,
8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
Commonweal’s September cover story, by David Bentley Hart, argues that Catholics make “wildly inaccurate” claims about Communion and divorce, because they (we) don’t know any history: commonwealmagazine.org/divorce-annulm… But I’m not sure the facts are on his side here.
Catholics, he says, rely on “easily discredited fictions about the Christian past…a concept of the early centuries of Christianity that borders on fantasy”. We would know that early Christianity had a “fluid and ad hoc” approach to divorce, if we read Origen, Basil, Epiphanius.
Hart apparently doesn’t realise that the very passages he cites have been much discussed in Catholic circles for some time. And not just among academics: the “five cardinals” book, which made a significant splash in 2014, contained a whole chapter on Origen, Basil etc.
Recent studies – eg Rist, Cooper, Kampowski and Perez-Soba – have come to very different conclusions from Hart’s. Prof Rist, for instance, finds “overwhelming” evidence that Catholic doctrine, as reaffirmed by John Paul II, was also the established practice in antiquity.
These scholars differ strongly from most of Hart’s readings. I may be biased, but theirs appear the more rigorous and careful. Take Hart’s opening example: “Origen (ca. 184–253) notes that many of the bishops of his time permitted both divorce and remarriage among the faithful”.
What Hart doesn’t mention is that Origen condemns this practice, three times, as contrary to God’s Word. (None of the translations I’ve seen say “many”, either – but perhaps that debate can be left to classicists.) In other words, the passage has the exact opposite significance!
There are many other things, specific and general, to take issue with – Hart’s claim that the concept of annulment makes no sense; his pronouncement that in the early centuries “marriage was not regarded as a worthy object of theological reflection” – but we haven’t got all day.
To sum up, though: Hart accuses Catholics of failing to grapple with the history of the sacraments. But Catholics have not only examined this history, they appear to have done so more thoroughly than Hart himself. End of thread.
