Book Review: The Oil of Gladness: Anointing in the Christian Tradition
1996; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/earl.1996.0002
ISSN1086-3184
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Architectural Studies
ResumoReviewed by: The Oil of Gladness: Anointing in the Christian Tradition Arthur Shippee Martin Dudley and Geoffrey Rowell, editors. The Oil of Gladness: Anointing in the Christian Tradition. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1993. Pp. ix 1 221. $10.95. Following R. Greenacre’s introduction, the fifteen chapters are “The Sacramental Use of Material Things” (B. Horne); chapters on anointing in Mesopotamia (S. Dalley), Greece and Rome (A. Bowie), the Old (J. R. Porter) and New (J. John) Testaments, the early church (J. Halliburton), and various traditions: Syriac (S. Brock), Byzantine (C. Hall), Roman Catholic (M. Dudley), and Anglican and Reformed (G. Rowell); chapters on anointing in the hospital (N. Autton) and hospice (M. Palmer), and oil in contemporary culture (R. Abrams and H. Slim); and chapters on the Western (M. Dudley) and Byzantine (W. J. Grisbrooke) rites. Most essays run about ten pages, but some are longer: thirty-one pages on the New Testament; twenty-one on Catholic and twenty on Anglican and Reformed traditions; and thirty-five on Western rites. Books citing both a canon of Jacob of Edessa (Ý708) and Naomi Wolf’s The [End Page 116] Beauty Myth are rare. This collection stems from the struggle within the Church Union Theological Committee and the Anglican community to develop a modern sacramental role for anointing. Greenacre’s introduction sketches the bumpy road towards a still-elusive consensus. A related volume, Confession and Absolution (1990), contained papers discussed before the Committee, but the present essays were not, and a lack of coherency shows. J. John spends seven pages on James 5, the scriptural “locus classicus” on anointing the sick, but Halliburton says the rite “cannot be traced in the ante-Nicene church” and that baptismal anointing predominates. Discussion of these types of tensions, and their consequences for the modern church, would be welcome. To begin with John’s essay, the first half covers Mark 6.13 and James 5.14–15, the only NT passages specifying anointing with oil, in both cases of the sick. Next, the Spirit anointed Jesus for various roles, including king, priest, and prophet. Other anointings were also by the Spirit, and it is unclear if any rite using oil was meant. Valentinian and Marcionite texts mentioned chrismation’s importance, but Tertullian is “our earliest certain witness to chrismation in the Catholic Church.” A striking silence, but perhaps reflecting the haphazard survival of evidence. John’s approach is old-fashioned. He insists that Jesus’ healings were not those of “the more vulgar category of wonderworkers,” but of a “more dignified and authoritative form.” Granting the distinction, still it is not good taste that is at stake. John also uses rabbinic evidence naively. As a punishment perhaps, the publishers consistently mangle his Greek texts. Given the topic’s importance, Halliburton’s essay should be better. He rightly stresses the centrality of anointing both to the early baptismal rites and to their interpretations, but his description is synthetic and shallow. There is an assumption of general uniformity that cannot be sustained: Hippolytus might call the anointed “kings” and “priests,” but not Chrysostom, for whom Christ is the king, and the anointed his subjects. Also, Halliburton asks if anointing is essential to baptism, but answers weakly, “the contemporary theology of all Christian Churches” supports the sufficiency of water baptism, while the Patristic understanding saw the rite—water and oil—as “an entirety, a whole.” Yet the Orthodox anoint the already-baptized convert, whence we see that sufficiency is not propriety; nor did the interpreters think that water and oil did the same things. Water was linked to death and resurrection, making the new person, while oil was a seal against demons, preparing one for the virtuous life. Brock and Hall deal with a single tradition each, Syriac and Byzantine. Brock’s essay is as satisfying as one would expect. All anointing is grounded in baptism, even anointing the sick and penitent. The Trinitarian formula of Mashocha, Mshicha, and Meshcha—Anointer, Anointed, and “Anointment”—shows how lively the association between oil and the divine economy remains in the Syriac and other Eastern traditions. Who in the West hears “Christ” and thinks “olive oil”? As Hall begins, “every Orthodox Christian...
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