whether modem individualsdo or do not
interpret the world religiously.
The causes of the decline of religious institutionsare many: the
modem capitalist-industrialeconomy changed people’s living pat-
terns; urbanization and industrialization meant that people experi-
enced ever more religiouspluralism. Modem scienceposed new ex-
planations for natural, social, and psychological phenomena,
clashing with traditional religious explanations. Max Weber had
characterized the result of these social forces as the “disenchant-
ment of the world.” Berger saw the generalization of this disen-
chantment to the masses of entire societiesin the 1960s. The ensu-
ing crisisof meaning extendedfrom the largestpublic institutions to
the most ordinary routines of daily life. In this social secularization,
Berger saw no substantivedifferencesbetween the US and Western
Europe; he saw only a “timelag” (163). While not offeringdetailed
predictions about the futurecourse of world historical development
in particular countries,Berger did feel it “safe to predict that the fu-
ture of religion everywherewill be decisively shaped by the forces
that have been discussed [here]-secularization, pluralization and
‘subjectivization’-and by the manner in which ...religious institu-
tions will react to these” (173).
Not content simply to describe what he felt would be a great so-
cial impoverishment, Berger sought during these years to warn
Christians of this seeminglyinevitablesecularization. The Noise of
Solemn Assemblies (1961) was in fact a project of speculative
ecclesial theology in the guise of, and in the hermeneuticsof, socio-
logical analysis.Berger drew his title from the words of the prophet
Amos (521-24): “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight
in your solemn assemblies ... but let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an everlasting stream.’’ Berger the sociolo-
gist would lay bare American Protestant practice so that Berger the
theologiancould call for a renewal of belief and a reformationof its
practice. The church may be reformed to the extent that believers
meet the real intellectual and cultural challengesof the present day
(exposed by sociological analysis)in prophetic courage (awakened
by theological reasoning). Writing about the then current state of
Christian malaise, “not unlike the feelings one sometimes harbors
for a beloved but hopelessly impossible relative” (9). Berger saw
the problem as “innocence,”understood in the common American
sense of the word as “a quality of being intellectually untouched, a
euphemism for plain ignoranceor obtuseness.”America’sreligios-
ity was marked by “a starry-eyedoptimism, a naive credulity in the
ideologiesof the status quo, somethingthat goes well together with
an unthinking if benign conservatism in all areas of life ...a solemn
ratificationof an existenceof trying to get along with a minimum of
awareness.This is not only humanly reprehensible. It is an offense
against the integrity of the Christian commitment”(13-14).
Berger’s critiqueis typicallydeep and wide-ranging.Among his
many qualities, one of the best is great intellectual honesty. His
analyses and considered opinions win him only temporary allies
from this or that political camp, for “loving truth and despising iniq-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
uity,” it is quite likely that he shall live in permanentexile from both
organized religion and party politics. His heroes are Kierkegaard
and Schleiermacher,and like them, he is not too tempted by the sin
that St. Paul called “factionalism” (Galatians520); instead, his he-
retical options will be more individual in nature.
Berger’s early warnings to the churches about secularization
were counterintuitiveto many, for they seemed to contradict the
steady rise in ecclesial belonging among the general population.
Church membershipas a percentage of the total population had in-
creased steadily from the 1920s (43 percent) to the 1960s (65 per-
cent). Yet Berger saw the postwar religious revival as taking place
within an overall secularizationof American society.Religious mo-
tives were ignored in broad areas of political, economic, and social
life, replaced by more pragmatic interests. “Our religious spokes-
men tell us that America is religious-and they are right, if they
mean the prominenceof the religious institution in the society,”yet
these religious institutionsexist as segregated enclaves, no longer
able to exert any significant influence on important social matters
(34-35).
Berger noted that believers were lulled into a false sense of secu-
rity by “public religion,” which served to support a vaguely conser-
vative nationalism. Religiops language and religious figures had
been drafted into public service for the affirmation of the moral su-
periority of the nation at war, coldly, with atheistic communism. At
the same time, genuine religion was relegated to the domain of pri-
vate life, leisure,and family. Berger placed a large part of the blame
at the doorsteps of American churches, which had ceased being
places of worship where believers are called to encounter and obey
the Divine, becoming instead institutions chiefly concerned with
people’s relationships with others and with themselves rather than
with God.MainstreamChristianity was becoming more secularized
and in the process functionedas an engine for the furtherseculariza-
tion of American religiosity. Church leaders and churchgoers took
great pains “to avoid any experiences of ecstasy,that is, any experi-
ences where men may step outside the routine of everyday life and
confront the terrors of their condition”(48). SecularizingAmerican
religion was in fact serving the statusquo through symbolic integra-
tion (in the Durkheimian sense) and social control (in the Marxist
sense). Berger counteredthat “sometimesreligion [shouldserve]to
disintegratethe social symbols and that sometimesreligion [should
be] downright subversive of the political order” (73).
Echoing Kierkegaard, Berger called for a renewal of Christian
faith in the modem social context that would entail a fairly radical
break with the taken-for-grantednessof bourgeois culture. Religion
should make explicitthe palpable and finally unbridgeabledistance
that ought to exist between the believer and the world of false com-
forts. To believe in Christ should mean a permanent discomfort
with solemn assemblies, for God is so much greater, and desires of
us so much more, than smoke and bells. “We are arguing that a
goodly portion of alienation from the ‘O.K. world’ of religious and
social settlement will facilitate the encounter with the Christian
message” (123). Bergerjudged that a deliberatealienation of Chris-
tianity from its privileged place in the American social context, as
an act of desecularization,would reform the churches according to
four “marks”: diaconal service to the poor, social action as pro-
phetic witness, symbolicChristian presence in a secular world, and
intellectual Christian dialoguewith all that is non-Christian. A new
mission to modem society would call into question all and every-
thing that does not conformto the kingdom announcedby Jesus. So-
ciology has a vital role to play in this process. Since many social
Volume 27 Number 1 /January 2001
forces of modem American life militate against the imperatives of
Christian faith, sociological analysis must unmask these forces. A
sociologically informed faith can allow for a reading of the signs of
the times and can oppose them with the challenges of the Gospel.
Yet d1 seems to be in vain: in Berger’s prophetic view, the steady
rise of secularizationinvites urgent personal commitment and exis-
tential choice against an unstoppable tide.
In the fall of 1969,Berger reviewed his efforts in The Sacred Can-
opy, where he had summarized “certain essential features of a so-
ciological perspectiveon religion” and had applied this perspective
to “an analysis of the contemporaryreligious situation.” Becausehe
had been trained in a sociologicaltradition shaped by Max Weber,
he had attempted to keep his presentation “value-free.”“The result
was a theoretical work that ...read like a treatiseon atheism, at least
in parts.” Berger considered this a misreading of his ultimate inten-
tions, for he consideredhimself a Christian as well as a sociologist,
“though I have not yet found the heresy into which my theological
views would comfortably fit.” Since the appendix to The Sacred
Canopy, addressing some possible theological implications of his
findings, did not ease his dissatisfaction, he wrote A Rumor of An-
gels (1969). In the introduction to a 1990 expanded edition of this
book, after his abandonmentof the theory of secularization,Berger
explained that he had wanted “to show how the intellectual tools of
the social sciences, which had contributed greatly to the loss of
credibility of religion,could be turned on the very ideas that had dis-
credited supernatural views of the world and on the people propa-
gating those ideas.” He had also wanted “to draw a very rough
sketch of an approach to theologizing that began with ordinary hu-
man experience,more specifically with elements of that experience
that point toward a reality beyond the ordinary.” The result was an
inductive approach that searched for “signals of transcendence” in
order to “transcendentalizesecularity” (1990, x).
In 1969 Berger still held that it was a “fairly reasonable progno-
sis that, in a ‘surprise-free’world, the global trend of secularization
[would]continue.An impressiverediscoveryof the supernatural,in
the dimensions of a mass phenomenon, is not in the books” (29).
Some few pockets of religious belief would continue to hold out
against this inexorable trend, chiefly under the guise of traditional-
ism (holding out against modernity) or religious innovation (a re-
discovery of the supernaturalwithin the dominant secularizingcul-
tures). Both types would have to exist in sectarian enclaves, apart
from the major flow of history and society.
For theology to re-enter the mainstream, Berger would propose
sociology as the “fiery brook” through which the contemporary
theologian must pass, much as Feuerbach’s philosophy was for the
nineteenth century. Both the physical sciences and the social sci-
ences had profoundly challenged theology and the “religious hy-
pothesis,” the overall effect having been a relentless disenchant-
ment of the world. Of the two, the human sciences posed the more
dramatic challenge, for history, psychology, and sociology threat-
ened to undermine theology at its very roots. Beyond simply the fal-
sificationof this or that theological explanation of natural phenom-
ena, the human sciences have shown the historicity of the sacred
texts themselves and the psychological and social sources of theo-
logical constructs, thereby sapping them of authority and unique-
ness. Theology in the twentieth century has been plunged into a
“vortex of relativizations” (35). Yet Berger would hold that, all
Religious Studies Review / 13
relativization of human knowledge having been subsumed under
one or another academic discipline, “the question of truth reasserts
itself in almost pristine simplicity.” Having passed through the “fi-
ery brook” of relativity and been deprived of the innocence of
premodern times, yet still we must ask about the truth or falsenessof
the human affirmations that we must make if we are to make any
truth claims whatsoever(45). This loss of innocence does not make
us superior or inferior to past generations and past social worlds.
Berger concurs with Ranke’sjudgment that “each age is immediate
to God,”rejecting thereby the vulgar progressivism of much of the
nineteenth century, which has yet to be fully exorcised from West-
ern minds. Indeed, the “perspective of sociology increases our abil-
ity to investigatewhatever truth each age may have discoveredin its
particular ‘immediacy to God”’ (50).
Interestingly, it was Berger’s immediacy to poverty and suffer-
ing that led to his break with the theory of secularization. He spent
much of the 1970s studying development and modernization in the
Third World, where he noted the enduring dynamism of religion.
His observations led him to hope for a religious confrontation be-
tween First and Third Worlds and to speak of such a debate as prom-
ising a bracing, possibly salutary effect on First World Christianity.
As well, popular religious movements in the Sovietbloc led Berger
to wonder whether the theory of secularization, while not wholly
mistaken, had overestimated the extent and inexorability of the de-
mise of religion. Just as modernization is one cultural force contest-
ing with countervailingcultural forces in particular social contexts,
so, too, is secularizationa social force contesting with, and opposed
by, countersecularizingforces in diverse ways. Certainly pluralism
and the secularizing aspects of modernity had succeeded in
relativizing religion in the West, yet if religious experience is in-
deed a meeting with the transcendent, the rotaliter aliter, as such it
always serves to relativize all of mundane reality, including the
relativizing and secularizing aspects of all modem social institu-
tions and academic disciplines. Recurring, uncontainablereligious
experience reminds people that there is a meaning to human exis-
tence that transcendsall worldly agendas. Indeed, such mystical ex-
perience has a number of positive effects on modem democraticso-
cieties, including the maintenanceof a healthy,popular suspicionof
the nation-state. Religious institutions serve their most important
social purpose precisely when they are least secular in their activi-
ties, for religious experience makes present transcendence and is
thus a dynamic force for the renewal of all social institutions.
After a ten-year hiatus from writing books on religion, Berger re-
turned to an inductive approach as the most promising method for
theologizing in the current social context. In a pluralistic and secu-
larized modernity, we should begin by looking at the human experi-
ence of the divine, the “signals of transcendence,” and then move to
religious affirmations about the nature and truth of reality. His
movement from experience to normative claims led him to write
The Heretical Zmperutive (1979), a study that moves from a
“value-free” sociological examination of the state of belief into
“highly evaluative”theologicalpropositionsfor the developmentof
belief.
The “heretical imperative,” the most salient feahw of recent
Western religious history, is the obligation to choose, for Western
society has done nothing but multiply choices in the modem era.
Pluralism and freedom are the twin pillars that support the modem
14/ Religious studies Review
temple, thefanurn, which is as much supermarketof ideas as it is sa-
cred space of encounter. Here the Protestant experience is paradig-
matic, for Protestants have been dealing with choice and with the
relativizing forces of modernity longer, and at closer quarters, than
other religioustraditions, althoughthese, too, are bound to follow in
the same trajectory (1979,68). The reader is invited to pass through
the heretical imperative and to emerge on the other side, having
made a choice and having affmed a personal creed, an “I believe”
statement that formulates in cultural categories the content of the
supra-categoricalreligious experience.
In the modem Christian context, there are three possible types of
credal expression: the deductive position (of Barth) that would
stand on a neo-orthodox obedience to Scripture and in denial of
much of modem science and scholarship; the reductive position (of
Bultmann)that would hold modem science and scholarship as nor-
mative and would purge Scriptureof all non-science and non-sense;
and the inductive position (of von Harnack) that would stand be-
tween science and Scripture, founding the quest for religious affu-
mation in human experience of the transcendent articulated within
the vocabularies of both the Christian religious tradition and mod-
ern scientific knowledge. Berger opts for this difficult middle
ground and says, along with Martin Luther, “Hier srehe ich. Ich
kann nichr anders.” Berger then describes a dialectic of faith and in-
ductivereason: “I believeand I then reflect about the implications
of this fact; I gather evidence about that which is the object of my
faith-and this evidence provides a further motive to go on believ-
ing. This, of course, is a very different dialectic from the one taught
by the Barthians: mellower, undoubtedly less inspiring-but also
less demanding of a sacrifice of the intellect, less conducive to fa-
naticism. And reasonableness has its own inspirations” (141). The
individual gains a sense of certainty from the experience of tran-
scendence,yet this experience is fleeting, and one must mostly live,
not in the experience, but with the memory of the experience, and
within the confinesof a social life-world that pales in comparison to
the hierophany, yet which is absolutely real and makes great claims
on the attention,creativity,and energy of the individual. The reality
of the two experiences, of the sacred and of the secular, must be
taken seriously, leading Berger neither to secularism nor to fanati-
cism but topiety, an attitude of engagement with the secular “other”
and with the sacred “Other.”
Modem Western thought, including the historical and so-
cial-scientific disciplines, has been the secular “other” with which
Christian thinkers have dialogued and contended for the past two
centuries.Christianityhas gained from the conversation,but Berger
opines that that conversationhas now grown stale-everything that
modernity has to say to Christianity has been said. He would turn to
new conversation partners, viz., the great religions of South Asia.
Christianity should now “contend” with Buddhism and Hinduism,
by which Berger means a far-rangingdialogue into which both par-
ties enter in hope of learning something true; indeed, both must ad-
mit from the outset that the truth of God is greater than they, and that
this truth will continue to reveal itself through new hierophaniesand
through the human struggle to make sense of these signals of tran-
scendenceby means of reasonable thought, fearlessreflection, and
candid dialogue.Marking the new state of hopefulness to which his
thought had led him, Berger wrote, “There is no reason to exclude
the possibility that the future holds new, as yet inconceivable
hierophanies.The Christian, especially the Christian thinker, must
remain open to all the possibilities of a future that lies in God’s
hands” (1 89).
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
lv
In 198 1 Berger edited The Other Side of God, a cross-culturalcom-
parative study of the human experience of the divine. In it he pro-
posed a phenomenological approach “to penetrate through the lev-
els of theoretical and ethico-practical articulation down to the level
of primordial religious experience” (8). To pursue this path, Berger
engaged in a number of religiously based policy debatesof a decid-
edly ethico-practical nature. A singular example was the debate
around the US Roman Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on the
e c ~ n o m yFundamentally
.~ in agreement with the necessity of the
conversation, Berger was unpersuaded by many of the arguments
and much of the evidenceproduced by the bishops and their staff for
the specific policies that they endorsed. While underscoring both
the right and the duty of Christians (including bishops) to bring their
faith with them into the political arena, Berger was cautious about
the inferred normativity of statements from ecclesial authorities,
and he was especially chary of the divisiveness that partisan politics
could bring into church bodies if they became too particular, too
policy-specific in their prudential judgments. As well, there is am-
ple evidence that Berger grew close to certain neo-liberal political
analyses and prescriptions on economic development. These polit-
ico-religiousdebates further nourished his thinking about the place
of religion in society, which he articulated in A Far Glory (1992).
In this book,Berger sets out to rediscover socially relevant reli-
gious truths that had been lost in the process of modernization.His
theologicalstarting point remains classically Lutheran, namely that
God’s work of salvation is an opus alienurn, a process that surprises
us because of its absoluteotherness;“the divine always manifests it-
self as that which is alien, not human, not part of ordinary reality”
(13). Churches ought not, therefore, to embrace the “wisdom of the
world”; they best serve the secular order by maintaining a critical
distance from it. Rather than “reading the signs of the times,”
Berger suggests that thinking Christians write some countersignsto
the age. Yet he would continue to steer a perilous middle course,
one that threads between the Scylla of secularizing surrenderto mo-
dernity and the Charybdis of the sectarian denial of modernity on
the other.
By this time, Berger was eagerly refuting the theory of secular-
ization.The conventionalview, that scienceand technology are sec-
ularizing factors, was based on the assumption that people who use
technologically sophisticated machines become accustomed to
highly rationalistic and pragmatic approaches to all of life’s prob-
lems. Yet in fact this has not been the case in a number of technolog-
ically advanced societies, including the US and the Islamic world.
China, as a counterexample,developed a secularizing high culture
long before the advent of sophisticated technology. While Max
Weber did correctly see the disenchantmentof the world (or at least
of Western society), “he did not sufficiently perceive the possibili-
ties of a re-enchantment of the world, precisely because the disen-
chanted world is socold and comfortless” (28). Berger points to “re-
vitalization movements.” In India there is ample evidence of a
resurgenceof various forms of Hinduism, wherein technology users
in villages and cities can and do, at one and the same time, operate
sophisticated machinery and live in a cultural world that is totally
dominated by the mental and behavioral structures of either tradi-
tional Hinduism (in the case of the village) or Hindu nationalism(in
the case of the urbanite). Examples of religious revitalization can be
found within Islam and evangelical Protestantism. Both are inter-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January XI01
preted as reactive counterformations. “What they react to are the
displacements and discontents of modernization” (33).
The religious situation in the United States-his principal focus
in this book-is difficult to explain, especially when compared to
the perduring applicability of secularization theory to the situation
in Western Europe. The US continues to be an intensely religious
country, where, contrary to what secularization theory might pre-
dict, “churchesprosper in direct proportion to their adherence to re-
ceived beliefs and practices: the more conservative, the more suc-
cessful” (36-37). This is all the more puzzling given the advanced
state of “pluralization”in America. By pluralism Berger means the
relatively peaceful coexistenceof different religiousgroups in a sin-
gle society. In the US context, co-existence connotes a certain de-
gree of social interaction whereby members of one religious de-
nomination have sustained and cordial contact with people from
vastly different conceptuallife-worlds, such that cognitive contam-
ination is a regular occurrence: different lifestyles, values, and be-
liefs mingle. Business dealings, political coalition-building,
commensality,and intermarriageare points on a continuumfrom no
contact to syncretism.Secularizationtheory assumesthat, along the
way, believers will notice that their manner of perceiving reality,
shaped as it is by a given religious tradition, is not the only plausible
explanation for the way things are. The sacrificesand demands that
their religion makes on them in matters of diet, continence, cloth-
ing, and deference to authority begin to be questioned. A
taken-for-granted religious worldview becomes first questionable,
then doubtful.The end point of this process is supposed to be perva-
sive relativism and finally complete unbelief. Yet this has not oc-
curred in the US, where the vast majority continue to maintain often
quite demanding beliefs.
Berger again systematizespatterns of belief. Some believers opt
for cognitive bargaining, others for cognitive surrender, and still
others for one of two subvarieties of cognitive retrenchment. In the
first option, the believer will hold science to be absolute and will
slowly give up bits of faith as they are called into question by schol-
arship. The second option involves a quick surrender of all that is
transcendental and inexplicableby scientific language,focusing in-
stead on a number of political, ethical, and aesthetic projects. The
third option is defensivesectarianism,wherein a state of siege is de-
clared, the gates are closed, and the reality of the larger social world
is denied. The fourth option sees these same sectarians set out on a
crusade to reconquer society, ridding the world of secularism and
the sciencesthatsupport it. Since he sees each of these as problem-
atic, Berger proposes a fifth model, attentive both to signals of tran-
scendenceand to reasoned examination of the conditions and con-
sequences of those signals.
From such a stance, between the religious and the secular, one
can see the possibility of a re-enchantment of our social world, for
the “mythological matrix is not just a thing of the past” (157). A key
resource within Christianity for this re-enchantmentto take place is
sacramentality,visible signs of invisible grace peeking through hu-
man social reality. It seems that Berger understands sacramentality
in a broad, panentheistic sense, for he names Karl Rahner as an ex-
ample of the inductive approach that he himself favors. A second
key is the perduring nature of mystical experience; he cites
Bonaventure’simage of thefonfalisplenitudo, “the fountain pleni-
tude of all the wonders of the world which Francis had embraced in
his mystical ecstasies” (159). Scholarship into both sacramentality
and mysticism will tease out the anthropology that we weave into
the theologies of these sources, yet theology is not thereby ex-
Religious Studies Review / 15
hausted. When all the Christian symbols have been analyzed and
contextualizedwithin human cultures and human psychology, faith
in God will still lead believers to look beyond the individual sym-
bols and accept all of reality, the empirical world in its entirety, as
gigantic symbol. In a passage reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin,
Berger writes, “If Christianity is true, then the universe is in the final
analysis a vast liturgy in praise of its creator....This liturgy includes
all human beings who have been brought to this understanding and
... it also includes those who praise God under strange names”
(186).
The third section of A Far Glory deals with the difficult problem
of ecclesial belonging. Berger begins by acknowledgingthat, while
religion is rooted in the human experience of the divine on the part
of a religious virtuoso, that experience must be remembered and
made availableto the typical, nonmystical believer through an insti-
tution, which symbolizes and re-presents the founding and sustain-
ing experiences. Religious institutionsprovide a plausibility struc-
ture for religious beliefs, preparing people for possible epiphanies,
providing the conditions for the possibility of belief. Yet too, reli-
gious institutions domesticate religion. “Religion is a clear and
ever-presentdanger to social order. The purpose of religiousinstitu-
tions, in that perspective, is to contain this danger” (173). Max
Weber called this Verallfdglichung,a quotidianization of the revo-
lutionary, the mystical and the supra-categorical. Yet precisely be-
cause religious institutions have been greatly weakened by moder-
nity, religious experience is in a good position to re-emerge within
and without those institutions.
Over the decades, Berger has maintained a critical engagement
with religiousinstitutions and persons. I suspectthat his senseofhu-
mor, everywhere evident in his writing, is helpful. In a marvelous
bit of hubris, he codified this humor in Redeeming Laughter (1997).
Part cultural anthropology,part philosophical history, part specula-
tive theology, it treats the comic as a universal human capacity to
perceive humorous incongruity between what is and what ought (or
ought not) to be. It would seem that the joke, finally, is on the secu-
larists. “Comic laughter can be a weapon, as particularly in irony
and satire, but over and beyond these social functions there is the
comic intuition of an order of things within which human life can
make sense” (33). Berger sketches a theology of the comic that
draws on Anton Zijderveld’s sociological study of the comic phe-
nomenon, in which the author builds on the idea of the fascinuns
from Rudolf Otto. Berger sees humor as the in-breaking of the tran-
scendent. In this, the comic is akin to the aesthetic, the erotic, and
the mystic, for all of these experiences are of Doppelbodigkeif, a
concept Berger has used in previous books. Borrowed from the
world of German theater, where trap doors are employed to allow a
character to disappear from the stage, Berger intends the term meta-
phorically to indicate the transcendentalexperience when everyday
reality is shown to have a deeper layer of reality that is truer and
fuller than our “normal” world. The holy is within, behind, and un-
der the secular.
Berger’s enjoyable and sometimes bawdy examples are cited as
evidence for his contention that the comic is allied with the religious
in its potential ability to reveal divine mystery in the midst of ordi-
nary human reality. Against A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who argues for
comedy’s role in the maintenance of social structures, Berger high-
lights comedy’s subversiverole, just as he previously argued for the
subversive social function of religion. The “fool” and “folly” are
words that have lost much of their bite over the ages. Berger re-
trieves their primal importance, as once seen in Erasmus’s vision of
16 / Religious Studies
the rule of Lady Folly: the fool is a prophet who dares to speak hard
truths in public, cloaking the sharpest criticism in aplay on words or
a silly song. Like the prophets and the saints (of the “fools for
Christ” variety), the fool relativizes all temporal reality against the
horizon of eternity (74). “Certain essential aspects of the world are
accessible only to laughter.” This quotation from Mikhail Bakhtin
introduces Berger’s central contention: the comic epiphany is con-
tained within the experience of disjunctureand is conveyed by the
transcendentalnature of comedy, for comedy is sacramental,a visi-
ble sign of an invisiblegrace (83). With Kierkegaard, Berger says
that humor is thejoy that has overcomethe world. To laugh, then, is
to participate in this in-breaking, divinely authoredjoy.
Berger’s latest book is an edited volume of scholarly essays pro-
vocatively entitled The Desecularizarion ofrhe WorM (1999). He
contributed the first chapter,an overview of the project at hand that
also characterizes his four decades of research and analysisof reli-
gion and society.He begins with the statement,“the assumptionthat
we live in a secularized world is false ... ‘secularizationtheory’ is
essentially mistaken” (2). He admits to having contributed to the
body of literaturethat supportedthis theory in his early work. While
allowing that the process of modernizationhas had some seculariz-
ing effectson many institutions and social structures, especially the
older ecclesial bodies, Berger contends that modernizationhas pro-
voked powerful movements of countersecularization in both per-
sonal beliefs and practices of individuals and in the rise of new reli-
gious institutions and organizations. He again remarks that
conservativeor orthodox traditionalist movements demonstratevi-
tal growth almost everywhere, while progressive religious institu-
tions that have made great efforts to conform to a perceived moder-
nity “are almost everywhere in decline” (6). These phenomena
disprove the notion that modernizationand secularization are cog-
nate phenomena. On the other hand, they show that
countersecularizationis at least as important a phenomenon in the
contemporary world as secularization. Berger sees a cycle at work
here-modernity did indeed undermine religious certitude, a crisis
that gave rise to uncertaintyand disorientation;people dislike ambi-
guity, so they search for new (or return to old) religious movements
that offer certainty and an explanation of human (and cosmic) real-
ity.
The religious impulse, the quest for meaning that transcends the re-
stricted space of empirical existence in this world, has been a peren-
nial feature of humanity .... It would require something close to a
mutation of the species to extinguish this impulse for good. The
more radical thinkers of the Enlightenment and their more recent in-
tellectual descendants hoped for something like this, of course. So
far it has not happened, and as I have argued, it is unlikely to happen
in the foreseeable future. The critique of secularity common to all
the resurgent movements is that human existence bereft of transcen-
dence is an impoverished and finally untenable condition (13).
Over four decadesof serious scholarship,Berger has traced out a
modem three-act historical drama: from naive religiosity, through
existential secularization, to chastened re-enchantment.These in- BAKHTIN,
sights have followed his own evolving views on the theory of secu-
larization-from an unquestioned acceptance, through defensive
bargaining, and finally to critical rejection. It is interesting to note GAUCHET.MARCEL
that the breakthrough occurred for him in the Third World, whose
poor were his teachers. Modernizationhas undoubtedly had an ef-
fect on religion’s place in human consciousness in all parts of the NATIONALCONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS
globe. Generally, there has been a movement from fate to
choice-at least, in the religious sphere. We appear to live in a
Volume W Number 1 / Jamrary 2001
world where we are free to choose, and where we must choose, be-
tween many institutional expressions of perduring religious
experience.Certainly,there are “discontents and even ...terrors that
can come with this new freedom” (1992.68). Yet there are also the
joys of new theophanies to come, or so Berger hopes. Both
Weberian sociologist and Lutheran theologian, Berger is perhaps
best understood through the theology of the apostle Paul: the grace
of Christ is accepted as a wonderful, horrible freedom, inviting a
movement away from the supportsand structuresof naive certainty
and into arealm of graced freedom. In the first century,and again in
the twenty-first, the believer must choose, again and again, to be-
lieve and to live out the social consequences of belief, in a real, so-
cial context marked by ambiguity and plurality. Intellectual exer-
tion, prayerful meditation, and a certain respectful distrust of all
religious organizationsand their officers is the stance Berger rec-
ommends. In it there is neither the false certainty of fanaticism,nor
the emptiness of utter relativism,but only a human commitment to
faith in God and in our limited but real freedom to believe the ru-
mors of angels, at the margins of society and at the heart of human
experience.
Notes
1. In an effort to focuson the developmentof his singular insights, I have omitted
from considerationhere the several books that Berger co-authoredwith other schol-
ars.
2. “I am very conscious of the fact that 1 am addressing theological problems
withoutany kindoftheologicalaccreditation....Ireadily concedemy lackofaformal
theological education, and I stipulatethat I might have avoided some errors or short-
comings in my thinking about religion had I benefited from such an education. Tant
pis. One does what one can do. What the ‘Professional The~logians’have done of
late is not so inspiring that we unaccredited types must feel constrained to stand
watching in awed silence. Moreover, my feelings on this matter are. still quite Lu-
theran; 1 believe that the priesthood of all believers has an intellectual dimension”
(1979. xiii).
Berger spenta “very happy” year at the Lutheran TheologicalSeminary in Phila-
delphiabefore decidingthat he would not become aminister, unable at the time to as-
sent to the whole of the Lutheran confessions.By 1980, however, he had achieved a
certainclarityoffaith,aliberalProtestantone.whichindeed hecouldbelieveandhas
preached (1990.141).
3. During the 19809, Berger was involved with a number of journals and insti-
tutes. The Religion and Sociefy Review was begun in June 1984 by Richard John
Neuhaus with Peter and Brigitte Berger. Brian Benestad, Stanley Hauenvas. et al.
The journal was intended “to advance a constructive subversion of long-standing
confusionsabout religion in public.” This World was published by the Institute for
Educational Affairs, with Michael Scully as editor, Michael Novak and Seymour
Siegal on the editorial board, and Peter Berger. James Finn, Gertrude Himmelfarb,
George F. Will, et al. on the editorialadvisory board. Berger was an active participant
on panels discussingthe economicpastoral letter; the fruits of one, sponsoredby the
American EnterpriseInstitute,were published in This World, Winter 1985, as “Four
Views of The Bishops’ Pastoral, The Lay Letter, and the U.S.Economy: A Sympo-
sium,” 99-1 17.
References
MIKHAIL
1968 ET Rabelais and His World. Trans.Helen Iswolsky. MIT
Press.
1985 Le Difsenchantementdu Monde: Une histoire politique de
la religion. Presses Gallimard.
1986 Economic Justicefor All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic So-
cial Teaching and the U.S.Economy. Washington, DC:
US Catholic Conference.
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001 Religious Studies M / 17

