The Way of the Word: The Beginning and the Establishing of Christian Understanding by John C. Meagher (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 603 upon an epistemology than he seems to admit. A person's epistemology will have a significant effect upon one's philosophy of language. There is one more specific comment about Adler's book. The Bibliographical Appendix at the end of the book is of great value. It cites those works which are pertinent to the discussion of a philosophy of language, whether they are in agreement, partial agreement, or disagreement with the author's own viewpoint. Finally, Adler's contributions and insights in the area of developing a philosophy of language, whether or not one eventually accepts his theory in its entirety, are well worth studying-indeed, studying well. Adler does present a coherent analysis, and is successful in presenting us a solution to the problem of language other than the " linguistic philosophies " which are available. Dominican House of Studiu Washington, D. C. DENNIS H. AUGER, o. p. The Way of the Word: The Beginning and the Establishing of Christian Understanding. By JoHN C. MEAGHER. New York: Seabury, 1975. 234 pages. $9.50. This work inserts itself into a major contemporary debate in the area of the history of doctrines in early Christianity. The debate began with Walter Bauer's book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (German original 1934), and has been furthered in the United States, especially by Helmut Koester of Harvard and James M. Robinson of Claremont in their joint book, Trajectories into the New Testament. Bauer's thesis briefly stated is that the usual way of presenting early Church history is wrong. This usual way has it that in the beginning the Church was one in faith but later on heretics arose and sowed seeds of error and dissension. On the contrary, Bauer says, orthodoxy and heresy were both present from the first Easter morning, so to speak, and what is more, heretical teachers were the first to bring the gospel to many parts of the ancient world. His best examples of this are East Syria (the Osrhoene) and Egypt. (The origins of Christianity in Egypt are quite obscure, and it is commonly said that Bauer staked too much on the argument from silence. In any case, James McCue has recently challenged Bauer's views with respect to the Valentinian Gnostics.) Bauer concludes that in fact there was no division into orthodox and heretical thought throughout the Second Century ; it was an invention of the early Third Century Church of Rome, projected back onto a fluid past. 604 BOOK REVIEWS Meagher's is the first book-length attempt by a Roman Catholic to address itself to this challenging thesis. As such it is both courageous and ambitious. The author does not, however, endeavor simply to follow in Bauer's tracks. Rather, he turns the question around to ask how one arrived at doctrinal certainty in first century Christianity. Thereby he shifts the study from patristics to New Testament studies. Indeed, after a sharp introductory chapter in which he poses the question, the rest of the book investigates the principal theological clusters within the New Testament (Paul, Luke and the [other] Synoptic Gospels, Acts, John, the later Pauline and Johannine Schools, and other New Testament evidence) for an answer. The concluding chapter tries to formulate the various New Testament answers into a coherent synthesis useful for us today as we face especially the problem of doctrinal pluralism. The fundamental criterion for discerning truth and error turns out to be having, or better, participating in, the mind of Christ. This is attained through study of the scriptures and the gift of the Spirit, through a study of history, and the common sense of the universal Christian community. The axiomatic principle remains that Jesus is the One. It will be seen then that the question addressed by the book is sophisticated and important, the answer is faithful to the New Testament data and, while not solving all our present-day problems for us, true so far as it goes. But frankly, the long middle section of the book I found almost unreadable. The author knows the New Testament texts well and can draw upon them with considerable synthetic power. But he does not seem to know...