The advent of a new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is always an event of some moment and this fourth edition – now in two volumes – is no exception. Even the preliminary introductory papers tell their own story. The first edition under the editorship of Professor F.L. Cross appeared in 1957, with a second edition, also under his editorship, finally appearing in 1974, six years after his death. Leslie Cross had been Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and chief organizer and initiator of the Oxford University International Patristic Conferences. Earlier, he had been an ordinand and then later a staff member of Ripon Hall theological college in Oxford, under the principalship of H.D.A. Major, a leading Anglican Modernist. On his later appointment to Pusey House in Oxford he made it clear that Anglo-Catholicism rather than Modernism was the tradition to which he belonged. It was this tradition within Anglicanism that determined the approach of the first two editions of this remarkable dictionary, and this is implied in the excellent note on Cross, first published in the third edition and included again in this volume. This approach undoubtedly coloured the first two editions, but Elizabeth Livingstone, his collaborator and successor as editor, reflected that the theological climate had been changing and was continuing to do so throughout the later part of the twentieth century.
The third edition of the dictionary was effectively her work, as his long-term assistant. Dr Elizabeth A. Livingstone, is known by all in Oxford as Betsy. She was co-organizer with Leslie Cross of the Patristic Conferences, and she continued to organize those after Cross’s death. Betsy had indeed been more than simply the assistant editor, and she contributed much to the character of the original book and subsequent editions. Her preface to the third edition is also embraced here in this volume, and that preface includes her commentary on changes in the intellectual and academic climate which also has had its impact upon the nature of the book, throughout the different editions.
The current edition thus needs to be placed within a far wider landscape. Neither Anglicanism nor the particular ‘culture of theology’ within the University of Oxford is now determinative. Andrew Louth, the present editor (himself previously Chaplain Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford and later Professor of Theology in the University of Durham), was formerly an Anglican, but is now an Orthodox scholar. He points up the changes in background culture, partly by signing off the preface to this edition from his private address in Darlington, in County Durham, admittedly still in the UK. Louth’s preface is highly instructive in understanding some of the more recent changes in this substantially revised edition. Unlike the continuing custom of the London Times newspaper’s obituaries, all new contributions to the dictionary are now attributed. Where the article remains unchanged, the contributor is not named. Where there has been minimal editing, with perhaps only bibliographical updating, the original author remains anonymous but the editor of that section is credited with the further work. The third edition did include articles on some individuals still living, but this fourth edition has returned to the earlier rule of focusing only on scholars who are now dead.
Louth points to some other key changes in this volume. He and the fifteen advisers appointed to bring the new edition to publication were given a remit to expand significantly the number of articles on Christianity in its broadest sense. Hence traditional churches, new church movements, significant leaders and thinkers, and fresh theological concerns now all find their place. This has meant reductions in other areas; so, for example, material on other world religions has been removed inasmuch as there are now other volumes that cover these in far more detail. Similarly, the large number of biblical entries on individual books and specific issues has been drastically reduced for a similar reason. The space allowed for Anglicanism has also decreased to balance the overall content but this also once again points to shifts in both the scholarly and ecclesial cultures in the twenty-first century. Significant editing has also diminished the length of many entries, again to order the balance of contributions proportionately. The space vacated by these deletions has, amongst other things, allowed an expansion of coverage of liturgical material – notably liturgical theology. There is too far more detail relating the Christian traditions in Eastern Europe and further afield to the ancient Oriental Orthodox churches. The statistics relating to this new edition speak for the breadth of the enterprise with over 480 contributors and 6500 entries. The volumes are beautifully printed and bound.
Further reflection on the nature of the content, unavoidably must focus on how far contemporary issues should be allowed space, and indeed when new subjects should be included. A few examples will suffice. So in the realm of ecclesiology, the concept of receptive ecumenism, initially nurtured by Professor Paul Murray at the University of Durham, is at present a key concept in the worlds of ecumenics and ecclesiology. There is no entry for this, despite it being used widely in both intranational and international dialogues – including particularly with ARCIC III (the third working group of the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission). Nor, indeed, is there an entry for Radical Orthodoxy, a theological approach initiated by John Milbank and others, and again taking ecclesiology as a key starting point.
Two factors, of course, govern here. The first is simply that an enterprise like this takes some years to come to birth and so there is bound to be a lag behind current trends. Second, is the Gamaliel principle. If a movement or concept has traction, then its importance will be indicated by its own survival. If it is more transitory then it is right that commentators should not ‘join a band wagon’ to quote popular parlance.
In different areas of theological study, one can encounter further examples of changing cultures. So within moral theology, there is an absence of any reference to ‘situation ethics’ popular in the 1960s and early 1970s, and effectively a form of consequentialism using a calculus based on love rather than happiness. It was first mooted by the American ethicist Joseph Fletcher, with some support later on from John A.T. Robinson in Britain. As noted, this enjoyed some popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, but in this edition of the dictionary merits no entry, even though a rather diluted form of the approach is still used today; presumably this absence results from it being seen as an approach that has had its day. This approach was also associated to some degree with different versions of existentialist philosophy and theology, and it is interesting to note that at the end of the fairly modest entry on this subject there is an interesting comment: ‘There are signs, however, that theological existentialism is losing some of its appeal, as theologians concern themselves with social problems and again explore metaphysical questions.’ Interestingly, there is no entry for the popular Scottish theologian John Macquarrie, himself a much quoted theologian and coming from the existentialist stable. Bibliography is also a realm of some complexity in a dictionary of this nature. Much has been achieved in this edition to update bibliographies even within articles that have been inherited from earlier editions.
Questions of who should or should not be included are always fraught. So, interestingly, the most prominent Catholic Modernists of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, Maurice Blondel, Alfred Loisy, Friedrich von Hügel and George Tyrrell, receive considerably more coverage than either of the American theologians, Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr. Reinhold Niebuhr, in particular and his concept of ‘Christian Realism’ are enjoying a new focus in the light of contemporary social ethical controversies.
A further issue is how one decides, on balance, an issue raised by Andrew Louth in his preface. A case in point would be the article on the pioneering twelfth-century monk, Gilbert of Sempringham. The Gilbertines, established in mediaeval Lincolnshire in the English East Midlands were a rare example of a joint men’s and women’s community. With issues of equality of the sexes within the churches, this might be a profitable focus whereas at present the article is of a skeletal three lines and clearly inherited from earlier editions. In contrast, however, there is now a well-balanced article on sexuality and gender but even that, in the light of the present high profile for these areas, may for some seem to be too slim.
These few examples of who and what is covered in the new edition could be multiplied across the two volumes and there is bound to be an element of subjectivity even allowing for the wide collection of editorial advisers. Nonetheless, overall, there is a remarkable sense of balance and proportion and this new edition clearly continues to stand within the tradition established over eighty years ago by Leslie Cross and Betsy Livingstone. The marks of its Oxonian beginnings are still there and Andrew Louth is to be congratulated on the remarkable achievement manifested in this amazing pair of volumes. It is ample evidence not only of the existence of ‘development’ within theology but now more clearly too of ‘evolution’ within the wider discipline.
