F. LeRon Shults. Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. 264 pages, $ 35.00
F. LeRon Shults and Steven J. Sandage. The Faces of Forgiveness: Searching for Wholeness and Salvation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2003. 269 pages, $ 21.99
In his previous book, The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality (Eerdmans, 1999), and the two listed above, F. Leron Shults, professor of theology at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, is building an impressive body of work that provides a philosophical and theological framework for engaging various academic disciplines in constructive dialogue with theology. His work displays a deep understanding of the contemporary struggle over epistemological and hermeneutical approaches to knowledge, and he astutely offers a via media that takes seriously the postmodern suspicion of universal claims to truth and the modern concern about the need for a method that offers at least a means of addressing common concerns across disciplines.
In his Reforming Theological Anthropology, Shults focuses on the relational mediation of personal knowing. This “turn to relationality” in theology and philosophy opens opportunities for recovering some of the inherently relational concepts of the biblical tradition. Self-understanding is mediated through interactions with others, and human identity is formed and shaped “as the boundaries of the self are explored, negotiated, transgressed, or reified” (2). This struggle to define self within a communal context provides the experiential lens for understanding and reforming theological anthropology and for developing an interdisciplinary method for relating theology to other fields of study. He follows Calvin’s insistence that without the knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God and, at the same time, without the knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self. Using also the resources of educational psychology and cultural anthropology, Shults argues that the intellectual concepts humans form are shaped developmentally by an order of consciousness or “fiduciary structures” that are socially situated and underlie attempts to understand others across cultures or disciplines. The search for self-understanding and the need to discover truth inevitably lead to a “dread and wonder” about the mysteries of what cannot be known particularly in relationships with the human other. The self is formed in interaction with others, but these interactions both threaten and fascinate in the quest for self-knowledge and self-identity. There is a passionate longing to know the other, but there is also the fear of losing a secure identity through the loss of long held beliefs. According to Shults, Christian theology has not always been interested in the social, cultural, and physical dimensions of humanity in its discussions of the nature of man. In its search for truth, theology has often emphasized abstract notions of the human soul at the expense of the embodied and communal components of self-formation. This is why the relationships between theology and other disciplines have been, at times, contentious and anxious rather than dialogical. Theological anthropology, as Calvin stressed, must account for both the dread and wonder of the self in relation to the other. This search for understanding, according to Shults, leads to three types of anxiety: epistemic (the longing for truth), ethical (the longing for good), and ontological (the longing for harmony and beauty). Many of the classical formulations of these categories have been challenged by recent scientific and philosophical interpretations of reality and the nature of man. If biblical anthropology is going to respond to these challenges, it must address these new conceptualizations in a relevant and discerning manner.
In Reforming Theological Anthropology, Shults attempts to reform or revise some of the classical loci of theological anthropology, including human nature, sin, and the image of God. Shults displays an admirable breadth of knowledge as he engages recent developments in psychology and the social sciences, as well as a wide array of ancient, medieval, and contemporary philosophers and theologians. His discussion probes in detail some of the key contributors to discussions on the nature of humanity from Aristotle to Emmanuel Levinas. His nuanced analysis of the theology of Leontius of Byzantium and Fredrick Schleiermacher is well worth the price of the book. Many evangelicals may feel uncomfortable with Shults’s reformulation of some of the classical doctrines of the church such as original sin and the mind-body relationship. He argues, however, that this reconstructive effort provides new opportunities for theology to retrieve some of the relational thought-forms of Scripture that have been obscured because of an emphasis on the theology of “substance.” This reformation of theological anthropology also opens up conceptual space for an engagement with other disciplines in a way that allows Christians to contribute to the contemporary conversation.
