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R e v i e w s
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This Rock
Volume 14, Number 3
 March 2003 
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Naturalists and Supernaturalists
It takes some courage (some would say audacity) to write a book that plays on the title of C. S. Lewis’s most famous work, Mere Christianity, especially when your book argues that Lewis didn’t go far enough. But Dwight Longenecker has done just that. His new work of Catholic apologetics pays homage to Mere Christianity, points out the strengths and limitations of Lewis’s view of Christianity, and explains Catholic doctrine with verve.
In this endeavor, Longenecker’s background is an asset. He was raised in America as a Fundamentalist and attended Bob Jones University, a bastion of old-fashioned anti-Catholicism. While there, he fell in love with the writings of C. S. Lewis and the bucolic world the famed author appeared to inhabit. Longenecker eventually moved to England, attended Oxford, and became an Anglican priest. Years later he began to study further the claims of the Church of England, the Reformation, and the teachings of the Catholic Church. He eventually entered the Catholic Church and has been writing about Catholicism and apologetics ever since.
The goal of More Christianity, Longenecker states, is "to help non-Catholic Christians who are interested in historic Christianity to understand the modern Catholic Church more easily" (p. 30). He has written his book with the curious, well-read Evangelical in mind—the sort of informed Protestant who tends to relish C. S. Lewis and to be curious about the Catholic Church. "Now at the dawn of the twenty-first century," Longenecker writes, "that simple gospel that Lewis branded ‘mere Christianity’ and that Evangelicals call the ‘old, old story’ is more fully and universally presented in the Catholic Church than anywhere else" (p. 27).
Longenecker has great respect for Lewis, the masterful apologist. He also understands that Mere Christianity was not meant to promote a minimalist Christianity, as some critics suggest. "Lewis’s Mere Christianity is good as far as it goes, and as a first step in Christian apologetics it probably has no equal. To be fair, Lewis denied that his use of ‘mere’ in the title indicated the lowest common denominator" (p. 28).
The problem with the famous book is its lack of ecclesiology. This also explains to some degree why Lewis has been so popular among Evangelicals, who often emphasize the individual while ignoring the communal nature of the Christian faith. The essential problem, Longenecker argues, "is that Lewis and other well-meaning non-Catholics believe the fundamentals can exist as objective truth outside the dynamic life of the Church (p. 29).
This leads to major problems, especially that of authority. Embracing "mere Christianity" means accepting someone’s criteria for what it is or is not. Who decides? And how? "Without anyone to define just what that ‘mere Christianity’ is, each group and each individual has to define his own version" (pp. 29–30) Longenecker explains that Evangelicals are lacking the fullness of the Christian faith that is found in the Catholic Church. But he also acknowledges that Catholics need to appreciate the strengths found in Evangelicalism. "If Evangelicals need ‘more Christianity,’ then so do many Catholics" (p. 37).
Longenecker does not break any new apologetic ground as he works his way through the major issues separating Catholics from Evangelicals: ecclesiology, authority, the papacy, salvation, the sacraments, the Eucharist, the saints, and Mary. But he does a fine job of comparing Catholic doctrine with common Evangelical notions and misunderstandings. He is especially good at making critical comments in a charitable way: "Catholics reject sola scriptura not because it is untrue but because it is not true enough" (p. 51).
The chapter on the Real Presence is one of his best. "I believe most Evangelicals deny the supernatural dimension of the Eucharist through an inherited misunderstanding of the Catholic position combined with a concession to the spirit of the age that is skeptical of anything supernatural," he writes. "The way forward is to remind Evangelicals that they do actually believe in the supernatural; they do believe God is at work in the world in wonderful ways" (p. 157).
Longenecker’s discussions of salvation and Marian beliefs are solid but would have benefited from a greater emphasis on grace as the supernatural life of God. Catholics agree that grace is divine favor but go much farther and deeper than do Evangelicals in holding that grace is the trinitarian life that truly infuses the soul. And the issue of confirmation is clouded by comparing the sacrament to "personal conversion." Unfortunately, this suggests that confirmation is about an individual decision, not the conferring of further supernatural grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the person whether they are an adult, a teen, or a baby.
