Christian Norms Research Articles

Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, The Colonial Experience by Kevin Starr

Reviewed by: Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, The Colonial Experience by Kevin Starr Laura M. Chmielewski Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, The Colonial Experience. By Kevin Starr. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2016. 675 pp. $34.95. As a Catholic kid growing up in the greater Philadelphia area during the American Bicentennial Year of 1976, I felt both invested and left out. Any youth with the least spark of historical interest could find outlets for their curiosity about the achievements of 1776. But the story as told in the bicentennial year pretty much excluded any Catholic dimension, save the Quebec Act (bad!) and Philly's hometown son, Commodore Barry (a Catholic fluke in an otherwise uniformly Protestant story). So thank you, Kevin Starr, for giving readers at all levels of interest your sweeping new book, Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, the Colonial Experience. The scope and scale of Continental Ambitions is astounding. Starr chronicles just about every conceivable instance of Catholic interaction with North America. But this massive book—all 556 pages of it, excluding notes—is far more than just a catalogue of Catholic individuals, institutions, and achievements. Throughout, Starr demonstrates that North America's Catholic past is a sweeping and expansive epic that long predates the Protestant Reformation, spanning all corners of the continent and encompassing much more diversity (and longevity) than most previous continental histories reflect. Exploring topics ranging from colonial and church policy to the life trajectories of individual Catholic or Catholicism-inflected people, Starr's work underscores the fact that North American history is as much a Catholic story as a Protestant one. Beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated in color, Continental Ambitions will excite the interest of general [End Page 81] readers and serve as an enriching resource for scholars of early American culture, politics, and faith. Kevin Starr has built an enviable scholarly career on his work on the American West (specifically California), and his comfort with this topic is evident. Given his scholarly expertise, one might expect him to start this book with the Spanish. Instead, Starr surprises us with the complicated story of nominally Catholic Norsemen of Greenland and beyond, whose experiments in New World colonization coincided with a society in religious flux. Within Norse settlements, new Christian norms of behavior rubbed up against traditional methods of achieving power and vanquishing rivals. After the disintegration of these communities and the centuries-long gap of European contact that ensued, the Spanish arrived with their own particular variant of Iberian Catholicism. It is here that the story many know takes shape, and Starr's multifaceted approach takes the reader through the development of religious institutions, colonial policies, and sometimes-peaceful, often-violent encounters with numerous native peoples. The author weaves geopolitical realities, institutional development, and individual accounts into this comprehensive study. And yet this is not a world in religiously defined geographical isolation, as Starr connects the world of Catholic North America with its Protestant neighbors. For example, Starr demonstrates the similarities and differences between native leader Popé in the southwest and Metacom in New England and their respective encounters with Old World Christians. Starr likewise provides unvarnished accounts of encounter, cooperation, and violence between Catholic Europeans and the Indians they sought to convert, trade or ally with, learn from, or fight. Despite its almost-encyclopedic coverage, Starr's book feels somewhat lacking when it comes to women. One would expect a book of this nature to embrace the gender diversity of American Catholic experience, and some notable and predictable examples such as Kateri Tekakwitha, Jeanne Mance, and the women of the Brent family are indeed present (and in the case of Mance, prominent). Yet Catholic women on the margins who were cultural travelers in complex times are harder to track down. Recent scholarly treatments of the powerful Native American culture broker Marie Rouensa and the Indian captive-cum-superior of the Ursulines of Quebec, Mére Esther Marie Joseph de l'Enfant Jesus (born Esther Wheelwright, and grandniece of Anne Hutchinson) testify to the central role such seemingly fringe colonial players had in their respective spheres of influence. The book's organization is also difficult to follow at...

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

Learning from the Past: Considering the Ethics of Appropriation

A Mother's Joy at Her Child's Death: Conversion, Cognitive Dissonance, and Grief

This article explores how a sophisticated woman, Minnie Benson, could have rejoiced when her beloved son died at school at age 18. Her joyous reaction—remarked on by all her family—is in stark contrast to that of her husband, Bishop Edward White Benson, who was devastated by the death and found it the most dismaying challenge to his deeply-felt faith. Her reaction is investigated in particular through her personal Evangelical conversion and her commitment to believing literally in joy at suffering. This literalism is set in contrast to standard normative Christian responses to a child's death. The article discusses the cognitive dissonance of religious responses to death in the Victorian era, and how converts are socialized into expected horizons of response.

