Content provided in partnership with

Editor's Notes

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Wondra, Ellen K

Scripture, tradition, reason. Hooker said. When one reads Hooker's notes, it's clear that a wide-ranging and varied gathering of texts and practices comprise "tradition," which Hooker then interprets in response to the matters and concerns facing him. As theologians continue to point out, it is important to note here not just which texts and practices are involved, but also the processes by which they are gathered and interpreted as they are handed on from one generation to the next. "Traditioning" is a matter of bringing out of the storehouse that which is old as well as that which is new (Matt. 13:52).

Most Popular Articles in Reference: The importance of understanding organizational culture; Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students; What factors attract foreign direct investment?; Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...; How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques; More »

There is a particularly modem temptation to set aside "what is old" as ill-informed in comparison to contemporary material, or inferior in understanding, or just plain mush'and moth-eaten. This is not a temptation to which Anglicans are particularly susceptible. Rather, the Anglican tradition-at least the North Atlantic strain of it-looks readily to the wisdom of our ancestors for some degree of guidance in every matter that captures our attention, be that asserting the importance of "the way we do things here" or assessing what may be the most "convenient" ( Hooker again ) way of responding to new knowledge and experience.

And, of course, in such looking there is always interpretationdecisions about what of the storehouse is to be brought ont, how it is to be understood, and how it might form and inform our reflections today. Even' person, every theology, every community needs a useable history-useable not just in the sense of providing grist for the mill, lint also in the sense of providing companionship along the way. Put plainly, it's reassuring as well as challenging to know that others have walked these paths before.

This issue of the Anglican Theological Review offers the companionship of a variety of ancestors who offer to accompany us now in various ways. In his essay on Julian of Norwich, Daniel Pinti draws attention to Julian's reticence-her restraint in describing and interpreting her own mystical experience for others. Such care, in Pinti's estimation, is not only or primarily a response to the risks Julian took in making her showings known, though these were considerable. Rather, Julians reticence is a theological and rhetorical strategy that involves the community of those who read her with the whole of her experience, of which she is both guide and interpreter. In showing her Showings as she does, Julian enacts the perichoretic theology of which she writes. That is, in her contemplation the Trinity is both mutually indwelling and at the same time self-offering to an other, inviting the other into the communion that is God. Julian's Showings work in the same way: she offers her vision perichoretically to others with a reticence that invites them to participate as well in the communion with God that she has envisioned.

Evelyn Underhill's long quest for holiness is the subject of Nadia Delicata's essay. A woman of sharp intellect, Underhill longed to be holy, but was for many years unable to view her search as other than an intellectual exercise. In her 1911 book Mysticism. while explicitly preferring the "emotive will" over the "intellectual will," she laid out a path that clearly put "all the psychological, disembodied work" prior to any significant "concrete labors of love and compassion in the world." However, the brutalities of World War I precipitated her realization that all spirituality is embodied, in persons and in religious communities. She sought out Baron Friedrich von Hügel to be her spiritual director, and through her experience of him as a holy person, Delicata maintains, Underhill discovered a way toward holiness through a spiritual life that embraced the daily, the apparently inconsequential encounters with others, and habitual "meek devotional practice and symbolic action"-in other words, a spiritual life that was incarnational, embodied. In her essay, Delicata maps for us the way that Underhill found, a way that brought together her intellect and her mystical experience of God's world.

The next two essays each discuss aspects of the important work of Origen of Alexandria. As Jason Byassee notes in his précis, not so long ago "it would have been nearly impossible to make a fruitful comparison between a patristic exegcte and a modern one." Now, with the development of reader-response interpretation and various forms of postmodern hermeneutics, contemporary biblical exegesis has recovered and reconstructed some older methods that are more overtly theological and more tightly connected with the worship which is at the base of the Christian life. Origen was convinced that all Scripture, as the Word of God, was edifying, if only one read it rightly. Thus, in addition to the literal (or plain, or historical) sense of Scripture, there is also the allegorical sense, providing mature believers with additional riches as they contemplate the presence of God in the world.

Byassee compares the work of contemporary exegete Ellen Davis with that of Origen by considering the commentaries each has written on the Song of Songs. Davis, against some modern scholars, argues that the Song is both a poetic account of physical sexuality and "a truly happy story about God and Israel in love." For Origen. the Song is an aid to our embodied desire to know and love God. Origen and Davis both find the Song rich with allusions to other renderings of God's relationship with Israel, such as other "songs of jubilation" in the Old Testament that testify to Israel's growth in love of God (Origen). or the connection through Solomon of the Song with the Temple in Jerusalem where God was rightly loved through worship (Davis). The rich figurai or allegorical readings that Davis and Origen give the Song of Songs connect this wonderful if puzzling book of Scripture to the rest of the biblical material, and also to issues of concern in the particular historical moment in which each exegete lived and lives. Read together, Origen and Davis make available more of the great wealth lodged within this most comniented-npon hook of the Bible.

Editor's Notes

Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2006 by Wondra, Ellen K

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in Reference

Most Popular Publications in Reference