Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church: The Spiritual Life (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church: The Spiritual Life Louis J. Swift Wendy Mayer, Pauline Allen, and Lawrence Cross, editors. Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church: The Spiritual Life. Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2006. Pp. xi + 367. This volume is the fourth in a series of publications from the Triennial Conference on "Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church" held at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. With a focus on "The Spiritual Life" the book includes the papers of four keynote speakers interspersed among twenty other contributions on themes ranging from the New Testament to Gregory the Great. Not all the contributions pertain strictly to the spiritual life, but each tells us something significant about the early church. Here it must suffice to give only a general idea of the individual entries. In the opening paper, "'The Art of Prayer' (Chrysostom on Ps 4): Antioch's Recipe for the Spiritual Life," the late Robert Hill makes the sometimes forgotten point that spirituality in the early church was highly exegetical (in the broad sense of the term) with a particular emphasis on the Gospels and Psalms. Then, [End Page 605] through the work of several fathers he reflects on the Antiochian reticence about the mystical dimension of the Scriptures in favor of a more pedestrian approach. Ian Elmer's "The Two Ways: A Diversity of Spiritualities in the Earliest Jerusalem Church" argues for a radical split between the Aramaic and Greek speaking communities which ultimately led the Hellenists to "initiate the mission to the gentiles in Antioch." David C. Sim in "The Failed Christian Mission to the Jews: A Historical and Theological Defense of the Jewish Position" defends the legitimacy of the Jews' rejection of Christ in light of their own traditions about the messiah. Philip Esler, one of the keynote speakers, wrestles in his paper, "Understanding the Death of Jesus in its Ancient Context: Perpetrator and Victims Perspectives," with the long standing issue of how Jesus himself interpreted his passion and death and argues that he "aligned his experience and suffering to that of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah." In "Between the Desert and the Temple: Finding God in First-Century Judea," James McLaren makes a plea for a balanced view regarding the priesthood and the temple as "crucial aspects of Jewish life" in first-century Judea even after 70 C.E. Allie Ernst's "Which Way to the Tomb of Jesus? Martha as Myrrhbearer in Image, Text and Liturgy" explores the extra-scriptural tradition concerning Martha's role at the tomb of Jesus. The second section of the volume focuses more extensively on patristic texts. Youhanna Nessim Youssef's study, "Another Allusion to a Marian Work Attributed to Severus of Antioch," deals with a late-Coptic Psali which illustrates how the Coptic and Copto-Arabic sources contribute to our knowledge of Severus. Barry Craig's "Gathering Angels at the Breaking of Bread" examines two texts of the Didache (9.4 and 10.5) and their possible role in the evolution of certain liturgical texts. Helen Rhee in "Spirituality of Female Martyrs: Virginity and Spiritual Motherhood" demonstrates how female martyrs in the pre-Decian Martyr Acts "denied their conventional gender roles" and thereby exercised spiritual leadership in the Christian community. Another keynoter, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, in "Praying Bodies, Bodies at Prayer: Ritual Relations in Early Syriac Christianity" focuses on the very close connection which both monastic and solitary ascetics had to the surrounding civic and ecclesiastical communities, especially in such areas as liturgy, healing, and social justice. Eiji Hisamatsu's "Theoria in Early and Late Byzantine Spirituality: Evagrius of Pontus [c. 345–399] and Gregory of Sinae [c. 1255–1346]" demonstrates how a Byzantine writer develops Evagrius's ideas on contemplation, and Shigeti Tsuchihashi's "Aspects of Spiritual Struggle in ps-Macarius' Homilies," argues against the idea that ps-Macarius is Messalian and shows how this author shifts the core meaning of πληροφορία. In a very stimulating piece, "Maximus and Irigaray: Metaphysics and Difference," Damian Casey compares the ideas of a contemporary French philosopher on diversity and difference with Maximus's ideas about being and becoming. Naoki Kuwabara's contribution,"Nikitas Stithatos on Stages of...