Sex, Transsexuality and Archaeological Perception of Gender Identities

Reconsideration of some previous archaeological interpretations of gender may offer much more variability and freedom to our current understanding of gender identity. The perception of gender in archaeological interpretations commonly reflects our current social reality. In our Christian Western worldview, the traditional gender categories of men and women are based on biology and presume the primacy of the reproduction in human societies. Alternative social roles were judged as deviations by the biased majority. The extremely difficult position of homosexuals in twentieth-century Western society was caused mainly by the lack of an appropriate and commonly recognized gender category. No surprisingly, the concept of transsexualism developed in cultures that only recognized and valued two gender categories based on biological sex while the tribes in North America and Siberia had gender categories ready for such cases. In Western society, Christian norms instigated a social neglect of homosexuals mainly due to the absence of appropriate gender categories. As archaeologists, we should change our approach to the interpretation of past societies because our current gender categories do not always correspond to those of a former reality.

English

This article explores the relationship between God and a posthuman representative of humanity in Octavia Butler’s “The Book of Martha” (2005). Using Daphne Hampson’s feminist post-Biblical ideas, the article argues that the story, as a sample of science fiction, exposes a posthumanist perspective where existence and subjectivity of human kind is defined based on a mutual, non-hierarchical relationship between human being and God. The article aims to explore the capacity of the story to embody a positive standpoint of science fiction towards the transformation of the human. This article suggests that “The Book of Martha,” reflecting this transformation together with an unothered perspective of the God-human relationship, illustrates the potential for a more humanitarian life on Earth. The relationship is investigated through an unorthodox theological perspective that confronts Christian norms, particularly the norms dealing with what is considered as true femininity. In this way, the story describes a fictional space in which the Christian concept of human as a fallen, condemned, and passive object before a ubiquitous Almighty is substituted with a non-Christian active concept of the human entity. This active representation is based on the recognition of a posthuman agency which is free from surrender to divine power. “The Book of Martha” is about the gradual awakening of a black woman who, in interaction with God as the source of goodness, becomes aware for the need to redefine an authentic sense of self beyond that of an obedient servant before a masculinized God. This article explores this awakening. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1603-09

Medical Ethics & Natural Law: Does Natural Law Impede on Medicine?

Natural law, initially a deontological ethic which concerns itself with “what people do, not with the consequences of their actions”, provides no room for maneuvering tough decisions, such as end-of-life choices, namely physician-assisted suicide, and abortion, exemplifying the theory’s axiomatic objectivism. Whilst considering the early Christian perceptions and formulations of natural law, we will determine how this ethic has impeded on contemporary medical ethics and law. When we consider medical ethics, one of the most sacrosanct principles enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath is that a physician “…will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it…Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” This can be aptly summarised by the medical principle of primum non plus nocere quam succurrere. However, the debate begins when we understand that 54% of American doctors support euthanasia, an end-of-life decision which contradicts the Oath and natural law.The themes behind this oath, mainly the utmost duty to save life – in vivo and in utero – links with the normative Christian ethic. However, considering that the Hippocratic Oath has changed from 400BCE and, subsequently, the application of natural law in medicine, we are aware that the “natural law theory [has] changed in the West…and has become utilitarian and relativistic.” It is of this author’s view that double effect allows natural law to become effectively relativist, allowing the doctrine to take away opportunities for arbitrary decisions to be made. Thus, whilst we will see that natural law does impede on medicine, the doctrine of double effect saves the normative ethic from becoming redundant in practice. On the other hand, we must also consider how some jurisdictions may fall short of availing of this relativist approach to natural law.

