Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation by Alex Fogleman (review)

Abstract

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Reviewed by:

• Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation by Alex Fogleman
• Geoffrey Dunn

Alex Fogleman
Knowledge, Faith, and Early Christian Initiation
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023
Pp. xiv + 256. $110.00.

The catechumenate in early Christianity was the time a person who wished to become Christian spent in preparation, which consisted of catechesis and liturgical experiences. Fogleman’s volume seeks to explain the changing form of catechesis during those centuries by considering the writings of eleven key figures of the Latin West. This follows an introductory chapter on the educational landscape in antiquity. The aim is to understand the differing ways in which catechesis led to knowledge of God. The work offers an epistemological approach to catechesis, investigating the relationship between catechesis and pedagogy, thereby differentiating itself from liturgical, historical, or pastoral studies of the topic, such as the [End Page 475] late Bill Harmless’s Augustine and the Catechumenate. It asks how knowledge of God is described and taught. One should note, however, that a portion of each chapter is devoted to such liturgical and historical matters before attention is turned to the epistemological. Overall, I would say that to present the catechumenate solely in terms of knowledge of God, although important, is limiting in that a wider consideration of learning how to experience God is downplayed.

Irenaeus is seen as offering an aesthetic way of knowing God in that the regula fidei offered an initiate a principle of unity to connect all scripture harmoniously together. Tertullian is regarded as highlighting the importance of ritual in its simplicity as shaping knowledge. The Hippolytan school stressed both the hiddenness and openness of knowledge of God through mystery language. Cyprian pointed to the fact that knowledge of God was inseparable from participation in the true church. Ambrose, the first of the post-Nicene fathers considered, wrote specifically catechumenal and mystagogical works that accentuate training the senses, particularly the visual, for a spiritual perception. The fact that Ambrose emphasized learning through liturgical experience for the newly initiated cannot be overlooked. The next chapter considers Zeno of Verona, Gaudentius of Brescia, Rufinus of Aquileia, and Peter Chrysologus, suggesting that the first two offered cosmological knowledge (true Christian knowledge of the world and time) to their catechumens, while the second two offered apophatic knowledge. Augustine of Hippo is understood in terms of how love leads to the knowledge of God through the illumination of the memory. Yet love is not merely to be understood intellectually but experienced. Finally, there is Quodvultdeus, who lived in an apocalyptic age confronted by the Vandals in Carthage where the catechumenate was a path to a radically different way of life. One could argue that, although it is true that each author offered his own perspective, they shared much in common, and perhaps the approach taken by the Fogleman stresses those differences between them too much.

As the author is aware, catechesis was a process of formation that involved not only learning the faith but living it as well. Faith was seen in the early Christian period, as the author affirms, as not only coming through belief but also through experience. In discussing catechesis as knowledge, however, all but the most careful of readers could be forgiven for thinking that only the intellectual component of that formation is of concern. The learning actually was not only theoretical but applied, not only cognitive but practical and attitudinal. One would like to see more nuance in the understanding and use of the term “knowledge.”

I was somewhat disappointed to see that a distinction between formation before initiation (catechesis) and formation after initiation (mystagogy) was not considered relevant. The way a Christian was shaped in anticipation of the ritual was different from the reflection upon the experience after it had happened.

I would like to offer a little more detail in my review restricted to only a couple of chapters. Fogleman asserts in Chapter Three that in De spectaculis Tertullian stated that Christians possess a deeper knowledge of God that comes through baptism. Yet, where did that leave catechumens yet to experience that ritual? Their knowledge of God was incomplete but was growing to the extent that they adopted the Christian lifestyle...