OTTO,RUDOLF SMART,NINIAN
1932 ET Mysticism East and West. Trans. Bertha L. Bracey and 1975 “Sociological Study of Religion.” In Encyclopedia Bri-
Richenda C. Payne. Macmillan. tannica, v. 15,620.
RADCLIFEE-BROWN,A. R. ANTON
ZIJDERVELD,
1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Free Press. 1982 Reality in a Looking-Glass: Rationality through an Anal-
ysis of Traditional Folly. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Rockefeller Visiting Fellowships in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kroc Institute for International Peace
Studies at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for Visiting Fellowships in its
Program in Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding (PRCP) for the 2001-02 academic year. The
PRCP will explore the complex role of religion in contemporary conflicts, ranging from the
legitimation or sacralization of violence, to participation in conflict mediation and reconciliation,
to the advocacy and practice of nonviolent resistance as a religious imperative. Program research
will emphasize the relationship between religious ethics, human rights, and attitudes of tolerance
and intolerance toward the other; religion’s roles in conflict resolution, including conflict within
and between religious traditions; and the contributions of religious actors to post-conflict
reconciliation, justice and peacebuilding.
Fellowships are open to senior and junior scholars in the humanities and social sciences, as
well as religious leaders and peacebuilding practitioners, whose research will explore these issues
in a wide range of contexts, including Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Sikh, or Christian
traditions and movements. Fellowships will ordinarily be for one year, although applications for
one-semester fellowships will also be considered. Stipends begin at $30,000 per year. Visiting
Fellows will also be provided with an apartment, office, and access to University fkilities.
To apply, please send a complete CV or resume, three letters of reference, and a research
proposal of no more than 7 double- spaced pages to Scott Appleby, Director, Kroc Institute for
International Peace Studies, 100 Hesburgh Center for International Studies, P.O. Box 639, Notre
Dame, Indiana 46556; phone 219-631-6970; fax 219-63 1-6973; email Aupleby.3@nd.edu.
Further information is available on the Kroc Institute website at <.www.nd.edu/-krocinst>.
Applications for the 2001-2002 class of Visiting Fellows are due by December 15,2000.
18 / Religious Studies Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

scholar gazing through book catalogues must wonder: is the exami-

DISPUTES AND TRAJECTORIES nation of books about how to live, about ethics, worth it?
IN RESPONSIBILITY ETHICS In this essay, I hope to aid the beleaguered and provide some
calm amid the clamor. My tactical approach in what follows is not to
RESPONSIBILITY AND CONTROL: A THEORY OF offer detailed analysis of the texts under review but rather to isolate
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY the main disputes found among thinkers writing about responsibil-
By John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza, S.J. ity, as these divisions signal trajectories for further reflection. The
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 discourse of responsibility is amazingly fecund, touching all major
Pp. viii + 277. $59.95. topics in contemporary thought. Because of this, the ethics of re-
MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND THE BOUNDARIESOF sponsibility is the best avenue for contemporary moral inquiry.
COMMUNITY Making that claim will elicit dissent from advocates of other moral
By Marion Smiley outlooks, like virtue ethics. I hope this essay will sustain my judg-
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 ment. We turn first to a dispute about responsibility ethics.
Pp.x + 286. Cloth, $51.00, paper, $19.95.
Responsibility EthicsEthics of Responsibility
RESPONSIBILITY MATTERS
By Peter A. French
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1992 Perhaps no single idea has dominated mid- to late-twentieth-
Pp.xi + 229. Paper, $14.95. century Western conceptionsof human existencemore than respon-
sibility. As Wolfgang Huber (1990,135-57) has noted, the idea took
A GRAMMAR OF RESPONSIBILITY on particular force with Max Weber’s important essay “Politik als
By Gabriel Moran Beruf‘ (1919). Recall that Weber, mindful of the reality of com-
New York Crossroads, 1996 plex, modem, differentiated societies, contrasted an ethics of abso-
Pp.253. $24.95. lute conviction (Gesinnungsethik) to an ethics of responsibility
THE IMPERATIVE OF RESPONSIBILITY: IN SEARCH (Verantwor-tungsethik)oriented toward the assessment of conse-
OF AN ETHICS FOR THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE quences. The impact of Weber’s work has been to associate respon-
By Hans Jonas; translated by Hans Jonas and David Herr sibility with the myriad forms of situational and consequentialist
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 ethics. Yet that connection, as Huber rightly notes, is hardly defini-
Pp.xii + 268. Paper, $15.95. tive of responsibility ethics. In fact, reflection on responsibility has
taken several different forms. It has been linked to so-called “com-
ONESELF AS ANOTHER munication ethics” (hardly consequentialist in nature), develop-
By Paul Ricoeur; translated by Kathleen Blamey ments in practical philosophy, and recently, the agenda of a global
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 ethics (Kung 1991; see also Kung 1998). For this review, we will
Pp.374. Cloth, $32.95; paper, $15.95. draw a simple but important distinction between kinds of responsi-
ALTERITY AND TRANSCENDENCE bility ethics. This distinction reaches well beyond Weber’s work
By Emmanuel Levinas; translated by Michael B. Smith and is valid whether or not a specific ethicist links responsibility
New York Columbia University Press, 1999 with consequentialism.
Pp.xxiv + 195, $29.50. For thinkers as diverse as Karl Barth (1957-70), Emmanuel
Levinas (1999), H. Richard Niebuhr ( 1999), Wolfgang Huber, and
GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY: IN SEARCH OF A NEW others, “responsibility” focuses on responsiveness to the other, in
WORLD ETHIC patterns of interaction or, as Barth put it, to the command of God.
By Hans Kling; translated by John Bowden Normatively speaking, Barth’s divine command ethics and
New York Crossroads, 1991 Levinas’s insistence on the heteronomousclaim of the other on self
Pp. 158. Paper, $14.95. differ markedly from each other and from Niebuhr’s ethics of what
is fitting to complex situations of interaction. Yet, for all of these
Reviewer: William Schweiker thinkers, the ethically decisive issue is what or who makes a rightful
University of Chicago claim on our lives and how best to live in responsiveness to the
Chicago, IL 60637 other. “Responsibility”is the root metaphor or first principle of an
ethics; that is, “responsiveness” to the other defines morality and

T he last few decades have witnessedan explosion in ethics. De- provides structure for moral thinking. Despite differences among
partments in colleges and universities-business to law, med- theorists, the basic point is that “responsibility ethics” is not reduc-
icine to philosophy-ffer an array of ethicscourses. Medical ible to an ethics of virtue or duty. Niebuhr, for instance, argued that
centers, corporations, and governmental agencies are in the ethics responsibility configures a different perception of our being as
business. Doctoral programs grow and flourish. Every year a moun- moral creatures. Whereas Kantian-style ethics conceives of human
tain of books is published. One must dedicatea lifetimejust to keep- beings as under duties, and virtue theory focuses on patterns of
ing abreast of developments in ecological, legal, medical, or self-formation and well-being, the ethics of responsibility pictures
business ethics-likewise, with works in moral theory and the his- humans as dialogical creatures existing in patterns of interaction.
tory of ethics. There is little doubt that in the age of globalization, Levinas makes a similar point in arguing that the “I” comes to be
with its compressionof time, space, and peoples, moral matters are thanks to an encounter with the other. “All thought is subordinated
pressing and important. Further, the unexamined life is surely not to the ethical relation, to the infinitely other in the other person, and
worth living, as Socrates supposedly said. Yet the befuddled to theinfinitelyother for which I am nostalgic.... The transcendental
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
I in its nakedness comes from the awakening by and for the other”
(1999.97-98). A dividing line among those who focus on respon-
siveness appears between those insisting on the “heteronomy” of
the other over the self (e.g., Levinas) and those who explorerecipro-
cal patterns of interaction (e.g., Niebuhr).
Other thinkers, especially Anglo-American philosophers like
Marion Smiley in Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of
Community (1992). Peter French in Responsibility Matters (1992),
and John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza in Responsibility and
Control:A Theoryof Moral Responsibility (1998), but also theorists
like Hans Jonas in The Imperative of Responsibility (1984, 1996).
hold that responsibility is about the freedom or capacity of persons
to be accountable for their actions. Again, there are normative dif-
ferences. In her work, Smiley argues for a version of pragmatic
Aristotelianism, whereas French, deeply interested in problems of
ascribing responsibility,is much more concerned with moral rules.
Jonas seeks to reconnect ethics and metaphysicsthrough an impera-
tive of responsibility. Yet in each case, the nature of action, free-
dom, and determinacy, as well as patterns of ascribing accountabil-
ity occupies attention. Responsibility for actions, rather than
responsivenessto the other, is the center of ethics. In this respect, we
might speak of an “ethics of responsibility” rather than, as with
Levinas, Niebuhr, and Huber, “responsibilityethics.” These are ob-
viously not opposed:every ethics must give some account of ascrip-
tions of accountability for actions; every ethics acknowledges that
moral creatures respond to others and to their world in a variety of
ways. What is at issue, then, is a matter of emphasiswithin an ethics.
The purpose of this distinction is to clarify that for some theories
morality is not defined by responsivenesseven though responsibil-
ity for action, or accountability,is basic to the moral life. What de-
termines morally right or wrong, responsible or irresponsible, acts
for such thinkers as French, Smiley, and Jonas is a norm other than
responsiveness. One might say that theories that take responsive-
ness as the first principle of an ethics are “strong” theories of re-
sponsibility, whereas those that do not offer “weak theories” (see
Schweiker 1995,78-105).Gabriel Moran inA GrammarofRespon-
sibility (1998) and Huber (1990) have made the same point by in-
sisting on the distinction between “responsibility for” actions and
“responsibility to” others. Moran argues, as did Niebuhr and
Levinas, that “responsibilityto” is basic insofar as to be human is to
be able to answer to others for one’s actions. As he puts it, “To be re-
sponsibleis first to listen and then to answer. The first moment is be-
ing responsible ’to; the second moment is being responsible for”
(35). This is merely to argue that responsiveness is morally primi-
tive, whereas accountability for actions is derivative. But it is pre-
cisely that point that is in dispute between these kinds of ethics.
Smiley puts it most bluntly. It is possible, she contends, to focus at-
tention on social practicesof praise and blame and thereby to escape
the “metaphysical baggage associated with our modem concept of
moral responsibility”(15). The baggage we need to drop includes
ideas about free will as well as strong claims about the depths of per-
sons. Divesting ourselves of this baggage, Smiley contends, is part
of a cogent and thorough escape from religious, especially Chris-
tian, ideas of responsibilitythat have funded conceptionsof self and
freedom. But should we seek that escape? How might Levinas or
Niebuhr assess these claims?
By drawing the simple distinctionbetween responsibilityethics,
centered on “responsibility to others,” and the ethics of responsibil-
ity, focused on “responsibilityfor actions,” I have begun to intro-
duce the main lines of debate surroundingthe idea of responsibility
ReugrousstudiesRel7iew/19
and also trajectories for further thought: the relation of freedom and
accountability, the idea of the moral self, norms of right and good,
the relation-historically and normatively-between religion and
morality, and the source or ground of responsibility. We begin to
see how “responsibility” touches on the whole range of concerns
currently dominatingthought. In the remainder of this review, I will
address some of these themes and thereby unfold the contributions
of various theorists to the debate in ethics. I leave aside the question
of corporate and economic responsibility, although the thinkers
noted, especially French and Moran, also address this hugely h-
portant topic. We turn now to the most complex and theoretical is-
sue, namely, how to understand the “source of responsibility.”
The Source of Responsibility
Currently there is a heated debate within ethics on the source or
ground of responsibility. It is really about the validity of a wide-
spread consensus in modem moral theory, namely, that ethics can
and must get along without making substantive ontologicallmeta-
physical claims about the good. The modem consensus was given
two paradigmatic formulations. The first, stemming from David
Hume, insists on a crucial distinction between statements of fact
(what is the case) and those of value (what ought to be done). Insofar
as one cannot logically derive “ought” from “is,” ethics must get
along without appeals to the nature of things. Ethics focuseson sen-
timents, communal values, or conventional norms. The other para-
digmatic formulation of the modem consensus is Kantian in origin
and flavor. Its argument is that claims derived from contingent
states of affairs-the beliefs of a community, specific desires and
tastes, the will of a deity, the temporal universwannot be the
ground of universal, necessary moral laws. A moral law, if it is to be
valid, must be a dictate of reason binding on rational agents as such.
Whether one spoke in the rigor of Kant’s German or Hume’s gen-
teel English, agreement was found among “moderns.” In the mod-
em age, one must discard all “metaphysicalbaggage” from ethics.
The modem consensus, while not decisively rejected, is cer-
tainly in question (see Gamwelll990). Three options dominatecur-
rent ethics, and, although it is not often noted, each focuses on the
idea of responsibility.The degree to which the various types of eth-
ics continue or critique the modem consensus differs among types
and even representatives of each. My depictions of these positions
are obviously heuristic and typological in character; detailed analy-
ses are not possible in the scope of this essay.
One option in the current debate is found among continental
thinkers deeply concerned about the “other” and troubled by the
legacy of onto-theology in totalistic systems of thought. Levinas,
Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Demda argue for good beyond be-
ing. Ethics is first philosophy,Levinas insists. Derrida, for instance,
contendsthat the “other, as the other than self, the other that opposes
self-identity, is not something that can be detected and disclosed
within a philosophical space and with the aid of a philosophical
lamp” (cited in Kearney 1984, 118). Rather, the moral life centers
on an infinite demand of responsibility for the other, who cannot be
thought within the “logocentric” structure of Western philosophy.
The other is outside of or prior to philosophy.For these thinkers, the
source of responsibility is unthinkable; it is delivered or spoken by
the other. It utters the command, as Levinas puts it, “thou shall not
kill.” More profoundly, the relation to the other is prior to
self-relation or our relation to the world. Ethics is prior to ontology
and cosmology. Levinas speaks of this as a “meontological”
a/RellgioUSStlldhReVieW
grounding of responsibility, that is, a grounding in what is “not be-
ing” (meon).
The implicationsof these argumentsare radical. In one interview
Levinas explainedthat “Ethical subjectivitydispenses with the ide-
alizing subjectivityof ontology which reduces everything to itself.
The ethical ‘I’ is a subjectivity precisely insofar as it kneels before
the other, sacrificing its own liberty to the more primordial call of
the other” (cited in Kearney 1984,63). Levinas’s insistence on the
absolutepriority of other over self rightly worries (in fact, horrifies)
some, especially feminist thinkers mindful of the legacy of
women’s subjugation.Yet his point, like that of Barth and others, is
that the self is not constituted by a simple self-relation (I am I in
thinking, feeling, willing). Rather, the subject comes to be, is con-
stituted, in a relation to the other. Yet whereas Niebuhr (1999), for
instance, would insist that the self is indeed responsive, Levinas
goes further to speak of the ‘‘I” coming to be as a subject, in subjec-
tion to the other. Any contrary position is an act of violence; it is the
reduction of other to self.
The force of this position is to wage an attack on all forms of to-
talitarianism,but we should also note something curious. Thinkers
heralding responsibility to the “other” banish from ethics the con-
nection of being and goodness. For Levinas, Derrida, and perhaps
Barth (but not Niebuhr), one cannot speak of the being of the other
as good, to do so is to risk a totalizing ontology. In terms of moral
theory, Levinas and company ironically continue some form of the
modem consensus. More specifically, they continue the distinctly
Kantian form of non-naturalism with its insistence on the limits of
thought and the critiqueof classical metaphysical ethics. But unlike
Kant, what is disclosed in the “ethical” is not our freedom and ca-
pacity for self-legislation (autonomy) (1999, 145-50). What is dis-
closed is the infinite claim of the other on self. “Ethics redefines
subjectivity.” Levinas says, “as this heteronomous responsibility in
contrast to autonomous freedom” (cited in Kearney 1984,63).
It is important to see that this form of responsibilityethics insti-
gates a metaphysical dualism. There is, first, the ontological dis-
course of “being” and, with it, cosmology, the sciences, politics,
and all other forms of categorical and logical thought. To use
Kantian terms, we are here in the realm of theoretical reason con-
cerned with the “laws of nature.” Second, there is a sui generis
realm of the “ethical” outside or prior to being and thus thought.
Levinas calls this “metaphysics.” The ethical is self-justifying. It
speaks in the imperative mode overturning and challenging the
reign of thought in nature and society. Responsibility is disclosive
of a good beyond being, the realm of the interhuman. The force of
this position is to insist on the irreducibilityof the ethical. The good
and the right are not simply a matter of social consensus (politics)or
read off the workings of sentient nature (cosmology). Claiminga re-
ality not reducible to politics or cosmos, the ethical forever wars
against homogenous and tyrannical orders. Yet while one deeply
appreciatesthe desire to preserve the radicality and nonreducibility
of the ethical, questions surely arise: What are the limits of responsi-
bility? What does it mean that the good is unthinkable? What pro-
hibits us from saying truthfully that the being of the other is genu-
inely and really good?
Advocates of “otherness” are not the only ones who hope to es-
cape or modify the legacy of modern ethics through the idea of re-
sponsibility.This brings us to the second option in current thought.
As noted, there is a burgeoning literature on responsibility among
Anglo-Americanthinkers worried about freedomand determinism.
John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza in Responsibility and Con-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January ZOO1
trol, for instance, try to articulate a shared view about responsibility
found in Western societies. That view, they argue, holds that re-
sponsibility is linked to our attitudes about moral agents, like love,
regret, disappointment.What do these attitudes disclose?They sug-
gest that persons have control over their lives, some measure of
freedom.Fischer and Ravizza defend an account of “control,” that
is, moral freedom, needed for ascriptions of responsibility. Spe-
cifically, the authors argue that issues of control are separate from
claims about determinism.‘Taking responsibility” for oneself, and
so accountabilityrather than responsivenessto the other, is in part a
matter of making one’s own the springs of one’s actions. There is no
compellingreason to reject this even if determinism were true. “Our
contention is,” they write, “that even if causal determinism were
true, there is a strong impetus to think that human beings should still
be properly considered persons, morally responsible, and at least
sometimesin control of their behavior” (15). In this position,just as
with advocates of “otherness,” there is a close connection between
responsibility and ideas about persons. In fact, Fischer and Ravizza
argue that taking responsibility entails seeing oneself as a source of
actions and as the fair target of reactions by others to one’s actions.
These conditions help aperson to form an internal sense of self even
if, as these authors note, there has to be due evidenceof culpability
for the actual ascription of responsibility. Fischer and Ravizza try to
show, then, the compatibility between freedom and determinism
with respect to our attitudes about responsible agents. They do so
without appeal to the “other”or ontologicalclaims about self or mo-
rality. Our sense of self arises within the social practice of taking re-
sponsibility.
As already noted, Marion Smiley likewise hopes to drop all
“metaphysical baggage” from her discussion of responsibility.
From her pragmatic and Aristotelian perspective, questions of free-
dom and responsibilityfocus not on something deep within persons
or on an appeal to an ideal blamer (i.e., “God”)but to social and po-
litical practices. By this move, she also tries to escape the modern
consensus.For Smiley, the modern “self’ is its own ideal blamer; it
is a secularizedversion of human beings living corum deo. If we es-
cape that self, we also move beyond modem ethics. At the heart of
her proposal is the claim that practices of praise and blame (hence
responsibility for action) are keyed to social roles. To be sure, there
arecausaljudgments entailed in responsibility assignments.Never-
theless, deciding what happened or who caused what (for example,
in a medical procedure) does not end the question of who is respon-
sible. We need to view “moral responsibility as part of social and
political practice rather than as an ideal that supposedly exists out-
side and superior to our social and political concerns” (14). The
source of responsibility is then social practices of praise and blame
rather than the “other,” some ontological claim about the good and
right, or the individual’s free will. Responsibilityfocuses on causal
judgments with respect to social roles (the physician in the case of
medical treatment) and practices of praise and blame.
Smileyjoins other “social theories” of responsibility in her rejec-
tion of metaphysical claims and in her worry about determinism
(causaljudgments) and freedom (evaluativejudgments). Her work
also bears on how we understand persons as moral subjects. Per-
sonal identity is bound to projects to which individuals are commit-
ted. But the self is not a (metaphysical)condition for free action; our
identities arise within social practices, including practices of blam-
ing. As Smiley notes, “blaming as a practice is necessary to the con-
struction by individuals of a relationship between them and the ex-
ternal world, a relationship which partly defines, and in turn helps to
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
maintain, their personal integrity” (172). The force of these claims, earth. This means ensuring that human beings continue to ex-
for Smiley,is to ensure that despite our judgments about causal fac-
tors (judgments that might excuse individuals), we nevertheless
have reasons for holding persons responsible for harm done to oth-
ers. Without appeal to a “deep self’ or reduction to causal evalua-
tion of outcomes (consequentialism), Smiley seeks to ground the
moral life in social practices and roles.
Albeit in a different way, Smiley, like Fischer and Ravizza and a
host of others, tries to circumvent problems of determinism as well
as metaphysical claims about self or world by a turn to social prac-
tices and attitudes about agents. One finds a similar move among
current religiousethicists who, railing against the “Enlightenment,”
explore ecclesial practices and narrative. A community or individ-
ual shapes its characterwith respect to the story it tells and lives out
(for a Christian context, the story of God’s actions in Jesus Christ).
The assumption,again, is that we can make sense of moral identity
and moral norms on purely historical, social grounds. Moral con-
vention, and not the “other”or “being,” is the source of responsibil-
ity. Dropping “metaphysical baggage” means that we can attend to
our historically particular identities untroubled by general claims
and beliefs about morality and human beings. If the advocates of
“otherness” still seem to work within the ambit of Kantian con-
cerns, the Humean backdrop to these various proponents of an eth-
ics of responsibility centered on social practices is hard to miss.
The third option about the “source” of morality is found among
those who insist on some kind of metaphysicalor ontologicalethics.
Hans Jonas, Erazim KohAk, Iris Murdoch, and others herald a moral
sense of nature or attention to the real, especially particular other
persons. The moral law “bids us to honor the intrinsic claim of Be-
ing,’’ as Jonas puts it in The Imperative of Responsibility (90). To
exist is good, and this goodness grounds moral responsibility.
These philosophers, along with theologians like James M.
Gustafson (1984) and Franklin I. Gamwell(1990), attack the mod-
ern consensusat its core in the most radical departure from the mod-
ernist agenda in contemporary ethics. The truly radical thing today
is not to proclaim the relativity of values or the importanceof social
practice; it is to attempt to show how “worth”is real and not limited
to human perception or well-being (Schweiker 1995). In terms of
responsibility ethics, Hans Jonas’s work is especially important.
For Jonas, modem technology, as the working out of deep
strands in our civilization, is an ontological event in history. It has
changed the nature of human action. Technology so extends human
power that the future becomes our responsibility. In short, our
power makes responsibility basic to ethics in our age. This change
in the scope of action challenges assumptions about freedom found
among thinkers like Fischer and Smiley no less than the rejection of
“ontology” by Levinas and others. Jonas argues that freedom ap-
pears in the biosphere from the lowest level of metabolic processes
to its highest form in the capacity of human beings to differentiate
themselves from their environmentand make choices about actions
(1996.59-74). Human freedom is a unique expression of the basic
ontological fact of purposiveness. All life entails an affirmation of
being over nonbeing. Human beings are an ontological event, be-
cause with us responsibility, and thus obligation, enter the bio-
sphere. (Note here the stark contrast with Levinas’s
“meontological“ grounding of responsibility.) Since we now have
the power to end life on this planet, Jonas insists that it is vitally im-
portant to take responsibility for the contingency our actions intro-
duce into the world. In an age of human power, one must ensure that
the conditions necessary for “responsibility” continue to exist on
Religious stlldies Review / 21
ist-we have a responsibility for future generations.
Based on this argument, Jonas formulates an imperative of re-
sponsibility for our age: “Do not compromise the conditions for an
indefinite continuation of humanity on earth” (1984, 11). The
source of this imperative is not the “other” or social patterns of as-
cription. Jonas holds that “a ‘command’can issue not only from a
commanding will, for instance, of a personal God or a Thou, but
also from the immanent claim of a good-in-itself to its realization”
(79). There are certain ends, goods, that are to be respected and that
demand their realization. We must have some recognition of the
goodness of being, which moves us to live by the moral law. So,
Jonas writes, “Being (or instances of it) disclosed to a sight not
blocked by selfishnessor dimmed by dullness, may well instill rev-
erence-and can with this affectionof our feeling come to the aid of
the, otherwise powerless, moral law which bids us to honor the in-
trinsic claim of Being” (89-90). The claim of “being” to its realiza-
tion is paradigmaticallyseen in the child as the face of the human fu-
ture. Responsibility opens reflection on the very nature of reality.
Yet for Jonas, this demands a decidedly ontological ethics rather
than beliefs about the heteronomous claims of the other.
What becomes evident is that the various positions in current
ethics on the source of responsibility (the other, social practices, at-
titudes, being) all seek a path beyond the modem consensus. They
do so in decidedly different directions even while the problematic
connection between claims about “reality” and ideas of “morality”
captures attention. This illustrates the fecundity of the discourse of
responsibility, at least for sorting out the intellectual currents of our
day. Yet more is at stake. We can continue to unfold options in eth-
ics by pressing issues that arise in asking about the sourceof respon-
sibility.
Ascription and Identity
~ ~~
We have seen that debate about the source of responsibility is
deeply bound to questions about the moral self, or identity. This is
not surprising insofar as current ethicists seek a way beyond the
modem consensus, which, at least in its Kantian version, centered
on the self-legislating “I” as the source of moral maxims. The cur-
rent turn in thought about responsibility rightly offers adifferent ac-
count of the self than that of modem idealism. Advocates of other-
ness, like Derrida or Levinas, argue that the self is constituted in the
event of being summoned to responsibility by the other. Social the-
Gries of responsibility, as I have called them, explore social roles
and patterns of responsibility ascription in order to understand the
constructionof moral identity. Ontological ethics, as found in Jonas
or Murdoch,explores the connection between the real and the good
and understands the voyage to selfhood through attention to others
‘qMurdochVi responsibility for the future (Jonas). In short, the cur-
rent debate about the ground or source of morality carried out
through the idea of responsibility is fruitful for exploring trajecto-
ries of thought about subjectivity and identity.
Rather than detail all of these options, it will be more useful to
explore one thinker who focuses on responsibility but does so with
great concern for human subjectivity. Among contemporarythink-
ers, Paul Ricoeur has continued, but also radicallyrevised, the tradi-
tion of reflexive philosophy of the subject. Instead of focusing on
the human being as knowing subject (“I think, therefore I am”),
Ricoeur throughout his vast corpus has examined human beings as
practical agents, willing creatures with the capacities to speak, to

