KELLY, Joseph F(rancis) 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born August 13, 1945, in New York, NY; son of James Patrick and Marion Rita (Gleason) Kelly; married Ellen Marie Murray, August 17, 1968; children: Robert, Amy, Alicia. Education: Boston College, B.A., 1967; Fordham University, M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Religious Studies, John Carroll University, 20700 North Park Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44118-4520. E-mail—kelly@jcu.edu.

CAREER:

Theologian, educator. Molloy College, Rockville Center, NY, instructor of theology, 1969-72; John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH, 1972—, began as assistant professor, became professor, 1982, chairman, 1985-95.

MEMBER:

American Society of Church History, North American Patristic Society (president).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Medieval Academy of America grant, 1970; National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, 1984, faculty award, John Carroll University, 1997; Mellon Foundation fellow.

WRITINGS:

Why Is There a New Testament?, M. Glazier (Wilmington, DE), 1986.

(Editor) American Catholics, M. Glazier (Wilmington, DE), 1989.

The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity, Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN), 1992.

The World of the Early Christians (booklet; part of "Message of the Fathers of the Church" series), Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN), 1997.

The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics, Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN), 2002.

Responding to Evil, Liturgical Press (Collegeville, MN), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Professor of theology Joseph F. Kelly has written a number of books, including, Why Is There a New Testament? It is an account of the process which resulted in the recognition of the canonical Christian Scriptures during the fourth century. He addresses not the writing of the texts but the way in which they came together as the New Testament. "His uncommonly clear, nontechnical approach allows the multiple strands of development to be grasped and understood more readily," commented Donald J. Grimes in Theological Studies. Grimes also said that the volume is "grounded in the best of contemporary biblical and historical scholarship" and is "well-written." A Christian Century reviewer noted that editor Kelly "does not tell us what occasioned the joint effort" that resulted in American Catholics, "but we're glad to have its result." The volume contains essays by such theologians and historians as J. Bryan Hehir, Catherine L. Albanese, Richard P. McBrien, Denise Lardner Carmody, and Jay P. Dolan, which include their views of the Church and their hopes for its future.

The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity covers the first six centuries and concentrates on "people, movements, and terms that will be of most interest to the reader." In addition to Christian issues, Kelly touches on subjects that provide a clearer understanding of Christianity. He uses asterisks for easy cross-referencing and includes a bibliography and a list of popes and emperors. Louis J. Swift wrote in the Catholic Historical Review that the dictionary "functions very well as a place to check an idea, an event, a date, theological term, or a particular person. The text is written in a clear, straightforward fashion which focuses on factual information; where interpretation is called for, the author intentionally follows the most commonly held views."

Kelly wrote The World of Early Christians, the first volume of Liturgical Press's "Message of the Fathers of the Church" series. It is an introductory history of the first six centuries of Christianity, and Kelly studies the sources that provide knowledge of this period. Although the book is divided into thematically arranged chapters, Kelly does provide a chronology, as well as a bibliography. Among his topics are the relationships between Christians and other groups, including pagans, Jews, astrologers, magicians, philosophers, and internal dissenters. One chapter addresses cultural life, and another looks at the Christian view of women, war, slavery, and poverty. "The chapter detailing the various tools that scholars use to reconstruct the past is particularly valuable," noted John J. O'Keefe in Theological Studies. O'Keefe commented that few such texts delve into such subjects as manuscript submissions, text critique, or the role of computers in such research. "Kelly does," he said. "Kelly's years of teaching undergraduates have clearly paid off in this text." "All in all, this is a fine and useful book," wrote Charles A. Bobertz in Church History. "Yet it shows us as well that we have perhaps turned a 'postmodern' corner in our writing of the historical narrative of the early Christians. The position from which we write will come under as much scrutiny as the narrative presentation itself."

The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics is divided into six chronological sections, covering four thousand years, and features the views of approximately 150 writers, painters, poets, theologians, and philosophers on the subject of evil. Kelly studies his subject, "the deliberate imposition of suffering by a human being on another sentient being" as it is treated in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Patristic period (St. Augustine), the Middle Ages (Dante), the Reformation and Renaissance (Luther and Calvin), the Enlightenment, and the modern period. The writers he has chosen include Newton, Milton, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau, Gibbon, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and Darwin; novelists Mary Shelley, Dostoyevsky, and Goethe; and social scientists Freud and Jung. Many of the classics Kelly has chosen to study have evil as their theme.

"The chief problem emerging is how an omnipotent and good God can allow so much suffering in he world, or, indeed, how God can allow any suffering at all, especially the suffering of good people," wrote Leonard A. Kennedy for Homiletic and Pastoral Review. This is Kelly's position. Although he is a believing Roman Catholic, he cannot reconcile the existence of a good God with the existence of evil. "However the problem gets too complicated, or at times even lost sight of," said Kennedy, "because of the different notions of God which different theists have had, and especially when the ideas of nontheists are also considered."

America reviewer Stephen J. Duffy wrote that The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition "is a reader-friendly, lucidly written work, unencumbered by the scholarly armature of footnotes. It is also an overly ambitious work. It contains the makings for two or three books.… Because the work is concerned primarily with moral evil rather than natural evil and the complex entwining of the two, there is frequent reference to original sin, a term riddled with ambiguity. Would that we could abandon it. Kelly rightly views the Augustinian understanding as no longer viable and seems to prefer seeing original sin as a symbol of our inherent tendency to evil. Yet while one of the most important spinoffs of the study of evil is what we learn about our humanity, Kelly makes no attempt to elucidate our dark underside, why humans incline to and do evil." Much of the book references the Devil, who for the first nineteen centuries of Christianity, was regarded as the source of all evil. "The author has taken on a mammoth task which others before him have shirked," wrote Hugh Montefiore in the Times Literary Supplement. "The treatment is objective, and criticism of various viewpoints are those made by others rather than the author's own." Montefiore continued, saying that Kelly "combines his ignorance with trust in God, a position similar to that of Job."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, June 3, 2002, Stephen J. Duffy, review of The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics, p. 26.

Catholic Historical Review, October, 1993, Louis J. Swift, review of The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity, p. 727.

Christian Century, November 29, 1989, review of American Catholics, p. 1130.

Church History, December, 1995, Everett Ferguson, review of The Concise Dictionary of Early Christianity, p. 754; June, 1998, Charles Bobertz, review of The World of the Early Christians, p. 351.

Religious Studies Review, April, 1998, Kim Paffenroth, review of The World of the Early Christians, p. 200.

Theological Studies, June, 1987, Donald J. Grimes, review of Why Is There a New Testament? pp. 390-391; March, 1998, John J. O'Keefe, review of The World of the Early Christians, p. 177.

Times Literary Supplement, December 20, 2002, Hugh Montefiore, review of The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition, p. 6.

ONLINE

Homiletic and Pastoral Review,http://www.catholic.net/ (June, 2002), Leonard A. Kennedy, review of The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition. *