Religion and Community

Religion and Community. By Keith Ward. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 366 pp. $72.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

With this volume the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford brings his quartet of comparative theology to a successful conclusion. When I reviewed the first three volumes together in this journal (ATR 82:1, pp. 181-189), under the title "An Anglican Magnum Opus," I suggested that the fourth volume would need to examine the nature of religious community and the means of human participation in the divine: "Comparative ecclesiology must be the next frontier." Little did I know that by then the present work must have been nearly finished. Whatever we may think about either Ward's comparative method or his substantive conclusions, it remains an extraordinary achievement to have written and published four major studies of this quality in less than a decade.

The introduction recognises that religions become embodied in social forms of life. I have a suspicion that Ward assumes that religions are basically ideas that become clothed with social forms. There is some ambivalence as to whether he is studying religions (which one might say are social forms) or theologies (which are components of religions). At any rate, his main interest is in the ethical vision that lies at the heart of religions. The ethical is to be the guiding thread of this study. Thus the Christian Church is seen as "a transformative community living by the power of the Spirit of Christ." But all human institutions, including the churches, are fragile, fallible and liable to corruption. Religion is not intrinsically ennobling of human nature, but granted moral vigilance it may become so. The combination of diversity and tolerance can provide safeguards.

The bulk of the book is divided into three roughly equal parts. The first is a descriptive, phenomenological account of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. The secular state is considered alongside the four world faiths as an ideology of our time. Individual religious commitment and public tolerance can reinforce each other, as in the United States, provided that the state stands back. Ward seems to advocate a secular state (while noting that the only fully secular state in Europe is France-and even that needs to be qualified), provided it encourages freely chosen religious commitment (p. 127). I am unhappy with Ward's drift here. A state that actually encourages religious commitment, even of various kinds, does not qualify as secular. A secular state must, at least tacitly, reinforce secularity and secularism. On the other hand, it is arguable that the idea of a state that is completely neutral about religious values is an incoherent concept.

Part two considers the Christian Church as a fourfold community: teaching, charismatic, sacramental and moral. On the doctrinal authority of the Church Ward comes clean as a "liberal Protestant" (p. 148). The Church of the New Testament was not the guardian of unchanging formulae. The Church must be open to new insights, led by the Spirit. Tradition is not a firm foundation: it is diverse, opaque and often perplexing. The Church is always a community that is seeking the truth. Its search will be guided by "the originative, normative, but only partially understood revelation of God's nature and purpose in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth" (p. 158). The Church of the future, Ward ventures, will not be monolithic and authoritarian but pluralistic, exploratory and responsive. The apophatic dimension is well taken, but what I missed here was affirmation of what is actually given in the apostolic faith and discussion of the limits of diversity.

There is a perceptive discussion of the sacraments. The primary principle, of course, is that Christ is the minister of the sacraments he has ordained. Ward outlines a sophisticated sacramental realism that is grounded not in ontology but in moral purpose (intention). There is a real presence in the eucharist, but transubstantiation is "unduly counter-intuitive."

The third part looks at the Church in historical perspective, using Ward's favourite method of exploring a tradition by studying a key exponent. Here there are substantial discussions of Aquinas, Calvin, Schleiermacher, Barth and Tillich.

Finally, there are reflections on the project of comparative theology. Because this is undertaken here from a Christian viewpoint and by an Anglican clergyman to boot, the result is "a positive Christian theology." But it is a Christian theology of a particular kind. Ward's values come out again and again: they are those of contemplative wisdom, compassion, detachment, tolerance, reasoned discussion, tranquility. They are, in the best sense of the word, academic values. One has a creeping sense that Ward assimilates even the heroic, militant virtues that we find in the Jewish and Moslem traditions to this rather quietist, urbane model. But comparative theology, even in its Christian form, does not proceed by solid biblical exposition. If it did, it could not evade the thrust of the gospel texts that speak of division and conflict, the sword that Jesus came to bring and the fire that he came to cast upon the earth. In his chapter on meaning in history Ward skips too lightly over the eschatological tension of the New Testament. It is not his cup of tea. The issue is not so much discerning a divine purpose woven into the texture of history at every point, but of the coming of the Kingdom with power.