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Cornelius Ernst and anthropology as a preface to theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2025
Abstract
The English Dominican friar Cornelius Ernst OP left an enduring mark on the intellectual life of the English province. Although some of his lectures and articles were published in the volume Multiple Echo, there are a number of different avenues of Cornelius’ work that remain as seeds. Building on Cornelius’ paper ‘A Preface to Theology’, this article investigates the relationship between Cornelius and Edward Evans-Pritchard and Godfrey Lienhardt. Although Evans-Pritchard is most frequently cited in Cornelius’ works, I argue that it is to Godfrey Lienhardt that we should look for the anthropological roots of Cornelius’ ontology of meaning. This paper also interrogates the question of whether there is such a thing as ‘Oxford anthropology’, and whether this has a particular Catholic character. Although I argue that there is no sign of a Catholic anthropology in Oxford, we have to be able to give some account of an anthropologically engaged Catholic theology in the work of Cornelius Ernst. Building on the idea of Cornelius’ work offering seeds for future development, I conclude with a short exploration of how anthropology could act as a preface to theology today, especially in bolstering fundamental theology.
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- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.
References
1 Louis Roy OP, ‘Cornelius Ernst’s Theological Seeds’, New Blackfriars, 998 (2004), pp. 459–470.
2 From a notebook of 1972, quoted on the dust jacket of Multiple Echo.
3 Cornelius Ernst, Multiple Echo: Explorations in Theology, ed. Fergus Kerr and Timothy Radcliffe (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1979). Henceforth referred to as ME.
4 Lubor Velecky, ‘A review of Multiple Echo’, Journal of Theological Studies, N.S., 32 (1981), p. 312.
5 Cornelius refers to this problem of predication twice in ME: on p. 70 in the essay ‘Metaphor and Ontology in Sacra Doctrina’ and in a more extended treatment on pp. 189–91 in the essay ‘How to See an Angel’.
6 This manuscript is held, with the rest of Cornelius’ papers in four boxes of the archives at Douai mostly containing offprints of his journal articles and some personal effects. As will become clear below, I do not believe this manuscript is Cornelius’ work.
7 Cornelius Ernst, ‘The Relevance of Primitive Religion’, Blackfriars, 453 (1957), p. 526.
8 Ibid., p. 527.
9 Ibid., p. 528.
10 J. Derrick Lemons (ed.), Theologically Engaged Anthropology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Joel Robbins, Theology and the Anthropology of Christian Life, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). As well as studies that have examined anthropological and theological concepts through a mutual lens, there is an increase in the number of interdisciplinary studies. See for example, Pete Ward (ed.) Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), which focuses on the use of ethnography to bridge the divide between empirical and theological analysis of ecclesial contexts. There is now a growing community of scholars who engage in participant observation as part of their research, and informal networks which seek to bridge the divide between theology and anthropology. Some of these networks are more established, such as The Network of Ecclesiology and Ethnography, which has expanded since its foundation at St John’s College, Durham. Other networks are smaller and informal, such as the Cambridge Anthropology and Theology Network. In other contexts this offers a reflection on the ways that theological ideas are parsed in a particular cultural idiom. For an example of this see Matt Tomlinson, God is Samoan: dialogues between culture and theology in the Pacific, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2020). For an account of the religious running through the anthropology of ontology see Michael W. Scott, ‘The Anthropology of Ontology (religious science?) in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 19(4) (2013), pp. 859–872.
11 Fanella Cannell, ‘Introduction: The Anthropology of Christianity’ in Fanella Cannell (ed.), The Anthropology of Christianity, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Khaled Furani, Redeeming Anthropology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). For the relationships between anthropologists and their Christian faith see in particular Timothy Larsen, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
12 Cornelius Ernst, ‘Preface to Theology’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 2(1) (1971), pp. 1–8.
13 Edward Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 322.
14 Cornelius Ernst, ‘Preface to Theology’, p. 1.
15 Paul Ricœur, ‘Symbolique et temporalité’, Ermeneutica e Tradizione (Atti del Congresso internazionale, Roma, gennaio 1963), Archivio di Filosofia. ed. by Enrico Castelli, 3 (1963), pp.12–31. Reprinted almost integrally in Esprit, 322 (11) (1963), pp. 596–627.
16 Claude Lévi-Strauss, ‘Reponses a Quelques Questions’ Esprit, 322 (11) (1963), pp. 628–653. This interview was translated and reprinted under a rather more alarmist title ‘A Confrontation’ New Left Review I/62 (1970), pp. 57–74.
17 Cornelius’s translation in ‘Preface to Theology’, p.2. Original text: Vous dites dans votre article que La pensée sauvage fait un choix pour la syntaxe contre la sémantique; pour moi, il n’y a pas à choisir. Il n’y a pas à choisir, pour autant que cette révolution phonologique que vous évoquez à plusieurs reprises, consiste dans la découverte que le sens résulte toujours de la combinaison d’éléments qui ne sont pas eux-mêmes signifiants. Par conséquent, ce que vous cherchez…c’est un sens du sens, un sens qui est par derrière le sens; tandis que, dans ma perspective, le sens n’est jamais un phénomène premier: le sens est toujours réductible. Autrement dit, derrière tout sens il y a un non-sens, et le contraire n’est pas vrai. Pour moi, la signification est toujours phénoménale’. Esprit, 322 (11), p. 637.
18 See ‘A Theological Critique of Experience’ in ME, p.52.
19 Cornelius Ernst, ‘Preface to Theology’, p.4; c/f ‘A Theological Critique of Experience’ in ME, p.55.
20 Cornelius Ernst, ‘Preface to Theology’, p.4, emphasis original.
21 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ‘Fragment of an Autobiography’ in New Blackfriars, 54 (632) (January 1973), pp. 35–37.