The Faces of Forgiveness is an interdisciplinary treatment of forgiveness which carries on the emphasis of the turn to relationality discussed in F. Leron Shults’s previous book. Here Shults and Steven J. Sandage, his colleague at Bethel and a licensed psychologist, offer a synthesis of psychological and theological reflection to develop a fresh and constructive perspective on forgiveness in the context of the “relational interfacings that shape and transform the systems of human existence.” Extending the work of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, the authors draw on contemporary psychoanalytic relational theories to indicate how the self is shaped in the context of “reciprocally interacting subjectivities”: the human person is formed in the face of the other (14). This reflects the impact of postmodernism on recent psychological models leading to an emphasis on “alterity” or otherness—viewing the self as embedded in social relationships. This shift from the “individual subject” to relationality and intersubjectivity broadens the discussion on forgiveness by raising an awareness of how identity is shaped by a community of people and how the criteria for forgiveness must be understood in the context of social interaction. Conflicts occur within a relationship, and therefore “[d]ilemmas of forgiveness are embedded in a social process of saving and loosing face” (14).
According to Shults and Sandage, it is more appropriate to speak of a return to relationality in theology because the early church fathers emphasized this construct particularly in the doctrines of the Trinity, revelation, and redemption. More recent theology has recognized the importance of relationality in contradistinction to the category of substance; together with its implications for the doctrine of salvation, the meaning and practice of forgiveness have been profound. The implications of the relational model are broad and interdisciplinary in the sense that theology is always located within a social and historical tradition. This is no less true for a theology of forgiveness since human life is embedded within a social existence. Conflict and forgiveness is something that occurs within the everyday life of human and communal interactions. The overlapping social and spiritual nature of forgiveness necessitates a clarification and examination of its meaning in articulating the doctrine of salvation because historically the church has relied heavily on the use of legal metaphors. According to the authors, salvation also has to do with wholeness and the good (salus) of renewed relationships and a life together in community. Western theology, unfortunately, has too often “abstracted (forgiveness) from the concrete practices of shared life together in community” (104).
The attempt to interpret forgiveness in terms of relationality raises hermeneutical questions which the authors describe as “facial hermeneutics.” Contemporary psychotherapy tries to explain this in the context of efforts to understand the motives and attributions of social interactions. Physical facing brings countless reactions in response to the warm face of welcome, the cold face of criticism, the loving face of a mother, and the “face that can launch a thousand ships.” The phenomena of the face, however, implies something deeper than just the physical, the “face confronts us with an overflow of meaning that is beyond objectification” (19). Emmanuel Levinas argues that the face reminds us that we are inextricably bound to the other who is more than the image we project. The face speaks of our humanity and the call of the other (the one who is not the same) to ethical responsibility. The face shapes our understanding of forgiveness and unforgiveness.
The hermeneutics of the face, according to Shults and Sandage, inevitably leads to questions about the meaning of forgiveness and the way it has been used in theology and in psychotherapy. There are differences of emphases in the fields of meaning that have been problematic in clarifying the meaning of forgiveness. There are three primary ways that forgiveness functions as a concept that may create a lack of clarity: forensic forgiveness, therapeutic forgiveness, and redemptive forgiveness. Forensic forgiveness has been stressed by traditional theology in which forgiveness is described with an emphasis on legal justice and the removal of a penalty. While forensic forgiveness has important significance, it is also important to recognize a difference when it is considered in different disciplinary domains. Psychotherapists have focused on a therapeutic understanding of forgiveness, emphasizing transformation and healing. At the same time, forgiving entails more than understanding why someone feels a certain way; it also involves a moral component. Harmful actions have consequences that must be remembered, although in a different way than forgiveness. Redemptive forgiveness should incorporate both meanings and concerns. The overarching meaning of forgiveness in the New Testament, according to the authors, “is manifesting and sharing redemptive grace” (23). The Scripture does use penal metaphors, but salvation is also about healing and redemption. The privileging of a particular meaning makes it difficult to articulate a coherent view of salvation. A redemptive understanding of forgiveness opens up the conversation for a broader discussion of faith.
The Faces of Forgiveness is a much needed analysis of key doctrines of the faith as they are related to and engage other disciplines. It is too often the case that theological discourse seems disconnected from the life-world, a kind of “Christianity in the air” as Stanley Hauerwas describes it. If the Christian faith is to be taken seriously, it will be necessary to develop interdisciplinary models that recognize the integrity of each discipline as well as the needs and concerns of the spiritual, psychological, social, and political world where human beings live.
