One of the more satisfying audits is to review a year's reading. I mainly read books, though I do a lot of research and casual reading by browsing favourite websites, and sometimes being diverted to new sources and resources for my interests. But yes, books remain my mainstay for learning, reading, praying, thinking, meditating, struggling, nourishing and stimulation. As Rachel Cooke wrote of Christopher De Hamel's Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts, in the digital age, the book is "the ultimate analogue consolation."
Actually the whole paragraph is worth pondering for its persuasive commendation of writing and reading as safeguards of knowledge, wisdom and yes, respect for truth:
"A scholar who can convey his enthusiasm and erudition to the lay person without ever seeming to patronise, his tone is so urbane and wise, you find yourself absorbing the most arcane and complicated stuff – the history of handwriting, say – almost by osmosis. The religious texts he describes, born of endless labour and unfathomable (to us) faith, seem not to connect at all with our own times, and yet they do, in ways I cannot begin to describe here. In a digital world that cares less and less for facts, moreover, de Hamel’s book, the product of a lifetime’s learning, is the ultimate analogue consolation."
But those words refer to a book I haven't read. This past year I've read several books that have filled gaps, opened new seams, extended horizons, or whatever other metaphor describes a book that changes the way we see the world, ourselves and the relations between the two.
Konrad Hammond, Rudolf Bultmann. A Biography. This is more than an intellectual history of one of the greatest New Testament scholars of last or any other century. It is a history of the cultural changes in Germany from pre First World War, through the rise of National Socialism, and on into the late mid 20th Century. Bultmann's intellectual and theological development is traced with care, told with fairness and supported by an encyclopedic grasp of detail. Superficial evaluations, often based on theological presuppositions conservative or liberal, and whether adulatory or dismissive, are simply disqualified by this massive account of a mind refusing to have the questions silenced, and equally resistant to easy closure or cheap conclusions.
Demythologising was the bogey word for much of Bultmann's career. Yet even after his death his work is still by many scholars judged to be a benchmark of scholarly discipline. Further, some of his most admiring critics concede that even though his answers may be wrong, wrong headed or no longer tenable, the questions he asked, and the methods he used in asking them, remain programmatic for the discipline of NT studies. Often it is the scholar who identifies the basic issues, the more intrtactable problems and the key critical questions, whose contribution is the most durable.
My interest in the history of New Testament interpretation made this book a weighty ingot of gold for me. Some of the greatest Christian minds have delved deep into those ancient, potent and subversive texts and have sought a deeper understanding not only of the foundation documents of our Faith, but have probed and pondered the transformative events to which they bear witness. In the middle years of the 20th Century Bultmann was a major planet drawing many other scholars into his orbit. And although many differed from him in their conclusions, the contribution of a veritable galaxy of NT scholars to our understanding of the New Testament has been far reaching, and echoes still down the decades into our own time. Names like Dibelius, Kasemann, Cullmann, Jeremias, Conzelmann, are some of those whose life work was inevitably responsive to, or reactive against, Bultmann's work. Bultmann's own interlocutors included Heidegger, Gogartern, Von Soden, Barth and others whose philosophical and theological emphases coincided or collided with his own. Like all good biographies this is the story of a life, in all its humanity, but given depth by also being an account of the mind of a great scholar theologian, and of a man of faith. Bultmann's faith was deeply entangled in the cultural and intellectual categories of Existentialism, but it is readily apparent to anyone who takes time to read him, and to hear his faith resonating in his sermons, that this complex and powerful personality was grounded (a word he would approve) in a faith deeply christological and forward looking to the eschaton and final triumph of the Christ of faith.
Ironically, and thankfully, those who don't need or can't afford the hard copy book (it is very expensive) can download to Kindle for £7.43 - this is the bargain of the year for those happy with a digital copy. But as noted above, with a big book token to take the weight of its purchase, I am happy to own it as a book, an analogue consolation Kindle notwithstanding!
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