act, to narrate, and to assume responsibility. Profoundly aware of
human fallibility, evil, and violence rooted in the fact that we are
never at one with ourselves, Ricoeur argues that we come to
self-understandingthrough the long detour of encountering what is
other than self: texts, traditions, other persons (see Klemm and
Schweiker 1993). While Ricoeur has addressedmoral and political
issues throughout his career, recent writings center on ethics and re-
ligious topics. In many respects, his position on responsibilityhelp
fully mediates the disputes about moral responsibility that we have
already isolated. Yet this mediating position also entails the judg-
ment that neither the utter subjection of the self to the other nor a
purely social account of the self is finally adequate for a moral an-
thropologY -
In his 1986 Gifford Lectures published as Oneself as Another
(1992), Ricoeur explores human existence and ascriptionsof per-
sonal identity through the philosophyof action and language. Clar-
ifying and answering the questions “who can act?’ and “who can
speak?”he specifiesthe importanceof narrative for identity ascrip-
tion: I am identified as a self in and through the narratives I tell and
appropriate. For those aware of Ricoeur’s work, this turn to narra-
tive, begun in the volumes of Time and Narrative (1983-83, is not
new. But, significantly,in Oneselfas Another, he does not leave the
discussionof identity simply at the level of namative. He is also in-
terested in ascriptions of responsibility and, hence, questions of
moral identity. Here the relation of self and otherbecomes most cru-
cial. Offering what he calls his “little ethics,” Ricoeur outlines a
moral philosophy that mediates the general thrust of Aristotelian
ethics focused on the good life and Kantian ethics of duty. He tries
to show how moral duties are a necessarycritical moment within an
ethics of the good culminating in the importance of human life
within just institutions.
What does all of this have to do with responsibility?Ricoeur in-
sists that the golden rule (do unto others as you would have done
unto you) is the supreme moral principle. In his judgment, the
golden rule enjoys several advantagesover the Kantian categorical
imperative. One of these advantages focuses on responsibility. By
centeringon human interaction (do unto others)rather than maxims
of action, the golden rule “emphasizesthe fundamentalasymmetry
between what someone does and what is done to another.” The
other, Ricoeur insists, “is potentially the victim of my action as
much as its adversary”(294). WhereasKant provided an imperative
to thwart desire’s heteronomy in the will, the golden rule aims to
thwart the tyranny of power on and over others. The self is sum-
moned to responsibility, as Ricoeur puts it in Oneself as Another.
Conscienceis where the obligation to the other resonates within the
self. It signifies“beingenjoinedas the structureof selfhood” (354).
Theorists have noted that the golden rule rests on a suppressed
premise, namely the good will. It should read: do unto others as you
ought to have done to you. The evil will can endorse ill to itself and
thereby legitimate violence under the requirement of
universalizability.In his recent writings, Ricoeur addressesthe con-
dition necessary to transformthe evil will in what he calls “theecon-
omy of the gift.” He does so, significantly,with respect to the sym-
bolism of creation and thereby takes a step within ethics toward
ontology and theology. “The sense of our radical dependence on a
higher power,” Ricoeur writes, “thus may be reflected in a love of
the creature, for every creature, in every creature-and the love of
neighbor can become an expression of this supramoral love for all
creatures” (1995,298). Ricoeur examines religious symbolism for
the power to evoke the desireto abideby the moral law in the face of
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
evil, violence, and unrelenting self-interest. He is clear, of course,
that radical love cannot be severed from the golden rule lest it risk
becoming nonmoral or even immoral (asin extremeself-sacrificeor
the nondefenseof the innocent).There is the need to hold in tension
unilateral love and bilateraljustice. Still, the symbolics of creation
disclose a power working for moral regeneration. The economy of
gift appropriatedthrough religioustexts can saturateaffectiveexpe-
rience and empower one to act upon the golden rule motivatedby a
love of others. It would seem that Ricoeur seeks to redeem a love of
being beyond Nietzschean consent to destiny and to escape the
modem banishment of ontology from ethics.
Yet, oddly enough, Ricoeur ends OneselfasAnother with a pro-
found silence about the depth and reach of worth. In the name of a
philosophy of limits, he concludes with the admission that the phi-
losopher “does not know and cannot say” whether the Other as the
source of moral injunction is a person, ancestors,the self, the living
God, or “an empty place.” “Withthis aporiaof the Other,”he writes,
“philosophical discourse comes to an end” (355). What kind of
“end” is this? Are we to suppose that in the end the goodnessof the
Other is beyond thought?The ambiguityin Ricoeur’sethics, then, is
that these claims about the goodness of the Other are symbolically
presented in religious texts but not conceptually expressed in the
moral philosophy. Becauseof this, it is unclear whether Ricoeur es-
capes the modern consensus-the banishment of the being of good-
ness from ethics. What is clear is that Ricoeur, in distinction from
most proponents of “narrative ethics,” has wrestled mightily with
the place of ontology in ethics. While most narrative ethics seems
gleefully to continuethe modem consensus under the auspices of a
turn to language and tradition, Ricoeur’s work shows how matters
of action, language, identity ascription, and responsibility are at
least “on the way to ontology.”
The Scope of Responsibility
The discourse of responsibility takes one to the center of current
concerns in ethics and indeed the whole round of contemporaryde-
bate about language and norms, moral identity and subjectivity,the
possibility and need of ontology and metaphysics in ethics. The
richness of this discourse should enable moral philosophers and
theologians to clarify their distinctive contribution to debates rag-
ing throughout the disciplinesand the wider society and might help
combat the marginalizationof ethics. Yet a grasp of the importance
of these issues of responsibility is also crucial for scholarsin other
fields. Moral questions-questions about how we can and should
live-are present in some form, no matter how modest, in every hu-
man inquiry. Recognition of responsibility might aid escape from
not only the marginalizationof ethics but also the demoralizationof
thought. Moreover,there are at least two other areas of concern that
figure importantly in current thought and responsibility ethics. One
is the pressing fact of globalization and the reality of moral diver-
sity.
Whether one speaks of our age as postmodem or postcolonialor
in terms of globalization,there is little doubt that we are witnessing
the compression of space, time, and populations in ways that de-
mand global cooperationand responsibilityin order to ensurea live-
able future. This was the point of Jonas’s ethics of responsibility
with respect to the ecologicalcrisis,as we have seen. Other thinkers,
notably Hans Kiing in Global Responsibility: In Search of a New
World Ethic, have taken up the call for a global ethics through the
idea of responsibility. For these advocatesof global ethics, our situ-
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
ation of pluralism is more complex than simply the diversity of
moral traditions. Human life is interdependent:cultures and societ-
ies live in an increasingly interdependent economic, political, and
media reality. What affects one part affects the whole. Thus, a basic
claim of aglobal ethic is that diversity is not the whole story. We ex-
ist at a time when difference is set within complex patterns of inter-
action. The rhetoric of “otherness”so important for some responsi-
bility ethics is not enough. We also need to consider complex
patterns of interdependence ranging from the biological to cultural
levels of life. The moral challenge of the day, accordingly, is to
specify an ethic for the emerging global order. As we read in the
“Declaration Toward a Global Ethic,” which Kiing helped to write
and which was proposed through the Parliamentof the World’s Re-
ligions: “In such a dramatic global situation humanity needs a vi-
sion of peoples living peacefully together, of ethnic and ethical
groupings and of religions sharing responsibility for the care of the
Earth. A vision rests on hopes, goals, ideals, standards” (1993,
19-20).
This claim about the contemporary moral demand means two
things. First, most proponents of a global responsibilityethic insist
that there must be a fundamental change in consciousnessfor such a
moral outlook to become operative. What is required, as Kung puts
it, is a transformation of consciousness with respect to basic ideals,
norms, and values. Second, this transformation will be possible in-
sofar as persons are able to commit themselves to a fundamental
consensus on values, standards, and attitudes. Proponents of a
global ethic have turned to the religions to meet these two interlock-
ing demands. Yet Kung and others insist that a global ethic is not a
“single ideology” or a “unified religion” somehow developed out-
side of existing traditions. It is, asjust noted, a consensus that meets
the demands of the global age. In this respect, a global ethic of re-
sponsibility ZI la Kung is quite distinct from the aspiration to moral
universalism found in Enlightenment thinkers like Kant or even
current theorists like Seyla Benhabib (1992). Benhabib and similar
theorists, who share an interest in the complex, differentiatednature
of contemporary societies and the concrete, situated other, contend
that we can develop an ethics by specifying norms entailed in com-
municative action. This continues the modem consensus but at the
level of communicative acts rather than rational principle (Kant) or
moral sentiment (Hume). A global ethic is a distinctive form of
moral universalism that is not developed on ostensively pure ratio-
nal grounds, even the rationality of intersubjectivecommunication.
Rather, fundamental moral norms are present within diverse tradi-
tions. The task of a global ethic is to articulate norms and values in
such a way that persons first see that they are already committed to
them and then realize that acting on these norms and values in our
time will require a transformationof consciousness. This transfor-
mation of consciousness,and hence the widening of our moral sen-
sibilities, is tied to a sense of responsibility.
Advocates of this form of global ethics have been roundly criti-
cized for the seemingly “Western” flavor of their position as well as
the assumption that one can easily extract from the various “reli-
gions” a set of shared moral convictions. It is also true that this pro-
posal works at such a high level of abstraction that its import for ac-
tual policy is difficultto discern. Further, one might worry about the
“inflation”of responsibility,a problem that (Ijudge) also besets the
advocates of responsibility to the “other,” like Levinas. What I
mean by “inflation”of responsibilityis the claim that we-whoever
we are-are utterly responsiblefor the fate of life on this planet. As
the “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic” declares: “We take re-
Rellglous studies Review / a8
sponsibility for all we do. All our decisions, actions, and failures to
act have consequences”(1993.14). Yet this is clearly faulty reason-
ing. A moment’s reflection reveals that fallible and limited human
beings cannot possibly know “all” the consequences of their ac-
tions. Like other forms of consequentialism,this kind of global eth-
ics of responsibilityclaims too much for human knowledgeand pre-
dictive capacities. These statements, no less than claims that we are
utterly subject and responsible for the other, are high-sounding, but
they verge on being practically meaningless. Similarly, it is not at
all clear that the religious traditions to which advocates of a global
ethics turn for moral insight would allow that human beings, as o p
posed to the divine, are responsible for the fate of reality. What of
God’s sovereignty?
What is instructive about the recent proposals for a global ethic is
that they pose a crucial question within the discourse of responsibil-
ity and contemporary life. What is the scope of our responsibility?
As human power increases, media and market wed and spread,cul-
tures interact, and peoples continue to engage in massive migra-
tions, how are we to think about a viable moral framework for a
global age? These questions, which must be considered within any
responsibility ethics, keep the theologian or philosopher from con-
centrating solely on matters of moral identity and interpersonalre-
lations. Likewise, they enablethe ethicist tojoin debates about what
to make morally and politically of our global reality.
The Divine and Moral Responsibility
As we have reviewed the various developmentswithin responsibil-
ity ethics, the question of “God” has ironically and importantly
arisen. Levinas and Jonas each draw upon Jewish thought, albeit in
very different ways. Ricoeur, Moran, and others explicitly deploy
the resources of Christian thought in their moral discourse,. Theolo-
gians ranging from Barth to Huber and from Niebuhr to Kung have
found in the language of responsibility a means to show the moral
vibrancy of the Christian tradition. Advocates of a global ethic un-
abashedly draw on religious traditions to fashion the moral outlook
urgently needed for the present age. Even moralists like Smiley who
seek to remove all religious or metaphysical “baggage” from their
accounts of moral responsibility still have to take religious dis-
course seriously. This ironic appearance of God-talkwithin ethics
might well be the most significantsignal that we are moving beyond
the modem consensus. If anything characterized modem Western
ethics, it was, as I have noted, the separationof ontology and ethics.
But that move, one needs to realize, is deeply linked to the agendaof
establishing the autonomy of morality from religious thought and
life. Of course, within Jewish and Christian moral inquiry, the mod-
em rejection of ontology never went far. The good and right have al-
ways been defined by Jews and Christians in relation to a reality,
“God,” not reducible to convention, preference, or communicative
rationality. In this way, religious ethics has always been somewhat
out of step with the modem agenda in ethics.
There were, of course, many good reasons to insist on the auton-
omy of morals. The modem project, if nothing else, has, in my judg-
ment, pressed the religions into moral transformation and even re-
pentance around issues of freedom, human rights, the experienceof
women and the poor, ecology, and also the moral demands and lim-
its of toleration. In the light of these concerns, theologians and phi-
losophers have sought to avoid classical onto-theology and the re-
duction of God, Good, or the Other to determinate states of affairs
too easily open to manipulation by those in power. The tendency
a4/ Rellryous s-s Review Volume 27 Number 1 / Jarmary 2001

