The title of this book suggests simply a discourse on ethics and moral theology. What the Rev. Michael Hopkins gives us is a more gracious gift than that. He provides an extended practical commentary on the rite of Holy Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer. Enriching his presentation is the apt use of Scripture and both classical and contemporary theologians, most of them Anglican. His selection of personal stories and historical accounts is judicious. The study guide provides several choice questions for each chapter that could prove profitable for personal or group study.

Called to Act can be used as the basis for adult groups of several kinds, including preparation for baptism or confirmation/reception/reaffirmation, as well as enrichment for veteran Christians.

A welcome feature of this book is how it keeps returning to the theme of Christian responsibility in public life, a theme often inadequately addressed even in contemporary Anglican/Episcopal literature. How does Hopkins summarize the Christian’s responsibility in public life?

“It is participation—action—in common life for the common good. We participate as individuals, as members of the church, and as part of other human institutions, both formal and informal, including the institution of government. We participate … with the overall goal always of love of neighbor (in the practice of which we believe we are also loving God) and striving toward the common good.”

A newer member of the Episcopal clergy recently told me that the younger generations of Episcopalians tend to be orthodox but that today’s church unfortunately overlooks teaching the prayer book. I am happy to report that Michael W. Hopkins, a veteran priest, teaches the prayer book together with the Scripture and tradition that underlie it, and that he effectively expounds the dynamics of responsibility, especially public responsibility, to which every Christian is called.

More people should read Josef Pieper. A Catholic German philosopher who lived from 1904 to 1997, Pieper shaped theological luminaries like Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar. An acuity distinguishes his insight; a lucidity distinguishes his prose. This combination makes him excellent reading for non-academics, especially undergraduates. An encounter with Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture as an undergraduate transformed my vocation to academic theology, and I am happy now to teach that book and others by Pieper to my students today. His diagnosis of a productivity-obsessed culture and his prognosis of a contemplative life strikes a chord with young adults.

Thus, Nathaniel Warne — an academic theologian and priest in charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mishawaka, Indiana — has done us a service in recovering Pieper’s vision. Believing that “Pieper’s is an important and overlooked voice in the history of philosophy, theology, and twentieth-century Thomism,” Warne rectifies this oversight and, in so doing, discerns in Pieper’s seemingly sprawling work — spanning topics such as language, the virtues, and education — an overarching vision relevant for our time.

Warne rightly divines that creation forms the central motif of Pieper’s work. As a good philosopher, Pieper begins with the whole, a whole that he does not take for granted in its created givenness, and sees the vision of that whole as the asymptotic goal of the philosophical task. Because it is given by God, creation is intrinsically good and intelligible. But, since it comes from the God who evades total comprehension, it also can never be fully exhausted by the human mind: “Just as we cannot comprehend the divine essence, we are unable to grasp fully creation.” The mystery of the created order beckons us to plumb ever more the depths of its loving Creator.

For Pieper, then, earthly happiness and fulfillment reside in the act of contemplating this whole. To know the foundations of the world — to know why there is something rather than nothing — is what “we thirst” for and so “it is in the vision of the created order that thirst can be quenched.” This activity entails a silent, attentive receptivity, a type of knowing that the medievals classified as the more meditative intellectus rather than the more calculative ratio. Warne establishes how Pieper’s studies of the cardinal and theological virtues serve this contemplative end. To posit contemplation as the apex of being human relativizes (though not dismisses) all other types of more practical knowing.

To make this bold anthropological claim cuts against the grain of much contemporary culture, after all. Pieper himself warned against the creeping totalitarianism of “total work” and lamented a frenetic restlessness that masks a nihilistic boredom. Sounding like a true prophet, Pieper declared in 1957 that “[t]he greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.” Tell Mark Zuckerburg the news! If it is through contemplation that human beings fulfill their vocation, the loss of our contemplative capacities can only endanger our humanity and degrade the entire created order.

Pieper offers many antidotes to this crisis. He hails a liberal arts education that broadens our visions, an “asceticism of perception” that retrains our attention, artistic and poetic exercises able to surmount the hegemony of calculative thinking, and prayer that points beyond the immanent frame. Above all, however, the antidote is Christ; Werne’s book unveiled the Christocentricity of Pieper’s project for me. It is by meditating on Christ — who “is the light that illuminates all things and is the transcending principle of all things, is the measure and light of all things” and the revelation of humanity’s eschatological destiny — that we see the reason why there is something rather than nothing and the depths of our loving Creator. We can thank Warne (and Pieper) for helping us contemplate this belief more clearly.

