Book Reviews
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BOOK REVIEWS EARLY CHRISTIAN EPITAPHS FROM ATHENS. By John S. Creaghan, S. J., and A. E. Raubitschek, with a Foreword by Benjamin D. Meritt. Wood stock: Theological Studies, 1947. Pp. 54; plates 10. $2.50. The excavations of the Agora, pursued by the American School of Classi cal Studies at Athens since 1931, have produced a copious store of new materials to illustrate the history, art, cult, and culture of the pagan city. In comparison with this abundance, or with that of the Christian remains from ancient Rome, the early Christian yield from Athens is slight. Yet these "few humble tombstones" deserved to be edited with all scholarly care; and the present monograph, a reprint from Hesperia XVI (1947), is welcome. After an introduction, which includes an account of previous publica tions in their field, the authors present, with revisions and commentary, a selection of twenty-two inscriptions already known, and thirty-four new ones, recovered in the current excavations. Of notable interest among the new epitaphs is no. 5, which may be trans lated as follows: "Resting place of Andrew, reader, of St. Agathoclia's." The same saint's name, and as title of a church, had been conjecturally restored in another epitaph from Athens. A church of this name, which stood near the Agora in the early nineteenth century, was destroyed by fire during the War of Independence. The commemoration of St. Agatho- clia is kept by the Greeks on September 17. To the editors' materials on her legend, succinct comment may be added from the Propylaeum ad Acta Sanctorum Decembris (Brussels, 1940). The notice in the Roman Martyrology for September 17, observe the Bolland- ists, agrees with the Greek lives read in the synaxaries. Back of these may lie an earlier Passion, which has now disappeared: "quamque sinceram et genuinam fuisse nulla ratio suadet" (op. cit., p. 403). It is gratifying to have now, in an inscription as old as the sixth century, conclusive evidence of the antiquity of the cult, and confirmatory evidence of its place of origin. The saint's day may also be of old tradition; and the name of Agathoclia, so beautifully Greek, is secure. Waiving an extensive critical study, the reviewer submits to the authors of Early Christian Epitaphs from Athens a few points that have met the eye. There is a self-evident misprint on page 20: "domuments." The reference in footnote 182, "I. G. IP, 4878," should be, I imagine, 4873. Plate X, no. 34, appears to have been printed in negative: see p. 10, "the open rho is to the left of the upper arm of the cross," and f. n. 87. A state- 700 BOOK REVIEWS 701 ment on page 19, that itacism "is of a much later date than the documents with which we are dealing," seems not to say what the authors must have intended. On the name Sambatis (p. 42), see the informing article, "Sam- bathis," by Herbert C. Youtie, Harvard Theological Review, XXXVII (1944), 209-218. Ann Arbor, Michigan EDGAR R. SMOTHERS, S.J. THE COMMON PRIESTHOOD OF THE MEMBERS OF THE MYSTICAL BODY. By James Edward Rea, S.T.D. Westminster, Md.: The Newman Book shop, 1947. Pp. ix + 259. $3.50. Protestants no less than Catholics are becoming progressively more conscious of the common priesthood of all the faithful. And yet the ex pression has an altogether different meaning on the lips of Protestants than it has on the lips of Catholics. This divergence of meaning is the re sult of two important traditions, the one heterodox, the other orthodox, and Father Rea has succeeded admirably in presenting an historical survey and a synthesis of each. The work is divided into two fairly equal parts, the first dealing with the heretical concept of the common priesthood, the second with the Catholic concept. Working with primary sources wherever available, the author traces in Part I the genesis and development of the basic ecclesiological heresy of which the heterodox teaching on the priesthood of all believers is the cor ollary. The heresy itself, which regards the Church as an invisible society of the saints rather than a visible organism for the sanctification of men, was first propagated by the Montanists, indirectly furthered by the early Manicheans and later Cathari, directly fostered by the Waldensians and Wickliffites, and received its final form in the writings of Martin Luther. Within the framework of this invisible church, which was looked upon as an aristocracy of the just or predestined, there was to prevail an egalitar ian rather than an hierarchical priesthood. Each of the just would exercise his priesthood in the temple of his own soul, without need of external ritual, sacramental ceremony or sacerdotal intervention. As the author, however, points out (p. 128), the earlier heretics were less consistent in applying their master principle