now is to understand discourse about the divine in and through the FRANKLIN
GAMWELL. 1.
strictures of moral demand and possibility. This is certainly true 1990 The Divine Good: Modem Moral Theory and the Neces-
about the languageof responsibility,as we have seen. Nevertheless, sity of God. HarperCollins
after the obvious gains of modem thought, it seems clear now that GUSTAFSON,
JAMESM.
thinkers around the world are looking to the religions for hidden or 1981-84 Ethicsfrom a Theocentric Perspective.2 vols. University
lost resources necessary for the moral life. Of particular importance of Chicago Press.
is that religious claims help support respect for future life on this HUBER,WOLFGANG
planet (Jonas), signal the profound transcendenceof the ethical en- 1990 Konjlict und Konsens: Studien zur Ethik der
counter (Levinas), enable moral transformation of persons so that Verantwortung.Munich Chr. Kaiser.
they may live responsibly (Ricoeur),and provide resources for deep
and abiding values and norms important for all peoples (Kiing). JONAS,HANS
1996 Mortality and Morality:A Searchfor the Good afer
These are not apologetic claims. The reappearanceof the religious Auschwitz.Edited by Lawrence Vogel. Northwestern Uni-
within ethics through the idea of responsibility is not a statement versity Press.
about how to validate ethical norms and values. Few thinkers using
the discourse of responsibility, including theologians, argue that KEARNEY,
RICHARD
one must be a religious believer to be moral. The question of valida- 1984 Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The
tion is more complex than a simple appeal to the will and command Phenomenological Heritage. Manchester University
of God. What seems to be the case is that we are entering a period in Press.
which religious thought and moral inquiry can aid and revitalize KLEMM.DAVID,
AND WILLIAMSCHWEIKER
each other around pressing human concerns. For the ethicist, it is a 1993 Meanings in Texts and Actions: Questioning Paul
simple but important truth that we must search for moral insight Ricoeur. University of Virginia Press.
wherever it can be found. K O H ~ KERAZIM
,
1984 The Embers and the Stars: An Inquiry into the Moral
Conclusion Sense of Nature. University of Chicago Press.
All of these developments suggest that we now have the possibility KUNG,HANS
of enteringa period of creative thinking and engagementwithin eth- 1998 A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics. Trans.
John Bowden. Oxford University Press.
ics. Long-standing divisions between philosophy and theology,
moral inquiry and the other disciplines,ethics and culturenow seem KUNG,HANS,AND KARL-JOSEPKUSCHEL(EDs.)
spent. The real and pressing issues facing us-from the ecological 1993 A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the
crisis to situationsof violence and oppression-demand a response. World'sReligions. Continuum.
The calling of the moral theologian or philosopher must be to LEVINAS,
EMMANUEL
awaken a sense of responsibility and provide some modest guid- 1969 Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority.Trans.
ance for how we can and should live in order to respect and enhance Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne University Ress.
the integrity of life. These facts make the work of religionists inter- 1999 Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence. Trans.
ested in ethics crucial to the whole scope of contemporarymoral in- Alphonso Lingis. Duquesne University Press.
quiry. After all, the clamor for ethics is, at its root, just a cry for di- MURDOCH,IRIS
rection in living humanly. The point of this essay has been to show 1992 Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. PenguinlAllen Lane.
that the discourseof responsibility,more than other forms of ethics,
holds the resourcesnecessary for the creative and demandingmoral NIEBUHR,H. RICHARD
1999 The Responsible Self:An Essay in Christian Moral Phi-
task our humanity places before us. losophy. Introduction, James M. Gustafson; foreword,
William Schweiker. Westminster John Knox.
References
RICOEUR,
PAUL
BARTH,KARL 1995 Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagina-
1957-70 Church Dogmatics.T & T Clark. tion. Fortress Press
SEYLA
BENHABIB, WILLIAM
SCHWEIKER,
1992 Situating the Self: Gender, Community and 1995 Responsibility and Christian Ethics. Cambridge Univer-
Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Routledge. sity Press.
Volume 27 Number 1 / January N)O1
MONOTHEISTIC REREADINGS
OF THE BIBLICAL GOD
GOD: A BIOGRAPHY
By Jack Miles
New York Vintage Press, 1996
Pp. x + 446.Cloth, $30.00; paper, $15.00.
FIGURING THE SACRED: RELIGION, NARRATIVE
AND IMAGINATION
By Paul Ricoeur (translated by David Pellauer; edited by Mark
Wallace)
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995
Pp. viii + 340. Paper, $27.00.
ASPECTS OF MONOTHEISM: HOW GOD IS ONE
Edited by Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt
Washington: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997
Pp. 131. Cloth, $21.95; paper, $14.95.
Reviewer: Mark Stratton Smith
New York University
New York, NY 10003
f the three books reviewed in this essay, the first treats fhe
0 biblical God as a literary figure, the second is an interdisci-
plinary reflection that weaves a vision of engaging the divine
in the Bible, and the third is a popular account of historical topics as-
sociatedwith the origins of biblical monotheism.Each easily merits
an extended review (other similar works, especially Freedman
1995, might have been included but for constraints of space). Yet I
have chosen to address these three books together for a reason: they
share an interest in God as presented in the Bible, largely apart from
the later Western religious traditionsthat lie at the historicalroots of
this topic. Currently,the fieldsof biblical studies, theology,and his-
tory of religions stand at an interesting point where questions of di-
vinity and the Bible enjoy an (after?)life, decoupled from the
religious beliefs that inspired the creation, composition and trans-
mission of the biblical texts. The publication of the three books un-
der review, and even more their popularity, shows that
nontheologicalreadings of divinity in the Bible have become an im-
portant, if not a dominant, feature of the landscape in biblical and
theological studies.
Although the interests of the authors of the three volumes differ
widely, there is some overlap in their academic backgrounds.After
earning a doctorate in biblical studies under Frank Cross and G. Er-
nest Wright (two students of William Foxwell Albright) at Harvard
University in the 197Os, Jack Miles left the university world of bib-
lical studies. He served as literary editor for the Los Angeles Times
and later returned to academia as director of the Humanities Center
at the Claremont Graduate School. Paul Ricoeur is a
world-renownedphilosopherof religion, now emeritusprofessor at
the University of Chicago and the University of Paris. A number of
the essays in his book take up biblical themes. Like Miles, Ricoeur
largely sets aside the issues of the Bible’s own religiousbackground
and delves into questions of divinity without the constraints of a re-
ligious tradition. What makes this work so remarkable in its treat-
ment of the biblical deity is the author’s own point of standing. Un-
like Miles, Ricoeur has imaginatively, intensely, and
problematically engaged the modem Christian theological enter-
Religious stlldies Review / 25
prise. Yet his reflections place an ambiguous distance between the
senseof God in the Bible and traditional theologicaldiscourses.The
third volume is a collection of four essays by distinguishedscholars
in Egyptology,biblical studies, and archaeology. Like Miles, three
of the authors are intellectual descendantsof Albright. As the most
important twentieth-centuryAmerican scholar of the Bible and the
ancient Near East, Albright engaged the religious importance of
biblical monotheism on historical grounds. The content of this third
volume under review here largely follows suit. In short, all three
books focus on the monotheism of the Hebrew Bible while con-
sciouslydeparting from theologically influencedreadings of the Bi-
ble; in this respect, they represent “re-readings”of the monotheistic
God of the Bible. How these works differently reflect that agenda
will form the underlying theme of this essay.
God’s Literary Personas: Jack Miles
Jack Miles offers a simple and fresh approach-studying God as
one character,amongothers through the course of the Hebrew Bible.
Miles wishes to invite the “modern, Western, secular reader” (4) to
the biblical text, not through traditional religious methods of read-
ing, but through an independent literary “rereading of the Hebrew
Bible” (21). With this goal, Miles demonstratesthe various facets of
this deity in different parts of the Bible and attempts to draw the
many biblical witnessesto the divine into a coherent picture of char-
acter development.At the outset, readers may question whether the
Bible should be viewed as a single literary work. Unlike Hamler
(which Miles uses as an illustration of character development),the
Bible was not written by a single author. Nor is it likely that many of
the biblical authors envisioned the sort of literary aesthetic that
Miles’s reading anachronisticallyimposes. Other critics have noted
that the order of biblical books privileged by Miles, namely the ma-
jor (but not only) traditional Jewish order, is not the only one that
could have been selected (see the intelligent review by Barton
1995). Such points may be granted and further dissected, but as an
exercisein reading the Bible, Miles’s book deserves to be read on its
own terms. Indeed, an attempt to “read for God” over the course of
the biblical corpus is welcome.
Modem readers may find it refreshing to look at the biblical
God’s complexity, characterized historically as “a true fusion of
personalities” with an interior life accompanied by moments of
self-doubt and regret. Here Miles (20) takes stock of twenti-
eth-century research on the religious history lying behind the bibli-
cal God;he cites in particular the work of Albright, Cross, and my-
self. (Besides being a former student of Cross, Miles has written an
engaging retrospective [19761of Albright’s work.) Building on the
research of these and other scholars who have grappled with the cul-
tural relations between Yahweh and the other deities known in an-
cient Israel, God: A Biography echoes Albright’s view of Yahweh
as a god without a mythic beginning or a spouse or divine chil-
dren-in these respects the biblical God differs from other deities.
Miles further posits a “fusion” of these other divine personalities
(e.g., El, Baal, Asherah, and even the creation-monster)in the per-
son of the biblical God (one may contrast the discussionof “conver-
gence” of divine characteristics in Smith 1990); then he broaches a
psychologicalreading of an often conflicteddivine figure. Yet most
biblical texts show no such concern with either this posited histori-
cal developmentor a conflicted divine personality.Miles conflates,
perhaps a bit too easily, the biblical God‘sreligious history as a fu-
26 / Religious Studies Review
sion of different deities’ personalities with the literary record’s pre-
sentation and view of this one deity.
The psychologicalreadings of God are all too often offered with-
out textual substantiation. For example, in creating humans, does
God “want” an image? (28) GenerallyMiles is prone to see ambiva-
lence and anxiety in the biblical God,for example, in the second
creation story (29). In my reading, however, this particular instance
reflects dramatic narrative suspense rather than anxiety on the part
of the divine creator. Miles infers that in Genesis God and humanity
are locked in an ongoing struggle over control of fertility; this view
is oddly put and, worse, mostly unsubstantiated.Does God “mock”
Abram in his righteousnessin Genesis 18 or “manipulate”him with
the covenant in Genesis 15? (54-55) Does God’s action toward
Abraham in Genesis 22 really amount to “bluff and ruse”? (59,60)
Does God want the Israelites to “gloat” over the Egyptians? (103)
At many points such as these, Miles tends less to analyze than to of-
fer up his own view of divine psychosexual development or divine
emotional affect of surprise and self-discovery. Miles’s readings
are at their weakest here, and one may wonder whether the anxiety
and ambivalence detected in the divine actually reflect the mind of
the beholder, in this case Miles himself.
Miles sometimes writes so richly that his discussion lacks clar-
ity. He regularly presents the Bible and ancient Israel as monotheis-
tic and its neighbors and their literatures as polytheistic. The fact
that this interpretation is too simple shows up in his claim that an-
cient Israel knew no divine enemy for Yahweh, a monotheisticview
based on a reading of Genesis 1 (216). Such a characterization is
roundly contradicted by Psalm 74 and other biblical texts, a point
Miles seems to grant shortly afterward (229). At other points, the
book shows an opposing tendency that constitutes perhaps both its
greatest strength and greatest weakness, namely a proclivity for
simplificationsthat result in bold statements. Perhaps Miles’s sin-
gle greatest contribution is to trace the trajectory of divine speech
over the course of the canon: a vocal and active God in the Torah, a
vocal God in the Former and Latter Prophets, and after Job, a silent
God (1 Chronicles 16 and the like notwithstanding).This single ob-
servation constitutes something of a four de force (Barton 1995).
Accordingly, Miles grapples throughout with the symbiotic rela-
tionship between God and humanity; God is known through inter-
action with creation, and divine self-knowledge is presented only
through humanity’s interaction with God.A further particularly
clever point: “if the entire Bible could be summarized in one word,
that one word would be vicfory”(27 1, his italics). Such statements
deserve further reflection.
Nevertheless, Miles’s simplified readings diminish the book.
Readers may be surprised to learn that God loses his temper only at
Sinai (241) or that God does not know what love is prior to Isaiah 40
(238). despite the attestation of divine compassion in many prior
texts. Readers are also informed that God is surprisedby his own ac-
tions or does not know things about himself. Perhaps my own favor-
ite case of this sort of reading is the following: “He [Job] demands
no further self-disclosureby God. In effect, he loses interest in him.
Thereafter, and as aresult, the Lord never regains his own interest in
himself’ (404405). Indeed! The biblical texts do not characterize
God in this manner; a charitablereading would be to regard these as
clever conceits on Miles’s part. Worse, readers may be appalled at
simply incorrect readings. For example, Malachi 2:13-16 is not
“God’s first completely unequivocal and unmistakablereference to
himself as female” (262), and it is not true that Asherah “bore mon-
sters” (263), that each of the psalms after Psalms 1 and 2 “carries a
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
heading” (277), or that “the Satan” of the book of Job is “the devil”
(31 1). In sum, Miles simplifiesor fills in gaps in the texts. The bibli-
cal authors were evidently unconcerned with the sorts of gaps they
left; otherwise, they might have addressed them. By implication,
they were probably uninterested in the psychological ideas that
Miles brings to the text. To make his readings credible, the burden
falls on Miles to show that the texts reflect the concerns he imputes
to them.
This issue leads to a question about the sort of literary study un-
dertaken by Miles. If the Bible can be accepted as a literary work,
then one may ask more specifically about the kind of literary criti-
cism undertaken in Miles’s project. On the one hand, Miles handles
historical criticism in an inconsistent manner. At some points he
bails out of literary reading and retreats to old-fashioned historical
criticism or references to ancient Near Eastern cultures. To take one
case, why should a literary reading separate the two creation stories
in Genesis 1-2 according to traditional source criticism? Even if
these accounts were written independently (certainly the second is
independentof the fmt), their placement together suggests a single
reading for the two. Yet at other points Miles passes over source
criticism pertinent to his points. For example, he contrasts scholar-
ship’s depiction of the Israelites’ undramatic slipping out of Egypt
with the Cecil B. DeMille version of the crossing of the sea, which
he rather likes (“truer to the intended literary effect”-104). The
two versions have been correlated with two of the sources detected
in the story: the more mundane characterizationattributed by Miles
to scholarsechoes the poem of Exodus 15and the so-called Yahwist
source, while the more miraculous version is reflected in the
so-called Priestly source. On the other hand, when Miles does pur-
sue literary reading, there remains the issue of the method followed.
The book selectively quotes and retells the biblical narrative with
literary and psychological comments (in contrast to literary analy-
sis).
Miles’s project, warts and all, issues in a God curiously suitable
to our age: a pained, conflicted, anxious God competing with his
creation, later silent, even distant from it; indeed, this is one to
whom it would be difficult to relate, yet this deity is also “a divided
original whose divided image we remain” (408). In another era, the
differences among divine roles and experiencesof the divine might
have included a recognitionof human inability to grasp God except
in diverse pieces that point to divine complexity and difference
from humanity-in short, to the biblical mystery of the divine. In
Miles’s hands, there is no less hesitation; modernity perhaps pro-
duces a more solipsistic reading of the Bible as ultimately about us
anyway. By telling God’s story in the Bible, Miles has told our
own-and perhaps all too well. Along the way, the book contains
many fine observations, and thanks to Miles, the project of survey-
ing God’s character through the biblical corpus without involving
confessionalconcerns commandsa central place in the ongoing dis-
cussion.
Genres of Divinity: Paul Ricoeur
The name of Paul Ricoeur has long stood for rigorous and imagina-
tive meditation on sacred texts via mediation among perspectives
offered by various fields. Wending his way through the
multidisciplinary world of the contemporary university, Ricoeur
has sought a space for recovering the sacred by imaginatively
“in-vesting” his reading in the Bible’s mytho-poetic world. In Fig-
uring the Sacred,Ricoeur’s meditations on a range of topics include
Volume 27 Number 1 /January 2001
specific treatments of biblical texts. At first glance, this work is the
most theological of the books under review. Ricoeur’s essays do
contain much theological language, yet clearly the author feels
more at home in a playful space at a distance from traditional Chris-
tian theological discoursesand the claims they proffer. Spatialmet-
aphors are particularly appropriate for characterizing Ricoeur’s
reading sensibilities since he regularly deploys such figures (see,
for example, 45-46, 171, 176). The notion that discourse about di-
vinity in the Bible can be pursued largely without an anchor in the
theologicaltraditionsplaces this book of essays within the larger or-
bit of the works under review. Ricoeur is perhaps most radical in lo-
cating (and possibly even delimiting) authentic religious experi-
ence in reading the Bible. In short, God can be experienced
dramatically through an authenticengagementwith the imaginative
world of the Bible. The result is a God of the text instead of a God of
religious traditions or experience in the world (see the emphatic
statement, 221). Religious traditions may agree that sacred scrip-
ture mediates experience of the divine, but such experience would
intersect with other communal and individual locations of religious
experience (celebration and prayer, for example, in sacraments).
Ricoeur offers no such correspondence;the Bible stands alone as a
source and entrance, “the whole space of gravitation of stories,
prophecies,laws, hymns, and so forth” (45-46). All these “forms of
discoursetaken together” (39) yield a complex yet refracted reading
of a single God (especially in the essay entitled “Naming God‘’):
“Thus God is named in diverse ways in narration that recounts the
divine acts, prophecy that speaks in the divine name, prescription
that designates God as the source of the imperative, wisdom that
seeks God as the meaning of meaning, and the hymn that invokes
God in the second person” (227).
Ricoeur’s way into his imaginativeexploration of divinity in the
Bible involves a correlation within Scripture between various
modes of the presentation of divinity and various modes or genres
of biblical literature. This concept (for which Ricoeur thanks
Gerhard von Rad-39) involves what is at first glance a sensible
and fresh assumption that different dimensionsor modes of divinity
are refracted through different modes of discourse. Collectively,the
Bible discloses an inspiring and well-rounded vision of the divine.
For example, in “Biblical Time,” Ricoeur points to the ways that
time functions in different genres. Their intersection, by virtue of
belonging to a single canon, creates a modificationof time’s signifi-
cations. Space here allows for only a taste of the rich fare provided
by Ricoeur on this topic: the intersection creates “both a
narrativization of ethics and an ethicization of the narratives”; “the
giving of the law itself becomes a memorableevent that calls for its
narration, and that demands to be told and retold”; and “the law
qualifies not just the event of its giving but all the narratives in
which this giving is encased, in such a way that the founding events
become events that do not pass away, but remain” (172?73).On the
whole, the biblical God presented by Ricoeur is able to address and
be addressed in diverse modes of human speech.
Before offering further considerations, I would like to empha-
size the many fine insights in Figuring the Sacred; I wish that others
in theology and philosophy of religion would follow in Ricoeur’s
footsteps.Some biblical scholars may carp about the insufficient or
outdated biblical scholarshipin this work (for example, those infa-
mous Canaanite cults-55). Although the book is dated in places,
this does not undermine too badly the points that Ricoeur makes
well. Accordingly,the followingcomments are intended to serve as
a constructiveengagementof Ricoeur’s work. Given my limitations
Reugious Stlldiee Revlear / 27
(I work in biblical studies), I address only issues concerning Scrip-
ture. Ricoeur constructs-somewhat covertly or perhaps even
unconsciously-a hierarchy of textual privileging. I search in vain
for an intellectualjustification for Ricoeur’s particular champion-
ing of the Bible as the locus of revelation or disclosure of the divine.
Why the Bible? While for Ricoeur other texts also bear the capacity
to disclose ultimate reality, what makes the Bible particularly able
to accomplish this task, and why should Ricoeur focus so specifi-
cally on this text? Within the Bible, Ricoeur gives a certain priority
to narrative over other modes of discourse. Speaking of the theol-
ogy of biblical narrative, he writes: “it is a theology that calls for the
narrative mode as its major hermeneutical mode” (1 82). This ten-
dency is not a hardened theoretical position, but a recurring feature.
Furthermore, some biblical narratives (Torah and the Gospels) are
privileged over others, such as the Deuteronomistic History. The
privileging of prophecy over Torah seems implicit in the character-
ization of Torah as “set within the gravitational space of prophecy,”
but a traditionalJewish view would see the prophets as expositorsof
Torah-they are drawn into its “gravitational space” (176). Such
privileging of some modes of discourse over others is largely mani-
fested in the practice of reading; it is not self-evident. Viewing this
tendency as,at least partially, influenced by Christian privilegingof
narrative over law would be somewhat ironic, since Ricoeur other-
wise attempts to venture into Scriptureafresh, unencumberedby the
limitations imposed by later theological traditions and their tenden-
cies. Yet his own point of standing remains unclear, even ambigu-
ous (perhaps a dimension of his mediating stance?).The third essay,
“The ‘Sacred’ Text and the Community,” acknowledges theologi-
cal traditions and even attempts to crystallize out of the tradition an
emphasis on the word and its preaching, but the essay is almost si-
lent on the question of the nature of community. Ultimately,
Ricoeur-like Miles-relies on the theological tradition to inform
his monotheistic perspective. Why assume that the Bible presents
the figure of only a single deity? Clearly, the different names of the
divinity mask different deities, a historical datum that Miles diverts
into his psychologicalreading of God. In contrast, Ricoeur assumes
a monotheisticreading without presenting adequate reflection on its
source, even though the Bible shows many stress fractures with
such a traditional interpretive strategy.
Turning to Ricoeur’s own distanced context for reading, mediat-
ing between various poles (the word versus the numinous, history
versus the cosmic-56) lends an air of “straw men” to the enter-
prise. Second Isaiah, for instance, deeply involves and jointly
configuresall of these features. Similarly,Ricoeur’sreadings mani-
fest a proclivity to correlate biblical books with different genres, a
move that tends to fix on a major mode of reading divinity for each
book. Most biblical books contain many different genres, and it is
the interaction of various genres within a given biblical book that
makes the range of divinity particularly appealing and dramatic.For
example, Ricoeur’s essay on time (mentioned above) does not cap-
ture the diverse notes in Pentateuchal narrative. It passes over the
way the poems and various genres punctuate and redramatizeexpe-
rience and time (see especially Exodus 15 and Numbers 22-24) and
how the narrative itself marks time in different ways (in years be-
fore the Passover from Egypt, then in a compressed “sacred”calen-
dar of months and days between the Passover from Egypt and the
Passover from Sinai in Numbers 10, then back to years in thejour-
ney to the Promised Land; for explication, see Smith 1997).
The reading of genres as generating modes of revelation about
the divine may be insufficient in other ways. To indicate some di-
a8 / Religiolla Stlldia Review
mensions of this point, I turn to an authorcited by Ricoeur,one who
also makes a case for Correlating modes of discourse about divinity
with genre. In his well-known book, The Art of Biblical Narrative,
Robert Alter correlates biblical narrative with monotheism, on the
one hand, and, on the other, myth with polytheism: “What is crucial
for the literary understanding of the Bible is that reflex away from
the polytheistic genre had powerfully constructiveconsequencesin
the new medium which the ancient Hebrew writers had fashioned
for their monotheisticpurposes” (1981,29). The recent critique of
Alter’s ideas by Simon Parker (1997) should be especially noted, as
it bears on Ricoeur’s interpretive approach. Parker offers the fol-
lowing observations:
Despite his explicit commitment to a synchroniccriticism of the Bi-
ble, Alter’s comparative statement is diachronic-and quite mis-
leading. First, Alter confuses literary categories (genre) and
theological categories (monotheism, polytheism). Certainly, many
ancient Near Eastern narrativesare polytheisticin their depiction of
the world, most famously the great poems in the mythic-epic tradi-
tion, but in many others,especially prose narratives,only one god or
no gods appear. This suggests that the Hebrew writers did not shape
a new medium but exploited and developed a well-established one.
Second, although the Bible has been generally received since its
compilation and closure as a monotheistic book, “the ancient He-
brew writers” were by no means all monotheists. Our literary under-
standing of the Bible as a whole may depend on our appreciation of
its monotheismand ]3thonotheistic purposes”ofthose who deter-
mined its final shape, but our literary understanding of the work of
the “ancient Hebrew writers,’’writing long before that later momen-
tous transformation of their material into a religious canon, requires
that we recognize sometimes a complete disregard of the divine
realm and other times the nuances of the relations among and the
kind of reality accorded a variety of divine beings. In other words,
ancient Near Eastern narrative cannot be lumped together under the
term “polytheisticgenre,” and ancient Hebrew writers did not fash-
ion “a new medium” for “monotheisticpurposes’’(137-38).
In view of Parker’s analysis, Alter’s claims correlatingmonothe-
ism and polytheism with different genres are problematic and rely
in part on arguments from silence that can be tested only by serious
historical-criticalstudy. (Some of Miles’s comments on monothe-
ism, too, involve this difficulty; see 86.) Parker’s remarks indicate
that while correlatinggenres with modes of discourse may be attrac-
tive at first glance, historical context demonstrates the potential
flaws in such readings. If the field of biblical studieshas come to see
the importance of literary study, the reverse remains equally true:
literary studies of the Bible often rest on historical assumptions or
make historical claims (as illustrated in the discussion of Miles’s
book above).
Given these issues, Ricoeur’s wide-ranging explorations of the
relations between biblical genres and divinity leave a number of
loose ends regarding reading procedures and reading communities,
perhaps an appropriately open-ended mediating stance for an in-
quirer for whom further exploration always remains. Ricoeur’s
work leaves me as a reader in a “good place” wishing for more. To
take only one example, the essay “Naming God” does not treat
God’s names in the Bible; I would be intrigued to read Ricoeur’s
thoughts on that subject, but perhaps even more important,
Ricoeur’s reflections stimulated me to think about this subject for
myself. In the end, Ricoeur provides an inspiring voice and displays
a nimble and intriguing mind at work in exploringdivinity in the Bi-
ble; the biblical field should be grateful to him and others outside
the biblical guild courageous enough to follow his lead.
Volume 27 Number 1 /January2001
Historical and Archaeological Research:
Cross-dressed Theology?
Aspects of Monotheism is a collection of four essays by as many au-
thors, all distinguishedscholars in biblical and ancient Near Eastern
studies. The volume is designed for a wide audience, and in reach-
ing this goal it is very successful. It includes good pictures of an-
cient finds and is easy to read, even a bit chatty; more serious read-
ers may turn to works cited in the footnotes to pursue the discussion
at a deeper level. This volume stands in a long line of studies under
the rubric of biblical archaeology. (One of its co-editors, Hershel
Shanks, is the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review.) The essays
study the rise of monotheism against popular assumptions on the
subject.
Noted Egyptologist Donald Redford opens the discussion with
an examination of the old argument that Pharaoh Amenophis IV,
better known as Akhenaten (1352-36), developed a monotheism
that paved the way, or even set the example, for Moses and Israelite
monotheism. Redford surveys the Egyptian evidence and finds it
different enough from biblical monotheism that he wisely rejects
any substantial relationship between the two. Nevertheless, the
Egyptian evidence shows some of the characteristics later identified
as features of Western monotheism (“the revelation-cum-teaching,
the belligerent iconoclasm, the denial of the plurality of the Super-
natural, the anathematizationof other ‘gods,’ the purging of forms
of religious expression” [26]). Some may find this list a bit stereo-
typical and not conveyed with consistency in the Bible, yet it pro-
vides a simple benchmark for continuities and discontinuities with
later monotheism.
William Dever, a noted archaeologist, examines the case for Is-
raelite worship of deities other than the biblical God. In Dever’s
view, the biblical evidence preserves the elitist, reformist religious
perspective, largely omitting references to folk religion and other
aspects of Israelite polytheism. Here the priestly and
deuteronomistic perspectives, seen by Dever and others as having
made the major imprint on the biblical tradition, have obscured the
true record of Israel’s “idolatry.” Dever cites a litany of archaeolog-
ical finds that point to Israelite polytheism. Many are well known,
such as the tenthcentury Taanak stand and the eighth-century in-
scriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud mentioning “Yahweh and his
dAsherah.” Scholars continue to debate the provenance of the
Taanak stand (Israelite or not?) and the sense of the word dAsherah
in the inscriptions@ole or goddess?and if pole, was it the goddess’s
symbol?). Here Dever assumes that all of the artifacts in question
point to polytheism, an approach that suggests he assumes what he
sets out to demonstrate.At other points the discussion is misplaced.
Asherah is not “a mother goddess”;rather, she is a goddess who is a
mother in the attested mythology from ancient Ugarit. Readers may
regard my objection here as “splitting hairs,” perhaps, until one
notes that the multiple goddesses regarded by Dever as manifesta-
tions of the ancient “mother goddess” include Anat. No credible
historian of religion views Anat as a mother goddess or a manifesta-
tion of one. Dever also compares such goddesses to other manifes-
tations of the divine marked as female, including the Jewish
Shekinahand the Virgin Mary. With the ideal type of “mother god-
dess,” Dever flattens out the substantial differences among these
figures and compares them without concern for their historical con-
texts.
Despite such criticisms, Dever’s basic point that artifactual evi-
dence points to polytheism in monarchic-period Israel still holds.
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
That conclusion was already clear from the textual evidence; Dever
overstates the contrast between the literary and archaeologicalrec-
ords. As he himself notes, many of the prophets condemn the idola-
try of the Israelites. What is less evident from these textual sources
is that such “idolatry,” as it is usually regarded, included variant
forms of cult associated with Yahweh. These “idolatrous”forms of
religiosity were not simply corrupting features imported by foreign-
ers (such as the much maligned Canaanites) but traditional forms of
Israelite worship. Some readers may wish Dever had provided a de-
scriptive account of the development of monotheism: why did it
arise and in conjunction with what social and political circum-
stances? In sum, Dever makes his case that monotheism did not
emerge until the exile and after. For popular audiences,this may be
news, but it is old hat in biblical studies; what Dever brings to the
discussion is the archaeologicalevidence to support this position.
P. Kyle McCarter,Jr., distinguishedbiblical scholarand William
Foxwell Albrightprofessor at Johns Hopkins University,begins his
contribution with a discussion of the religious reforms of two
pre-exilic Judean kings, Hezekiah (727-698) and Josiah (639-608).
These reforms coincide with the production of the first monotheis-
tic works in ancient Israel, namely the book of Deuteronomy and the
related historicalwork commonly called the “DeuteronomisticHis-
tory” (Joshua through 2 Kings). Like Dever, McCarter notes the va-
riety of survivingreligious expressions,such as the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud
inscriptions. The two scholars differ significantly,however, in that
McCarter regards monarchic-period Judah as monolatrous and
henotheistic, if not actually monotheistic. By McCarter’s account,
the national gods of Iron Age states, such as Judah and its
Transjordanian neighbors Moab and Ammon, had displaced the
cults of other deities and local forms of the national god. In this
view, monarchic Judah was essentially monolatrous,and the seem-
ingly contradictory inscriptional evidencepoints not to the cult of a
goddess as such but to one manifestationof the god comparable to a
number of female manifestations or hypostases of important gods
(such as “face” and “name”). It is this national cult that provides the
matrix for monotheism’s emergence in McCarter’s account. His
overall picture passes over some important evidence of monarchic
polytheism, both in the Bible (e.g., Ezekiel 8-10) and from
extrabiblical sources (as noted in Dever’s survey). The cults of na-
tional gods left plenty of room for domestic cults, extradomestic
popular cults, and state cults devoted to other deities. These national
gods were “kings of their kingdoms,” but such an understanding
hardly precluded other divine figures. Indeed, the elevation of a na-
tional god to the status of king assumed the existenceof other divine
figuresto pay homage to the great divine monarch and participate in
his elevation.Accordingly,Habakkuk 3 could includethe divinities
Resheph and Deber as part of Yahweh’s theophanicretinue. The ex-
amples of female hypostases at first glance function to reduce the
evidence for goddess worship, but in the end, McCarter calls
Asherah a goddess (althoughhe distinguishesher from the West Se-
mitic goddess of the same name). Worship of a goddess necessarily
taxes the idea of monarchic monolatry (not to mention monothe-
ism). Two deities do not constitute monolatry even if the two are
worshipped together (one might label the phenomenon “ditheism”).
In short, the evidenceraised and discussed by McCarter undermines
his general reconstruction for monolatry in monarchic Israel; other
evidence would point further to a notable range of theistic configu-
rations. Indeed, within the larger frameworkof the worship devoted
to the national god, pre-exilic Israel entertained a great variety of
options, including polytheism, henotheism, ditheism, monolatry,
Religious Studies Revlew / 29
and monotheism (at least in the late monarchy).Perhaps these forms
coexisted and competed. It is feasible that no single model domi-
nated the scene until the sixth century, if then.
The major differences in perspective offered by the essays of
Dever and McCarter should not overshadow the basic point they
hold in common. Both agree that Deuteronomy and the
Deuteronomistic History reflect the emergence of monotheism in
ancient Israel. In the question-and-answersection at the back of the
book, McCarter expresses agreement with Dever’s claim that the
work traditionally known in Pentateuchal criticism as the priestly
source was part of this monotheism. Both scholars agree that the Is-
raelite religion practiced prior to the promulgation of such works in
the monarchic period was a diverse phenomenon that at least was
not fully monotheistic.Yet their differences over the reading of mo-
narchic-period religion are vast and point to an important unstated
question: how does one identify the rise of monotheism in ancient
Israel? For Albright, the biblical foundational account was trust-
worthy: Moses received the message of monotheism on Mount Si-
nai; the command to have “no other gods before” the one deity of the
Ten Commandments was tantamount to monotheism. Albright’s
view came in for criticism for positing monotheism so early: no
“other gods” points to competition among deities, not denial of
them. Part of the early claim rested not only on Albright’s own reli-
gious sympathies and those of his reading public, but also on the
ambiguities involved in defining monotheism. The historical as-
sumptions that allowed Albright such confident claims have
eroded, and some would go as far as to suggest that no discussionof
monotheism can be dated prior to the post-exilic period. More bal-
anced voices have noticed evidence in between Albright’s very
early dating and others’ very late datings. McCarter can recog-
nize-and rightly so-monotheism in deuteronomistic works, but
his further appeal to an earlier monolatry that may be monotheistic
(he hedges on this characterization) shows the problem at hand. Had
he begun with the monotheistic statements and theologies that a p
pear clearly in the seventh and sixth centuries, then the full variety
of Israelite and Judean religion of this period and earlier would not
have been reduced under the rubric of a national cult that was puta-
tively monolatrous if not monotheistic. Given the problematic na-
ture of McCarter’s case for national cults as monolatrous if not
monotheistic, his essay (like Dever’s) fails to provide a plausible
historical account of the rise of monotheism. Here I confess that my
own interests are showing; I take up some of these issues in a recent
book (Smith 2001).
In the final essay of Aspects of Monorheism, John Collins
thoughtfullyexplores the various forms of discourse taken about di-
vinity in Judaism. He correctly notes that Judaism in the late classi-
cal period, contrary to popular understanding,entertained a variety
of forms of monotheism, including higher angelic powers, collec-
tives of divinities called ’Plim(a standard term for “gods” in the Bi-
ble), and even the notion of “two powers in heaven.” Monotheism
was the norm in Judaism, but the forms it could assume might not
look so monotheistic according to later Jewish norms. This variety
helps to address the question of how early Jewish Christians could
adhere to both monotheism and the idea of Jesus as a power with
God the Father. While complete equality betwekn the two crossed
the line of monotheism as understood in Judaism, the distance
crossed over was not nearly so great as Jewish tradition has as-
sumed. Here Collins performs a valuable service by providing an
intelligible account of a difficult and complex subject.
80 / Religious Stlldia Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

