Lehner, Ulrich

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteTheology Faculty Research and Publications Theology, Department of1-1-2011Review of "Art and Religion in Eighteenth CenturyEurope" by Nigel AstonUlrich LehnerMarquette University, ulrich.lehner@marquette.eduPublished version. Theological Studies, Vol. 72, (2011): 235. Publisher Link. © 2011 TheologicalStudies, Inc. Used with permission.SHORTER NOTICES 235 R. J . Berry on the reception of Darwin's theory by both biologists and theolo-gians, and another by Amy Laura Hall on Charles Kingsley's response-are exceptions to the strongly theological flavor evident in topics such as intelli-gent design, ecology, providence, the Fall and sin, ethics, evil, and the status of natural theology. The tone varies from chapter to chapter. Denis Alexan-der mixes philosophy, court cases, and recent theology to deal with intelligent design. Neil Messer speculates about how to face the fact of natural evil. David Grumett compares ways of doing natural theology after Darwin. Michael Northcott wants to extend theologi-cal evidence beyond concern for the human. John Bimson treats the Fall and sin from a decidedly biblical perspec-tive. Along the way contributors touch briefly but competently on other spe-cific topics such as miracles, social Darwinism, and some implications of sociobiology. The variety of topics and approaches makes this book an effective and clear illustration of the current status of the many debates about the theological implications of Darwinism, as well as a good primer for further analysis. Clearly good for testing the waters, the book needs to be followed by a work offering more consistent overall analysis. MICHAEL H. BARNES University of Dayton, Ohio ART AND RELIGION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE. By Nigel Aston. Chicago: Reaktion via University of Chicago, 2009. Pp. 344. $45; $29.95. Aston shows where modern historiog-raphy went wrong, namely, in its naive presumption that religious art as well as religion in general declined in the 18th century. Quite the contrary, it flourished but underwent a substantial transformation. Catholic art, for exam-ple, increasingly absorbed the values of the Catholic Enlightenment and dis-tanced itself from Tridentinism. Art became a tool for presenting core doc-trines in the light of intelligibility and morality, freed from miraculous depic-tions or Baroque ornaments. This, how-ever, made Catholic religious art also less "dangerous" to Protestant buyers who often came into contact with Cath-olic art during their grand European tours as young adults. The resulting exchange of art between Protestant and Catholic areas contributed to the soft-ening of confessional polemics, an exchange and a softening that has been-thus far-widely neglected by church historians. Also worth further exploration is the fact that "Art was ... an opportunity for restating Christian truths in a manner that competed with the irreligious and skeptical currents of the century and preserved the ordinary mass of believers from lapsing" (120). This remarkable book masterfully combines history of art and religious history and is a must read for every-one interested in early modern Chris-tianity, since it successfully challenges established interpretations of religion and provides a magisterial overview of the contexts in which religious art dur-ing the 18th century was produced and received. ULRICH L. LEHNER Marquette University, Milwaukee IMPOSSIBLE LOVES. By Don Cupitt. Santa Rosa, Calif. : Polebridge, 2007. Pp. xi + 104. $18. Don Cupitt is a thoroughly engaging, witty, and erudite writer in the phi-losophy of religion. His attempt to rethink his way from religions that are dogmatic, authoritarian, and fundamen-talist to a religion that is worldly, life-affirming, democratic, and undogmatic is attractive for many. Yet his approach to his sources frequently falls into a fun-damentalist trap of a different kind, thereby weakening his own argument. Drawing on the contemporary shift from commitments to organized reli-gion to forms of "new spirituality," C. has developed a schema of an intramundane, secular religion "after God ... [but] haunted by the ghost of God" (29), rooted in the pursuit of non-existent "impossible loves." Though he has long since moved beyond any realist understanding of God, C. acknowledges nonetheless that he is "stuck in an 

Review of  Art and Religion in Eighteenth Century Europe  by Nigel Aston

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