In this clearly written book, T.L. Holtzen explains why the complicated debates about the doctrine of justification before and after the Reformation still matter today, and why John Henry Newman (1801-90) made an important contribution to them by grounding justification in God’s inner-Trinitarian life. When still firmly an Anglican, Newman engaged those earlier debates in a technical manner, which has meant that his Lectures on Justification (1838) are largely unread today. But Holtzen is an excellent guide to the theological terminology of righteousness and grace involved.

What’s at stake in the Lectures’ engagement with “Protestant” and “Catholic” doctrines of justification has become increasingly difficult to understand in the generations since Newman. But Holtzen’s final chapter helpfully inserts Newman’s theory of justification into contemporary ecumenical debates. In doing so, Holtzen quotes the Reformed theologian Bruce McCormack’s recent claim: “Where the doctrine of justification in particular is concerned, my own conviction is that the Reformers had it basically right with their emphasis upon a positive imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”

But McCormack develops the concept of “imputation,” which is to say God’s “reckoning” of believers to be righteous when in fact they are not, into God’s also making them righteous — enacting “sanctification” in them — because “God’s word is always effective.” Holtzen calls this McCormack’s “idea of transformative forensic justification.”

Here are the key theological terms justification (or, as E.P. Sanders put it, “being righteoused”) and sanctification (or, as Holtzen usually calls it, “renewal”) and Holtzen discusses why the realities they express are not “forensic” only (in the sense of a legal transaction) for McCormack, but also “ontological.”

Holtzen further discusses disputes about the classic Protestant term imputation, belief in which protects the sovereignty of God to ascribe righteousness to sinful humans, over against its theological opposite, God’s infusion of righteousness to sinners through the sacraments, whence classic Catholicism believed it became inherent in them unless they committed mortal sin. By contrast to both classic positions, Holtzen shows that Newman taught “imparted righteousness that he called the ‘doctrine of the justifying Presence,’” specifically that of the Spirit.

Holtzen’s book is not about McCormack, of course, though it is worth noting that his Reformed position does not allow my (this-worldly) participation in the divine life but only that “I participate in the kind of humanity which Jesus instantiated and embodied through his life of obedience.” Such words should alert Anglican readers that McCormack does not represent their tradition. Anglicanism has evolved a commitment to justification in which real participation in Christ is available through the Spirit in the sacraments, and renewal begins in baptism.

As Newman (paraphrased by Holtzen) puts it, “through the Holy Spirit’s divine indwelling, Christ’s righteousness is brought to the soul for justification as ‘the gift of righteousness’ [Rom. 5:17] that also causes a subsequent renewal.” Such a view is fully scriptural, at least as interpreted by the Church Fathers. Holtzen adds evidence to the case others have made that a great deal of the theology we consider “Anglican” (including the term via media) came from the 19th-century revival of patristic theology by Newman and his Oxford friends.

My only quibble concerns Holtzen’s focus on the Latin patristic sources of Newman’s thought, especially Augustine, rather than on the Alexandrian Fathers’ teaching on deification. Even if, as Holtzen claims, Newman’s “understanding of the divine presence does not strictly follow an Eastern theology of theosis,” it has all the marks of such a theology without being systematic. On the other hand, Holtzen’s focus makes sense considering that the Reformation debates were conducted in Latin and therefore centered on interpretation of the Latin Fathers in particular.

What Holtzen does so well is to calibrate how much of Newman’s view of justification is Protestant (a surprising amount if one has been misled into thinking he was always a Catholic masquerading in Anglican clothing) and how much is Catholic (more still, though not in the mode of Thomistic theology that some Catholics these days attribute to Newman). Above all, through Newman’s reliance on Hooker, the Homilies, and the Thirty-nine Articles, his view of justification is shown to be Anglican — distinct from both Catholic and Protestant while mediating one to the other.

John Wyatt’s book is not only timely, but it can, and I would argue should, be read by people in all walks of life. Yes, Dr. Wyatt’s book is geared more toward those who serve in vocational ministry, but our generation has a desperate need for authentic, life-giving, meaningful friendship. Wyatt speaks with power and truth to a post-COVID world that needs to find its way to the strength and vitality that come from one word: friend.

A physician, ethicist, and university professor by training, Wyatt was fortunate, like untold numbers of people around the globe, to receive the care, reach, and tutelage of the late Rev. Dr. John R.W. Stott, who died in 2011. It is this unique relationship between an older and wise pastor to a younger and growing disciple of Christ that serves as the background to Transforming Friendship.