The essays in Aspects of Monotheism as a whole point to a larger

intellectualproject. Three of the four end with some reference to Ju-
daism or Christianity. Redford reminds his readers that Akhenaten
was no “mentor of Moses” or “Christlike figure.” Dever compares
the goddess Asherah to female manifestations of divinity in Juda-
ism and Christianity. Collins closes with references to the Trinity in
early Christianity down to the Council of Nicaea (325 CE). Only
McCarter abstains from making explicit connections with the reli-
gious traditions assumed and practiced by many of the readers ex-
pected to pick up this volume (as one might infer from the brief edi-
torial introduction). In short, the volume provides a nontheological
account of ancient history leading up to Judaism and Christianity.
Such an account is not necessarily designed to supplant the Bible.
Rather, it is aimed at modifying and even partially supplementing
the “orthodox” views that later religious traditions of Judaism and
Christianity based on their readings of biblical texts. Dever’s piece
is the most vocal in this regard.
This dimension of the book is part of a wider trend of work that
purports to form an independent discipline, such as history of reli-
gion. The volume as a whole (and especially Dever’s essay) offers a
substitutereading for biblical tradition, one that is regarded in some
sense as more true insofar as it provides historical correctives to the
Bible-in short, history and archaeology as counterbiblical theol-
ogy. In contrast, Albright’s reading of Israelite religion tended to
render a historical account parallel to and supportiveof the biblical
account. I amnot suggesting that applying archaeologyor history of
religion to the periods associated with the Bible is a “bad” thing; I
engage in the same sort of work. What I am suggesting is that when
scholars working in archaeology, biblical studies, or history of reli-
gion write explicitly or implicitly about Judaism and Christianity
for audiencesincludingJews and Christians, their intellectualenter-
prise sometimesincludesthe unstated task of offering an alternative
account of the Bible, more specifically an alternative theology
melding theology and nontheological data anchored in the cultur-
ally prestigious discourses of history and archaeology-in short, a
Bible and a theology without religious experience or even belief.
Belief is ostensibly set aside yet clearly informs the ref(v)erence to
Judaism and Christianity. This approach has enjoyed a long lineage
in the United States, especially with Albright and his students, in-
cluding Frank Cross, teacher of three of the four contributors to this
volume (and one of my teachers as well). My point is not that such
scholars should stop what they are doing, although I would question
some of the forms that such work takes, as I have noted. Instead, I
am advocating a more explicit discussion of the relationship be-
tween theology and religion in such a project, which may be situated
against the wider contemporary discussion of God in the Bible. In
retrospect,Aspects of Monotheism seems to have more in common
with the other two books under review than might appear at first
glance.

Afterthoughts

The books discussed in this review provide substantial intellectual

capital for a discussion of God in the Bible without the underpin-
nings of any traditional theology, identification with any religious
tradition, or even belief in the divine. For centuries Judaism and,
even more, Christianity borrowed intellectual currency from the
larger cultures in which they circulated.These books reflect a trend
in the reverse direction, namely to borrow from Judaism and Chris-
tianity and to create nontheological discourse about God that may
Volume 27 Number 1 / January WO1 ~ligiou8S~RePiew/S1

find sympathy in both religious and nonreligiouscircles. Two of the project, religious or not. The question does not involve simply a
three appeal to a wide audience beyond the scholarly guilds in reli- choice of one sort of reading against another. In this age of special-
gion and theology. These works enjoy a “secular pulpit” that ization, how will the university communityexercise theintellectual
reaches well into the general public, including members of syna- catholicity (not to mention the serious research) needed to engage
gogues and churches. Why do manifestly nontheological voices and mediate a constructivediscussion of the diverse,important,and
take up the Bible and privilege it as a text? Why should an avowed textually substantiated readings of God in the Bible?’
secularproject such as that of Miles take up the Bible? Since the Is-
raelites did not amount to much in the ancient world, why should Notes
biblical scholars,whether historiansor archaeologists,privilege the
1. I would like to thank the Greater PhiladelphiaPhilosophy Consortium’s Phi-
Bible if their goal is wholly historical?Theappeal to the Bible’s his- losophy of Religion DiscussionGroup for entertaining and correcting a presentation
torical place in Western culture might be the very reason to ignore it 1gave on Ricoeur‘streatmentof Scripture in Figuring rhe Sacred. I am also indebted
in some of these works. Indeed, the violence of the text has often to Mark Wallace for offering criticism of an earlier version of this essay.
been taken precisely as a reason to drop the Bible from the modem
cultural canon. References
Ironically perhaps, these books combine a variety of
nontheological approaches to the Bible (historical, literary, history ALTER,ROBERT
of religion, or philosophy of religion) with a distinctive regard or 1981 The Art of Biblical Narrative. Basic Books.
even reverence for the Bible that one associates with members of re- BARTON,
JOHN
ligious traditions. It may be argued that such authors take over the 1995 “A God’s Life” (Review of Jack Miles, God:A Biogm-
task (traditionallyheld by theological writers) of mediating the Bi- phy). The New York Review of Books, November 30,
ble to the wider public of readers who may or may not believe or 1995,7-9.
practice any religious tradition, but the significant point is that for FREEDMAN,
RICHARD E.
these works belief does not really matter. The authorsof such works 1996 The Hidden Face of God. HarperCollins.
do not usually address their point of standing or the larger signifi- MILES,JACK A.
cance of their intellectualprojects. On one level, they do not need to 1976 “Understanding Albright: A Revolutionary Etude.” Har-
do so since the popularity of their books points to an implicit agree- vard TheologicalReview 69,151-75.
ment between nontheological authors and their nontheologicalpub-
lic, analogousto the implicitagreementbetween theologicalwriters PARKER,SIMONB.
1997 Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions: Comparative
and their religious audiences. Nonetheless, such work should be Studies in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions and the Hebrew
seen as offering a serious help and challenge to traditional theistic Bible. Oxford University Press.
readings. It remains the wider intellectual task of theologians to ad-
dress not only their own communities but also interested parties in SMITH,
MARKS.
other traditions,religious or not, if only because a diverse society is 1990 The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities
the lived reality of contemporary people with religious commit- in Ancient Israel. Harper & Row.
1997 The Pilgrimage Pattern in Exodus, with contributions by
ments. By the same token, scholars who produce largely Elizabeth M. Bloch-Smith. Sheffield Academic Press.
nontheological works about God (and I include myself-smith 2001 The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic
1990,2001) must reckon with the larger import of their intellectual Background and the Ugaritic Texts. Oxford University
Press.
 s- Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 23001

and articleform, continue to appear each year; many of these are in-
NEW DIRECTIONS IN RESEARCH sightful, sheddingnew light on the thought and practices of the great
ON THOMAS AQUINAS scholastictheologian.The range of scholars interested in Aquinas is
extensive, from intellectual historians and students of culture, to
TBE METAPHYSICS OF THEISM: AQUINM’S working philosophersand theologians.The great Leonineeditionof
NATURAL THEOLOGY IN SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES I the Thomisticcorpus grinds on, settingnew standardsof excellence
By Norman ktzmann in critical editions of medieval texts with each new volume. And
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 Thomas continuesto be held in esteem by all those who appreciate
Pp.xi + 302. $45.00. clear and rigorous thinking: by Christians (Protestantand Catholic)
and non-Christians alike.
DIALECTIC AND NARRATIVE IN AQUINAS: AN Only a few dark spots mar this picture of accomplishment.For
INTERPRETATION OF THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES most of the century,studentsof Thomas have been well served bib-
By Thomas S . Hibbs liographically.First by the Bulletin Thomiste and then by its succes-
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 sor, the Rassegna di letreratura tomistica, scholarshave been given
Pp. x + 242. $34.95. ampleaid in keeping currentwith the vast number of Aquinas publi-
SAINT THOMAS D’AQUIN, MAfTRE SPIRITUEL. cations each year. With the death a few years ago of its principal
INITIATION2 compiler, ClemensVansteenkiste, however, the Rassegna seemsto
By Jean-Pierre Torrell have passed out of existence. It would be most desirablefor a yearly
Fribourg: h t i o n s Universitaires, 1996 comprehensiveThornisticbibliographic survey to be revived-per-
Pp. viii + 574. Paper, 240 F. haps in an American setting and employingcomputertechnology to
make the information more readily available. For the time being,
LE CHRIST EN SES MYSTkRES LA VIE ET L’OEUVRE however, scholars of Thorn@ will have to be content with the
DE JkSUS SELON SAINT THOMAS D’AQUIN. Tome 1 briefer bibliographicalsurveysthat appear in certain specialistjour-
By Jean-Pierre Torrell nals, the occasional review essay, and, of course the bibliographi-
Paris: Descltk, 1999 1
cal databases that serve medievalists in general.
Pp.liii + 301. Paper, 180 F. Similarly, there is still no one-volume introduction to the theol-
LA TRINITa CRkATRICE ogy of Thomas Aquinas. The philosophical side of Thomas has
By Gilles Emery been better served; one can name, for example, The Cambridge
Paris: Librairie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin, 1995 Companion to Aquinas, edited by Kretzmann and Stump (1993).
Pp. 590.297 F. There have also been in recent years many significantintroductions
to the career and writings of Aquinas, some of these touching, to
IDEAS IN GOD ACCORDING TO SAINT THOMAS greater or lesser extent, on the theology. Thomas O’Meara’s
AQUINAS SOURCES AND SYNTHESIS
By Vivian Boland ThomasAquinus Theologian (1997) has reached a wide American
Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996 audience and provides a good overview of Thomas’s work.
Pp.x + 353. N.p. Jean-Pierre Torrell has presented to a primarily specialist audience
a masterful account of Thomas’s life and writings (1993,1996ET),
KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH IN THOMAS AQUINAS incorporating the latest insights of the Leonine Commission, of
By John I. Jenkins which he is a member. (The Leonine Commission is the group of
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997 scholars responsible for the preparation of the edition of the com-
Pp. xv + 267. $59.95. plete works of Thomas, initiated in 1882 by Pope Leo XIII. Over
DID NOT OUR HEART BURN? PLACE AND FUNCTION thirty volumes of this edition have appeared, but a considerablepor-
OF HOLY SCRIPTUREIN THE THEOLOGY OF ST. tion of the Thomisticcorpus remains to be edited.) Torrell’s update
THOMAS AQUINAS of James Weisheipl’s Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Lge, Thought
By W. G. B. M. Valkenberg and Works (1983) is of special interest to theologians. While
Utrecht: Publications of the Thomas Instituut, 1990 Weisheipl’s own interests lay in the history of science, Torrell is
Pp.x + 440. N.p. both a historian of theology and a theologian, and this is evident in
the way that he presents Thomas. But, despite such valuable over-
TO THE IMAGE OFTHE TRINITY:ASTUDY IN THE views of Thomas’slife, career, and thought (and in German, Pesch
DEVELOPMENT OF AQUINAS’ TEACHING 1988can be recommended),there is yet to appear in any languagea
By D. Juvenal Merriell solid presentation of his theology, one that pays equal attention to
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990 the main themes of the theology and to the pedagogical and
Pp. x + 266. $29.50. compositional decisions that enter into Thomas’s various expres-
sions of his thought.
In this essay, I would like to provide an orientation to some re-
Reviewer: Joseph Wawrykow cent work on Aquinas, categorizedunder three main headings. My
University of Notre Dame categories are admittedly highly selective, and some extremely in-
Notre Dame, IN 46556 teresting work will necessarily go unnoted here (for example, the
y most standards,the study of Thomas Aquinas (12246-74) many writings of Alasdair MacIntyre on Thomistic ethics, e.g.,
B is in extremely good shape. As has been the case throughout 1990aand 1990b).The categories are also artificial (in a medieval
the twentiethcentury,hundreds of works on Aquinas,in book sense), corresponding rather inexactly to those favored by the
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001 Religious Studies Review / 93