Domingo de Soto contra o direito de submeter os infiéis por idolatria, sodomia ou antropofagia / Domingo de Soto Against the Right of Submission the Unbelievers Due to Idolatry, Sodomy or Anthropophagy

Among the manuscripts containing works by the dominican Domingo de Soto (1494-1560) we find the acephalous and mutilated fragment Relectio an liceat civetate infidelium seu gentium expugnare ob idolatriam, titled by a later hand. Soto’s argument belongs to the context of the juridical, political and religious polemic on alleged rights to subdue unbelievers, staged by the junta gathered in Valladolid, in August and September 1550, to hear the arguments in favour, by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, and arguments against, by Bartolomé de las Casas, whose meeting Summary was written by Domingo de Soto himself. In the fragment An liceat, Soto unwaveringly takes upon himself the refutation of each argument deployed by proponents of the right to subdue and punish natives in the New World, asserting their state of non subjection to Christian norms before their convert. Bearing in mind its structure and arguments, it is conjectured that the text may have been written for the De iustitia et iure, published in 1554, and again in 1556, though, for unknown reasons, was not included in that work.

Medieval Christianity: A New History by Kevin Madigan

Reviewed by: Medieval Christianity: A New History by Kevin Madigan Tanya Stabler Miller Medieval Christianity: A New History. By Kevin Madigan. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2015. Pp. xxiv, 487. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-300-1587-24. Over the last fifty years or so, the study of medieval Christianity has broadened considerably beyond strictly institutional or theological approaches to include studies of parochial religion, mysticism, and heresy. In recent years scholars have endeavored to uncover the beliefs and religious practices of the ordinary laity and the extent to which clerical elites and laypeople were part of a shared religious culture. Contemporary concerns, too, have raised new questions and inspired interest in religious dissidents, interfaith relationships, and the role of women in medieval Christianity, resulting in a stream of publications on communities and groups that are rarely, if ever, considered in more traditional histories. Given the explosion of scholarly interest in medieval religion and the recognition of its importance for understanding medieval history in general, Kevin Madigan’s book, Medieval Christianity: A New History fulfills an evident need for a new synthesis. Noting that the last major synthesis was Richard Southern’s Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmonsworth, UK,1970), Madigan’s stated goal is to provide a new survey for undergraduate students with little to no knowledge of the topic or time period. Defining “medieval Christianity” broadly, the author presents a narrative history of Western Christendom that integrates the research of the last several decades, particularly studies on mysticism, lay religion, and parish life. In all of these objectives, Madigan succeeds admirably. Well written and broadly accessible, this book would indeed serve as a useful textbook in courses on the history of Christianity. The chapters are well organized, highly focused, and provide broad coverage of major historical developments while addressing historiographical debates in a fluid, engaging manner with plenty of clear, illustrative examples. As Madigan suggests in the introduction, these debates—presented throughout the book with a light, engaging touch—could serve as research topics in undergraduate courses. Madigan helpfully provides bibliographical information for each chapter in the notes section at the end of the book as well as a glossary of relevant terms. Following the customary chronological divisions of the Middle Ages (early, high, and late), Madigan begins with a succinct overview of “Pivotal Moments in Early Christianity,” effectively sketching the importance of creeds, councils, and clergy in “the emergence of normative Christianity” (p. 11). Part 2 focuses on cultures of conversion in the early Middle Ages while introducing central themes in the history of medieval Christianity such as the relationship between imperial power and the papacy. Two chapters on Jews and Muslims, respectively, round out part 2, laying out the context for increasingly tense and often tragic interfaith relations in the later Middle Ages. [End Page 588] Part 3 on the High Middle Ages begins with the reform movement of the eleventh-century church, presenting a comprehensive narrative covering monastic culture, heresy, the rise of the mendicant orders, scholasticism, religious education, popular religion, papal monarchy, and Jewish/Christian relations. Throughout, Madigan engages with the influential and much-critiqued “two-tiered model” of medieval religious history, using vivid examples to show that medieval society was hardly composed of “two distinct cultures” (p. 91)—that is, educated, Christianized clerics on the one hand and superstitious, folkloric laypeople on the other. Rather, medieval culture was characterized by “dynamic interaction” (p. 94) between clergy and laity. Part 4, “Later Medieval Christianity,” addresses the calamities of the fourteenth century, the decline of papal power, and the rise of religious reformers. Here, Madigan’s efforts to integrate new research on women and mysticism is perhaps most evident. In a sweeping discussion of influential mystical writers from Hildegard of Bingen to Catherine of Siena, Madigan illustrates the important role played by women in shaping late-medieval spirituality as visionaries and writers. Overall, this is an excellent textbook that is wholeheartedly recommended for undergraduate courses on medieval Christianity. Tanya Stabler Miller Loyola University Chicago Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press

Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology by Ingolf U. Dalferth

Reviewed by: Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology by Ingolf U. Dalferth Mark Mattes Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology. By Ingolf U. Dalferth. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011. xix + 325 pp. Originally published in German in 1994, this book, a foray into Christology by an internationally recognized scholar, merits widespread attention. Dalferth shares many affinities with the rich theological thinking of the Tübingen systematician, Eberhard Jüngel, with whom he had studied and whose own complex theology interweaves a Barthian approach to God, where God is self-revealing as the triune life, a Bultmannian approach to anthropology, where human authenticity is established through a decision for or against God in the face of existential awareness, and a Lutheran highlighting of cross and resurrection as the primary paradigm for understanding Christian existence. The major shift in Dalferth’s Christology [End Page 243] in contrast to traditional two-nature Chalcedonian Christology is to center Christology in Jesus’ resurrection and not the incarnation. For Dalferth, this stance is more faithful both to Scripture and a contemporary outlook as opposed to the substance metaphysics assumed in the Chalcedonian creedal formation. The book begins with the critique of the incarnation postulated by the 1970’s “Myth of God Incarnate” theologians, such as John Hick, and then moves to the motif of “cross and resurrection” as the proper basis for outlining Christology, the trinity, and the nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Dalferth appreciates Hick’s conviction that belief in the saving efficacy of Jesus Christ is not reducible to belief in the incarnation (3), but he discredits Hick’s overall approach to Christ because it is “Pelagianizing” (21). In contrast to “substance metaphysics,” Jesus is best understood in his role of disclosing the “nearness of God”; God’s “imminent advent” is the field on which to recognize the meaning of Jesus (25). Jesus’ entire ministry was for the sake of this mission and for it he sacrificed his life. Even so, his resurrection shows that God’s love is stronger than death. God, not death, has the last word in Jesus’ story (26). Indeed, because Jesus has been raised to eternal life, the compassionate reign of God has dawned (26). The saving significance of Jesus for believers is that faith in Jesus as the “mediator of God’s life-giving presence” will allow them “to participate in Jesus’ resurrection to continuous fellowship with God” (28). Theologically, Jesus’ resurrection discloses God’s nature to be “inexhaustible creative love” (33). In the cross the “Son of God” makes himself like us mortals and in so doing makes us mortals like him (42). Hence, God’s divinity is disclosed not as “omnipotent self-preservation” (as the normative Christian tradition would have us believe) but as gratuitous self-abasement (46) for humanity’s welfare. Jesus’ behavior in his earthly ministry, such as his placing himself above God’s law, his exercising eschatological functions, his controlling demons, and his forgiving sinners, exercises rights that belong to God alone (103). Jesus is not only human but divine in that in all he says and does he defines the “reign of God” (126). Dalferth finds the substance ontology and the realist semantics of traditional two-natures Christology problematic for the modern world (142). As an alternative, he posits God as in a process of “self-definition” [End Page 244] (as love for the world) (158) in which the cross itself is most definitive of God’s life because it indicates the “risk” which God will take to reach out to rebellious, self-deifying humans (160). Dalferth is wary of “penal substitution” language as the way to describe Jesus’ atoning death. He notes that we must be careful not to confuse four models of atonement (which grow out of different and not always commensurable contexts): (1) cultic, centered on the language of sacrifice, (2) juristic, centered on covenant, (3) political, centered on freedom from captivity, and (4) personal, centered on fellowship. In a word, Jesus’ death enacts our own unavoidable death (275). Jesus death is “for us” in that his entire life was one of “surrender” on behalf of sinners (252). Those for whom Christology must come...