"In our age the big differences are not between Catholics and Protestants but between supernaturalists and naturalists," Longenecker writes, "between those who believe in a revealed religion and those who believe in a relative religion" (p. 130). More Christianity goes far in helping Evangelicals better appreciate the riches and glories of Catholicism, the fullness of revealed religion.
-- Carl E. Olson
More Christianity
By Dwight Longenecker
Our Sunday Visitor (2002)
265pages
$12.95
ISBN: 1-931-709-351
The Blaze Within
Don’t be misled by the title. No one’s prayer life is so rich that it can’t benefit from the ideas in Fr. Thomas Dubay’s powerful and profound Prayer Primer. Prayer is the daily sustenance of every Christian. But just as one can be obese yet malnourished, it is possible to be baptized, live to a ripe old age, receive the last rites of the Church, and die without ever having fully enjoyed the satisfying spiritual vitality of a deep relationship with God.
Whether or not we realize it, we all hunger for this ultimate intimacy with our Creator. People endure lives of quiet desperation in longing for the relationship they were created to have. Even those who seek to know God in daily, personal conversation rarely achieve the pinnacle of prayer that is the desire of the One who loves them most.
This simple book can help remedy that, especially for those influenced by the trendy Buddhist or New Age techniques that pass for Catholic prayer in the twenty-first century. Fr. Dubay describes his intended audience as "adults and teenagers who have come to the conclusion that this world is simply not enough" and who "want a vibrant relationship with God, the number one priority in any sensible person’s life" (p. 117).
A Marist priest and internationally known spiritual director and retreat master, Fr. Dubay is the author of numerous books, including Faith and Certitude, Seeking Spiritual Direction, The Evidential Power of Beauty, and the best-selling Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel, On Prayer. A Ph.D. scholar from Catholic University of America, he serves as an adjunct professor for Christendom College.
Despite the author’s academic credentials, this book is no tedious tome. In listing his reasons for writing yet another book on prayer, Fr. Dubay writes, "Many of the topics and themes we shall discuss are seldom spoken or written about for ordinary people, that is, without scholarly details and footnotes. While we shall assume that readers of this little work are intelligent, we shall not presuppose that they need or have a theological background. Prayer is simple and uncomplicated, even though it normally becomes profound and rich—if all goes normally" (p. 20).
How to bring this about is precisely what Fr. Dubay teaches. Beginning at the beginning—the human yearning for beauty—he describes learning to pray as learning to fall in love with supreme Beauty and the goal as "becoming more and more like the One we love" (p. 33). He writes about "the illness of boredom," about the jaded ones who have "done it all," and about the many fruitless ways of attempting to fill an endless inner emptiness: vanity, fame, money, lust, power, frantic busyness, television, atheism, and drugs. Then he unfolds, step by beautiful step, the only genuine solution: "Prayer . . . simple and deep . . . immensely enriching, leading to unspeakable love and delight" (pp. 14–15).
While the author acknowledges that modern folks lead stressful lives, he quashes readers’ protests of not enough time to pray by reminding them that the Holy Father—"the man who has six billion people to be concerned about"—considers his own first duty to be prayer. "A salutary homily for the lesser of us," Fr. Dubay notes (pp. 27–28). Reminding us too that our Lord is our first model in prayer, he writes, "Though Jesus’ contemporaries needed his ministrations endlessly more than people need your attention and mine, he habitually went off for long and frequent times of solitude and deep prayer with the Father" (p. 129).
Prayer Primer contains four sections. "Preliminaries" includes getting "the feel for prayer as an interpersonal contact/union of slowly developing intimacy between the indwelling Trinity and the human person," as well as the "rich variations in which this relationship occurs" (p. 35). Section two, "Interpersonal Union/Intimacy," outlines practical steps for getting started, along with discussions of vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplation. "Church and Family," the third section, addresses liturgical prayer in the Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, family prayer, and making prayer the foundation of a busy life. The final section, "Questions and Problems," gives clear, direct answers to questions about frequency, feelings, distractions, self-image, dryness, innovations such as centering prayer (which he calls a "hindrance"), charismatic prayer, spiritual direction, and assessing progress.
