New Narratives for Old: The Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology, Essays in Honor of Michel René Barnes ed. by Anthony Briggman and Ellen Scully (review)

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• New Narratives for Old: The Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology, Essays in Honor of Michel René Barnes ed. by Anthony Briggman and Ellen Scully
• Shawn J. Wilhite

Anthony Briggman and Ellen Scully, editors New Narratives for Old: The Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology, Essays in Honor of Michel René Barnes Catholic University of America Studies in Early Christianity Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022 Pp. xviii + 405. $75.00.

This Festschrift quite seriously demonstrates a need to consider method for the study of early Christian theology. A "school" of early Christian thought can quite possibly be derived from the direct influence of Michel René Barnes. Permeating his scholarship over the years, Barnes presents a concern for a consistent method of historical theology, a criticism of and charge for dogmaticians to consider historical matters more seriously, and an aim to renarrate and correct older systems of thought. In New Narratives for Old, Anthony Briggman and Ellen Scully gather fellow peers and former students of Barnes to write in his honor. The book features Barnes's clarion call for methodology in historical-theological studies. The dedicatory focus of the Festschrift seeks to appreciate Barnes's "methodological clarity in the field of early Christian theology" (vii). Whereas Festschriften may vary in the quality of essays, this book reads with far more consistency and depth. For scholars of early Christianity interested in theology, this Festschrift contributes to the field of knowledge in a manner similar to Barnes's original works by offering clarity of historical methodology and an attempt to model said method(s) for historical theology.

Before beginning the book, the editors provide a wonderful dedication to Barnes. They highlight three areas of his lasting contributions: he (1) redefined and renarrated our understanding of specific features in early Christian theology, (2) wrote three articles from the 1990s on method and patristic theology, and (3) demonstrated a commitment to and articulation of a historical-theological method. Barnes's contributions renarrated three areas of patristic thought, including the "New Canon" of Augustinian scholarship, neo- and pro-Nicene thought (even though the former term did not catch on like the latter), and the formation of early Christian Pneumatology. A recent book noted that Barnes's contribution to the "New Canon" shifted Augustinian scholarship away from psychological reflection toward a focus on exegesis and Trinitarian theology (see Kevin Grove, Augustine on Memory [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021]). His first two essays in 1995 ("De Régnon Reconsidered" and "Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology") took aim at dogmatic theology and patristic theological scholarship. Finally, but not least, his chapter "Rereading Augustine's Theology of the Trinity" (in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, ed. Stephen T. Davis et al. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999], 145–76) offers seven methodological steps for, in Barnes's words, "any credible reading" of Augustine.

Festschriften are challenging to assess because of the diversity of the essays, writing styles, research quality, and focus. In the opening pages of this book, the editors note that "no volume has ever been dedicated to the definition and demonstration of the method undergirding historical theology" (3). Briggman [End Page 584] and Scully comment, "It is, thus, incumbent upon the discipline of historical theology to articulate a method that sustains this commitment. The essays in this volume look to meet this obligation" (20). The essays seek to address these challenges by offering a definition and demonstration of a method that supports early Christian historical theology.

The book consists of nineteen chapters and assumes a two-fold structure: (1) "Defining the Method of Historical Theology" and (2) "Demonstrating the Method of Historical Theology." The opening chapter by Briggman and Scully on historical theology's aim and method surveys frameworks for using ancient texts in theological discourse. In Part One of the book, Lewis Ayres and John Rist help define a method of historical theology. In Part Two, sixteen chapters consist of the "demonstrative essays" that occupy a fourfold "scholarly reorientation": "(1) reassessing early Christian theological interpretation of Scripture; (2) reexamining sources and influences; (3) redefining polemical opponents and strategies; (4) revising scholarly narratives" (23). The essays range from matters...