363 - Tradition and Life In the Church: Essays and Lectures in Church History

Tradition and Life In the Church:
Essays and Lectures in Church History
By Hans von Campenhausen
Trans. by A. V. Littledale
254 pp. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968. $4.50.

Historians are specialists, most out of necessity and each according to certain tastes. Hans von Campenhausen, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Heidelberg, is perhaps best known for his work in tracing the development of institutions and customs in the early church; his taste runs to those problems which exhibit the underlying patterns of authority developing in this period. This collection of essays reveals this interest, complementing nicely his larger study on ecclesiastical office and spiritual authority which also is appearing in English translation. What this collection does not make clear is Campenhausen's characteristic breadth of interest, for the English translation has omitted five essays, among them three on Luther and the Reformation and one on Jaspers' philosophical critique of Christianity.

By any standard, the dominant contribution of this book is a study of "The Events of Easter and the Empty Tomb." Campenhausen seeks to reconstruct a plausible sequence of events for the Easter story, concluding

364 - Tradition and Life In the Church: Essays and Lectures in Church History

that I Cor. 15: 1ff. refers to a series of Galilean appearances which originally were quite separate from an equally reliable tradition concerning the discovery of the empty tomb. "At a very early date attempts were made to align the two accounts as closely as possible, that is to say, to make the first appearances begin at the empty tomb, and then, finally to shift them all to Jerusalem. But whenever this tradition, especially from the conservative standpoint, is repeated and defended as historical, any solution of the kind becomes impossible, since it contradicts the evidence of the most ancient sources. Yet the opposite attempt, made for the most part by liberal scholars, to base everything solely on the Galilean appearances, and to dismiss entirely the tradition of the empty tomb, seems to me irreconcilable with the sources." Campenhausen's analysis is not always convincing, in part because while he attacks the use of conjecture in Wellhausen and his followers he himself must conjecture creatively in his concluding portions to flesh out the whole picture. But the essay is basic reading, raising the right issues including that of the limits of the historian's competence.

Somewhat less detailed in analysis, an essay on the "Theological Problem of Images in the Early Church" is equally rewarding. It provides an historical overview of the pre-Constantinian period within which Campenhausen deftly highlights cultural and theological influences and their shifting relationship.

Indeed, it is a feeling for the mutual impact of culture and theological principle which emerges again and again in these studies, whether in broad surveys ("Faith and Culture in the New Testament") or more substantive investigations ("Christians and Military Service in the Early Church"). The author has a good eye for relative differences and the pluralism of early Christianity. Dealing with the development of ascetic practices he points out the singularity of Paul's position on sex and marriage, so different from either the Corinthian scene or the tone of the rest of the New Testament or even Post-canonical literature.

Nor does Campenhausen hesitate to draw conclusions from this history. Reflecting on "Augustine and the Fall of Rome" he raises the question of the inherently Christian-theological matrix of the whole idea of world-history. Tracing some aspects of "The Christian and Social Life According to the New Testament" he concludes that the church is not the place for the advocacy of definite social aims. "It can cause nothing but confusion if her representatives take sides in doubtful questions," and virtually all social questions are "doubtful." Instead, the church should be content to proclaim the "peace of Christ."

Even those who most admire Campenhausen's work may wonder at this confining way of pointing "morals" from this history. The opera-

365 - Tradition and Life In the Church: Essays and Lectures in Church History

tional technique is to adopt the standard of Reformation theology, constantly repristinating the origins of Christian truth and faith and keeping those origins pure and contemporary. That should, and does, sound like Bultmann, who is no less "conservative" in such matters. But unlike Bultmann, and alas unlike much of early Christian literature, Campenhausen is tone deaf to eschatology. While he sees well enough the church moving forward by the guidance of its past, he fails to see at the same time how past and present are shaped by its perception of the future.

Tradition, authority, and the interaction of church and cultural context-these are the common themes of Campenhausen's essays. Perhaps in the day and place originally written they did not seem quite so parallel to contemporary problems, but now their timeliness is unmistakable. No themes from the past could be more suggestive for the present, which is only to say that history also has its future.

John H. Schutz
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina