Dawson Revisited
Christianity and European Culture: Selections from the Work of Christopher
Dawson
edited by Gerald J. Russello
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998
(262 pages; $24.95, paper)
The Spirit of the Oxford Movement and Newman’s Place in History
by Christopher Dawson
London: The Saint Austin Press, 2001
(153 pages; $26.95, cloth)
Dynamics of World History
by Christopher Dawson
Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Publications, 2002
(500 pages; $29.95, cloth; $16.95, paper)
reviewed by Patrick Henry Reardon
Among the many reasons for which we mourn the passing of Russell Kirk in 1994, special mention can be made, I think, of our consequent loss of a new, uniform edition of the works of Christopher Dawson. Such a project was the wise Kirk planning during the waning days of his life. Moreover, his introductions to other significant writers, such as Irving Babbitt and T. S. Eliot, leave no doubt that Kirk’s own edition of Dawson, had he lived to accomplish it, would have been one of the more valuable publications at the end of the twentieth century.
Meanwhile, because a very long period must surely elapse before another Russell Kirk passes this way, we are grateful that three other Dawson scholars have taken the initiative to provide new editions of certain Dawson works long out of print and hard to obtain.
The first of these scholars is the young attorney Gerald Russello, who has taken in hand Dawson’s small 1960 volume, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture, joining it to a number of other Dawson essays to form the first book here under review, Christianity and European Culture. In this composite work, Dawson argues that the study of Christian culture must be distinguished from the pursuit of those political forms with which it was associated in times past. On the contrary, he contends, the proper point of departure for such study must be the transcendent nature of Christian culture, its properly spiritual claims and inspiration. This transcendence is more than theory. Indeed, Christian culture does not presume or rely upon any a priori philosophy of culture. It consists, rather, in a “continuous succession and alteration of free spiritual movements.” Christian culture, because it is a living reality, is not fixed by abstract laws of development or specific political expressions. In this volume, therefore, Dawson encourages Christians to explore the riches of their own cultural history, not in order to copy it slavishly in a modern context, but to address the eternal spiritual questions as they are being asked in modern discourse. This book is recommended with enthusiasm.
Peter Nockles, of the University of Manchester, wrote the helpful introduction to the second book here reviewed, a new publication of Dawson’s brief but valuable The Spirit of the Oxford Movement, a contribution to the chorus of works commenting on the centennial of the Oxford Movement in 1933. To this short book is appended another essay, “Newman and the Modern World,” rarely seen since its inclusion in an anthology in 1945.
Although it has long been customary to study the Oxford Movement mainly in the light of its later ecclesiastical effects, whether in Anglicanism or Roman Catholicism, Dawson’s interest in the movement was at once both smaller and larger. It was smaller, inasmuch as he endeavored to study the major figures of the movement within the limits of their own time-bound self-awareness and sense of vocation. Froude, Keble, Newman, and the others were concerned with certain immediate tasks rising from the circumstances of their own lives and the imperatives of their own convictions. They should not be treated, Dawson argues, simply as forerunners of later developments in the Roman Catholic and Anglican religious systems. They need to be understood within the confines and perspectives of their own time.
On the other hand, Dawson argues, the driving ideas of those men were far larger than their own disciples could appreciate. These disciples became chiefly interested in certain ecclesiastical reforms based on the theological and historical studies of the early great lights of the Oxford Movement. In fact, however, those great lights saw themselves as standing in opposition less to certain objectionable ecclesiastical policies than to the major philosophies of the day, such as naturalism, rationalism, utilitarianism, and aggressive secularism. Dawson read those men, then, less as ecclesiastical reformers than as figures in the much larger march of modern thought.
He contended that Froude and Newman, men of very keen vision, were able to perceive what must be the final outcome of so many of the notions most favored in their own century. Newman in particular was aware of the deeper mental infidelities of his time and the dangers that these posed to the traditional order of Christian civilization. At the same time he believed that a principle of “development,” intrinsic to the very composition of Christianity, would in due course assert itself to answer the challenges of the day and to reveal new and unsuspected dimensions in the ancient truths. Dawson’s little book on this subject is a marvel to read.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on culture from the online archives
18.2—March 2005
On Conservatism as Vexation, Vanity & Near Impossibility by Graeme Hunter
more from the online archives
23.1—January/February 2010
It’s Bent on Bringing Down the House on the Family & the Church by Douglas Farrow
36.4—Jul/Aug 2023
Our Political Void & the Disintegration of Truth by Michael Hanby
28.3—May/June 2015
Of Bicycles, Sex, & Natural Law
Describing Human Ends & Our Limitations Is Neither Futile Nor Unloving by R. V. Young
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