than the later reformers: "The Montanists and the Waldensians and some, at least, of the Lollards, despite the fact that they had thoroughly interiorised all the truly essential means of sanctification, clung to the sensible sacraments and to the sacrifice of the Mass as realities, and conceded to the laity real powers of confection and consecration. With the later Lollards and with the Lutherans, all aspects of religion were interiorised, that is de-sacramentalised. All sacraments 702 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES became empty symbols; all sacrifice and all priesthood became unreal and metaphorical. And this was the logical outcome to which even the earlier heresies must have come, had they remained consistent with their first principles." The following sentence will sum up the first part of Father Rea's work: "The exercise of the common priesthood, as understood by each of the four groups of heretics, reveals a movement away from an inconsistent reality to a consistent unreality" (loc. cit.). The importance of the truth here ex pressed is on a par with the felicity of its expression. For it is well to stress the fact that modern Protestantism, in gracing its members with the title "priest," confers a dignity that is devoid of any strictly sacrificial function, and hence a priesthood that is meaningless or at most metaphorical. Hence, if the first part of Father Rea's study serves as a warning to those who would so exaggerate the priesthood of the laity as to prejudice the exclusive prerogatives of the priest in orders, it should serve no less as a corrective to those who would so impoverish the concept of the common priesthood as to rdduce the Catholic layman to the unenviable status of the pious Protestant, who can exercise a priesthood that is at most meta phorical. Father Rea is evidently aware of this second tendency among Catholic writers and marshalls his evidence from the patristic and Scholastic period accordingly. Tracing the teaching of the Fathers and theologians, with a special emphasis on what he calls the Augustino-Thomistic concept, Father Rea concludes that the common priesthood is not a metaphor, but a real though analogous sharing in the priesthood of Christ from whom all priesthood is ultimately derived. Ontologically, the reality of the common priesthood is founded upon the character of baptism which connotes a power to offer, though mediately, the objective sacrifice of the Mass: "Since the common priesthood is a real participation of the priesthood of Christ, and as such, a potency really though mediately to offer the Eucha- ristic sacrifice, it is not simply a metaphor, to be emptied of all reality, by the prefixing of the adjective "spiritual." It is a real but analogous priest hood participating in the reality of the one priesthood of Christ, which is the sole source and origin of all priesthood" (p. 233). Thus far we would express perfect agreement with Father Rea's inter pretation of what is at least implied in the teaching of the past. Unfortu nately, however, a note of confusion, if not inconsistency, is introduced when the author contrasts the common priesthood of the members of the Mystical Body with the priesthood of the ordained. After stating the impropriety of referring to laymen as "priests" and to lay-women as "priest esses," terms which are admittedly offensive to pious ears, the author gives BOOK REVIEWS 703 the following reason for the impropriety: "To refer to the individual baptised layman as a priest in any but a metaphorical sense is to forget that his priesthood is not in him, as an individual, integral and absolute, but that it is in him as a member of the Mystical Body, finding its integrity not in himself, but in the whole Body. It is in this way that the common priesthood is adequately distinguished from the special priesthood of the ordained, which is also a real but analogous participation of the one priest hood of Christ, but is integral and absolute in each one who possesses it" (p. 234). We said that the passage is confusing. In the first place, it is difficult to see how the priesthood of the ordained is integral and absolute when the fullness of the priesthood is found only in Christ, from whom all priesthood is ultimately derived. Again, the impression is given that the ordained priest, unlike the layman, exercises his priesthood independently of the whole Body, when, as a matter of fact, even in those actions which are peculiarly his, he acts as the organ of the whole Body in whose unity he remains. But the passage is also inconsistent with what has gone before. Father Rea based his argument for the reality of the common priesthood on the reality of the participation through baptism of the priesthood of Christ, and the reality of the potency to offer, if mediately, the Eucharistic sacrifice.