Russegna, reflecting instead my own interests and concerns as a are normally understood to have worked before the time of Christ),
scholar of Aquinas. I will consider, in turn, 1) the most adequate such a truth inevitably has been modified and transformed by those
ways of characterizingThomas’s intellectual project; 2) important truths that are distinctively and exclusively Christian and available
studies of select themes in the theology of Aquinas; and 3) Thomas only through revelation (the articles of faith). That God is one
as a writer, especially in his dependenceon certain of his predeces- means one thing for Aristotle but another for a Christian who be-
sors. In the process, I will indicate (especially for the first topic) lieves, on the basis of God’s Word, that God is also three.
why it has been so difficult to marshal1the resourcesthat would lead The divide that separates studentsof Aquinas can be nicely illus-
to a comprehensiveand historically accurate account of the theol- trated through reference to two recent books on one of Thomas’s
ogy of Thomas Aquinas. most important and challenging writings, the Summa contra
Gentiles (ScG). According to Norman Kretzmann’s The
What Is Thomas Doing? Metaphysics ofTheism (1997), there are in Aquinas three different
types of “theology.”“Dogmatic theology” is concerned with divine
Given the amount of scholarly attention paid to Aquinas, it may be revelation in scriptureand seeks to summarizein the rule of faith the
surprising that there is still no consensus about how best to classify major truths of the religion. “Philosophical theology” attempts to
his work. Is he primarily a philosopheror a theologian;and if the lat- plumb the meaning of the articles of the faith in themselves and in
ter, of what sort?Apart from the special interests of those who study relation to each other; in addition to this contextualized reflection,
him, and the concomitanttendency to reshape him in their own im- performed on the basis of the faith whose understanding it seeks,
age, the difficultyof portrayingThomas most adequatelyis compli- philosophical theology can engage in more defensive and apolo-
cated by his own failure to state unequivocally what exactly he getic work, defending the faith against those who attack it as
thinks he is doing in his various works. We do not meet in Thomas antirational. It is the third type, “natural theology,” that most in-
what is so common in modem writing-sustained reflections on trigues Kretzmann. Here the connection with philosophy is palpa-
method and the componentsof the author’s outlookon life, religion, ble; natural theology is in fact the pinnacle of philosophical en-
and culture. Rather, Thomas’s students are dependent on his occa- deavor. In terms of the division of truths in sacred doctrine, natural
sional comments,made in passing, about the aims and ambitions of theology is preoccupied with the preambles of faith taken in an ob-
some of his writings. Especially important are his statements about vious sense: the work of the theologian in relation to the preambles
sacred doctrine and about the theology that pertains to sacred doc- is necessary and preparatory for the subsequentconsiderationof the
trine, as found at the beginning of such works as his Scriprum on the articles of faith. The preambles of faith enter Christian discourse
Sentences of Peter Lombard, the opening chapters of Book I of the
under the formality of reason. There is, Kretzmann adds, only a
Summa contra Gentiles, and the very first question of the Summa modest contribution by dogmatic theology to natural theology: the
Theologiue. There, Thomas customarily acknowledges that two former figures in the latter only to the extent that the Christian faith
kinds of truth enter into sacred doctrine and, by extension, into the helps the natural theologian in determining which truths available
theology preoccupied with sacred doctrine. In the first place, there to reason should be included in his or her own natural theology.
are the articles of faith: these are the truths, necessary for salvation, For Kretzmann,natural theology plays an important role in all of
that are revealed by God, held by faith, and not susceptible to ratio- Thomas’s writings, but it is in the Summa conrru Genriles that
nal demonstration.Thomas will add that while these truths-e.g., Thomas’s prowess as a natural theologian comes to the fore. In the
trinity, incarnation, the human person’s end in the triune first three of the four books of the ScG, we meet. in Kretzmann’s es-
God-transcend the capacity of reason, they are not contrary to rea- timation, the most successful and sustained experiment ever in nat-
son; hence, anyone who attacks them as if they were can be rebutted ural theology, a model that can serve modems well as they ponder
by rational argument. The other kind of truth that enters into sacred things Christian and delve into the compatibilityof reason and faith.
doctrine is customarily designated the “preambles of faith.” These (In this reading, the fourth book of the ScG, which addresses such
are also revealed by God, usually held by faith, but can in principle revealed matters as trinity, incarnation, and eschatology, is handed
be demonstrated by reason. But, that effort, Thomas will add, takes over to dogmatic and philosophical theology.) Hence, Kretzmann
considerabletime and energy and is susceptible to error; the pream- decided to devote threebooks of his own to the ScC, one for each of
ble is known by reason only by a few-hence the need for God to re- Thomas’s, each covering the main topics in natural theology. Un-
veal these truths as well. fortunately, only the first two appeared before his death2
In terms of the debates over how best to understand Thomas’s in- Kretzmann’s volumeson the ScG are noteworthy for severalrea-
tellectual enterprise,it is the preambleof faith that provides a sort of sons. They testify to a confidencein reason unbothered by the wor-
litmus test. How, in Thomas’s understanding,do the preambles en- ries of a postmodern age. They also have a certain plausibility in
ter into the theology that pertains to sacred doctrine? Under the for- light of Thomas’s own organizational comments at the opening of
mality of the revealed or as demonstrated by reason? What connec- Book I, where he notes the two kinds of truths that concern the wise
tion does Thomas imaginebetween the preambles and the articlesof man and says that his first three books will be given over to those
faith? Are they treated separately and prior to the articles, providing truths that are accessibleto reason and have, to a greater or lesser ex-
thereby a “preamble” in an obvious manner to the consideration of tent, although with some error, been reached by the non-Christian
the articles? If so, then in treating the preambles, Thomas would be philosophers.By the arguments of the first three k k s , thephilosu-
working as a “philosopher,”as one employing reason to its greatest pher (natural theologian) provides the solid foundationfor the com-
effect;the philosophical would provide the necessary basis for the ments of the fourth on distinctively Christian topics. Without such
subsequent engagement with specifically Christian truths (the arti- preparatory work, the contents of the fourth would lack weight.
cles). Or are they considered in close connection with the articles But, despite the fairness of the reporting of particular arguments
and as modified by them? In that case, while the truth that God ex- in the opening books, Kretzmann’s reckoning of Thomas’s aims
ists or is one was available to the philosophers (who, for Thomas, and ambitionsin the ScC is not without problems. For one thing, the
34/ Religious Studies Review
division of theology into dogmatic,philosophical,and natural is not
Thomas’s own; one may fairly ask whether Kretzmann has imposed
a later conceptualizationon the thirteenth-centurymaterial. More-
over, there would seem to be considerable evidence that the pream-
bles enter into Thomas’s project not as demonstrated but as re-
vealed, and as connected to the articles and thus modified by them.
Finally, although it is certainly not without precedent, it seems
problematic to separate the first three books from the fourth and to
privilege the first three. The work as intended by Thomas falls into
four, not three, books, and the fourth seems to complete and so
transform the first three. Indeed, when read without the fourth, the
first three seem incomplete,calling for the final book‘s fuller inves-
tigation into the truths of God and humanity and their interaction.
A rather different approach to the ScG is taken by Thomas Hibbs
in his Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinus (1995). Talk about “dia-
lectic” is not out of place when it comes to Aquinas; throughout the
ScG, Thomas nicely follows Aristotle’s precedent as he considers
various truths significantto a Christian intellectualand contestedby
various others. “Narrative,”however, as applied to a work of Aqui-
nas might be a more surprising term, but Hibbs makes a good case
for the importanceof narrative in shaping Thomas’s project in this
writing and for grasping its proper ambitions.It is the biblical narra-
tive-of the triune God bringing things into being and orienting
them to their proper ends; of the Son of God becoming incarnate to
rectify the situation caused by human sin, and so allowing humans
to come to the special end set for them by God-that structures the
entire work. For Hibbs, what this means is that the first three books
cannot be set apart from the consideration of trinity, incarnation,
and eschatology in the fourth, nor can they be given privileged sta-
tus. Rather, the point of the first three books is realized only in the
fourth. Located against the background of the biblical narrative,
they are a preparation for the fourth and incomplete in themselves;
only in the fourth, in which the biblical narrative moves from back-
ground to forefront, do the first three books receive their proper and
final meaning. In terms of the opening organizational comments,
the two ways of attaining wisdom are distinguishedprecisely in or-
der to unite them, and the one is shown in its subordination to the
other, which is enriched by Christian revelation. Hibbs insists that
the ScG is meant to be an introduction and exhortation to Christian
wisdom, in which pagan wisdom is disclosed in its insufficiency
and its need for the fuller, Christian truth. He is indebted in an obvi-
ous and openly admitted way to a number of scholars for this “holis-
tic” approach to the ScG, in which the fourth book receives its
due-especially to his teacher Mark Jordan, who in an influential
essay (1986) had argued for the protreptic character of the ScG. He
is indebted as well to other scholars who have defended the theolog-
ical character of the entire ScG, including Corbin (1974) and
Gauthier, whose own study of the ScC, reissued in revised form in
1993, remains the finest one-volume study of this important
Thomistic work. Nonetheless, while Hibbs’s own innovation (i,e.,
employingin a thematic way the language of narrative) is relatively
modest, he does make a signal contribution to the discussion of
Thomas’s intellectual project by emphasizing the “narrative” at
least as much as the “dialectic” and by writing with a view to chas-
tising those who would neglect the former in preference for the lat-
ter.
My sense is that, on the whole, Hibbs is more faithful to
Thomas’s own intentions and understanding of the relations be-
tween faith and reason. The four books of the Summu contra
Gentiles work nicely as an integral unit, and there does seem to be
Volume 27 Number 1 / J m q 2001
the progression insisted on by Hibbs that requires the fourth book.3
Thomas seems to have distinguished the two wisdoms precisely in
order to show the incompleteness of the one and its transformation
by the other; such is lost by talk about “natural” as opposed to “dog-
matic” or “philosophical” theology. Nevertheless, Kretzmann’s
work retains considerable value, not least in light of some contem-
porary efforts to eliminate the “philosophica1”’fromthe theological
enterprise.The characterof the first three books may have been mis-
construed and the achievement of reason overrated. Yet, Thomas
himself seems much more open to the possibilities of rea-
son-when viewed in the service of Christian faith and the pursuit
of God’s wisdom-than many of our contemporaries. In emulating
him, it would be well to keep this part of the model in mind.
Important Theological Themes
Important and innovative work on aspects of Aquinas’s theology,
properly speaking, is done in numerous places throughout Europe
and North America, including Notre Dame. But in the 1990s,
Fribourg, Switzerlandattained a special prominence in the study of
Thomas’s theology, especially through the work of Jean-Pierre
Torrell and his associates. Their studies tend to deal with central
theological topics; their accounts are based on close readings of
Thomas’s texts, with due consideration given to historical circum-
stance and intention. At the same time, Torrell and his colleagues
show a great interest in current theological problems; one of their
goals is to show the continuing relevance of Thomas the theologian.
In the process, they have succeeded in calling into question much of
what passes as common wisdom about Aquinas and his work.
Two books by Torrell will be discussed here. The title of the first
is startling and meant, I suspect, to be thought-provoking: Saint
Thomas d’Aquin, maitre ~ p i r i t u e l“Spiritual
.~ master”? We mod-
ems have a tendency to favor an easy and clear-cut division of medi-
eval theologians: scholastics on the one hand, spirituals on the
other. In so dividing, there is an adjacent tendency to set the two at
odds, as if they did not intermingle or did not share basic convic-
tions about the Christian life. There are undoubted differences be-
tween a spiritual author such as Mechthild of Magdeburg and a
scholasticauthor such as Aquinas. One is their approach to religious
experience. For Mechthild, such experience is the starting point of
the writing, and the aim is to report the experience as a way of en-
gendering similar experience in the reader. In Aquinas, on the other
hand, the work is second-level, reflecting on religious experience
and the conditions, including the necessary core beliefs, for its oc-
currence; the appeal to experience and to religious practices re-
mains secondary. It is one thing to acknowledge differences in ap-
proach and intention; it is another to think that the two approaches
are necessarily at odds and incompatible. To the contrary, in the
Middle Ages, the more common move was to perceive these differ-
ent approaches to God and Christ as complementary, each inform-
ing the other. Through his own approach to Aquinas as spiritual
master, Torrell calls into question the sharp division that afflicts
contemporary scholarship, including the easy confidence in the
hostility with which practitioners of one kind of theology suppos-
edly viewed the other. As he shows in this closely argued book,
richly illuminated by lengthy and insightful quotations from a vast
array of Thomas’s writings, Thomas’s work is informed by a warm
spirituality, by basic convictions about how God and people should
be related in this life as a prelude to the intimate union promised by
God to humans in the next. Apart from his spirituality, Thomas’s
Volume 27 N u m k 1 / January 2001
technical work as a scholasticwould be unthinkable.It is in his theo-
logical writings, cutting across various genres (e.g., biblical com-
mentaries, theological syntheses, even occasional pieces produced
in response to theological inquiry), that Thomas develops and ex-
plains his spirituality.The spiritual is not at the expense of the scho-
lastic; he has a distinctlyscholastic approach to the spiritual life, ex-
ploiting to the full the rich resources of scholastic teaching to
promote the journey to God.
Torrell’s “subversiveness,”however, goes beyond overcoming
the imagined gulf between scholastic and spiritual. It is not uncom-
mon to read-especially in nonmedievalistsand often in systematic
theologians who like to gesture at the tradition-that Thomas’s ma-
jor theological insights have been developed without proper refer-
ence to such Christian teachings as trinity and incarnation. That is,
Thomas undoubtedly has treatises on the trinity and on Christ, but
his most important claims about God,the human person, and their
interaction have been developed, in this interpretation, apart from
reflection on and commitment to the triune God and the Son of God
made human precisely in order to remake fallen people. But, as
Torrell shows throughout this study of Thomas’s spirituality, that
worry is ill-founded. Torrell convincingly demonstrates that for
Thomas, the beginning and end of the spiritual life-and the basis
for Thomas’s own theologizing-is the triune God who creates all,
invites rational creatures to enter into God’s own life (in a prelimi-
nary way in this life and fully in the next), and provides the means
necessary for attainingthis spectacular,transcendentend, precisely
in the Christ who as perfect God and perfect man unites the divine
and the human in himself. To put this in terms that a North Ameri-
can audience may appreciate, the doctrine of the trinity is, as Torrell
shows in exquisite detail, no afterthought in Aquinas; it is alive and
well and central to his teaching about everything of importanceto a
truly Christian theology.
In a more recent book, Le Christ en Ses Mysttres: La vie et
l’oeuvre de Jksus selon Saint Thomas d’Aquin (1999),Torrell turns
to the christology of the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae. The
massive treatise on Christ is divided into two main parts: in qq.
1-26, Thomas offers the grammar of the incarnation, emphasizing
the union in the second person of God of the two natures, divine and
human; in qq. 27-59, he examines in turn (principallyon the basis of
the gospel accounts of Jesus as mediated by different strands of
Christian theological tradition) the Word-become-human’sentry
into the world, activity and teaching, passion and death, and resur-
rection and ascension. Torrell’s focus here is on the second main
part of the Summa’s treatise on Christ, and in particular qq. 27-45
(in a promised second volume, he will treat the remaining questions
of this part of the treatise). Informing the discussion of these ques-
tions is a rich and fully Thomistic sense of mystery. The mystery is
God’s very call to people to enter into God’s own life, through disci-
pleship to Jesus and accepting what Jesus has done as of ultimate
significancefor salvation. It is also possible to speak of mysteries,
of how the details of Christ’s life, actions, and sufferings testify in
their different ways to the revelation and working-out of the mys-
tery of God’s plan for humanity. In working through the individual
questions of this part of the treatise, Torrell nicely shows the cen-
trality of “fittingness”arguments for Thomas’s handling of the arti-
cles of faith. Acknowledging that God could have acted otherwise,
it is incumbent upon the theologian to ponder the meaning of what
God in fact has done, as revealed by scripture, and in the process to
grasp more fully the wisdom of God. Thus, the discussion of Christ
R e l i g i O u s Stlldies Review/ 35
in these questions is at the same time an exercise in sapientid theol-
ogy, fully in the service of Christian spirituality.
Scholars associated with Torrell have been increasingly prolific
in recent years, publishing a number of fine studies that illumine
many aspects of Thomas’s theology? Stimulated first by Torrell’s
own model, in some cases their own research projects have come to
inform Torrell’s portrayal of Aquinas. Gilles Emery’s La Trinitb
Crkatrice (1995) has elicited the most comment. Taking a primarily
historical orientation and focusing on Thomas’s early Scripturn on
the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Emery shows Thomas’s deep and
extensive familiarity and agreement with the earlier commentaries
on Lombard by his teacher, Albert the Great, and by Bonaventure.
By virtue of Emery’s study, there can be no doubt of the extent to
which Thomas has employed these other commentaries in con-
structing his own teaching about the trinity and the creative work of
the triune God. Building on and perfecting the teachings of these
predecessors,for Aquinas trinity and creation are in aprofound way
mutually informing: the multiplicity of divine persons is the model
for grasping the procession of creatures;the procession of creatures
in turn shapes the understanding of the triune God.While valuable
as history, Emery’s work has rich contemporary, systematicimpli-
cations. There have been those who want to drive a wedge between
Thomas and Bonaventure,as if the former were constrained by pre-
dominately “Western” notions of trinity while the latter had been
liberated by a (supposed) greater exposure to Greek patristic
sources. The division on the trinity between East and West is a late
nineteenth-century scholarly invention, one that has passed out of
favor among historians, although retained as helpful by (some) sys-
tematic theologians.After Emery, the claim about the supposed dif-
ferences between Bonaventure and Aquinas will-or, at least,
should-be all the harder to make.
Thomas as Writer
Thomas Aquinas is a skilled writer, able to weave into his analysis
of major theological topics the objections, comments, and queries
of others. Although various of his writings can have differing peda-
gogical aims, they are as a rule richly textured literary pieces, work-
ing off a multitude of earlier writings, Christian and non-Christian,
whether coming to Thomas through the mediation of others (as in
the case of the florilegia available in the later Middle Ages) or in
their integrity. In this sense, Thomas’s is an “authoritative” theol-
ogy, progressing through the main theological issues by referring to
the opinions of important figures from the past. In the theology that
pertains to sacred doctrine, Thomas limns and, I think, mostly ob-
serves in his actual practice a hierarchy of authorities. At the pinna-
cle is God,the source of religious truth, and the human authors of
scripture, to whom God has revealed-in an infallible way-the
truths necessary for salvation (which have been summarizedsubse-
quently in the creed). Next come the church fathers or doctors of the
church. Their authority is less, because revelation has not been
made to them, but still real and directly concerned with sacred doc-
trine: the church has recognized the value of their interpretationsof
God’s word in scripture. Theologians come after doctors, differing
not in their basic work-the interpretation of scripture and the re-
covery and relating of God’s saving truth to the contemporary situa-
tion-but only in the extent of their authority. Their readings have
not been subjected to the test of time, and so the extent of their au-
thority has not been fully realized by the believing community.
Finally, Thomas includes the philosophers in this hierarchy. Their
as/ Religious Studies Review
authority is the least, and exterior to boot: after all, they are not pri-
marily interested in saving truth, but in discussing the truth about
the things of this world, only some of which overlaps with sacred
doctrine (see“preamblesof faith”). Nevertheless,their insights and
terms can be appropriated by the theologian and brought into ser-
vice to God’s word.
Scholarsof Aquinas have become more attentive in recent years
to his pedagogical strategy and skill as a writer who uses the words
ofothers to teachChristian truth. Attention to the literary features of
Thomas’s works is not at the expense of his substantive claims.
Rather, such attention can make one more appreciativeof the depth
of the teaching, understood both in terms of content and as an act. In
the past decade, a number of important studies have appeared, con-
cerned in whole or in part with Thomas’s literary relations with var-
ious of his predecessors; I will note a handful of them here.
Studies of Thomas’suse of authorities can be global in ambition.
Some have attempted to chart his use of a major author through an
extensive range of theological and philosophical issues; one might
mention, as an example, Fran O’Rourke’s study of the contribution
of Pseudo-Dionysiusto the thought of Aquinas (1992). Similarly
ambitious,but in a different way, is Ideas in GodAccording to Saint
Thomas (1996), by Vivian Boland, which studies not the use of a
single author but how Thomas exploits a set of authorAhristian
and non-Christian, early and medieval-in different ways on an im-
portant topic, that of the divine ideas. Some scholars, in fact, have
questioned the relevance of the ideas for Aquinas: are they really
needed to account for God’s knowing, or is their presence in Aqui-
nas simply the result of inertia on his part, a failure to excise what
had for him, given his basic convictions about God and about
knowledge, really become anachronistic and irrelevant? Boland is
successful in showing that the divine ideas indeed retain an impor-
tance for Aquinas; in the process he also shows well how Thomas
has subtly, but profoundly, transformed many of his authorities in
constructinghis own teaching, allowing the ideas to figure success-
fully in a system in which a premium is placed on practical knowing
(as contrasted with merely speculative knowing) in describing
God’s creative, providential, and ultimately incarnational activity
in the world.
Less global in scale, but nonetheless significant, are studies that
confine their research to a single topic in Thomistictheology. Three
examples will have to suffice. In Knowledge and Faith in Thomas
Aquinas (1997). John Jenkins turns to Aristotle to illumine
Thomas’s theological project. As is well known, in such passages as
ST I 1, Thomas employs the language of Aristotelian “science” to
introduce sacred doctrine and the theology that pertains to sacred
doctrine.Scholarshave not been sure what to make of this language.
Is it purely ornamental, allowing Thomas to restate a traditional
conceptionof theology (“faith seeking understanding”)in Aristote-
lian terms? Or is the language instead an anticipation of what
Thomas will go on to do in therest of the S u m , that is, to construct
a science of the faith? For Jenkins, the key is the Posterior Anulyr-
ics, where Thomas had come across a notion of science that would
become well suited, in his hands, to Christian intellectual needs and
aspirations. According to the Posterior Anulytics, one who has at-
tained to science in a given subject has come to know effects as pro-
ceeding from their causes and, in fact, knows the causes better than
the effects. For Aristotle (and for Thomas as his follower in this
analysis), there are two stages in the acquisition of science. First,
one becomes familiar with the subject matter and its principal con-
cepts; then, one restates this first, imperfect knowledge by limning
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
the subject matter in light of its causes. In Jenkins’s reading, this no-
tion of science and its acquisition-in particular, the second
stageshapes Thomas’s procedure throughout the Summa. The
Summa means to bring its reader to a knowledgeof religious claims
and the practices that they engender in light of their cause, God,
viewed as the beginning and end of all things. Jenkins’s approach is
both straightforward and sophisticated-no confusion here about
why Aristotle is important or how he enters into Aquinas’s project;
Aristotle has been put into service to the Christian faith, his
epistemological concerns incorporated into this conception of
Christian theology. In addition, the book opens up new vistas, par-
ticularly with regard to the training needed prior to engaging in the
acquisitionof science at the second, perfect level. At the first level,
along with becoming familiar with the basic documents of the reli-
gion, as well as the Aristotelian philosophical corpus, one would
have to gain a basic sense of the faith through religious and liturgi-
cal formation-such formation stands as the basis of, and so pro-
vides the context for, the scholastic and scientific work in which
Thomas is engaged in the Summa.
Valkenberg’sDid Not Our Heart Burn? (1990) is devoted to the
chief of Thomas’s literary sources,sacred scripture,examininghow
it is used in the treatise on Christ’s resurrection. While never sacri-
ficing a senseof the whole, Valkenberg’sclose analysisis exquisite,
indeed numbing, in its detail, yielding rich and informative results.
One conclusion is that Thomas would appear to favor different gos-
pels in different portions of the treatise on Christ. In the more formal
analysis of the first main part of the treatise on Christ in the Tertia
Pars, John predominates, here reflecting, understandably, the im-
portance of that gospel for the determination in the fourth and fifth
centuries of the principal dogmatic data about Christ construed
incarnationally.In the second main part of the treatise, it is the gos-
pel of Matthew that especially informs Thomas’s approach to
Christ. The preference for different gospels at different points in the
treatise would seem to indicate a sensitivity to the differing
christologies embedded in the New Testament canon. But, of
course, Thomas is also insistenton the unity and overall uniformity
of the NT witnesses to Christ: it is the same Christ-God become
human-who is proclaimed throughout the canon, although with
different stresses in its various books.
Of all the church fathers, Augustine holds for Aquinas pride of
place; despite numerous differences in approach and writing style,
Thomas’s theology owes much to Augustine’s, and the work of
Aquinas can legitimatelybe viewed as the continuation and perfec-
tion of the teaching of Augustine. Given the thousands of quotations
of Augustine in the Thomistic corpus, it is perhaps not surprising
that there has been no comprehensive study of the incorporationof
Augustine into Thomistic writing. Nonetheless, in this century
there have been numerous fine studies of the Augustinian contribu-
tion to discrete parts of Aquinas’s system. In this regard, one might
note the influential study of Henri Paissac (195I), which shows that
Thomas’s increasing preference for “Word” as the most suitable
designation for the second person of the Trinity is due to his closer
reading of De Trinitare; similarly Henri Bouillard (1944) made a
compelling case that changes in Thomas’s later discussion of con-
version are a result of his reading in the early 1260s certain late Au-
gustinian writings against the Massilians, writings that had passed
out of general theological circulation after the Carolingian period
but had been rediscovered by Thomas.6
A more recent study, D. Juvenal Merriell’s To the Image ofthe
Trinity, demonstrates well how fruitful the comparison of Thomas
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001 Religious StlldieF4 Review / 37

