Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church (review)

Pauline Allen, Raymond Canning, and Lawrence Cross, editors. Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church. Queensland: Centre for Early Christian Studies, 1998. Pp. xv + 409. No price given.

This book presents twenty-three of the papers delivered at the international conference on Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church held under the auspices of the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, in 1996. Organized by the university's Centre for Early Christian Studies, the conference set out to delineate the enduring pattern in early Christian prayer and spirituality--a pattern which continues to have a profound and revitalizing effect in the Christian world.

The papers are divided into five sections. The first deals with aspects of prayer. Starting with a study of the high-priestly prayer of Jn 17 (Johan Ferreira), the section addresses spirituality and prayer in Cyril of Jerusalem's Catecheses (Ottorino Pasquato), the stages of prayer in the ascetical homilies of Isaac of Nineveh (Hilarion Alfeyev), the role of decorum in prayer (Robert Gaston), and concludes with an iconographic study (including twelve excellent plates) of Israelite figures and motifs in the Roman Christian catacombs (Joan Barclay Lloyd).

The second section is devoted to studies of personal spiritual visions and journeys. Athanasius' spirituality, exemplified in his Paschal Letters (Matthias Wahba), is the first, followed by a study of Jerome in his search for self-identity (Philip Rousseau). Desert spirituality is the subject of the next two. Pierre Évieux reconstructs the personal biography of Isidore of Pelusium through his journeys from Sophist didaskalos to priest-didaskalos to his desert hermitage, and Professor Hay studies the spread of desert spirituality exemplified by the Peter the Iberian, the itinerant Monophysite bishop of Maiuma, Palestine. Pauline Allen studies the homilies of Severus of Antioch, in order to understand the relationship between the bishop Severus and his church. Michael Casey enlivens the role of humility in the Fathers with a study of John Cassian's road map for the journey from fear to love. The section concludes with Andrew Louth's study of logos and eros in the works of Maximus the Confessor that found their way into the Philokalia.

The third section focuses on spirituality, asceticism, and original sin. The first study--on fasting and original sin in Augustine, Tertullian, and the Greek patristic testimonies--explodes the convention that the original sin was a sexual sin, arguing that it was greed, to be countered by fasting (Pier Franco Beatrice). A study of the devil and demons comes next, demonstrating that one must await the work of Evagrius Ponticus, Palladius, and John Cassian for an identifiable demonology (Kevin Coyle). Elizabeth Clark studies the profit and peril of allegorical interpretation, drawing the conclusion that allegorists like Origen and Augustine recoiled from allegory in exegesis concerning sexuality. The final study of the section explores some important practical questions (Wendy Mayer). To what degree was ascetic life separate from the life of the city? What can be said about female asceticism, and about the asceticism of the laity? What was the relationship of town and desert?

The fourth section has an unusual twist: spirituality, neighbor, and land. In the first paper Andrew Hamilton explores the image Jerusalem has stamped on Christian spirituality--at first, negative (Jerusalem in ruins), and then powerfully positive (Jerusalem in sacrament and pilgrimage). The next study seeks to determine whether Chrysostom's Commentary on the Pslams was for live listening or desk reading (Charles Hill), leading to the conclusion that they are an edited version of what he preached. The neighbor is the subject Robert Canning's inquiry about whether neighbor-love is the means to divine love in Augustine (uti/frui), in which he draws the conclusion that "the effect of a 'use' of this world directed towards the enjoyment of God is precisely loving concern for others (caritate consulendi), the very opposite of every kind of dominating 'use' (dominandi cupiditate)" (325). The final study of the...