Under review is the paperback edition of John Saward's Sweet and Blessed Country, which first saw the light of day in 2005. It is a treatise on eschatology in the classical manner of Latin theology, though it still bears the marks of its literary origins as conferences given to the monks of Pluscarden, the natural ambience of which is charmingly indicated at the book's beginning and end. Written in a style which combines Scholastic clarity (and, often, terminology) with the affective warmth of Cistercian and Franciscan mysticism, it consists, after an introduction, of four chapters dealing in turn with: the vision of the triune God; the Paschal mystery and its sacrament, the Mass, considered as ‘opening heaven's gates’; Hell and Purgatory; and the place of the Mother of the Lord in movement towards, and enjoyment of, the vision of God. This concluding Marian chapter may seem strangely devised, and even more curiously located, until one realizes, half-way through the introduction, that the book is conceived as a commentary on an eschatological ‘icon’: The Coronation of the Virgin by the mid fifteenth century artist Enguerrand Quarton.
This painting was commissioned as an altar-piece by the Charterhouse of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon; its iconographic themes were specified by the patrons, and thoughtfully executed by the artist, who added a number of telling details – such as a Carthusian embracing a Greek monastic (these were the years immediately after the Council of Florence) – which enhance the spiritual value of the artwork as a whole. More is the pity that Oxford University Press have failed to reproduce it in its entirety. Even what is offered (on the front cover) is too small in scale and fuzzy in its printing for some of the features discussed by Saward to be identified at all easily.
Apart from Scripture, Saward's principal sources are St Thomas, Denys the Carthusian (otherwise the ‘ecstatic doctor), a contemporary of Quarton, and two twentieth century Benedictine writers who belong to the Thomist school, Anscar Vonier of Buckfast and Columba Marmion of Maredsous. St Bede also gets a look in (another monastic theologian albeit, obviously, pre-Thomist), as do several modern popes, notably Pius XII and John Paul II. And given the original audience for whom the material was intended, Saward cannot omit St Benedict. Saward interprets the duality of aspiration in the Rule of Benedict – towards God, towards heaven – in Thomasian terms of the inter-relation of the love of friendship – which is other-directed and our primary relation to God, and fulfils the virtue of faith – and a spiritual concupiscence-love – which is self-regarding and our primary relation to heaven, and fulfils the virtue of hope. So far from competing, these two loves, on Saward's view, confirm and supplement each other beautifully (a favourite word of this author). In this sense, the book is an intervention, after the event, in a famous debate, the seventeenth century battle royal between Bossuet and Fénélon over what is entailed by the ‘pure’ love of God. It is surprising that these figures appear nowhere in the text.
The reader will find here a great deal of very good doctrine – and not only about eschatology, since there is much on Trinitarian theology, Christology, soteriology, the theology of the Eucharist (as presence and communion as well as sacrifice), as well as the Mariology with which the book ends. He or she may also find some slight discomfort, and not just at the rigour of the spiritual and ascetical demands put upon Christians, a message most of us need to hear. I am thinking, rather, of the way Saward seeks to revive the theological cosmology of the mediaeval period largely unchanged, especially through the high value he places on the concept of heaven as the ‘Empyrean’. I can see how the prospect of sending the corpse of Rudolf Bultmann spinning in its grave would attract him. But a more schematic concept, such as ‘that form of space and time which God makes available for creatures inasmuch as they are called to share his intimate life’, though less poetic, might have reassured readers wondering how much of Dante's cosmology they need to accept along with Dante's faith. But I don't wish to end with a caveat. This is an inspiring work as well as an instructive one. I doubt if any better discussion exists of the ‘temporal punishment due to sin’ than the – in every sense, gracious – one to be found on pp. 113–120.