Faithfully following Fr. Dubay’s advice can lead to a state in which "we love ourselves and our dear ones all the more realistically, purely, deeply—through thick and thin" (p. 178–9). Ultimately we may experience what Paul described as being "filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19). What good news—this blaze within can be attained by every Catholic.
-- Ann Applegarth
Prayer Primer: Igniting the Fire Within
By Fr. Thomas Dubay
Ignatius Press (2002)
188pages
$10.99
ISBN: 1-569-553-394
This Glimpse into Heaven
Jesus Christ gave us many gifts. Indeed, he gave us all the gifts we will ever really need. He freed us from our sins with his death and resurrection, he gave us the Eucharist so that we could share in his kingdom while on earth, and he gave us teachings to guide us to holiness even in this vastly different time and place. But in order to achieve holiness we must pray, and the when his followers asked Jesus how they should pray, he taught them the Our Father.
In Understanding “Our Father,” Scott Hahn considers the prayer’s seven petitions in a way that opens up these most familiar words to new spiritual meaning. Hahn guides the reader through each of what he calls the three "God-ward" petitions: "Hallowed be thy Name," "thy kingdom come," and "thy will be done." Then he addresses the four "us-ward" petitions: "Give us this day our daily bread," forgive us . . . ," "lead us not into temptation," and "deliver us from evil." In doing so he breaks down the structure of the prayer to show how each word, each juxtaposed phrase, and each theme can be pondered by the thoughtful Christian who yearns to pray as Jesus taught but is perhaps prone to fall into the habit of rote recitation.
The author uses personal anecdotes to good effect. He tells how as a college student he preached the gospel to inner city young people who may have had no notion of a real father, either earthly or heavenly. He shares his own experience as a father of six and explains how those who occupy that privileged office, whether they be fathers of a single child or of many children, should live their entire lives only trying to be more Christ-like. (Indeed, the book would be a thoughtful Father’s Day gift for any Catholic dad.)
Hahn brings new clarity to familiar phrases as he shows how Christ meant us to ask for many things with each petition. For instance, "Give us this day our daily bread" is not only a plea to be sustained with nourishment for the body but also an acknowledgement that the bread of life is Christ himself and that we ought not to neglect our spiritual nourishment. Augustine gives us the following to reflect upon toward the end of the book: "We should understand the daily bread as spiritual, divine precepts, which we ought daily to meditate upon and labor after."
Hahn also brings to bear the paradigm of God’s covenant with his people and his Church that is the hallmark of the author’s theology. From David in the Old Testament to Jesus Christ in the New to the Second Coming that we all await, Hahn guides his readers through Scripture to show how the institution of the Eucharist is both a fulfillment of God’s covenant and a prelude of the treasures to come.
The writings of Hahn himself occupy only about half the book. He wraps up his meditation by saying, "So learn from the saints who have gone before us." What follows are extensive excerpts from the writings of Cyprian, Cyril, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. Each was a devotee of the Lord’s Prayer, and their insights—by Hahn’s own admission—are the building blocks from which his book and his spiritual life are formed.
The Our Father is the prayer that the Lord himself, in his Sermon on the Mount, gave us for our benefit. This prayer, this glimpse into heaven, is so familiar that we may cheat ourselves out of getting from it what the Lord intends. In a day when many have to find what little prayer time they can while driving a car or before falling asleep after a day consumed with the demands of work, commute, children, and social functions, this brief, familiar prayer can be a source of great holiness. Those who pick up Understanding “Our Father” will get not only an insight into themselves but also an insight into the spirituality of Jesus Christ.
-- Michael Barnett
Understanding "Our Father"
By Scott Hahn
Emmaus Road Publishing (2002)
146pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1-931-018-154
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