A World Renewed. - Review - book review

National Review, March 20, 2000 by Michael Potemra

Neuhaus's book clearly deals with major issues, but in focusing on them one inevitably gives short shrift to its numerous incidental joys. For example, he points out that "the last recorded words of Mary in the New Testament [are] 'Do whatever he [Jesus] tells you.'" This is as succinct, and accurate, a summary of the Catholic tradition on Mary as I have ever read: She was never intended to serve as a goddess-figure, as comparative-religion scholars and no-popery pamphleteers have contended over the decades; she is, instead, the proto-disciple, with a marked family resemblance to her son.

Such insights abound in Neuhaus's excellent book. Very few religious works succeed in appealing across inter-confessional boundaries without sacrificing a great deal in terms of both literary quality and intellectual heft. This book is a rare exception to the rule. It's well written and intellectually challenging for all readers, not just those who profess Neuhaus's faith, or indeed any faith at all. To understand this book, all a reader needs is an interest in the basics of the human condition. Neuhaus has depicted Jesus-not a tentatively reconstructed "Jesus of history," but the Christ of faith in all his theological fullness-as a figure of importance not solely or even chiefly for Christians, but for the human race.