387 Paul Avis, Beyond the Reformation? Authority

Book Reviews / Ecclesiology 4 (2008) 356–391 387

Paul Avis, Beyond the Reformation? Authority, Primacy and Unity in the Conciliar Tradition (London and New York: T&T Clark, 2006), xx + 234 pp. £75.00, ISBN 0567083993 (hbk), £25.00, ISBN 9780567033574 (pbk).

Problems do not fall from the sky or spring fully formed from the head of Zeus. Th ey have histories and how those histories are narrated shapes how we understand their nature and possible solutions. Paul Avis states the problem he is addressing in the fi rst sentence of his book: ‘authority in the Christian Church’ (p. xi). He lays out the issues not by an analysis of the concept of authority or by a theology of authority in the Church, but rather by an extended history of the conciliar movement of the late Middle Ages (or, more precisely, a history of its theology and that theology’s ecclesial outworking) and its aftermath in later theology and church history. In doing so, he recasts how the elements of the problem are understood. Th e problems surrounding authority that were central to the Reformation were not sui generis , but were rooted in the unfi nished business of the brief triumph and fi nal defeat of conciliarism. Avis seeks to go beyond the Reformation by going back before the Reformation and recapturing its antecedents in a way that reframes the debates on authority inherited from the Reformation. Th e goal is ‘a sense of a tradition that bridges the Roman Catholic – Reformation divide and holds promise for the future unity of the Church’ (p. 107). After a brief discussion of ecclesiological categories, Avis takes up his story with the development of monarchical and conciliar paradigms in the high Middle Ages. Th e theological background of conciliarism and its evolution under the pressures of the Great Schism of the late fourteenth and early fi fteenth centuries are surveyed in detail, culminating in the radicalization of conciliarism during the Council of Basel, its loss of support among such infl u- ential fi gures as Nicholas of Cusa, and successful repudiation by a renascent papacy. Th is account forms the backbone of the book. An expert on the history of the period would be needed to judge its accuracy on all details, but the narrative is told with both clarity and nuance. Conciliarism is not portrayed as anti-papal; a papacy with signifi cant, but not unlimited authority was crucial to its vision of church governance. Nor is conciliarism presented as monolithic; not only were diff erent versions of conciliar authority put forward, but positions shifted over time. Th e failures and mistakes of conciliarism are noted: its inability to carry out true reform and its execution of Jan Hus. Particularly helpful in Avis’ account is the tracing of the interrelation of conciliar ideas with conceptions of natural law and the common good.

Avis goes on to lay out the legacy of the conciliar movement in Gallicanism, the continental Reformation, and Anglicanism. Th e complex relations of the diff erent Reformers to conciliarism is carefully developed. None of the Reformers were unqualifi ed conciliarists; Luther appealed to a council, but insisted that councils could err and had erred (most notably, in the execution of Hus). Th e book ends with a refl ection on the ‘imperative of reform’ that fl ows from the legacy of the conciliar tradition. In the course of laying out his narrative, Avis refers to a broad range of primary and secondary literature, so that interested readers can pursue particular topics further. Recasting the narrative of the argument over authority as Avis has here done is ecumenically of great importance. Th e bridge between Catholic and Reformation positions on authority may not be completely built, but the narrative he tells does remould the categories in which these positions have settled into stalemate. A contrast of scripture and tradition (a comparison of apples and oranges, of a book and a process) gives way to a more subtle contrast of diff ering understanding of how both scripture and tradition are used by diff erent potential teaching and governing authorities. Instead of contrasting Protestant and Catholic narratives of the history of authority (a story of the rebirth of the freedom of the gospel pitted against a story of the rejection of rightful authority), a single narrative that encompasses both Catholic and Protestant is developed, a narrative of the failure of the late medieval church adequately to mediate primacy and collegiality, a failure evident in inability of the mid-fi fteenth century settlement of the conciliar controversy to pass its fi rst real test, the protest of Martin Luther. If the volume has a weakness, it is that Avis does not draw out in much detail the theological implications of his history. Th e volume is not a paean to conciliarism. It does not pretend that a conciliarism redivivus would be a solu- tion to modern problems of ecclesiastical authority (even if there were the remote possibility that such would be acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church). Contemporary lessons are to be learned from the conciliarist history, but just what those lessons are and how they are to be applied is not developed here. To what extent can Catholic theology ‘re-receive’ conciliarism and what aspects of the conciliar tradition are most fruitful for Catholic ‘re-reception’? How are the halting advances toward conciliar authority in non-Catholic Western churches to be theologically strengthened? Th is lack is not necessarily a weakness, however. By not drawing detailed lessons from this history, Avis provides a resource for others who have not done his extensive reading. Th ey can profi t from his labours without his historical work potentially being obscured by extended conclusions about the nature of its present relevance.