Ephraim RadnerRecensioni

Or maybe not.. David S. Cunningham has a persuasive review/response/critique in the Anglican Theological Review (83:89-100).

A Brutal Unity by Ephraim Radner, B&C review 3-4/13

Beginning with the Bible's Jerusalem Council, A Brutal Unity offers a small church history in and of itself, moving through Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule, the Conciliar Movement, and into early modernism. Radner finds a workable model of church unity only in the pre-Nicene era, making the villain of his story Ephiphanius of Salamis (d. 403), who listed heresies and distanced the church from her enemies, especially the Jews.

Can we not see, argues Radner, that divisions have rendered Christian churches useless in evaluating human interaction?

Division, furthermore, "is the central part of the history of the Church as a whole and in its parts."

And one verse from the New--interpreted figurally--seems to summarize Radner's thrust, whether applied to our own fractured churches (of whatever comunion) or to the liberal state itself: "Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, 'Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved' (Acts 27:31)."

Bible, O.T. Commentary

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