Enterprise in Higher Education and related programmes are having an increasing influence upon the curriculum and practice of undergraduate teaching, yet there has been a curious lack of a detailed m'tique of their underlying principles. Two forms of justificatwn can be found for Enterprise in Higher Education: the ideology of the marketplace, and individual selfdevelopment. The tension between these two justifications lies at the root of the problems with the scheme.There is much to be said in favour of Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE), and much has, indeed, already been said -but of so varied and
This is a formidable and important book. Siedentop, a lecturer in political thought and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, is horrified by the way in which Liberalismthe idea of the secular individual -seems to have lost the understanding of its roots in Christian history, and of the intrinsic relationship between liberal secularism and Christianity. 'If we in the West', he writes, 'do not understand the moral depth of our own tradition how can we hope to shape the conversation of mankind?' (p. 363).Most of us learned at school to think of 'liberalism' as an eighteenth-century idea, associated with names like Locke, Kant and Rousseau, born of struggles between the Enlightenment and the obscurantism of the (Roman Catholic) Church. Siedentop will have none of this. For him, what distinguishes the Western tradition, with its characteristic emphasis on freedom, equality and (ultimately) democracy is its Christian heritage.No non-Western political theory -Confucian, Hindu, Islamic etc. -has moved in this direction: indeed, most have remained actively hostile to individualism. Moreover, the usual secular 'explanations' of European individualism -economic and political -are themselves, he argues, the product of Christianity. The development of Western political thought, economics and, above all, even the idea of 'secularity' itself, are all logical developments of the Christian theological tradition. At its centre Siedentop traces a line of thought from Paul to Augustine, to Abelard and the Franciscan tradition epitomized in Ockham. The Pauline emphasis on 'freedom in Christ', initially freedom from Jewish law, moves logically towards general moral freedom, and then, inevitably, towards economic and political freedom and the notion of secularity. The moral attack on slavery (begun as far back as the fourth century by, among others, Gregory of Nyassa), though it may have taken centuries to take effect, is without parallel in other civilizations. Similarly, as early as the sixth century we find the Christian Visigothic King Chilperic defending the rights of women on scriptural grounds: 'A long-standing and wicked custom of our people denies sisters a share with their brothers in their father's land; but I consider it wrong, since my children came equally from God . . . ' (p. 143). The democracy of the monastery and the universal claims of Canon Law gradually undermine the attractions of local custom and eventually even those of absolute monarchy itself. Such a movement rests on a not-always-explicit, but deeply New Testament tradition, of progressive revelation: that the teachings
This is a very strange book. Weighing 4.5 lbs, printed on high-gloss paper with colour illustrations on almost every one of its thousand pages, it is a massive, lavish and beautiful production which, at that price, must be heavily subsidized. While the Preface suggests that this is an attempt to 'condense' Wright's 'massive and still incomplete' work on Christian origins into a single volume, it feels like a (very wordy) student textbook. Minatory insets stating 'by the end of this chapter you should be able to recognize/appreciate/grasp/understand' the following things are reinforced by other insets of email correspondence between a theology student and his tutor on popular theological misconceptions. Yet neither of these aims is followed through with any rigour, and one is left with an impression more of editorial confusion -enhanced at one point by an open clash of opinions between the joint authors (p. 460).There is, nevertheless, much of interest here. Given the many unknowns, we are shown all the books of the New Testament as they would have been seen at the time without any modernizing gloss. Despite Roman rule, this was a violent and crime-ridden society. The many links between Hebrew Bible prophecy and firstcentury Christian interpretation are highlighted, as is the pervasive presence of Jewish ideas even among the Gentiles. The shocking strangeness of Jesus' willingness to eat and drink with almost anyone is emphasized (a 'party boy' (p. 205)). 'Resurrection' was essentially physical, without the division between body and spirit from Greek philosophy that was eventually to become common (p. 299). Mark's Gospel is introduced as an 'apocalypse'. There is a lengthy discussion of the development of Paul's theology -often familiar but sometimes very alienenhanced by the information that Paul was planning a missionary expedition to the Western Mediterranean. Without letters to Gallic or Iberian churches we cannot know if he did. With their range of reference, the insets are sometimes more interesting than the main text. Who knew, for instance, that the Onesimus mentioned as a runaway Christian slave to be returned by Paul in the Epistle to Philemon may be the same man who later was to become bishop of Ephesus (pp. 467-8)? Similarly, the younger Pliny's letter to the Emperor Trajan about whether to persecute Christians is given the answer 'yes', but to ignore anonymous denunciations (pp. 774-5).The ambiguity of genre and readership persists throughout. Any idea of a simple introduction to the New Testament is undermined by a series of abstruse Book reviews
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