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The invective is truly a lost art. It is very difficult to pull it off with great skill, but it really should not be attempted by many. Sean Swain Martin has written one, and he should not have. It's not as though Scott Hahn is beyond reproach. A master of self-deprecation, Hahn will be the first to admit that his critics are right to point out his flaws. I read this book not because I hoped to read about Hahn's flaws, but because I believe that criticism is good for theological discourse. And while there is some sense in which this book yields discourse on important topics, other elements are overpolemical and counterproductive. True invective must not hide the virtues of the subject of criticism. In a way, when I found out about this book, I had hoped for an invective worthy of Hahn, who has many critics. This text is not. Martin's all-out polemics exhaust the reader. Only those who are ardent enemies of Hahn will celebrate American Pope. To write a compelling invective, one has to accuse one's adversary concisely and specifically, while also remaining charitable. While at times Martin does a fair job of presenting Hahn's thought, more often his treatments are superficial, ill-researched, or wrong. Martin's prose is humorless, painting Hahn as a kind of boogeyman of biblical theology. The work is not altogether meritless: There are some fair criticisms. Hahn overgeneralizes and oversimplifies at times. (A missed opportunity: No mention of puns, which Hahn slings like a Seattle fishmonger.) In the introduction, Martin sandwiches the story of the conversion of Scott Hahn in between those of St. Augustine and St. John Henry Newman. This does not have the effect that Martin anticipates. Nor will the overall project compel readers to shed Hahn books from their shelves. If anything, the text's unpersuasiveness should have the opposite effect. After the first two chapters, I was thinking perhaps this was a 2-star book, but then I finished the book. I would like those hours back. Alas, they are gone. Martin's publisher, Pickwick, and his thesis adviser have done him a disservice by not requiring more extensive research and a tighter argument. The sensationalized title promises big things that it fails to deliver. Martin does not demonstrate that Hahn has papal-like authority or influence. Worst of all, Martin fails to adequately define fundamentalism in the whole text (an important task as this term means different things for different groups!). Indeed, he keeps the reader waiting for the entirety of the book before he attempts to delimit fundamentalism's bounds, but still no concise definition. Thus, he cannot make a compelling case that Hahn is a fundamentalist. One of the marks of fundamentalism for Martin is Hahn's certitude, but then he seems unfamiliar with Thomas Aquinas's or John Henry Newman's teachings on the importance of the certitude of faith. Martin seems certain that Hahn is a fundamentalist for his certitude and easy explanations. ... Does that make Martin a fundamentalist? That would be absurd, of course. What can be more certain than what we receive from Him who can neither deceive nor be deceived, Aquinas and others point out. Martin does not hold himself to the same standard to which he holds Hahn. He takes a shot at Hahn for failing to give evidence that for an assertion that a consensus of scholars hold to a pre-70s dating of the book of Revelation. Martin responds that there is "nothing approaching any kind of consensus." And ... Martin gives no evidence for this assertion. Now, we know that there is evidence. But surely, he could have created a footnote listing numerous alternative dating theories. But he does not. There are many instances throughout this book of similarly nit-picky criticism. Elsewhere, he criticizes Hahn repeatedly for not citing which "Fathers" refer to Mary as "Ark of the Covenant." What really is the gripe here? Is Martin suggesting that Hahn is incorrect? Hahn is not. This imagery is taken up by Modestus of Jerusalem, Andrew of Crete, Germanus of Constantinople, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, John of Euboea, and others. What Martin appears to find "frustrating" is that there is no footnote. Elsewhere, he criticizes Hahn for failing to footnote adequately in his popular book on matrimony, The First Society. Martin writes: "In this work, Hahn deals with notions of gender norms,³⁹⁴ sexuality,³⁹⁵ sacramentality,³⁹⁶ economics,³⁹⁷ Catholic philosophical commitments,³⁹⁸ historical understandings of marriage,³⁹⁹ abortion,⁴⁰⁰ contraception,⁴⁰¹ ecclesiology,⁴⁰² liberalism,⁴⁰³ biblical exegesis,⁴⁰⁴ Old Testament legal categories,⁴⁰⁵ western moral shift and degradation,⁴⁰⁶ Marxism,⁴⁰⁷ capitalism,⁴⁰⁸ Catholic social teaching,⁴⁰⁹ libertarianism,⁴¹⁰ Church and State,⁴¹¹ fertility,⁴¹² polygamy, homosexuality, self-marriage,⁴¹³ divorce,⁴¹⁴ and more. This is an incredible breadth of topics on which Hahn offers very definitive conclusions. And yet, given the wide range and critical importance of the topics he covers, in those 182 pages, Hahn provides only nineteen footnotes, several of which are to his own books. Comparatively, Pope John Paul II’s Ecclesia in America, the apostolic exhortation explored in the introduction to this discussion, provides 295 footnotes in a short 135 pages." This quote is a microcosm of the book's flaws. Interpretation requires one to identify the genre of text one is reading. Hahn is writing a popular text, but Martin expects it to have extensive footnotes as though it were a papal document. Reaching a broad audience requires one to be attentive to the vicissitudes of the audience, and