Beginning at Jerusalem: Five Reflections on the History of the Church (review)

This book represents the fruit of a lifetime devoted to the study of history, and especially the history of the Church, on the part of Glenn W. Olsen, Professor of History at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and I find myself in profound agreement with its point of view. A careful glance at the footnotes clearly establishes that the positions Olsen takes are grounded in the minutiae of meticulous historical research as well as in engagement with contemporary philosophy and theology. In terms of historical research, I counted about thirty-seven articles and essays by Olsen cited in the footnotes and dealing, for example, with Anselm of Canterbury, Bede, Dhuoda of Septimania, John of Salisbury, Bernard of Clairvaux. In contemporary philosophy and theology his published work engages with Christopher Dawson, John Rawls, the "radical Orthodox" Anglican theologians John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock and their Catholic first-cousins Aidan Nichols, O.P., Michael Baxter, C.S.C., and William Cavanaugh. However, I think it is fair to say that his favorite theologians are Pope John Paul IIand Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose influence or stimulus is omnipresent throughout the book.

The book consists in five reflections on the Church, followed by two appendices on prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The first reflection is chapter 1, "Ancient Christianity and Us: The Once and Future Church." The central contrast between our times and the time of ancient Christianity is that we have lost God, and thereby we have lost a sense of who we are. The elimination of God [or divine providence] from historical narratives ends with the substitute deity of "progress." It is not the case that there has been no progress as such. Rather, we have moved from seeing history as the form of permanent struggle in which progress may be at times discerned to seeing it as a linear story charting the inevitability of progress. This is a concern of Olsen's throughout the book and not just in early church history. Ancient Christianity may help us reclaim the sense of permanent struggle. Irenaeus of Lyons provides an example of history as "a process by which man has been educated, has been allowed to make mistakes and learn discipline.... History is not so much progressive as open ended or indeterminate" (p. 27). Augustine of Hippo saw all history as "mixed, that is, composed of an intermingling of good and evil that would never be separated until the Last Judgment" (p. 31). In this antique Christian view church history is "ongoing drama, ever scripting anew the struggle between sin and grace and open to radical good and radical evil, enlightenment and degradation" (p. 34). That ancient view is the first lesson we (post)-modernscould learn.

The second reflection is chapter 2, "Late Ancient and Early Medieval Christianity: A World We Have Lost." Without espousing ecclesial "primitivism," that is to say that "earlier is better," Olsen reflects on elements of this world that we have lost, and consequently are impoverished: angels, Pseudo-Dionysius, the cult of the saints, the communion of saints, certain medieval liturgical developments (Carolingian liturgical civilization). These elements represent an integral world-view with God as its center, with all held in and invited to greater communion in God and with one another in and through the liturgy.

The third reflection is chapter 3, "High Medieval Christianity: An Assessment from the Beginning of the Third Millennium." His assessment of this period is based on his permeative axiom: "Because of the mixed quality of all historical achievement, my goal is as much humiliating or sobering as anything else" (p. 68). The assessment runs from the Gregorian Reform to Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV. At each twist and turn of the road Olsen compares and contrasts high medieval viewpoints with modern perceptions. There is no apotheosis of this historical period but rather the determination to see loss and gain.

The fourth...