What began with an invitation from Stott — “Would you like to have a cup of coffee with me?” — launched a nearly lifelong relationship that sustained not only Wyatt in good and harder times, but became a source of strength to Stott as well, particularly in his later years. Wyatt lays out a thoughtful case that “we need to put a far higher priority on friendship in our everyday Christian lives.”

After a two-year lockdown when people were isolated from surface relationships, the damage the COVID pandemic did to deeper friendships cannot be dismissed. Those moments that make possible the health that comes from friendship disappeared, and were replaced by other plagues — social media and virtual reality.

People no longer came together to pray, worship, and serve, but spoke through hand-held devices and flat-screen visual aids. Is it any wonder that during and after the pandemic there was also an explosive growth in cultural and political division? “Distancing,” while necessary to stop the spread, has remained, and has for many become valued as a virtue long after the worst of the pandemic has subsided.

Wyatt’s book is a strong, well-crafted and concise invitation to break free from the bonds of isolation and minimalistic relationships. Transforming friendship works toward loving others by seeing them “as God intended,” to quote Fyodor Dostoevsky.

But before unpacking the benefits of transforming friendship, by looking with a critical eye to the past and present, Wyatt offers a thoughtful case that reveals the landmines that have hampered the development of such relationships.

Wyatt reveals a cultural collapse that springs from the belief that the summum bonum is the elevation of the self above all else. This leads to all kinds of hindrances to true friendship, including exploitation, abuse, and manipulation. “It’s as though each of us becomes a lonely tyrant, an absolute king, in a small banana republic,” Wyatt writes. “Each state can decide to enter into contractual relations with other states, but only by consent and only when the sovereign regards the relationship being in their own best interests.”

It could all be a work of conjecture and speculation if Wyatt did not include that helpful backdrop of his relationship with Stott. John Stott’s model of transforming friendship, much like the model of Charles Simeon of Cambridge, makes frequent visits to this work. His influence proves not only the extraordinary value of such friendships, but also the way in which they are an essential element in living the Christian life. Wyatt’s beautiful description of Stott’s friendship is a valuable prompt for those whose lives need the transformation true friendship offers.

I was asked to review this book about the time I was retiring from 32 years of active ordained ministry, which naturally required a purge of letters, books, and such. I came across dozens of letters Stott had written me over the years, beginning when we first met in the early 1990s. One of the most meaningful moments in my life was spending an hour or so with “Uncle” John (an adjective he requested of all friends) not too long before his death — wherein his primary concern seemed to be how I was, how my family was doing, how my ministry was unfolding. He left me with an enduring charge: “be faithful … preach the gospel.” To the end, Stott paved the way for understanding true godly friendship.

At the heart of this slender volume is a series of retreat addresses Rowan Williams first presented to the Anglican Benedictines of Holy Cross Convent in Leicestershire, which he later reworked and to which he added a couple of related essays. As it happened, I brought Passions of the Soul with me for a recent retreat, where I experienced through a slow, meditative reading of the text Williams’s unfailing pastoral insight. It is a gem. Like some of Williams’s other short books based on retreat addresses — his two sets of meditations on select icons of Christ and of Mary come to mind — Passions of the Soul merits multiple readings to savor the superb wordcraft and absorb the wisdom of its pages.

The brief foreword and lengthy introduction orient the reader to Williams’s topic: the teaching of early Eastern monastics on the principal interior obstacles to spiritual growth and strategies for overcoming them. He centers his exposition on texts written in 450-750, but also draws on earlier material, especially from Evagrius of Pontus (d. 399), as well as later works in that treasury of Eastern monastic writing, the Philokalia. The introduction frames the rest of the teaching that is to come, and I focus my remarks on this early, informative material. Book I then delves into the eight “passions” as interpreted in the tradition; Williams also juxtaposes each of the eight Matthean Beatitudes as counter-remedies to them. The two essays of Book II survey the goal of Christian spirituality — or the challenge “To Stand Where Christ Stands” — from Paul through patristic writers to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. These chapters elucidate foundational questions from various angles, while indicating an essential unity in the spiritual quest across the centuries.

The passions under consideration are symptoms of a fundamental loss of freedom in the human soul. While we might think of passion, positively or negatively, as intense desire, the “fire in the belly” (Williams wryly observes that nowadays no CV is complete without a disclosure of one’s “passion” for the work), these uses of the word are secondary to the monastic authors. Passion is employed in their ascetical grammar in its root sense to indicate something we do not so much choose as undergo, even suffer.

