Raymond E. Brown and the Catholic Biblical Renewal by Donald Senior, CP (review)

This important book retains the major features of a biography, but its title indicates that it is more than that. Donald Senior, an outstanding NT scholar in his own right, has skillfully blended Raymond E. Brown’s life story with a lucid description of the struggle for the use of the historical-critical method for the interpretation of the Bible within the Catholic tradition. Sections of the book are explicitly dedicated to the renewal of biblical studies within the Catholic Church, the result of Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), the teaching of Dei Verbum (1965), the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993), the Episcopal Synod on The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church (2008), followed by Pope Benedict XVI’s post-synodal exhortation Verbum Domini (2009). S. closes his book with a telling citation from Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (2013). Brown’s death in 1998 preceded Benedict XVI and Francis, but they inherited his singular, and at times heroic, achievements.

The first part of the book focuses on Brown’s biography, from his birth in the Bronx, New York, in 1928, to his family experiences, and to his eventually joining the Sulpicians, a choice that enabled him to dedicate his life to scholarship, writing, and teaching. He was academically associated with only two institutions: Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore (1959–1971) and Union Theological Seminary in New York (1971–1990). His final years were spent continuing his research and writing, completing some of his major works, side by side with some teaching and lecturing, at Saint Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, California. He passed away there in 1998.

Senior traces the rich formation that added to Brown’s personal academic gifts and fierce capacity for hard work: a year’s personal study of the OT, doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he fell under the spell of William Foxwell Albright, and a fellowship year at the American Schools of Oriental Research, where he had firsthand experience assembling and interpreting Dead Sea Scroll material from Qumran. Thus enriched, he began a long career of teaching and research. But S. has woven into this narrative, with the help of many written and oral sources, the portrait of a man who was more than a remarkable scholar, teacher, and author. He was above all a deeply committed Roman Catholic priest, a religious, and a long-standing friend and guide to many.

Senior presents Brown’s commitment to the historical-critical method as an “incarnational approach.” Eyewitnesses, early testimonies, and the eventual production of written texts later in the first century (see Luke 1:1–4) enable an interpretative act that respects the theological reality of the incarnation that took place in Jesus Christ, and the incarnational reality of the world into which and for which the NT was written. Once this is in place, then the questions “What did it mean, and what does it mean?” can be asked.

Senior devotes a chapter to Brown’s fearless NT reflections on “critical issues in the church.” These works generated most resentment in the United States; among many writings, most memorable are Jesus God and Man: Modern Biblical Reflections (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1967), Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections (London: G. Chapman, 1970), and The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973). Brown’s ecclesiology, and his sound philosophical and theological sense, enabled him to discern with accuracy and clarity what could and should be gleaned from the NT witness, and how it can be used to nourish the faith and practice of the church. Even those of us who have served long in the Catholic NT guild return to those books for guidance.

Senior offers a full description of Brown’s 1966–1970 Anchor Bible Commentary on the Gospel of John, followed by his commentary on the Johannine Epistles in 1983. Although much...