Kim Il-yeop and Christianity: The Influence of Christianity on the Life and Identity of Kil Il-yeop

Kim Il-yeop is considered to have been a pioneering female writer in the history of modern Korean women’s literature, beginning in the 1920s; she was Korea’s first female editor and publisher of a magazine for women, Sinnyeoja. She was one of the first generation of Korean “new women” and “modern female writers.” More importantly, however, Kim Il-yeop had a close relationship with Protestant Christianity and was at one time in her life a devout Christian. This paper investigates what in fact Christianity meant to Kim Il-yeop in her own life, in other words, how exactly she understood the Christian religion and in what ways she experienced and practiced it. Christianity shaped the landscape of her childhood, which included a Christian home, a Christian education, and her father’s embodiment of a fine Christian character as a pastor. Concerning her personality in her childhood, Kim Il-yeop herself attributed her fine and optimistic character to her Christian faith. On the other hand, however, she characterized Christianity as a religion of “repressive ideas” whose doctrines operated as a moral force that compelled strict self-regulation. More importantly, Kim Il-yeop understood herself through her identity as a pastor’s daughter and according to the expectations of her father. She experienced and understood Christianity and the true Christian life through her father. Her father’s influence on her derived primarily from the lessons she learned in observing his sincere religious life, rather than Christian doctrine. Kim Il-yeop understood the lessons of his Christian life more broadly and practiced them in her religious life after she became a Buddhist monk. Later on in life, Kim Il-yeop began to present a growing skepticism about Christianity, and this resulted in the weakening and final rejection of her Christian faith. She ultimately repudiated all the beliefs and claims she had accepted before. The motivation behind her repudiation of Christianity was the fact that she was interested in “free love” and even enjoyed romantic relationships during her youth. Indeed, her life as a new woman went against strict and conservative Christian norms and ethics. Kim Il-yeop’s repudiation of Christianity was in a broader sense related to the traditional and patriarchal Christian churches of Korean Christianity at that time. For her, Christianity itself never became a real power and source of energy with which she could handle the reality and difficulty of life, and in the end, she failed to save her faith.

De-Spiritualizing Pneuma

This paper is one of several presented at the 2010sbl naasrsession in Atlanta concerning anachronism and translation in the study of early Christianity. It argues that the concept ofpneuma’s central importance to Paul’s thought makes it a prime candidate to remain untranslated in scholarship. Most scholarship onpneumatranslates this word ‘Spirit’, which imports normative Christian theological implications. This reflects a modern, Western understanding of religion that is derived from thinkers like Kant and Descartes, which privileges dualisms of mind/body and material/spirit, and which foregrounds the importance of a private, internal, subjective religious experience anachronistic relative to Paul. I redress this through a theoretical shift toward contextualizing Paul’s understanding ofpneumaas a physiological process with analogues in ancient Greco-Roman medical thought. This approach is briefly compared to other influential accounts ofpneumain New Testament studies, and subsequently treats several Pauline passages within this new lens.

Commerce and Sentiment in Tales of Barbary Encounter: Cathcart, Barlow, Markoe, Tyler, and Rowson

A number of American sailors were taken hostage by Barbary Corsairs and held as slaves in North Africa in the years following the Revolutionary War. The crisis would ultimately lead to open warfare, but many Americans were optimistic that international commerce and common sympathy might overcome religious differences. This essay sketches the history of the Barbary conflict and considers three fictionalized accounts of Barbary encounter as secular conversion narratives, two of the three demonstrating how even despotic slaveholders could learn to embrace commerce and sentiment. Peter Markoe’s novel The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania (1787), Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Slave (1797), and Susanna Rowson’s drama Slaves in Algiers (1794) suggest a certain openness to religious and national difference; however they are clearly about American concerns and, in fact, more committed to secularized Christian norms than their praise of common sentiment would suggest. In all three texts, Jews are excluded from the vision of common sentiment and made to symbolize what was cruel about commerce; it is my argument that they served as scapegoats for the American discomfort with its own failures of sentiment, evidenced most obviously by chattel slavery and the slave trade. These fictionalized tales of encounter hold up sentiment as the solution to all sorts of conflict. However, they also deploy sentiment, paradoxically, as a pre-biological marker of race, designating those beyond the union of sentiment—Jews—as somehow detached from the quality that makes people human.

Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington as a Utopian Novel

Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington as a Utopian Novel Regina Hewitt Since the reception history of Maria Edgeworth’s Harrington has long been dominated by disappointment at the concluding revelation that its Jewish heroine is a Protestant Christian after all, readers might think that “Harrington as a dystopian novel” would be a more accurate title for my essay. Instead of letting the plot of Harrington’s overcoming his prejudice usher in a “good society” in which tolerance, diversity, and cosmopolitanism triumph over anti-Semitism, uniformity, and ethnocentrism, the conclusion revives the old social divisions that subject Jewish characters to Christian norms. This outcome neither advances Edgeworth’s goal of making amends for the negative stereotypes of Jews in her earlier novels nor offers itself as a blueprint for the Enlightened social relations that Edgeworth valorized in Harrington and in most of her other writing. Though Harrington’s shortcomings concede to the prejudices of Edgeworth’s historical moment,1 they remain troublingly inconsistent with Edgeworth’s outspoken commitment to improving social relations. In this essay, I suggest a way of interpreting Harrington that aligns its conclusion more closely with Edgeworth’s larger goals. Specifically, I posit that Harrington is strategically effective when read as a utopian novel. New scholarship that understands utopianism as a method or process of encouraging social change rather than as a blueprint for an ideal society brings to light Harrington’s broader social commitments. This view of utopianism has been most fully conceptualized and implemented by Ruth Levitas, who has devised a method of utopian inquiry that functions as “speculative” sociology and leads to the “imaginary reconstitution of society.” Crucial to Levitas’s method is the activation of a desire for society to be “otherwise,” both in its institutional arrangements and in personal conduct. People can bring about changes in their own character and relations, and in the larger structures that these comprise, if they recognize a gap between existing norms and some alternative norm more in keeping with their value system and if they then try to become the kind of [End Page 293] people who would inhabit the alternative society. Successful modifications are neither perfect nor static; they are steps toward an imagined “good society” that can continue to be approached through ongoing reflections and adjustments. A desire for self and society to be “otherwise” is likewise crucial to Harrington. At one level the novel depicts its protagonist’s growing wish to free himself, his family, and his society from religious and ethnic biases. At this level, it describes the irrational and unjust treatment of Jews in Harrington’s society; it shows, through the reasonable and generous behavior of Mr. Montenero and other characters, the alternative interactions that could occur among open-minded people,2 and it charts Harrington’s progress toward reforming his character until he is ready to marry Berenice despite his father’s and his culture’s doubts about the viability of a marriage between people of different faiths. At that point, narrative sleight-of-hand supplies a Christian identity for Berenice, allowing the novel to stop short of the behavioral and structural changes it promised. As historical research confirms, this descriptive level offers an accurate and realistic account of Anglo-Jewish relations during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the time frame of Harrington’s setting, composition, and publication. According to Todd Endelman’s study of The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000, much “acculturation” had occurred by the eighteenth century: especially in the upper tiers of society, Jews and Christians interacted freely in literary, artistic, athletic, and scientific spheres, and many regarded religion as a private matter of no concern in public life as long as secular laws were obeyed (65–76). But Endelman distinguishes between “acculturation” and institutional integration, with the normalization of intermarriage and political participation. Acceptance of Jews at the institutional level was not nearly so advanced as at the cultural level. Intermarriage among Jews, in particular, met with much resistance (66). Anglo-Jewish relations had indeed reached the kind of impasse portrayed in the novel: Enlightened thinking had called for the revaluation of prejudices but had not fully succeeded in overcoming them. Though Edgeworth stays within...

