reviews in religion and theology

reviews in religion and theology

Reviews in Religion and Theology

1. Introduction

The large volume of research and writing which has begun to appear in Christian spirituality over the past thirty years has brought with it a growing desire for critical review, both of the research itself and of the ways in which it has been conducted. From time to time, articles appear which devote some space to historiographical and methodological questions, and these are valuable for sharpening up discussion on these issues. More importantly, a number of monographs have been published which are asking the large questions about the nature of spirituality in a way that is historically and methodologically self-conscious. But reviewing has been sporadic and unsystematic. Spiritualitätsforschung has been bedeviled by the tendency to subsume historical investigations into normative dogmatic questions, and the fear that critical study will lead to relativism which licenses the doing of spirituality in a way that is playing fast and loose with the tradition. Different traditions within Christianity have often done their own thing, and since both the modern study of spirituality and the institutions of higher learning are ‘late’ products of Western culture, there is a strong tendency to assume modernity or to use spirituality in a culturally biased way. These are sheltering factors against critique.

2. Overview of Religious and Theological Reviews

This section starts with an article by Martin Connell, “Religious Studies Reviewed”, a survey of different methodological approaches to the study of religion as manifestations within the British and American RS and related journals. Connell’s detailed account appreciates RS as a discipline which has come of age with its various formative approaches and methods. Connell identifies the early approach as Theology and Philosophy driven and sees the academic study of religion suffering from an identity crisis in its early years. It is today, he argues, that the study of religion is more confident about its disciplinary identities and has moved past the Theta Alpha Kappa declaration (RSAC). The different current manifestations of RS as an academic discipline are reflected in the breadth of journals that he examines, from books featuring insightful and transmitted from one who has spent a lifetime on the task. The Theological Review series contains a number of monographs on specific subjects reviewed by expert theologians that have already been published in JsOT. JSOT and TynBul still remain the most popular places for TynBul good Old Classical to be reviewed. Connell’s piece serves as an excellent forerunner to these journals as it aims to identify and contextualize the study of religion in its various manifestations. Sandars’ work entitled “Old Testament Articles” and Job’s Thorn, best described as a light monograph of professional experience, provide less specific criticisms on JSOT pieces. The former features a large collection of essays on exegetical work of the OT with concise critiques. His article’s categories on general reviews and specific product reviews are demonstrated well by these works, and his suggestions on necessary improvements throughout his case study recommend just the type of review needed for today’s many theological and religious subjects.

3. Importance of Reviews in the Field

Another function of a review is to prevent work being done more than once; thus Ramm argues that reviews of review books are legitimate because it prevents repeating the review of the book under consideration. The generative functions of reviews are thorough and are best achieved with review articles. In the previous edition, a journal devoted entirely to review articles was indexed in the national library of medicine. The reason given being that from the practical viewpoint of the librarian, there is the advantage that a review article aims to do the same job as a research article, i.e. shift a portion of the knowledge of the subject from the unexamined into the examined category. This can also save an incredible amount of time for the researcher in first seeing whether a given document is worth reading and then, on its conditions, whether to attempt to understand it. It is no underestimation that for a single physician to keep up to date in medical knowledge would actually take more time than treating patients.

A review is designed to allow the reader to accurately and fairly judge the worth of a given piece of work. The Barth Essay points out ‘is an inquiry regarding the true nature of a document or action: what does it propose and what does it effect?’ and the author considers the majority of theological work to be just this, in which case we can rightly ask the same question of the review of the work itself. This is important in theology, possibly more so than in any other discipline, in which assumption or determination of a ‘canon’ in a second order discipline is not correct. It helps to ensure that only work which has made a contribution is not summarily lost or forgotten. It also allows us to more accurately measure the worth of a piece of work and its contribution to a particular debate, and to decide whether we should invest time in reading the given document.

Important to start with clarifying what is meant by a review in this context. This is generally understood as a critical review or critical notice (i.e. a review as we are discussing here) and it has been described as ‘an evaluative article based on a corpus of evidence that provides a comprehensive summary of current knowledge and interpretative commentary on that corpus which is of interest to a significant number of scholars within and often beyond a particular discipline.’ It is suggested that there are two different types of function of reviews ‘restricted’ and ‘generative’ and both are important in theology. It is argued here that the ‘generative’ is especially so. It is of necessity that at times the author points out the limitations in the argument that is developed here and he does this by suggesting that restricted functions (i.e. keeping scholars up to date with literature, and teaching students about existing literature) are best achieved by other means.

4. Critical Analysis of Key Religious and Theological Works

The theme of this collection of essays is the changing relationships between religious traditions and the concepts and practices of development. The series of articles in the Review of Religious Research covers all the major world religious traditions. The problem of relating ‘development’ to religion is approached in different ways. Jan Fritz’s article explores the largely unconscious influence of modernization theory on missiology in religious traditions. He suggests that it is this theory, more than any other factor, which has created a closer association between development and mission and which has led to a negative evaluation of pre-Christian religious traditions, because they are seen as ‘impedimenta to development’. He argues this case through exploring the recent history of Roman Catholic attitudes to other religious traditions. Terry McGinn compares two Christian denominations in Papua New Guinea in their approach to development. He argues that the Seventh Day Adventist church has a more conscious and structured doctrine of development and a more consistent approach than the United church, but mainly because Western concepts and structures of development, which Adventists thought were satisfactory for a developing country, fitted in better with Adventist values. Russell Adams examines the attitudes of White Americans who have been in the past, closely associated with Third World movements of liberation. He tries to show that the kind of commitment sustained by these Americans were quasi-religious and that liberation movements had a significant impact on their faith.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, then, as one would expect from a collection of review articles, this volume is a rather mixed bag, though in general of high quality. There are a large number of articles of value and a proportion that are unlikely to be of lasting help to anyone. As should already be clear from what has preceded, however, the very structure of the book, such as it is, affords possibilities that individual articles, however fine, seldom can. The greater part of our reviewing is, of necessity, caught in the immediacy of current debate, and thus the reviews we write, of even the most important books, fade from view with little trace left. It is no secret that the short-lived nature of such an undertaking gave pause to several of the contributors. It is hoped, nonetheless, that the content of the reviews and the very fact that the field of contemporary history of political philosophy could in fact support a project of this kind will provide sufficient grist for the mill. And once again, it is important to stress that the publication of these reviews does not imply an unqualified endorsement of the books reviewed. Where Hobbesscholar has published negative reviews (and in this project too there is a gratifying number of those), it is hoped that these will provide a new resource for teachers hoping to maintain intellectual balance and stimulate critical debate in Hobbesscholar’s areas of concern.