Book Review

Beyond academic boxes

Theology for Pilgrims

These essays offer to incipient as well as accomplished students of theology a paradigm of workmanship and devoted attention to what is real. In essays reminiscent of John Henry Newman, redolent of the intellectually therapeutic strategies of Wittgenstein and reflective of the unyielding attention to particulars characteristic of Donald MacKinnon (Nicholas Lash's  predecessor in the Norris-Hulse chair at Cambridge), Lash follows Aquinas to focus on "God and the things of God", allowing for wide-ranging inquiry.

There is little doubt that 21 years in a Cambridge chair offered a splendid opportunity for the colleagueship and friendship which nourished a desire to understand. Lash mines the collegial environment of Cambridge and is unafraid to cross disciplinary boundaries. A keen appreciation of the role that art and literature play in the quest for understanding, together with an astute use of philosophical strategies, has always marked Lash's work.

These essays span 10 years (1997-2007) and are arranged under four revealing headings: "Thinking of God without losing our way"; "Road-signs: theology and other things we say"; "Road-works: theology and other things we do"; and "The struggle for the Council". Having established the domain proper to theological inquiry in the first part, parts two and three exemplify Aquinas' observation that theology is both a speculative and a practical discipline; while the controlled anguish of part four testifies to Lash's love of the Church. The critiques are hard-hitting; the queries probing and at times relentless; the overall effect suggests a demanding supervisor, wanting to elicit the very best out of his student readers.

Part of the overall strategy must be to resist a priori boxes, labelled with abstract terms like "religion" , "theology" or "philosophy". This is in a medieval spirit of challenging modern bifurcations, only to show how fruitful theological inquiry can be as Lash shows its capacity to illuminate secular domains.

In the work of the great atheists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Lash suggests we pay little attention to what they have to say about "religion" and concentrate, instead, on what they have to say about the things which matter to them most, and on the way in which they say it. He offers a trenchant critique of the way current atheists (like Dawkins) egregiously misconstrue theological discourse. 

While some of these essays are more pointedly argumentative, their collective import parallels Aquinas' "five ways" to show the relevance of revelation by unmasking the pretences of alternative attempts at explanation. In this sense, part one offers a set of constructive preambles to faith, lest our untutored use of "God" gets us off on the wrong foot. Part two, "Road-signs: theology and other things we say", addresses common confusions regarding the best way to structure theological inquiry, beginning with a close commentary on John Paul II's Fides et Ratio, and continuing with two elucidations from literature: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and a careful commentary on Diderot's influential dialogue, Rameau's Nephew. A professedly "rude" sparring with John Milbank's contention (in the first two essays of his The Word Made Strange) that "the territory of metaphysics [has] been completely evacuated by ... that theology which pertains to holy teaching" is hard-hitting and was originally delivered to an audience in Cambridge which included Milbank.

More constructively, Lash gives a classical interpretation of the role that metaphysical inquiry plays in any discipline, offering a spirited defence of his own way of doing theology; and, in the process, presenting stringent reminders of the importance of grounding the use of abstract descriptors like "metaphysics".

Sparring aside, the next two parts show how questions of relative autonomy among disciplines are best executed through practices embedded in a community of faithful inquirers. Part three explores the practical dimension of theological inquiry in two offerings, devoted respectively to the work of Enda McDonagh and Sebastian Moore, both long-time friends and the latter Lash's uncle. The first outlines the globalised context of conversation today - long a preoccupation of Enda McDonagh - while the second pays homage to Sebastian Moore's penchant for unearthing the reality of "God and the things of God" by comparing the window of the south transept in Chartres with a frieze in the Church of San Sebastiano in Pallara (Rome), each dedicated to evangelists mounted on the shoulders of Hebrew prophets to grasp the import of the risen Christ. Two illuminating employments of liturgical sources for theological illuminating are then followed by a trenchant reflection on the Anglican-Catholic exchange, punctuated by the reflections of Bill Lash - another of Lash's uncles - who was Anglican Bishop of Bombay from 1947 to 1961. This essay deftly exploits his Cambridge colleague Nicholas Boyle's prescient reflections in Who Are We Now? (1998) to indicate how urgent ecumenical understanding can be to help "counter the most destructive aspects of the global market, [which portend] little but mounting pain and terror ... for humankind". The conclusion to this essay is bracing:

Sober realism ... persuades me that enormous courage, immense imagination, profound penitence, are required, from all of us, if we are to so transform our structures, our understanding and our attitudes as to exhibit that full gift of catholicity through the exercise of which alone will authentic witness to the Gospel be, in each place and throughout the world, concretely and effectively given, for "the healing of the nations".

In part four, "The struggle for the Council", a lover's anguish prevails. Lash deplores the "polemical dualisms ... constructed by the heirs of the conciliar minority" that have all but obscured that "most striking accomplishment of the [Second Vatican] Council: ... the proclamation of episcopal collegiality", perhaps unwittingly assisted by "John Paul II's lack of interest in administration". This lack of interest, I would suggest, by default handed things over to the bureaucrats. Yet, "with hindsight", Lash acknowledges that "it was naive of the bishops to suppose that the Roman Curia ... would suddenly and easily surrender power".

Even at our most pessimistic regarding matters ecclesial, which so easily become power games, it should be a source of hope that these essays unveil an ever-youthful Catholic tradition. 

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