Book Review: The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4th edition)
Sam Bostock is the Minister at First Presbyterian Church in Saintfield, County Down.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4th edition), Andrew Louth (ed.).
Oxford, 2022, 2 volumes, 2143pp, £170 (Amazon)
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church is something of an institution. First published in 1957 by Canon F.L. Cross, an Oxford patristic scholar in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, Cross died during the preparations for the second edition, which was brought to the press by Elizabeth A. Livingstone in 1974. Under Livingstone’s guidance a third edition was published in 1997, with a revision of the third edition appearing in 2005. While the dictionary became a standard work of reference in both the academy and the ministry, it continued to be marked by the idiosyncrasies of its original editor, offering an authoritative, yet very Anglican, perspective on the Christian Church.
This fourth edition marks a significant change of direction. The new editor, Andrew Louth, shares with Cross an expertise in patristics and a connection to the Oxford divinity faculty, but Louth is ordained in the Russian Orthodox Church and has sought to move the dictionary in a more global and inclusive direction. To assist with the work, Louth appointed fifteen subject-area advisors, including Richard Cross on medieval philosophy, Euan Cameron on the Reformation, Catherine Pickstock on philosophy of religion and Peter Phan on Asia. In contrast to previous editions, in this edition, entries are signed where they have been revised but left unsigned where they have remained unchanged. Perusal of the volumes quickly reveals that the vast majority of the 6,500 entries have been revised for this edition. According to Louth, particular attention has been paid to updating the bibliographies. Although the dictionary now runs to two hefty volumes, this fourth edition has pruned material on biblical topics and other religions in order to provide a more comprehensive overview of the Christian Church in both its historical and global dimensions.
To give a flavour of the emphases of the dictionary, it should be noted that “Peter, Preaching of St” is about the apocryphal work and not about the speeches in Acts, minor orders receive twice as much attention as the Minor Prophets, there is nothing on nard but a helpful entry on the ‘narthex’, an antechamber in eastern churches occupied by catechumens and penitents. The article on “Pentecost” briefly discusses the biblical references to the harvest festival and pouring out of the Spirit but gives the majority of its attention to the various ways the feast has been celebrated in the Eastern and Western Churches. Coverage of Reformation traditions is often valuable too, but it can be spotty or repeat caricatures. Calvin receives a lucid three-column entry, for example, but it is asserted that “Calvinism” erased the sacred/secular distinction. The article on the Synod of Dort takes up less than half a column and was not written by a specialist, while the article on the Westminster Assembly has not been updated and makes no reference to Chad Van Dixhoorn’s critical edition of the minutes and papers of the Assembly. A range of figures from the Church of Scotland are included, but Samuel Rutherford’s learned and subtle Exercitationes Apologeticae pro Divina Gratia is “rigidly Calvinist”. “Purgatory” is a good representative of the sort of article readers of this journal might benefit from. The doctrine receives a two-and-a-half column article with a half column bibliography. A sentence defines the doctrine, a half column gives its pre-history in the East and West, a further half column looks at the developed state of the doctrine in the West and East, and a final column discusses the afterlife of the doctrine following its Reformation critique and provides a theological assessment. One will not turn to this dictionary for help with biblical topics, but anyone looking for reliable basic information about Christian tradition, especially bibliographical or liturgical, and especially in its more “catholic” forms, will find that the revised dictionary provides accessible and wide-ranging introductions to a vast array of topics, and the bibliographies provide promising entry-points to further study. I recently wanted to mention Pentecostalism in a sermon. Rather than go to Google (which can take up a lot of time) or simply rely on my own experience, I turned to the dictionary article. From a two-column entry I gained a simple account of the movement’s origins and emphases that I could be confident in, as well as some key dates in its development – including the beginnings of Pentecostalism in Ireland, where I minister.
In conclusion, every institutional theological library will certainly want to purchase this as a reference work for both students and teachers. However, while the broadening of interest is to be commended, the dictionary continues to feel less comprehensive and less surefooted in its handling of the branches of the Church that flowed from the Reformation, and the increase to two volumes has made the printed dictionary considerably more expensive. Individual buyers reading this journal may struggle to justify the cost, especially as the dictionary is not a one-stop shop. However, ministers and lay-people who want a reliable and up-to-date window onto the labyrinthine and daily expanding global Christian tradition will find these handsome volumes to be a worthwhile investment, which they will want to place beside their desks so that they turn to their learned pages before they turn to a search engine.
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