In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

BOOK REVIEWS 167 Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It. By JEFFREY BURTON RUSSELL. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 210. $28.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-516006-1. At Regensburg, on 12 September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI spoke eloquently of Christian Hellenization, the synthesis of revelation with Greek thought that began in the Septuagint. He then called attention to de-Hellenization as, in effect, deconstructing Christian thought. Precisely such deconstruction is treated by Jeffrey Burton Russell in hiĀ§ analysis of the eclipse of the concept of heaven in the past five hundred years. Engaging and erudite as usual, Russell has in this new work contributed to intellectual history and to the history of Christianity and-particularly interesting to readers of this journal-he has done so in a volume valuable for demonstrating and contextualizing the diminution of classical Christian philosophy in the Western world. Set clearly in their historical context are changes in philosophy of science, philosophy of language, theology, and biblical studies as well. Founder of the "history of concepts" (Historically Speaking 3.4 [2002], 1720 ), Jeffrey Burton Russell has produced several masterful interdisciplinary volumes tracing specific ideas from antiquity to the present. After he had presented the history of the concept of the Devil in five volumes, arranged chronologically, Heaven became his focus (as a welcome refrigerium). A History ofHeaven: The Singing Silence (1997) covered antiquity through the fifteenth century. Now Paradise Mislaid treats how the classical Christian view of heaven "was modified, fragmented, denied, and defended" in the last five centuries (13). The history of a concept can be studied, regardless of whether the concept has a referent beyond the imagination: "A history of heaven, then, is a history of the human concept of heaven, and that is true whether or not heaven exists in itself" (2). An orthodox Catholic, Russell affirms the reality of heaven, yet he uses his historian's perspective effectively to present a discussion accessible to others and in this light refers to himself as a "lapsed atheist" (1). He uses the topic as a lens to disclose changes in faith more broadly. This is quietly evangelical scholarship. Put another way: In the Consolation of Philosophy Boethius can be understood to have set himself the task of exploring how far reason without revelation can take one in theological truth. Analogously, in Paradise Mislaid Russell has taken on the task of presenting a Catholic analysis of the last five centuries while writing in terms accessible to a general modern readership which has had a secular education-or, as he notes, "inducation": "The newer kind of education might better be called 'inducation' of ideology, because the root of 'education,' the Latin educere (to 'draw out') was lost" (145). A strength of the volume is Russell's awareness that people whose formation has been of the contemporary, post-Enlightenment ilk need unobtrusive explanation of terms (such as metaphysics) and ideas that were common knowledge only a few generations ago. Importantly, the author is astute in discerning and explaining metaphysical assumptions within various intellectual and social theories; one instance of many is found in his remarks on the thought of Emile Durkheim, 168 BOOK REVIEWS who invented the term "sociology of religion" in 1898 (112). Philosophers and schools of philosophy are treated in their emergence and also in their influence upon Christianity and ideas about heaven. This is a fascinating and insightful book. As Russell observes, "The classical Christian concept of heaven-the baseline against which anomalies can be measured-developed over fifteen hundred years and suffused Western thought through the sixteenth century" (5). The first chapter summarizes the major facets of belief in heaven before modernity and lays out Russell's methodology. For some readers, this will make the initial chapter rather demanding, so it is well to note how rich the volume as a whole is. The rest of the book sets forth cogently how changes in metaphysics undermined for many the primary bases for faith: the Bible, tradition, reason, and experience. The breadth of the bibliography is daunting, but made accessible through this learned book and its notes. The Protestant Reformation involved the rejection of traditional metaphysics...

pdf

Share