popular audiences find footnotes mystifying or off-putting. Martin could very well criticize Hahn for being a popularizer, but this is not his thrust. Hahn himself is very aware of this criticism. Martin brands Hahn as a fundamentalist in an attempt to dismiss him. And apparently failing to footnote is evidence of fundamentalism. For full disclosure in this review, I was a student of Hahn over a decade ago at Franciscan University, though I have not worked closely with Hahn as many of my peers have, whether with the St. Paul Center or on other endeavors. But I mention this because as a student of Hahn, and having been influenced by his thought, I've heard the accusation of "fundamentalism" once or twice by territorial gatekeepers within the academy, misreaders of the PBC 1993 document. The Catholic teachings on inspiration and inerrancy that are espoused in the Letter & Spirit volumes are easily distinguished from fundamentalist approaches, into which Martin tries to knead Hahn. As the PBC stated in 1993, "Fundamentalist interpretation starts from the principle that the Bible, being the word of God, inspired and free from error, should be read and interpreted literally in all its details." They then qualify "literally" by saying "naively literalist interpretation." In this way, protestant fundamentalists and secular historical-critical readers share a hermeneutical principle in their literalism, because the PBC adds that "fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human." That sort of thing happens very much in the literature, both among groups of anti-rational fideists, in one way, and, in another way, groups of Historical-Critical rationalists; the former prefers the divine to the exclusion of the human, the latter the human to the exclusion of the divine. Both remain in the letter and fail to read the text in the spirit in which it was written. On the importance of the spiritual senses, see for example Benedict XVI's Verbum Domini. For all his efforts, Martin fails to show that Hahn is misreading the PBC, or Ratzinger, or the Magisterium. Regarding Biblical inerrancy and the Second Vatican Council, I would commend to Martin an essay he does not cite: Augustin Bea's essay on Dei Verbum 11 in Letter & Spirit 1. Scholars continue to attribute to DV 11 what was contrary to the intention of the Council Fathers, as Bea shows. Whether one agrees with Cardinal Bea or not, It is crucially important in this conversation. But if Martin really wanted to engage Hahn's biblical theology, why not take up Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, co-written with Benjamin Wiker, which is rigorous and philosophical, and written for a more academic than popular audience, or the more recently published Modern Biblical Criticism as a Tool of Statecraft (1700-1900), co-written with Jeffrey Morrow to be a sort of sequel? Granted it was just published this year, but there is also The Decline and Fall of Sacred Scripture: How the Bible Became a Secular Book, coauthored with Wiker. Again, Martin does not engage. Martin blasts Hahn's presentations of theories for popular audiences, for making simple what is complex. He points to the examples of Raymond Brown and John Collins, saying "neither seek to step out on definitive interpretations nor concrete applications on their own." It's amazing that Martin doesn't appreciate that the task of exegesis is not only to propose theories and identify genres but also to ascertain meaning! How dare Hahn try to explain the meaning of Revelation! Maybe Hahn's interpretation of this or that is incorrect. Now, I have my own criticisms of Lamb's Supper, and some of them overlap with Martin. But the idea that one should not risk publishing one's interpretations is foreign to the tradition. On the importance of ascribing meaning, see DV 12. Worst of all is Martin's evaluation of the toothpaste tension: Hahn refers to his rolling up the toothpaste while his wife Kimberly Hahn does not. Hahn as an author has given an example to illustrate the day-to-day conflicts that occur in marriage, which would resonate with anyone in the happiest of marriages. Martin, however, concludes, "Even in offering the most insignificant of marital disagreements, Hahn cannot present himself as lacking." Like a sip of coffee too soon after brushing one's teeth, Martin's comment leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Such engagement with theological opponents is unseemly and beneath the dignity of all of us. I'm not a fan of "I've read this book so you don't have to" reviews. While I would never recommend this book to anyone whether for content or method, go ahead and read. But read Hahn's own works too to see whether Martin's assessments align with your own. Those who are truly great become a cause of greatness and growth in others. Being an academic is a kind of spiritual fatherhood. Many scholars who work with Scott recognize the ways in which he has enriched their own erudition. What's more, is the charity and collegiality which Hahn embodies. He is no Pope, but the Catholic Church in America is blessed to have received Scott and Kimberly Hahn into the fold. There are few scholars so hospitable and generous as Hahn is, virtues which he has brought into Steubenville, the St. Paul Center, and academia. What's most disappointing in this work is that the author clearly has not taken the time to get to know Scott Hahn. It paints a picture that no one will recognize who knows the man. I suspect Martin's whole painful ordeal could have been avoided if he would have packed up the family car, headed to Steubenville, and sat down with Hahn for Sunday brunch to raise these issues directly.