The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism by Shirley Jackson Case (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism. By SHIRLEY JACKSON CAsE. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1946. Pp. 248, with index. $3.00. The title of this book, " The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism," is not easy to understand; in the book Judaism is mentioned, Jesus is noticed, as it were in passing, for the Saviour of the world always remains in the shadows, but what is stressed is the influence of pagan philosophy and pagan religious cults on the beginnings of Christianity. The author (p. vi) states that the " present volume presents a survey of historical data." The digest of pagan philosophy and pagan religious myths is well done. It is clear that the Mediterranean world, at the time Christianity came to it, held to a belief that the activity of the world, in some obscure way, was controlled by superhuman powers. But it is not clear what the author attempts to prove from this. His thesis seems to be that the supernatural element in Christianity is not supernatural at all but is due to the religious conditions of the time; it was a better and more potent form of supernaturalism than the Greek form and so conquered the Greek world. Dr. Case concludes the book: " Christian supernaturalism arose to serve a functional need in the course of the new religion's expansion within its particular environment and in relation to characteristic modes of thinking prevalent in that day," and since these modes of thinking are no longer influential on the modern world, " to maintain rigid adhesion to an outworn type of interpretation might prove in reality detrimental to Christianity" (p. 224). The thesis, of course, is not new; it was enunciated by Loisy and others a long time ago and under various forms. At the present time it is not so prominent. The book, therefore, belongs to that class of books which come under the heading: " Comparative Study of Religions." Hence the title is misleading or, at least, ambiguous; the book is not concerned with the real origin of Christian supernaturalism at all. The comparative study of religions is not something new nor is it to be censured. If this science did not exist it would have to be devised; analogies between diverse religions cannot be denied. People, no matter how far you go back in history, do not live in hermetically sealed compartments. Nations did not develop in isolation; peoples, tribes, and nations influenced one another; even prehistoric time has its influence on historic time. Neither did the religions of nations develop in isolation; the advanced form of religions among the Greeks is not due to the Greeks alone. Nor did 349 350 BOOK REVIEWS Christianity develop in isolation. But development is one thing and origin is quite another. It was necessary, for instance, for a new religion to speak the language of the time in which it appeared. If it did not it could have no contact with the time nor any influence on the religion or the people of the time. Christianity spoke the language of the Greeks; there was no other language in common use in the Mediterranean world of that time. The writers of the New Testament used the language of the religious writers of the Greeks and, in point of fact, a great number of terms passed over from the religions of Greece and of Rome to the religion of Jesus Christ. But widely divergent spiritual attitudes and beliefs may creep in under the same symbols and the same language. Religions may present similarities of language or of externals but these will not necessarily indicate a common origin or even the borrowing of one from the other. The vocabulary of the New Testament and of the early Fathers of the Church is certainly the vocabulary of the Greeks and sometimes even of the religion of the Greeks. But the content of the vocabulary is not the same and we should not confound the expression with the thought. Hence, there is grave danger of exaggerating the importance of analogies between religious rites and of concluding a dependance where only a resemblance exists, which may be traced to the general laws of language and...