Sin, Death, and the Devil

Sin, Death, and the Devil. Edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson. Grand Rapids, Mich./Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000. v + 132 pp. $15.00 (paper).

A false promise exists within the most promising title of this book. One of the editors, Robert W. Jenson, gives it away on page one of his introductory essay:

John Paul II's description of a `culture of death' provided the original germ of planning for the conference at which all but one of the following papers were delivered and discussed-But ... despite the title, it is the sacraments of God's victory over the tyrants [italics mine] that shaped the conference and this book.

Sin, Death, and the Devil, which evokes the triad of principalities and powers with which Luther struggled so passionately, is in fact a Catholic book, or rather, a Roman Catholic book written primarily by Protestants who either are on the way to Rome or are already there. The book is a product of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology in Northfield, Minnesota. It reflects the turn to sacramental ecclesiology that some Protestant theologians are now taking, partly under the very committed influence of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus.

The theme of the book is the negatives of sin, death, and the devil in the victorious light of the sacraments, that is, of baptism and the eucharist. The diagnosis of the "culture of death" is forcefully stated and most Christians will agree with it, though we know we are in for it when Robert Jenson evolves "the horror of infant slaughter on demand" (p. 5).

Stanley Hauerwas wants to describe sin as sickness, and draws heavily on Thomas Aquinas. I was surprised that Hauerwas did not evoke any Protestant diagnosticians of sin such as Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, or William Tyndale, all of whom compared sin to paralysis and the thorough laming of the human being. Hauerwas understands baptism as the vital medicine for sin-sickness (p. 21).

Gary Anderson's essay on original sin is penetrating and evocative. I think he underestimates the extent to which contemporary men and women are open to the old teaching. The old teaching preaches and matches up with the disenchanted life experience of countless adults.

A. N. Williams's lengthy piece, "The Eucharist as Sacrament of Union," is quite abstract. What does it really mean to say that "the eucharist brings about not only intellectual, but also physical, union, for while Christ remains the sole instance of a hypostatic union, through the eucharist the union of God and humanity is realized manifold in the bodies of the saints" (p. 56)? What does this mean concretely?

Essays by Gilbert Meilaender and Carl Braaten on the subject of the devil and his vanquishing by the power of Christ are terse, concrete, and encouraging. You could read them to your parishioners, as well as before an audience of academic theologians.

Richard John Neuhaus is all stirred up in his piece "The Gospel of Life is the Gospel" and wants to make the "teaching of the Catholic Church" (p. 116) regarding abortion, euthanasia, and eugenics constitutive of the Good News in today's world. Many will disagree with his heavy emphasis on these issues. This reviewer, by the way, agrees with Neuhaus on the issues themselves. It is just his tone that is shrill.

Vigen Guroian's concluding essay tells an affecting but overly long and detailed story regarding an Armenian man named Kevork who is mourning the death of his ten-year-old daughter as the result of an earthquake. This material is promising, but the author makes a little too much of it. He tries to make explicit what appears more implicit in this particular experience of grief and Easter hope.

If you are interested in the theoretical relation of baptism and holy communion to the great enemies of the human race, sin, death, and the devil, you will get something out of these eight essays. But there is too little here that is fresh and quite a little that sounds fanatical.

PAUL F. M. ZAHL

Cathedral Church of the Advent

Birmingham, Alabama

Copyright Anglican Theological Review, Inc. Winter 2001
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