and Augustine on theological matters can be. Merriell detects sig- be enabled to contribute more fully and positively to contemporary
nificant shifts in Thomas’s presentation of the image of the Trinity theological reflection.
in the human person. From a relatively static notion in the Scripturn,
emphasizingcertain faculties of the higher part of the human person Notes
as the locus of the image, Thomas came to insist in his later writings
that the image is found rather in the use of these faculties, in know- 1. See. for example. the regular reviews of literature on Thomas in the Revue
Thornisre, under the direction of S.-T. Bonino. Fergus Ken; editor of The New
ing and loving, and in knowing and loving God, in particular. It is Blnckfriars. regularly offers insightful reviews of new publications on Thomas.
this capacity and use that render a person capable of the beatific vi- Blackwell Publishers has promised a volume of Kern’s reviews, to appear shortly.
sion; correct use of these natural capacities anticipates, in this life, For bibliographies,see, for example, the International Medieval Biblwgrqphy.
the vision of God, with entry into God‘s own knowing and loving,in 2. The second volume is entitled The Metaphysicsof Creation (Oxford Claren-
the next. The book is praiseworthyon several grounds-Merriell is don Press, 1999).
3. For my own approach to the writing, also working off of Jordan’s article as
sensitive to context, for example, in parsing Thomas’s various well as some comments by Chenu, see ‘The Summa Contra Gentiles Reconsidered:
claims; he is also careful in delineatingthe connectionsamong vari- On the Contribution of the De Trinirate of Hilary of Poitiers,” The Thomist 58
ous aspects of Thomas’s version of Christian truth. But it is his at- (1994): 617-34.
tention to the Augustinian contribution that is especially attractive. 4. This is the second volume of Torrell’s“Initiation”mentionedabove in the text.
An English translation,again to be published by Catholic University of America
In Merriell’sestimation, the main developmentsin Thomas’s ideas Press,is in preparation.
about the image of God in the human person are due to a closer ac- 5. See, for example, Luc-Thomas Somme, F i b Adopt$ de Dieu par Jdsus
quaintance with Augustine’s D e Trinitare. Early in his career, Christ: hafiliation divine par adoption duns la thdologie de saint Thomas d’Aquin
Thomas’s understanding of that work was more or less typically (Paris:Librairie PhilosophiqueJ. Vrin. 1997);G. Nmisse. L.es raisons de Dieu. Ar-
medieval, restricted to those passages in which Augustine contem- gument de convenance et esthdtique theologique selon saint Thomas d’Aquin et
Hans Urs von Balthasar (Fribourg, 1997).
plates psychologicaltriads to model the trinity. But, Merriell postu- 6. In my own God’s Grace and Human Action (1995). I have extended
lates, Thomas eventually turned to a personal reading of the entire Bouillard‘s insight, suggesting how Thomas’s reading of such late Augustinian
De Trinifafe,came to grasp the flow of the argument over all fifteen works as The Predestinationof the Saints (De PraedestinationeSanctorum)and The
books and so came to appreciate how significant for Augustine the G$ of Perseverance(De Dono Perseverantiae) led to modificationsof his teaching
on merit, in particular with regard to perseverance in the state of grace.
generative acts of knowing and loving are, both for glimpsing the
divine reality and for depicting the image of the triune God in the
human person. The recasting, in his later writings, of Thomas’sown References
teaching about the image in the person (and of the trinity as well) is BOUILLARD,
HENRI
thus Augustinian in inspiration.Merriell’s book is rich and provoc- 1944 Conversion et Grace chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin.Aubier.
ative, showing how importantit is to attend to Thomas’splace in the
overall Augustinian tradition; it would be wise to follow this model CORBIN,MICHEL
in other areas of Thomistic discourse. 1974 Le Chemin de la Thdologie chez Thomas d’Aquin.
As this review has indicated, interesting work continues to be Beauchesne.
done on Aquinas, work that is historically astute and sensitive to the GAUTHIER,
RENE-ANTOINE
distinctivecomposition of his theology. Becauseof the effortsof his 1993 Somme Contre Les Gentils: Introduction. Editions
more recent students, we are well situated to appreciate Thomas’s Universitaires.
theological genius. Yet, as is more and more the case for historical JORDAN, MARK
theologians, there can be considerable frustration among students 1986 “The Protreptic Structure of the Summa contra Gentiles.”
of Thomas. One might legitimately wonder about the overall effec- The Thomist 50, 173-209.
tiveness of this research, and ask whether this work will succeed in
NORMAN,
KRETZMANN, AND ELEONORE STUMP(EDs.)
reachingthose outside of the ever-contractingcircle of specialists in 1993 The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. Cambridge Uni-
medieval theology and culture. There is, it appears, an increasing versity Press.
disconnect between (some) working theologians and the preceding
tradition. In some quarters, it is not unusual to write theology MACINTYRE,
ALASDAIR C.
self-consciously out of one’s particular social and historical loca- 199Oa First Principles, Final Ends, and ContemporaryPhilo-
tion, to privilege the “experience” that one’s own historicity ac- sophical Issues. Marquette University Press.
199Ob Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry. University of No-
cords, and, accordingly,to downplay a relation to what has gone be- tre Dame Press.
fore, to earlier historical expressions of the religion. From this
perspective, there is little if any need to engage the tradition, no mat- O’MEARA,THOMAS F.
ter how well executed and internally persuasive studies of the tradi- 1997 Thomas Aquinas Theologian. University of Notre Dame
tion may be. The past is, at bottom, irrelevant to the present life and Press.
thought of the believing community. For their part, historians of 0 ROURKE,FRAN
theology, including scholarsof Aquinas, implicitlyassume the con- 1992 Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas. E.J.
tinuing meaningfulnessof the Christian past, including the work of Brill.
the leading Christianintellectuals.But, in the currentlyevolving en- PAISSAC,HENIU
vironment, this can no longer be taken for granted. The case for the 1951 Thdologie du Verbe: Saint Augustin et Saint Thomas.
abiding value of Aquinas and other “classical” figures needs to be hitions du Cerf.
made anew by historians, and made in a much more overt and ag-
PESCH.OTTOHERMANN
gressive way. Only then, perhaps, will Aquinas, with his distinctive 1988 Thomas von Aquin: Creme und G&se minelalterlicher
manner of proceeding theologically in the service of God‘s Word, Theologie. Mainz: Matthias-GrUnewald-Verlag.
38 / Religious Studies Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

TORRELL.
JEAN-PIERRE
1993,1996 ET Initiation a saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et
son oeuvre. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires. English
translation by Robert Royal, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Vol-
ume I : The Person and His Work. Catholic University of
America Press.
WAWRYKOW,
JOSEPH
1995 God’sGrace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theol-
ogy of ThomasAquinas. University of Notre Dame Press.
JAMES A.
WEISHEIPL,
1983 Friar Thomas dxquino: His Lfe, Thought and Works.
Catholic University of America Press.
Volume a7 Number 1 / January 2001
PILGRIMAGE AS A BOUNDED ENTITY:
A REVIEW ESSAY
CONTESTING THE SACRED: THE ANTHROPOLOGY
OF CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE
Edited by John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow
London: Routledge, 1991
Pp. xii + 158. N.p.
PILGRIMAGE: PAST AND PRESENT IN THE WORLD
RELIGIONS
By Simon Coleman and John Elsner
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995
Pp. 240. Cloth, $29.95; paper, $20.50.
THE ARCHETYPE OF PILGRIMAGE: OUTER ACTION
WITHINNERMEANING
By Jean Dalby Clift and Wallace B. Clift
New York: Paulist Press, 1996
Pp. vii + 182. N.p.
IN A DIFFERENT PLACE: PILGRIMAGE,GENDER,
POLITICS AT A GREEK ISLAND SHRINE
By Jill Dubisch
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995
Pp. xiv + 311. Cloth, $52.50; paper, $18.95.
PILGRIM STORIES: ON AND OFF’THE ROAD TO
SANTIAGO
By Nancy Louise Frey
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998
Pp. xiii + 313. Cloth, $45.00, paper, $17.95.
Reviewer: J. E. Llewellyn
Southwest Missouri State university
SpringFeld, Missouri 65804
A conferenceat the Roehampton Instituteof Higher Education
in Britain in 1988 has proved to be a watershed in pilgrimage
studies. This gathering saw a split between the anthropolo-
gists, on the one hand, and “the historians, geographers, religious
functionariesand (in large part) theologians,” on the other. It was
apparently the “deconstructiveimpetus” of the anthropologiststhat
set them against the other scholars of pilgrimage, leading to the “re-
fusal of the anthropologiststo discuss pilgrimage as a bounded en-
tity.’’ One of the nonanthropologistsgave evidenceof his frustration
by expressing relief after the departure of “the most vocal contin-
gent” of the deconstructionists: “now that the anthropologists are
gone we can get down to talking about pilgrimage” (Bowman 1988,
20).
On the basis of Glenn Bowman’s account, it is hard to say just
what was at stake in this argument over pilgrimage as a “bounded
entity.” It could be that the anthropologists insisted that there is no
such thing as pilgrimage “out there” among the phenomena of the
world‘s religions. Or it could be that the anthropologistsargued that
“pilgrimage”is useless as an analytic category,because its bound-
aries have not been spelled out with sufficient rigor. Obviously, if
there is no pilgrimage,or if it makes no sense to talk about pilgrim-
age, then those in pilgrimage studies will have to close up shop.
Thus, the argument is critical to the field. The purpose of this essay
is to review five books on pilgrimage that have appeared since the
Religious Silldies Bevlew / 39
1988 conference. One is a collection of some of the papers pre-
sented at that conference.Three others refer back to that book or to
the conference itself, which indicates the importance of the argu-
ment that broke out there. Although I will provide a summary of
each of the five books,my primary aim is to cast somelight on what
each of them has to say about this argumentconcerning“pilgrimage
as a bounded entity.’’
Contesting the Sacred:
The Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage
This book is made up of an introduction by editors John Eade and
Michael J. Sallnow and seven essays by six different authors. The
essays are based on presentations at the 1988 conference, but the
book is more limited than that gathering in three significant ways.
First, although the conference included other religious traditions,
Contesting the Sacred is about Christian pilgrimagesonly. Three of
the essays are about European pilgrimages (two of them on
Lourdes),and one concerns South America. There are only two es-
says about Asia, one on Jerusalem and one set in Sri Lanka. k sec-
ond limitationof the book is that, although various disciplineswere
represented at the conference, all the essays collected here are an-
thropological,as the subtitleindicates. Yet the most significantlim-
itation of the book is that as it includes only anthropologistsit repre-
sents the conference’s deconstructionistcamp exclusively.
On the first page of their introduction,the editors make bold to
say that their goal is “to set a new agenda for the study of pilgrim-
age” (1). Their new agenda consists of “a recognition that pilgrim-
age is above all an arena for competing religious and secular dis-
courses, for both the official co-optation and the non-official
recovery of religious meanings, for conflict between orthodoxies,
sects, and confessional groups, for drives toward consensus and
communitas,and for countermovementstowards separatenessand
division”(2). This manifesto makes a gesture in the direction of the
old agenda for the study of pilgrimage,that of Victor Turner, which
Eade and Sallnow seek to replace. In their influentialbook Image
and Pilgrimage in Chrisrian Culture (1978), Victor and Edith
Turner argue that pilgrimage is characterized by an experience of
communitas,which they define as a “relationalquality of full unme-
diated communication,even communion,between definite and de-
terminate identities, which arises spontaneously in all kinds of
groups, situations, and circumstances”(250). This abstract defini-
tion takes on life in the Turners’ descriptions of the union experi-
enced by pilgrims. About the French Marian shrine of Lourdes, for
example, they write:
In Lourdes there is a sense of living communitas, whether in the
great singing processions by torchlight or in the agreeable little cafes
of the back streets, where tourists and pilgrims gaily sip their wine
and coffee. Something of Bernadette has tinctured the entire social
milieu- cheerful simplicity, a great depth of communion (230).
It is the contention of Eade and Sallnow that pilgrimage centers are
sites not only of unification but also of divisiveness-sites of
contestation,hence the title of their book.
The individual essays in Contesting the Sacred do little to ad-
vance the theoretical argument made in the introduction. They are
intended to instantiate the theory, rather than to elaborate upon it.
Yet it might be worthwhile to take a detour through one of those es-
says to see more clearly the alternative vision of pilgrimage pro-
posed here. Christopher McKevitt’s “San Giovanni Rotondo and
the Shrine of Padre Pio” highlights a division between locals and
40 / Religious studies Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

outsiders in devotion to this twentiethcentury Italian stigmatic, the At the beginning, Coleman and Elsner describe some of the ele-
latter worshipping him as a saint, the formerrespecting him for what ments of pilgrimage without providing a very clear or rigorousdefi-
he did to revitalize the economy of their poverty-stricken town. nition of the term. This problem becomes critical at the end of Pil-
Here the meaning of the saint’s life is the subject of disagreement grimuge, when the authors take issue with Conresting the Sacred,
among those who celebrate his accomplishments, with one of the noting that book’s critique and then trying to restore pilgrimage as
factions bringing to the table considerations that are explicitly eco- an analytical category. Coleman and Elsner write that
nomic and political. This is the brave new pilgrimage of Contesring the emphasis on the idea of pilgrimage sites being void of intrinsic
the Sacred. meaning does tend to ignore the considerablestructuralsimilarities
Eade and Sallnow are to be commendedfor their frank acknowl- in pilgrimage practices within and between traditions. There are in-
edgment that this reinterpretation threatens the differentiating fea- deed parallels in behaviourto be found across time and culture, even
ture of pilgrimage. If one finds the same kind of competition for if the implicationsand meaningsof such behaviour vary enormously
money and power and status at pilgrimage centers that one finds at (202, italics in the original).
political and economic centers, then how is one to distinguish the These authors adopt the suggestion in Contesting the Sacred that
former?As a consequenceof their new agenda for pilgrimage stud- pilgrimagescan be analyzed according to the “co-ordinates”of per-
ies, “the theoretical discussion about pilgrimage becomes more di- sons, texts, and places, to which they add “movement” (202,205).
versified and discrepant, being less concerned to match empirical Then they discuss a number of interesting examples of the ways that
instances with a preconceived ideal-whether analytically or theo- persons, texts, places, and movements “interact” in pilgrimage,
retically inspired-than to deconstruct the very category of ‘pil- such as how the pilgrimage to Mecca is related to what the Qur’an
grimage’ into historically and culturally specific behaviours and has to say about that city, or how medieval devotional texts pro-
meanings” (3). The language that the editors use implies a certain vided a charter for the veneration of the remains of St. Cuthbert at
emancipatorythrust to this exercise as the “essential heterogeneity Durham Cathedral by later pilgrims. As these stories unfold,
of the pilgrimage process” is saved from being “marginalized or Coleman and Elsner demonstrate erudition of impressiverange, but
suppressed” as it was in “the earlier, deterministic models” (2-3). the reader is left with more of a reprise of motifs than with any kind
W e and Sallnow insist that T h e thrust of our analytic endeavour of analytically useful articulation of the “structure” of pilgrimage.
should not be towards the formulation of ever more inclusive, and The section in which Coleman and Elsner hint at a structure to
consequently more vacuous, generalizations, but instead towards pilgrimage is followed by the final section, “Pilgrimage in a ‘Secu-
the examination of the specific peculiarities of its construction in lar’ Age.” The lack of any clear “structure” to pilgrimage in this
each instance” (9).They seem to acknowledge,however, that there book becomes painfully obvious here. Most of the section is dedi-
is a danger in this focus on specifics at the cost of generalizations: cated to describing the modern museum as a “conventional goal for
“We suggest that the triad of ‘person,’ ‘place,’and ‘text’ might pro- the secular pilgrim” (216), introducing this theme with a few exam-
vide the co-ordinates for this task as far as Christian pilgrimage is ples of how museums are much like the shrines in pilgrimage cen-
concerned, and perhaps for pilgrimage in other scripturally based ters. The British Museum is designed to resemble a Greek temple,
religious traditions as well” (9). The authors seem to be recom- for instance. The glass cases in museums look like reliquaries. The
mending a new kind of analysis, in which comparison is possible museum’s architecture “proclaims” its special purpose, just as the
not because of ever more vacuous generalizations,but through the architecture of churches communicates their purpose. Although
use of a common set of coordinates.Yet I do not see, from the argu- Coleman and Elsner do point up some interesting similarities be-
ment in the introduction or from the evidence in the other essays, tween museums and churches, it is noteworthy that none are sug-
what good comes from this shift from the narrative to the carto- gested in the previous sections of their book. A clearly defined
graphic. “structure”to pilgrimage could have proven a useful analytical tool
The introductory essay of Contesring rhe Sacred has been influ- as Coleman and Elsner consider new incarnations of pilgrimage in
ential, and the other essays contain interesting material as well. The themodern world, but they seem not to have actuallydefined one.
book is certainlyconvincingthat pilgrimage centers are not just set- Coleman and Elsner accuse Contesting the Sacred of having
tings for communitas lovefests and that many other interests im- emptied “pilgrimage”of any analytical value, since pilgrimage cen-
pinge on them. Yet once they have exposed the inadequacy of the ters becomejust another site for the kind of ideological struggle that
old Turnerian differentia, Eade and Sallnow do not do a very com- takes place everywhere all the time. On this point I agree with them.
pellingjob of showing how pilgrimage as an analytic category can Yet their attempt to reconstruct pilgrimage is not very satisfying.
be reconstructed. What distinguishesthe pilgrim’sdestination from other centers, say
of political or economic activity?The obvious answer is that places
Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions of pilgrimage are sacred centers. While people go to market to buy
and sell goods, they go to pilgrimage centers to encounter the sa-
Simon Coleman and John Elsner present a more traditional survey cred. This is certainly an answer that Coleman and Elsner would
of pilgrimage in the world religions, with separate chapters on the find appealing, I think. On the very first page of Pilgrimage, the
“Classical World,” Judaism, Islam, early Christianity, medieval word “sacred” appears no fewer than six times, often in sentences
and modem Christianity, “Indian Religions,” and Buddhism. Pil- that would be equally clear without it (6). These authors are evi-
grimage is richly illustrated with photographs from around the dently working to get the reader to invest in the notion that a pil-
world and is worth a perusal for the pictures alone. It is no surprise grimageis a sacredjourney. Yet sincethe “sacred” itself is never de-
that one of the authors is an art historian. Given these strengths, this fined, its invocationis not much help in specifyingthe boundariesof
book might be a logical place for students and general readers to be- pilgrimage, that is, unless what is meant by “sacred” is self-evident.
gin the study of pilgrimage. Nevertheless, there is a bit too much (For a critique of the self-evident sacred, see McCutcheon 1997.)
show and not enough tell; the book is theoretically weak.
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2 0 1 Religious Studies Review / 41

BeforeIbegan work on this review, I intended it to be an essay on pilgrimage as a motif in psychotherapeutic practice: “Using the
comparativebooks about pilgrimage. Yet I soon discovered that I evocative material from pilgrimages in a retreat or workshop set-
had to abandon this rubric, as Coleman and Elsner’s book was the ting, we have found that people can even have transformativeimag-
only recent one that I could find to fit it. As a survey of pilgrimagein ined journeys, which they journal, and these journeys can prove to
the world religions, it will undoubtedly prove useful. The authors be very healing, especially in the group setting of quiet reflection”
take note of the contemporary controversy that became my new or- (153). For the Clifts there is no difference between real and imag-
ganizing rubric (the problem of “pilgrimage as a bounded entity”) ined journeys, because their emphasis is upon a kind of
and come down on the side that insists there is such a thing as pil- transformativeexperience as apart of what Jung called “the individ-
grimage, but I am afraid they fail to spell out what pilgrimage is. uation process.” As long as progress toward individuationis made,
it matters little whether that progress occurs because of an actual
The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action and Inner Meaning journey or a dream about a journey or a myth about a journey.
For the Clifts, pilgrimage is a bounded entity, but it is bounded
In a sense, the book on pilgrimage by Jean Dalby Clift and Wallace by the terms of Jungian psychology. Here pilgrimages do not shade
B. Clift does not belong in this review, since the authors do not take off into otherjourneys,which are taken to gain money,power, or so-
note of the controversy that began with the 1988 conference, cial status, as in Contesting rhe Sacred. The Clifts disparage those
Rather, the idea of pilgrimage as a locus of cornmunitas is some- who undertake a pilgrimagejust “to be among the privileged” (62),
thing that they seem to take for granted, apparently unaware that a apparentlyregarding such power trips as less than true pilgrimages.
sort of paradigm shift has taken place (13). To that extent, The Ar- Yet in The Archetype of Pilgrimage the practice of journeying to a
chetype of Pilgrimage seems a throwback to the previous genera- pilgrimage center does get mixed up with dreams, myths, and other
tion of pilgrimagestudies, when the spirit of Victor Turner was reg- motifs. For this reason, I doubt that the Clifts’ approach will prove
nant. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to include the Clifts’ book in useful to future students of pilgrimage. Yet it is instructiveto reflect
this essay, since it adds an important element to the analysis of pil- upon, since it seeks to define the boundaries of pilgrimage in a
grimage. Other books reviewed here sometimes indicate that pil- rather different way from the other authors under review-not ac-
grimage centers are places where “transformation”takes place, but cording to what pilgrims do, but according to what pilgrimage
just what that means is generally left a bit vague. (See, for example, means.
Dubisch, 35, and Frey, 27.) For the Clifts, transformationis at the
heart of pilgrimage, and they have something quite concrete and I na DlfSerent Place:
specific in mind. Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine
The Clifts’ thesis is that the pilgrimage is an archetype in a Jung-
ian sense(2). Early on the authors insist that this is why pilgrimages Anthropologists touched off the argument in pilgrimage studies in
everywhere are similar: “As we explored the phenomenon of pil- 1988 that opened this review, so it seems fitting to end with two re-
grimage and found it to be so universal, both historically and geo- cent books by anthropologists about specific pilgrimages. Jill
graphically,and its effects to be so recognizable, we concluded that Dubisch’s In a Different Place is a fine example of contemporary
this particular expression of the human spirit could be described as ethnography, analyzing the pilgrimage to the Greek Orthodox
archetypal” (9-10). Eventually the book goes on to spell out six Church of the Annunciation on the Greek island of Tinos. Dubisch
“characteristics” of pilgrimage: “Difficulty of Access,” “Special reflects current anthropological theorizing about gender as she con-
Clothing,” “Water Rituals,” “Community on the Pilgrim’s Way,” vincingly refutes notions of women’s marginality to the public
“Leaving Something Behind,” and “Taking Something Home” world in “Mediterranean anthropology” (193-228). Woven into
(66-81). If readers suspect that it might be a bit difficult to analyze this argument are interesting reflections on traditionalgenderbiases
various pilgrimages according to this rather heterogeneous and in the discipline of anthropology and on Dubisch’s own experience
lengthy list, then they should consider the Clifts’ earlier discussion as a woman practicing in that discipline. Although the author stops
of the reasons people go on pilgrimage, which runs to fifteen items, short of calling In a Different Place a “postmodern ethnography”
including ‘To express love of God” (number six) but also “To make (256), it is postmodern in its critical reflection on what anthmjmlo-
a vacation more interesting” (number twelve) (42-62). The discus- gists do, following the reflexive trend especially in its
sion of the fifteen reasons for undertaking pilgrimages and the six self-consciousnessabout the problematics of anthropologicalwrit-
characteristics of pilgrimage is illustrated with tales from the his- ing (49-75).
tory of religions. Some of the Clifts’ illustrations are literary rather One of the most compelling aspects of Dubisch’s account of the
than historical, as, for example, when the seventh motivation for pilgrimage to Tinos is her analysis of the role that politics (the third
pilgrimage, “To answer a sense of inner call to go,” is exemplified term of her subtitle) has played at the shrine. The church was con-
by Abraham, Moses, the Magi, and a knight of the Round Table structed after an elderly nun had a vision of Mary,the mother of
(52). God,in 1822. This was just a year after the struggle for Greek inde-
By the end of The Archetype ofpilgrimage, it is even clearer that pendence began, a struggle sometimes said to have started on
the authors are not interested exclusively in historical journeys. March 25, the date of the feast of the Annunciation, which is now
Take the chapter on “Pilgrimage Motifs in Dreams,” for example celebrated as Greek Independence Day. Since its founding, the
(130-47). Here the Clifts recount stories about dreams involving Church of the Annunciation has often been treated as a national
journeys to pilgrimage centers that dreamers have actually taken, shrine, a status that has been reinforced from time to time by histori-
journeysto actual pilgrimagecenters that the dreamer has never vis- cal events. For example, in the church there is a shrine to the Elli, a
ited, and journeys to imagined pilgrimage centers that do not even Greek ship sunk by an Italian submarine in Tinos’s harbor in 1940,
exist. Apparently, from the Clifts’ perspective, there are no differ- the event that drew Greece into World War II(244). August 15 is
ences among these various trips. The Clifts go on to recommend celebrated by the Greek government as the Day of Military
4-2/ Religious Studies Review
Strength, but this is also the date of the second important festival
day at the Church of the Annunciation,the Day of Dormition.Politi-
cians have exploited the association between this church and
Greece for generations,right down to a visit by the wife of the for-
mer Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou in 1990 (229).
There can be no doubt that Dubisch shares with John Eade and
Michael J. Sallnow the conviction that a pilgrimage center can be a
site where political power is contested. Still, she insists that there is
such a thing as pilgrimage, as distinct from other kinds of activities
that involve competition over money or power. According to I n a
Diferent Place, pilgrimage depends upon two ideas: “1) the associ-
ation created within a particular religious tradition of certain events
and/or sacred figures with a particular field of space, and 2) the no-
tion that the material world can make manifest the invisible spiritual
world at such places” (38). Suffusing Dubisch’s discussion at this
point is the notion of a two-story cosmos. On the ground floor is the
world of ordinary experience; there is another, spiritual world up-
stairs. When she writes of what all the visitors to the shrine at Tinos
have in common, both the locals and those who come from some
distance away, Dubisch concludes: “That common feature is its sa-
credness as a place where the everyday world comes close to,even
touches,the spiritualworld, and where the everyday world is altered
by such an encounter” (37).
Dubisch must take pains to spell out her notion of pilgrimage, in
part because there is no corresponding term in Greek, the native
tongue of most of those who visit Tinos. Rather, in Greek the word,
proskinima, is used for “the set of devotions performed upon enter-
ing a church,” whether that church is a hundred miles away or
around the comer (78). Early on Dubisch writes about this problem
as follows:
In many of the religions in which pilgrimage is found, individual
worshipersmay make a variety of visits to nearby sacred places, vis-
its that are not necessarily viewed as pilgrimage, nor as in any way
“extraordinary.”In this respect pilgrimage forms a continuum with
other sorts of religious activity involving special places, from a brief
visit made by an individual to a local church or tomb or other sacred
spot, to more difficult journeys to distant places drawing thousands
of worshipersevery year. The idea of journey, however, remains ba-
sic to pilgrimage and sets it apart from other visits to sacred places
(36).
Clearly it is not an encounter with “the sacred” that distinguishes
pilgrimagefor Dubisch, since such encountersmay occur on a fairly
routine basis at a nearby church. Rather, what distinguishes pil-
grimage is a “journey,” by which I take Dubisch to mean travel to
someplace fairly far away from home. Dubisch also implies that a
pilgrimage should be something extraordinary, while visits to a lo-
cal shrine are commonplace. Also, pilgrimage centers are distin-
guished from local shrines because they draw “thousands of wor-
shipers every year,” while a merely local shrine would presumably
attract fewer “worshippers.” At first I found this passage confusing,
since it seemed to argue both that pilgrimage is distinctiveand that it
is just part of a continuum of religious practices. Now I see that the
distinction between visits to local shrines and pilgrimages can be
expressed in terms of a series of binary oppositions, as follows:
local shrines : pilgrimage center
nearby : distant
commonplace : extraordinary
attracting few : attracting thousands
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
Dubisch’s definition of pilgrimage, however, has already been
undermined by an earlier section of her book, “Anthropology as Pil-
grimage.” Here she suggests that pilgrimage is an apt “analogy” for
anthropological fieldwork: “First, anthropology, like pilgrimage,
obviously involves a journey” (33). So far, so good, in terms of our
definition of pilgrimage, but then Dubisch continues, “Like the pil-
grim, the anthropologist must leave home and travel to a special
place, a place with transformative powers, a place that can provide
the pilgridanthropologist with answers to prayers/questions.In the
‘field’the anthropologist is in a liminal state, just as the pilgrim is”
(33). Now, there is nothing about “transformative powers” in
Dubisch’s definition of pilgrimage, or s3answerSo prayers” or
liminality, for that matter. Perhaps all of this is implied by her con-
tention that pilgrimage is undertaken to make contact with that
other, sacred world. But since it is not explicitly stated as part of her
definition of pilgrimage, readers might suspect a certain sleight of
hand, in which the random association of elements of pilgrimage
with anthropologicalfieldwork is substituted for rigorousanalysis.
This suspicion is intensified when Dubisch goes on to elaborate
upon the analogy between pilgrimage and anthropological field-
work
“Miracles” may occur in which the veil between self and other, the
profane and the sacred, is rent, and the anthropologist, like the pil-
grim, will return home to bear wimess with tales of these miracles,
recounted to either confirm or shake the faith of those who have re-
mained at home, and perhaps to inspire others to make the sacred
journey as well (33).
An initial reading of this passage might suggest that anthropologists
regularly witness miracles during their fieldwork, but there is no in-
dication that Dubisch did in Tinos. Or she may mean that anthropol-
ogists meet with their informants’miracles and then recount them to
rapt audiences at home. This is a possible reading of the passage,
since her text does attest to tales of miraculous happenings at the
Churchof the Annunciation.Still, Dubischtakes these stories with a
grain of anthropological skepticism, so I do not think that is the in-
tent in this passage. (The book includes an insightful discussion of
the choices that anthropologistsmake when they re-present their in-
formants’ narratives as history or just stories, 134-55.) Rather, I
think that the author’s point here is that the anthropologist’s en-
counter with the “other” in fieldwork is somehow like the pilgrim’s
encounter with the sacred. Just as pilgrims return home to regale
family and friends with the “extraordinary” experiences of their
journeys, inspiring others to make similar trips, so anthropologists
lecture students about the “extraordinary”experience of fieldwork,
moving some of them to undertake like ventures.
This reading of the passage turns on the two binary oppositions
that it contains:
self: other
sacred : profane.
There is never any serious suggestion in Dubisch’s book that the au-
thor sought or experienced any encounter with the sacred on Tinos
(althoughshe does admit that she sometimesfound herself adopting
the religious practices of her informants willy-nilly, 97-100). So I
take it that the similarity between the pilgrim’s experienceof the sa-
cred and the anthropologist’s experience of the “other” is based on
the kind of transformation that both undergo. This interpretation
suggests that Dubisch is operating with a notion of transformation
that encompasses both her analysis of anthropological fieldwork
and her analysis of the pilgrim’s practice, but she never spells out
Volume $7 Number 1 / January 2001
how that transformation is supposed to operate. On this point, The
Archetype of Pilgrimage is better than In a Direrent Place, even
though it is a much less sophisticated work overall. At least the
Clifts are working with a fairly clear and consistent notion of what
constitutes a transformation.
In an earlier essay about recent books on Hindu pilgrimage, I
took David Haberman to task for seemingly assuming in Journey
through the 7lvelve Forests (1994) that his own experience of pil-
grimage was the same as that of the Krishna devotees of whom he
writes (Llewellyn 1998, 258-61). Dubisch’s book is much more
self-conscious and careful about the analogy between the scholar
and the pilgrim, but I am still unconvinced by her argument. Part of
her point is political-to break down the presumed barrier between
the anthropologist and the “other,” who is placed under the
scholar’s“microscope.”Although I am sympatheticwith this politi-
cal goal, I still think it involves a move that is problematic analyti-
cally, since it seems to me that in Dubisch’s own terms the pilgrim’s
encounter with the sacred is a fundamentallydifferent kind of expe-
rience than the anthropologist’sencounter with subjects of study.
There is a sense in which In a DifferentPlace could be taken as
symptomatic of the kind of split between the anthropologists and
the “historians, geographers, religious functionaries and (in large
part) theologians” that took place at that 1988 British conference,
with Jill Dubisch’s work in the anthropologists’camp. This is ironic
because Dubisch definitely commits herself to the idea that pilgrim-
age is a “bounded entity,” unlike the anthropologists at the confer-
ence (46). Yet her defense of pilgrimage is ultimately based on a no-
tion of the “sacred”that is rather traditional and uncritical. Dubisch
has some very interesting observations on the role of gender in the
pilgrimageto the Church of the Annunciationand on the role of pol-
itics, but she does not offer much of interest about the specifically
religious aspects of the pilgrimage. In a way, In a Direrent Place
makes a greater contribution to ethnography than to pilgrimage
studies.
Pilgrim Stories: On and O f t h e Road to Santiago
Nancy Louise Frey’s book is about the pilgrimage to the shrine of
Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. Despite its remote-
ness (or perhaps in part because of that remoteness), Santiago be-
came one of the most important pilgrimage centers in medieval
Western Christendom, with thousands of devotees walking there
each year from as far away as northern Germany.Later the pilgrim-
age fell on harder times, suffering first from the Reformation’scri-
tique of the practice and more recently from political instability in
Spain (8-14). Yet the late twentieth century has seen a remarkable
increase in the popularity of Santiago, with more than twenty thou-
sand making the journey in 1996, a figure that does not include
those who came by car or bus (29).
Frey notes that a surprisingconstellation of interests converge in
the “reanimation” of this pilgrimage. The government of Spain un-
der Franco promoted the pilgrimage as part of its ideological com-
mitment to a kind of “National Catholicism.” Local governmental
units hoped to attract federal financial support and the money of the
pilgrims to spur economic development. The Roman Catholic
Churchpromulgated the pilgrimage,especially as a way to draw the
younger generation back to the church. Santiago also has its New
Age adherents, who have been particularly inspired by the writings
of a Brazilian, Paulo Coelho. The increasing popularity of
long-distancehiking and bicycling have contributed to Santiago’s
Religious Studies Review / 48
revival; many “pilgrims” acknowledge that they come only to chal-
lenge the limits of their enduranceor to communewith nature. In the
past decade or two, the pilgrimage to Santiago has been facilitated
for non-Spaniards by the increasing ease of travel throughout the
European Union (237-54).
There can be no doubt that Frey tells a fascinating and important
tale in Pilgrim Stories. Unfortunately, what she makes of that tale
could be more interesting. In this sense, there is quite a contrast be-
tween Pilgrim Stories and In a Direrent Place. While Dubisch’s
book is informed by contemporary theoreticaldebatesin anthropol-
ogy, Frey’s is amuch more traditional accountof apilgrimage.Frey
does note that hers is an unusual ethnography geographically, in
that she attempted to collect data along the pilgrims’ trail across
northern Spain and beyond. Yet her remarkable subject matter does
not provoke her to any especially telling insights. It is instructive
that Frey’s discussionof the problem of doing fieldworkover such a
large area is consigned to an appendix. She seems to take the posi-
tion, a quite untenable one according to many contemporary theo-
rists, that the ethnography can speak for itself, while the role of the
ethnographer in constructing it is of only marginal significance. At
variouspoints in Pilgrim Stories, the narrator’sexperience is woven
into the tale. The most striking example is when Frey interrupts her
discussion of the transformations that the pilgrims to Santiago un-
dergo and confesses that she went back home from the pilgrimageto
divorce her spouse (195). Yet these occasional authorial intrusions
do not add up to any very substantial account of the role of this eth-
nographer.In the end, this is no different from Malinowski’sadmit-
ting that he would bribe informants with “a small bit of tobacco” to
undertake some errand at night in order to discover if they were
afraid of the dark (1948, 152).
In general, Frey’s story of Santiago is organized temporally,
with pilgrims taking leave of their homes in chapter two, traveling
westward across northern Spain until they arrive at the Cathedral of
St. James in chapter six, and then returning home in chapter eight
(with a side trip to the western coast of Spain described in chapter
seven). Frey notes several distinctions that divide these travelers.
Most important is the separationof pilgrims who walk and bike (and
a few who come on horseback) from those who drive. The former
disparage the pilgrimage of the latter as “inauthentic” (18). Even
among the “nonmotorized”pilgrims, there is apparently some ten-
sion between the hikers, who trudge along contemplatively,and the
bikers who whiz by them (125-36).
Interestingly, the distinction between religious pilgrims and
those not motivated by religion is not very significant to the travel-
ers themselves,at least not according to Frey’s account. She writes:
The Camino can be (among many other things) a union with nature,
a vacation, an escape from the drudgery of the everyday, a spiritual
path to the self and humankind, a social reunion, or personal testing
ground. It is “done” and “made” as a pilgrimage. but what does that
mean now? The glue that holds these disparate elements together
seems to be the shared journey, the Camino de Santiago (4-5).
Presumably Frey is not referring here to the actual place, since the
place includesmany people not on pilgrirnage-from truckers driv-
ing to market to restaurateurs sweeping floors. Rather, it seems that
Frey is speakingof a common experiencethat all the differentkinds
of pilgrims have on the road. This understanding may provide at
least a partial justification for the way in which Frey has organized
her narrative. Her account is a kind of synthetic one, in which cer-
tain kinds of experiences are taken to be at least normal, if not nor-
mative, at different points on the journey. For example, early in the

narrative, Frey writes, “Before getting to the starting point pilgrims
may feel nervous or fearful or even begin to doubt the journey:
What am I doing here? Can I make it physically? Was this just a
foolish whim?” (52). Frey’s use of the word “may” indicates that
there are other pilgrims who do not have such thoughts, but their at-
titude is not described. I hasten to add that there are points in Pilgrim
Srories when the author does note varying reactions to a common
experience, but those variations do not interrupt the continuing
movement of the narrative.
I, for one, would like to have learned more about the differing
practices of the several kinds of pilgrims. Presumably the nonreli-
gious hikers spent less time at churches along the way than the de-
vout Catholics. And what exactly were the mysterious alchemical
symbolsthat the New Age pilgrims sought?Where did they look for
them? Did they find them? Were there no disagreements between
the Catholics and the New Agers? There is a sense in which Pilgrim
Stories seems to date from the period before the postmodern turn in
anthropology,I suspect that a researcher with a greater interest in
postmodernism would have produced a more discordant account of
the pilgrimage to Santiago, which would have been a more interest-
ing account, at least by my lights.
At the risk of belaboring the point, let me focus on one specific
problem. In general, Frey writes in very positive terms about the
deep friendshipsthat seem to develop spontaneously among fellow
travelers on the pilgrims’ road. She also notes that these encounters
occasionally blossom into sexual relationships. I wonder about the
effect of these relationships.Frey notes that they occasionallycause
problems for pilgrims when they return to partners back home, but
she does not really provide much evidence of conflict on the road
(1 15-17). Perhaps I have too limited a view of the possibilities that
free love affords, but I presume that along with sexual relationships
on thejourney there must comejealousies, arguments, and acrimo-
nious breakups. If that is the case, it is not allowed to mar the relative
communitasthat is conjured up by Pilgrim Stories.
I can point to nothing specific in Pilgrim Sforiesthat would lead
to the conclusion that Frey does not vote for “pilgrimage as a
bounded entity.” Her frequent use of the word “pilgrimage”implies
that she accepts that there is such a thing; however, the boundaries
of this bounded entity are drawn rather peculiarly. One of the char-
acteristics distinguishinga pilgrimage in In a Different Place is that
it is a journey undertaken to encounter the sacred, but this purpose
does not appear to define the pilgrims on the road to Compostela,
since both the religious and the nonreligious are accorded the pil-
grim label. Rather, as I have already noted, the defining feature of
the pilgrim is the mode of travel: “Tourists, understood to be frivo-
lous, superficial people, travel en masse by bus, car, or plane. Pil-
grims, understood to be genuine, authentic, serious people, walk
and cycle” (27). It would be easy to dismiss this way of dividing up
the world-especially this way of mixing up the religious and the
nonreligious-by claiming that it is specifically modem, with this
pilgrimageattracting exerciseenthusiasts and New Agers for whom
there is no analogy in earlier periods of history. Yet Frey writes that
Santiago was frequented by the nonreligious as well as the religious
in the Middle Ages as well. About the earlier period she writes:
The medieval pilgrims, like their contemporary counterparts, went
to Santiago for a variety of motives, which were subject to change
over time. Though it is hard to discern motivation across the centu-
ries among the illiteratemajority, devotion to SaintJames (including
prayer and hope for future health and betterment) was probably the
most prevalent motive. Penitents were sent to atone for minor sins
Volume 27 Number 1 / January WO1
and serious crimes. Civil sanctions could also be paid through the
journey. And some pilgrims went for the adventure,out of curiosity,
or to free themselves from rigid social norms. Others capitalized on
the economic benefits to be gained from the pilgrimage’s growing
status as a well-traveled road (14).
So for Frey an encounterwith the sacred is not the characteristicfea-
ture of pilgrimage. On the contrary, this pilgrimage has always in-
volved both the nonreligiousand the religious. What united the me-
dieval pilgrimsdevotees of St. James, penitents, adventurers,and
profiteers? And what unites the modem pilgrims-Catholics, New
Agers, nature-lovers, and health nuts? Frey’s answer is the experi-
ence of the pilgrimage itself.
It is hard to know if this definition can be extended to other pil-
grimages. Frey herself notes that the faithful generally do not walk
to modem pilgrimage centers such as Lourdes and Fatima (7). Even
if they did, their experiences on the road would presumably be dif-
ferent, since, according to Frey’s account at least, an important ele-
ment of the Santiagojourney is the encounter with the varied ter-
rain, expressed, for example, through feelings of depression or
exhilaration when traversing the featureless mesera in the middle
part of northern Spain (72-81). It should be clear by now that I am
skeptical whether there really is such a thing as a common experi-
ence among the pilgrims of Compostela, but if there is, I doubt it
would be the same as the experience of travelers elsewhere. Thus,
there is no such thing as pilgrimage, only pilgrimages, because the
experiencesof travelers to different pilgrimage sites are themselves
Varied.
The previous paragraph is based largely on speculation, rather
than on anything that Frey herself wrote in Pilgrim Stories. This is
partly because Frey is writing only about the road to Santiago, not
producing a comparative work, so she cannot be held responsible
for having said anything one way or the other about pilgrimage in
general. But another reason why I venture to shape Frey’s account
into an argument is because she has not done so herself. The reader
of Pilgrim Stories is taken on a trip that is often diverting but never
really goes anyplace in analytic terms. Again, that is no surprise
given the author’s approach. If what is characteristicof Santiago is a
certain kind of experience, perhaps that cannot really be analyzed
but only evoked.
Points of Departure
I feel that I owe the readers who have undertaken this long journey
with me through recent books on pilgrimage some accounting of
what I think we have learned. The ftrst and most obvious point is
that the rumors of Victor Turner’s death are most definitely not ex-
aggerated.Most of the authors reviewed here present evidence that,
although there may be moments when social barriers seem to break
down on pilgrimage, there are also times when there is plenty of so-
cial conflict. If pilgrimages could once have been taken as lovefests
in which communitashappens, they can no longer. A second and re-
lated point is that people do not go on pilgrimage only for religious
reasons. Rather, pilgrimage centers are places people go to make
money, to score points against their political adversaries,to gain so-
cial status, and even to have fun. In fact, these seemingly inconsis-
tent goals probably mingle in the minds of virtually every pilgrim,
with even the most devout hoping to gain greater respect in their lo-
cal church in return for the effort exerted in traveling to Knock or
Medjugorje.
Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001
Does this mean that pilgrimage cannot be taken as a “bounded
entity,” that pilgrimage centers cannot be distinguished from the
other places people go for money or power or status, from market-
places or capitals?I suppose that Eade and Sallnow’sanswer to that
question would be, yes, pilgrimage is not a bounded entity.
Coleman and Elsner would hold for a distinct pilgrimage, based on
its unique structure, but then they fail to articulate what that struc-
ture is. The Clifts define pilgrimage within the context of a certain
Jungian understandingof experience,which has its own logic, but is
not particularlyuseful for the scholar unwilling to keep the Jungian
bath water along with the pilgrimage baby. In the end, I think that
Frey provides support for the idea that each pilgrimage is bounded
by a certain experience,but that there is no such thing as pilgrimage
per se, since the experience of every journey is different.
In many ways, I think that the most substantial book reviewed in
this essay is In a Diferent Place, and it provides the most straight-
forward answer to the question. While acknowledgingthat politics
is woven into the history of the Church of the Annunciation,
Dubisch also makes an argument for distinguishing a pilgrimage
from a business trip or campaign stop. Unlike those otherjourneys,
a pilgrimage is undertaken in order to encounter another world, the
world of the sacred. Yet, even for Dubisch, this is not enough to dif-
ferentiatepilgrimage, since people go to the church around the cor-
ner in order to commune with the sacred all the time, and she would
like to distinguish these visits from the more difficult, distant, and
significant journeys that she calls pilgrimage.
The general reader might assume that an encounter with the sa-
cred would be a rare and transformative experience; Dubisch pro-
vides evidence that this is not the case among the Greek Orthodox.
But this fact itself undermines the distinction that she makes be-
tween the profane and the sacred, at least to a certain extent, since
points of contact between the two are so common that it makes little
sense to speak of the realm of the sacred as a different “world” as
Dubisch does (38). Human behavior is a messy business in which
acts tend to be prompted by more than one motivating factor. I think
it makes sense for certain purposes to analyze behavior in terms of
religion, and so I would like to cast my vote for pilgrimage as a
“bounded entity.” Yet I mean that analytically more than metaphys-
ically. If pilgrimageis defined as ajourney undertaken to make con-
tact with the sacred, it makes more sense to talk about such a thing
than to look for it, because bumping into the sacred is so common in
many traditions that it is difficult to separate that experience from
everything else and because every journey may be motivated by
more than just a desire to encounter the sacred.
Given the reflexive turn in much recent scholarly writing, in-
cluding some of the books under review, I hope that the reader will
forgive me a story about an experienceof my own, an experience of
a sort of pilgrimage. It has struck me that the tidbits of
self-disclosurein books on pilgrimage often involve events that are
awkward. Witness Frey’s post-pilgrimage divorce, already men-
tioned, and Dubisch’s chronic back pain (3). This is also the case for
other books on pilgrimage that I have reviewed elsewhere. In Jour-
ney Through the Twelve Forests (1994), for example, David
Haberman returns frequently to the blisters on his feet that devel-
oped on his Krishna pilgrimage (88 and passim); Ann Gold admits
in her influentialbook, Fruirful Journeys (1988), that the villagers
in Rajasthan found her comically wet behind the ears (13). (Cf.
Llewellyn 1998,252,259.)Consistentwith this trend, my own story
falls into the “Most Embarrassing Moment” category.
Religious Studies Review / 45
I was fortunate to be able to study for a summer in Israel while an
undergraduateat Duke University. One of the more remarkableex-
periences of that trip was a visit to the western wall of the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem, the famed Wailing Wall. I went in the evening
with a group from the Duke program, which included studentsfrom
Jewish and Christian backgrounds. For some of the Jewish students
the visit was a very important and long anticipated event. Some
brought prayers from relatives back in the States to slip into the
cracks between the rocks of the Wall. Although raised a Christian,I
had begun to study Judaism and was moved by the excitementof my
Jewish friends. Throughout the trip, I had a sense that some of the
more devout Christian students were missing the boat when it came
to appreciating Israel as a sacred center. They were trying to con-
struct a kind of mental time machine in which they would be trans-
ported back to the days when Jesus had walked the streets of Jerusa-
lem two millennia ago, but they seemed to me to be ignoring the
very profound religious significance of the modem nation of Israel
for contemporary Judaism.
These meditationscame to a head because of an experiencethat I
had at the Wqiling Wall. As I walked up to the Wall with the other
students, I peeled off from the group, as some of the religious Jews
did. I was uncertain whether I should approach the Wall but was in-
clined to do so. My recollection is that the courtyard directly in front
of the Wall was divided into two unequal parts. On my left there
were more people milling around, as well as a man giving out yar-
mulkes. Wishing to avoid the crowd, and especially the alien head-
gear, I veered to the right side. Then I passed a couple of the women
who were students in my program, and one of them quietly said,
“Jack, this is the women’s side.” Deeply embarrassed, I clambered
back up from the courtyard in front of the Wall to conduct my medi-
tations at a distance.
It could be said that this was no pilgrimage at all, since I had
come to Israel for academiccredit, but I was also driven by religious
motives. This was a profound experience for me, and not just pro-
foundly embarrassing. It prompted me to reflect on exactly who I
was at that place and what I was doing there. There cannot have
been many visitors to the Wall who have been as obtuse as I was,
failing to notice that all the worshipers on one side were men, while
all the worshipers on the other were women. Yet I would hazard a
guess that not all visitors to the Wall have felt at home there. My ex-
perience at the Wall might have been unusual, but I doubt that it is
entirely unique. There have probably been others who found a visit
to the Wall meaningful because it prompted them to reflect on the
ways that they were out of place, but this is obviously not ameaning
that is simply given by the experienceof visiting the Wall. Rather, it
is a meaning derived from the interpretationof the visitor on the ba-
sis of the understanding that he or she brought to the Wall visit.
At least on a descriptive level, I am more comfortable with
Dubisch’sidea that a pilgrimage is ajourney to encounter the sacred
than with her less clearly expressed idea that pilgrimages are “ex-
traordinary”and “transformative”(36,33). Just as people go on pil-
grimages for a variety of motives, so they come away with a variety
of impressions, some profoundly moved and others unimpressed,
depending in part on the ideas and expectations that they brought
with them, This confusion should be part of the study of pilgrimage.
As I said, human behavior is a messy business,and any serious anal-
ysis of pilgrimage must take that into account.’
46 / Religious studies Review Volume 27 Number 1 / January 2001

Notes

1. I presented an earlier version of this paper to the Department of Religious

Studies at SouthwestMissouri State University. Iamgrateful to my colleagues,espe-
cially Stephen Berkwitz. Charles Hedrick, and Russell McCutcheon, for their in-
sightful comments on it.

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