22 Kuper points out that several members of the department were converts to Catholicism and that many students were converted, with Evans-Pritchard acting as their godfather at baptism (see Anthropology and Anthropologists, (London: Allen Lane, 1973), pp.157–58).
23 Godfrey Lienhardt ‘E-P: A Personal View: Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, 1902–1973ʹ in Man, 9, 2 (1974), pp. 299–304, at p.302.
24 Ibid., pp. 300–301.
25 Ahmed Al-Shahi, ‘Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology, and Catholicism at Oxford: Godfrey Lienhatrdt’s View’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 30 (1) (1999), pp.67–72. In this article Al-Shahi is writing as Lienhardt’s literary executor and publishing a letter where Lienhardt directly refutes the idea of a Catholic party in the Oxford faculty.
26 See ‘Fragments of an Autobiography’ where his conversion is often understood as an offence to earlier colleagues at the London School of Economics. Timothy Larson notes wryly that Evans-Pritchard was such a bad Catholic that his autobiography of faith was published in New Blackfriars, and his claim to be a bad Catholic was mainly his infrequent Mass attendance, making him, Larson suggest, a perfectly normal Catholic. See Timothy Larson, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, pp.80–119.
27 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, edited with an introduction by Kit Lee, ‘Some Reflections on Mysticism’ in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (New Series), Vol XVI (2024), pp.91–111, at p. 91.
28 See for example Cornelius’ report that Evans-Pritchard asked for advice regarding theological terms for explaining Nuer religion as a kind of Sabellianism, ME, p. 109 f.
29 William Ernst as he was then matriculated on 3 November 1944, having been admitted as a member of Magdalene College. He took Part I of the English Tripos in 1946, and Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos in 1947, specialising in Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy with the History of Modern Philosophy.
30 Cornelius ‘…introduced young English Dominicans to the Aristotelian-Thomistic teaching de Anima by an application of Wittgensteinian “philosophy as therapy”. Oliver James Keenan, “Sacrament of the Dynamic Transcendence of Christianity” in New Blackfriars, 94 (1052) (2013), p.396. This based on notes taken by Fr Austin Gaskell OP. Another source of Lienhardt’s interest may also have been the literary critic F. R. Leavis who taught Lienhardt at Downing and who was an acquaintance of Wittgenstein. Lienhardt’s made a number of contributions to Leavis’ journal Scrutiny.
31 Evans-Pritchard delivered the 1959 Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars Oxford, published as ‘Religion and Anthropologists’, Blackfriars, 41 (480) 1960, pp. 104–18.
32 Godfrey Lienhardt, ‘E-P: A Personal View’, p.301.
33 English Dominican Archive, V, CE2, Douai Abbey, Berkshire.
34 Lecture notes on’“Some Approaches to Primitive Religion’, G. Lienhardt, 1951, 20 pp., Lienhardt Papers, 11/4, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
35 Godfrey Lienhardt, ‘Religion and Culture’ in Blackfriars 30 (347) (1949), pp. 69–72.
36 Godfrey Lienhardt, ‘Modes of thought’, in E. E. Evans-Pritchard (ed.) The Institutions of Primitive Society: A series of broadcast talks, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1959), pp. 95–107.
37 Godfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 28.
38 Lienhardt, Religion and Culture, p.70.
39 Religion, unpublished manuscript, p. 29.
40 Ahmed Al-Shahi, ‘Evans-Pritchard, Anthropology, and Catholicism at Oxford: Godfrey Lienhardt’s View’, in The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 30 (1) (1999), pp. 67–72.
41 Marshall Sahlins, ‘Foreword’ in Philippe Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, tr. Janet Lloyd (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013), p. xii.
42 While many of the interactions between theology and anthropology I have referenced above have focused on the use of fieldwork to answer questions in applied and practical theology, there has been relatively little engagement in the way that anthropology could form part of the philosophical preparations for theology. In other words, rather than focusing on empirical studies of churches, congregations and other ecclesial communities, or looking at doctrinal questions with reference to the lived experience of ecclesial communities, anthropology as a preface to theology would engage the ethnographic and theoretical arguments of anthropology within a philosophical propaedeutic.
43 Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions: The Paradox of Keeping While Giving (Berkley: University of California Press, 1992).
44 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), see also the work of Donna Haraway on cyborgs and the crossing of the species boundary. A general overview of this approach is provided by Martin Holbraad and Morton Axel Pedersen, The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 37–46.
45 Tim Ingold, ‘From science to art and back again: the pendulum of an anthropologist’ in Interdisciplinary Science Review, Vo. 43 (3–4) (2018), p. 221.
46 Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 19.
47 Ibid., pp. 20–21.
48 ME, p. 21.
49 James Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (London: Psychology Press, 2015).
50 Cornelius Ernst, The Theology of Grace (Notre Dame, Indiana: Fides Publication, 1974), p. 68.
51 Ibid., p. 75.
52 It might also be pointed out that caution is needed in accepting any philosophical system as a preparation for theology.
53 Catherine Pickstock, ‘Metaphysics and Poetics’ in Modern Theology, 40 (1) (2024), p. 5.
54 Ibid. The special edition of Modern Theology to which Catherine Pickstock’s ‘Metaphysics and Poetics’ forms an introduction makes much of the power of poetics to form the reality of the world around us. While persuasive, I try to draw a distinction between the craft of meaning and the poetics of grace that seems to hold more closely to the creative power of grace in Cornelius’ analysis. It is only through grace that we can, in Hölderlin’s words, really dwell poetically on the earth.