Greed and Work in Finland-Swedish Folklore

Greed, or avarice, is one of the cardinal sins. Protestant Swedish Finn folklore demonstrates expressions of greed, even if the actual term is not mentioned. In folk religion Christian norms and values are combined with elements of folk belief. Theologians certainly clarify the gospel, but how lay people have implemented it should also be considered. With the help of proverbs and folklore legends from rural Swedish-Finland in the nineteenth century, this paper reflects on the idea of the Sabbath, or holiday, and work, in combination with considerations of envy and ‘the limited good’. Greed can be regarded as an expression for work in the wrong time and in the wrong way.

Two Northern Grimoires: The Trondenes and Vesterålen Black Books

The so-called Black Books (grimoires) contain collections of conjurations and charms which provide instructions on how to make magical objects such as protective amulets and talismans. Two such Black Book manuscripts were recently rediscovered in the archives. They were part of the source material used by Bishop Anton Chr. Bang, who published excerpts from them in his book on magic formulas from Norwegian folk tradition. The two manuscripts are from ca. 1760 and 1800, and derive from the parishes of Trondenes and Bø in Vesterålen, respectively. This article will examine the two manuscripts with regard to their content and how they differ from each other. The use of grimoires is then discussed in order to clarify how we might interpret such books in their historical and social context in which Christian norms were taken for granted as the foundation of society.

SOUTH AFRICAN ELITES AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS (II) - SOCIAL ETHICS

South Africa is generally seen as a country in which religious values playa significant role, particularly Christian values. Such statements are, however, extremely difficult to qualify adequately. In this article the results from a national survey among elites conducted in both 1994 and 1995 are employed to gain some insight into the role the Christian faith plays with regard to ethical issues in the process of policy-making in South Africa. The article is a presentation of data which may contribute to a better understanding of the influence of Christian norms and beliefs in the area of social.

SOUTH AFRICAN ELITES AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS (I) - PERSONAL ETICS

South Africa is generally seen as a country in which religious values playa significant role, panicularly Christian values. Such statements are, however, extremely difficult to qualify adequately. In this anicle the results from a national survey among elites conducted in both 1994 and 1995 are employed to gain some insight into the role the Christian faith plays with regard to ethical issues in the process of policy-making in South Africa. The anicle is a presentation of data which may contribute to a better understanding of the influence of Christian norms and beliefs in the area of personal ethics, whereas civil and social issues are dealt with in a following anicle.

Forbidden Fruit? A Longitudinal Study of Christianity, Sex, and Marriage

Does religion still play a role in explorations of romance and sexuality among adolescents and young adults in a secular society such as Norway? Does it influence the type of living arrangements chosen? A population-based sample (n = 2,454) was followed longitudinally from their midteens to their late 20s using survey and register data. Christian involvement in teenage years was associated with subsequent less “precoital” exploration, less masturbation, delayed sexual intercourse, and a smaller number of sex partners. However, there were no associations with prevalence of same-sex experiences. Christians also postponed initiating romantic relationships and chose marriage over cohabitation. Associations were reduced after controlling for confounding factors but remained significant. Some associations (for example, the form of residential union chosen) were present only in the most “active” Christians. In other areas, such as “precoital explorations” and the age at which intercourse is initiated, Christian norms seem to play a role in much broader segments of the population. The findings indicate that Christianity may continue to influence young Norwegians’ experiences of sexuality and cohabitation more than has been expected.