Western Christians might recognize it as the condition stemming from original sin — parsed by Williams as the “spiritual handicaps we haven’t chosen but are stuck with.” Chief among these is the mental skew of “illusion,” which prevents us from seeing things as they are, in their natural simplicity, with clarity of vision. Instead, we tend to approach the world (including others) with the unstated questions, “What’s in it for me? How will this affect me or mine?” A self-centered perspective is seriously off-center, but we can’t seem to help it.

Small wonder early theologians referred to baptism as an “illumination”: the grace of seeing with the lights on; seeing, by small increments, the truth. But maturing into the baptismal life, of healing our disoriented and fractured selves, requires at least a lifetime of consistent ascetical effort. Our deep hope is grounded in the grace of Jesus Christ, who by his incarnation, death, and resurrection took our evil upon himself and transformed it. The Spirit opens a way into freedom, a defining quality of resurrection life. We are further helped by our innate longing for God, given in creation, what Williams calls “a kind of magnetic turning towards the real.”

Meanwhile, we need practical help to see straight, and here is where the early tradition comes to our aid. Williams insists, rightly, that these centuries knew no distinction between “theology” and what we would call “spirituality”; indeed, “Christian doctrine took its distinctive shape only through reflection on the distinctiveness of how Christian women and men actually prayed.” The guidance of the early monastics was shaped by their personal and corporate experience of struggle and prayer, their keen observations of the workings of their hearts, and the interventions of divine grace usually enacted in quite ordinary circumstances.

The passions are those framed by Evagrius of Pontus as the “Eight Thoughts,” which in turn passed into the Western tradition via John Cassian as the Seven Deadly Sins. This was an unfortunate recasting of Evagrius’s insightful diagnosis of our spiritual maladies, for what is at issue are not so much discrete acts of sin (although they can morph into sin) as thoughts, notions. Evagrius calls them logismoi. In his opening chapter, “Mapping the Passions of the Soul,” Williams shrewdly describes them as “corrupt chains of thought”: not mere “strings of mental ramblings but chains that bind us.” These logismoi can make us their prisoner, but it is possible to break these destructive bonds before they take over. Watchfulness over our thoughts from the very start is key here. Once we notice a vicious pattern beginning to lodge itself in our minds, we face it without undue anxiety and hand it over to God, casting ourselves upon divine mercy for help. Finally, we simply turn our attention to whatever task may be at hand and get on with it. No fuss.

Attaining the condition called apatheia is the object of these practices, but we must not confuse it with its entomological English relative, “apathy.” (Indeed, apathy could be traced to indifference or acedia, one of the deadly thoughts — what Williams characterizes as a cynical, perhaps coping, “whatever” attitude.) By contrast, apatheia is an “anticipation of the resurrection” (xiv), a state of inner freedom from enslaving, disordered, compulsive passion. Only apatheia makes authentic love possible, since it is free from our usual set of demands, whether spoken or not. “Apatheia has a daughter named agapé,” wrote Evagrius.

The aim here is to get beyond purely reactive responses to whatever life serves up. Humans have evolved a whole set of instinctive responses to situations that may please or threaten, instincts that have helped us survive and cope, and thus serve up to a point. But they have their limits. As Williams notes,

We have to negotiate our way by means of these instincts, yet they can get in the way of our full humanity if we don’t think through how they work. … For the Eastern Christian writers, “passion” is the whole realm of instinct, reaction, coping mechanisms, and this is the level at which complications arise. We cannot live without these things if we are to be human at all; yet unless we understand and in some degree transfigure them, we are trapped in something less than human. (xxii-xxiii)

As Williams, following the ancient writers, teases apart each of the Eight Thoughts along with its corresponding ameliorative Beatitude, we see the integrative theology of the Church’s first thousand years working to support praxis. The labor of habitual wakefulness does not take place in the echo chamber of one’s private thoughts, however. Its context is the faith and sacramental life of the community, and “it develops as we live a life involved with others, as we respond to situations and cope with a fluid and changing environment. … God has so shaped the world that we grow into our deepest freedom in a world of constraints and challenges.”

The teaching of these ancient guides is fundamentally hopeful. We don’t have to be trapped in self-defeating reactions that shrink our humanity, destroying the exchange of love with God and others for which we were made and for which we are destined in Christ. But we need education in the often subtle ways of the Spirit to get our bearings, sharpen our discernment of what’s really going on, and thus sustain a faithful response. Passions of the Soul offers such a needful mentorship.