Saturday, February 7, 1998

Religion in the media: a look at recent books and magazines

The Dallas Morning News

BOOKS

"An Introduction to the New Testament," by Raymond E. Brown (Anchor/Doubleday, $42.50). Brown, widely esteemed as the preeminent Catholic Bible scholar in the United States, has a reputation for thoroughness and erudition. His two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John is considered one of the best. Here he sets out to describe, in almost 900 pages, what is in New Testament, from Matthew to Revelation. The first hundred or so pages address preliminaries such as the origin of the New Testament -- how were the first Christians book written and collected? -- and the social world of the first believers. Then he devotes a chapter to each New Testament book, discussing authorship, audience, content and such. Brown's conclusions won't be conservative enough for some readers, or liberal enough for others, but he handles the "on the one hand ... on the other hand" issues with balance. A brief appendix on the "historical Jesus" gets in some nice licks against the Jesus Seminar. --Paul R. Buckley

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"Near Unto God," by Abraham Kuyper (William B. Eerdmans, $14). Not a household name, Abraham Kuyper. He was a theologian. Dutch Reformed. The founder of the Free University in Amsterdam. A newspaper editor. A statesman. "There is not one square inch of the entire creation," he said, "about which Jesus Christ does not cry out, ÔThis is mine! This belongs to me!' " The English translation of Near Unto God, Kuyper's collection of daily meditations, is a century old. This new edition isn't a new translation, but James C. Schaap, a literature professor at Dordt College in Iowa, has updated the language for contemporary readers. There are more than 100 meditations, about a page and a half long, each beginning with a passage of Scripture. --Paul R. Buckley

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MAGAZINES

The American Prospect (January-Februrary) brings morality out of the realm of private belief and into world politics. Jacob Heilbrunn, associate editor of New Republic, says the left has proclaimed a public mea culpa concerning the evil empire, the Soviet Union. The "sixties New Left included revolutionary romantics who were outright apologists for communism," he admits. He challenges conservatives to likewise acknowledge moral laxity toward apartheid. "Apartheid was the first cousin of Nazism," in that "an entire class of people was singled out for persecution and degradation solely on the basis of arbitrary racial categories." --Robert Plocheck

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Psychology Today (February) issues a "Call to Solitude" in the midst of beepers, cell phones and Internet. Author Ester Buchholz discusses how the search for God overlaps the search for solitude. "The book of Genesis lays the foundation," she writes, by establishing a day of rest. "The Shabbat was a time to contemplate one's life and the scriptures. We can do the same." Dr. Buchholz asks, "Are we routinely using the computer and television to find alonetime without really realizing our unfulfilled alone need?" --Robert Plocheck

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The Christian Century (Jan. 21) examines "Life with Alzheimer's" by delving into the "Theology of Body and Soul." Stephen Sapp of the University of Miami says we are more than our memories. He discusses the uniqueness of Christianity among world religions in emphasizing the oneness of body and soul. "Instead of considering the sould (or will or personality) to be the Ôreal' person, and the body to be something almost incidental that the person Ôhas,' it is more accurate according to the biblical understanding to say that human beings are bodies, that they are both animated, Ôensouled' bodies and incarnate, Ôenfleshed' souls." --Robert Plocheck

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REVIEWER'S CHOICE

"Religion and the Decline of Magic," by Keith Thomas (Oxford University Press, $19.95). If you got sick in 17th-century England, you could do worse than visit the village wizard. Going to the doctor might have killed you. A thesis of Thomas' classic book, recently reissued, is that magic is most alluring when normal systems of problem-solving, such as medicine, aren't working.

In medieval times, Christian ritual mostly quenched the yearning for magic. But in 17th-century England, religion became more rational and life didn't get much easier. The result was a proliferation of astrology, palmistry, witchcraft and superstition.

By the end of the century, magic of all kinds declined, according to Thomas, as human beings learned to control their environment. Famine and disease were in remission. Population pressure eased. Agriculture improved. Perhaps the most significant innovations: firefighting and insurance. Insurance let people, in Daniel Defoe's words, fence against all the contingencies of life: "floods by land, storms by sea ... and death itself."

Progress in medicine had been slow. Thomas asserts that magic's decline paved the way for technical progress, not vice versa.

Whatever the order, rationalism and science soon arrived. But why did religion outlive magic as a mass system of belief? Thomas' answer is that religion satisfies more than the primitive need to solve problems beyond our control. Christianity is "a guiding principle, relevant to every aspect of life." As such, it can incorporate or repel superstition, as the age demands.

The ritualism of the Middle Ages gave way to a transitional Protestantism, more rational but full of belief in portents, omens and "special providences." And that system eventually gave way to the Enlightenment view of a God who follows knowable, natural laws. --Michael D. Goldhaber

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(Writers are staff members of The Dallas Morning News. Write to them in care of: the Religion Section, Dallas Morning News, Communications Center, P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265.)

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(c) 1998, The Dallas Morning News.

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