Mudimbe’s homo absconditus: Towards a resurrection of the human

This article demonstrates that the notion of the ‘human’ – ‘man’, ‘anthropos’, ‘muntu’ (and their sub-human opposites: the pagan, the savage, the ‘docile’ body) – has played a crucial role in V. Y. Mudimbe’s work since the 1960s. Indeed, there is in the author’s production a tendency to explore the human sciences and the ways in which they have contributed to the real and imaginary shape, but also obfuscation, of sub-Saharan Africa and its people since the colonial era. From his early writings, Mudimbe, the humanist, the former Benedictine who at the age of 18 was ‘completely Francophonized, submitted to Greco-Roman values and Christian norms’ (Mudimbe 1991: 94), has conducted a systematic critique of humanism in order to identify the reasons behind Africa’s material, political and epistemological dependency on the West, and to envisage routes to its resurrection, a term also used here to reiterate the importance of religion and theology in Mudimbe’s trajectory. The first part of the article focuses on The Invention of Africa and examines Mudimbe’s adoption of a set of analytical models (previously developed by Michel Foucault in Les Mots et les choses) to excavate the discursive orders presiding over the emergence of Black Africans as ‘objects’ of knowledge. The second part of this study registers Mudimbe’s partial dissatisfaction with structuralist anthropology that, although free from former racial prejudices, continues to address other cultures ‘allochronically’ (Johannes Fabian) and often circumvents the human in the name of scientific objectivity. Finally, the study reflects upon Mudimbe’s many attempts – for instance in essays such as Parables and Fables, Les Corps glorieux, Tales of Faith, and Cheminements – to blur the divide between the scholarly essay and the autobiography and to return to his ‘own foundation’ (Fanon) as an African artist and intellectual.

Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture. Edited by EINAR THOMASSEN.

The virtue of balancing the available historical evidence as carefully as possible is crucial in the study of the Christian bipartite canon. This book on canon formation and canonicity, edited by Einar Thomassen, makes a welcome contribution in this regard. The eleven essays included were originally written as part of ‘Highways and Byways’, an interdisciplinary project at the Department of Classics, Russian and Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. The main concern of the project is to study ‘the Christian idea of “orthodoxy” ’. Following von Harnack’s understanding of the emergence of normative Christian faith—episcopate, rule of faith/creed, and scriptural canon as the regulative ecclesiastical structures—the essays aim at shedding light on ‘some of the many problems involved’ in the establishment of the canon of Scripture as one dimension of orthodoxy. Thomassen’s opening chapter, ‘Some Notes on the Development of Christian Ideas about a Canon’, provides nuanced and creative comments on the Christian canon formation. The commonly sharp distinction made by some scholars between canon as norm and as list is rightly softened. It is pointed out that the category of list or catalogue is not only late, but also rare in comparison with that of normativity: ‘When ancient Christian texts speak about “canonical” books, it is often the normative quality, or the authoritativeness, of certain books that is intended, rather than their inclusion in a particular list of titles’ (p. 9). An interesting observation in this connection—which has been made only by a few scholars—is the obvious connection between these two notions of biblical canonicity, since ‘a list may in itself represent a norm’. As it turns out, this is what is at stake not only in the Christian use of the Greek concept, but also within other domains, such as the drawing of astronomical canon tables: ‘[L]ists and norms are two different things. But in so far as some lists have a normative purpose, there is an area where the two categories overlap’ (p. 10). It therefore also makes perfect sense to view the biblical canon formation as a process. The critical scholarly task, then, may be to provide models for the ‘archaeology of the various layers that contributed to its production’. Thomassen here takes the reader back to the beginning, with ‘the proto-canonical phase’ consisting of: (a) a memory phase—the preservation and/or the invention of a memory about Jesus of Nazareth, out of which ‘a certain number of sayings, to which special authority was accorded, were distilled from the memory about Jesus’; (b) the formation of a ten-letter Pauline epistolary canon written to seven churches (whereas the sayings of Jesus have a revelatory quality, the letters of Paul, in the author’s view, ‘are not divine revelation’); and (c) the formation of extended narratives about Jesus, so-called Gospel writings (including words and deeds; cf. Acts 1:1). A common feature found throughout these layers ‘is the fact that during the first two centuries the words of Jesus possessed a special authority in themselves that can without doubt be called canonical’ (p. 15). The ‘canonization phase’ is discussed under two subheadings, ‘the Idea of a Christian Canon’ and ‘Verification of the Apostolic’. The essay closes with some reflections on canon as tradition and canon as revealed text. Even if not fully convincing, the following two claims are worth pondering further: (a) the view of the apostolic writings as inspired arose from the creation of the two-testament Bible, through the assimilation of the apostolic writings to the already established pattern of prophetically inspired Scripture, and (b) ‘once the Bible as a whole had consolidated its position as a constitutive element of Christian tradition, that position itself secured for it a status as sacred object. In this way, the Bible became a holy book’ (p. 25).