C. Clark Triplett, Ph.D. <triplett@mobap.edu>
Executive
Dean of Graduate Studies and External Compliance
Professor of
Psychology and Sociology
Missouri Baptist University
© 2005 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.
Philip Jenkins. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. 270 pages, $28.00
Written by Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, The Next Christendom offers much-needed insights into the explosive growth of Christianity in the non-Western world. Christianity is gaining momentum in formerly colonized nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America while its dominance is markedly diminishing in the West. This is an interesting historical development considering that post-colonialists and other postmodernists have tended to associate Christianity with Western colonialism, imperialism, and arrogance. Having survived Darwinian evolutionism and other atheistic movements since the middle of the 1800s, Christianity is now in the process of taking over many non-Western hearts and minds.
Why do non-Westerners embrace a “Western” religion? What aspects of Christianity appeal to Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans? Is what they believe and practice in accordance with Christian orthodoxy? How many native customs and traditions can Christianity accommodate without losing its distinctive religious identity? What are the promises and perils of global Christianity? Will Christianity continue to be a dominant religion in Europe and North America? These and other questions are tackled by The Next Christendom, which exhibits rigorous research, insightful analysis of data, and scholarly but accessible prose style.
Early in the book, the author debunks a prevalent myth about Christianity as a white or Western religion imposed upon unwilling non-White people groups. Eurocentric historians have erroneously overemphasized the Western development of Christianity. Indeed, numerous historical data indicate that Christianity is rooted in Africa and Asia and that there have been many thriving Christian communities outside Europe and North America. During the first century, Africa and Asia were more fertile missionary fields than was Europe. For many centuries following the death of Christ, it was not Europe but Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia that played the role of Christian centers. Christian art, literature, music, and the New Testament originated in the Middle East, not in Europe. Monasticism, which immediately recalls medieval Europe, originated in Egypt. North Africa was the home to Tertullian, Cyprian, and St. Augustine—renowned Church Fathers and founders of Christian Latin literature. In the 1200s, considered the zenith of medieval Christian civilization in Europe, Africa had the largest Christian population on the globe, and Asia had more Christians than Europe. And it was only after about 1400—during the Renaissance period—that Europe and colonized North America became decisively Christian (15, 17, 23).
Some of the statistics Jenkins presents will surprise the reader who associates non-European cultures with pagan religions. By the year 2050, there will be approximately 2.6 billion Christians in the world. Of these, 640 million will be living in Latin America, 633 million in Africa, 555 million in Europe, and 460 million in Asia. By 2050, either Latin America or Africa will become the most populous Christian continent, and only twenty percent of the world’s Christian population will be non-Hispanic whites (3). For an individual country, the United States will still have the largest Christian population (330 million) on the globe, but it will be followed by Brazil (195 million), Mexico and the Philippines (145 million each), Nigeria (123 million), Zaire/D. R. Congo (121 million), Russia (80 million), Ethiopia (79 million), China (60 million), and then Germany (57 million) (90). Put simply, there will be only two Western nations—the United States (ranked first) and Germany (ranked tenth)—on the list of the ten largest Christian communities in 2050. Accordingly, Jenkins notes, “Soon, the phrase ‘a White Christian’ may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as ‘a Swedish Buddhist’” (3).
Then, how do we explain such an explosive growth of global Christianity? What drives hundreds of thousands of new converts to lay down their lives for the religion brought by Westerners? It cannot be fully explained by the obvious fact that Christian civilization symbolizes success and modernity. There is clearly something in Christianity that appeals to non-Westerners. Jenkins identifies it as the truthfulness of the gospel: “We can suggest all sorts of reasons why Africans and Asians adopted Christianity, whether political, social, or cultural; but one all-too-obvious explanation is that individuals came to believe the message offered, and found this the best means of explaining the world around them” (43-44).
The churches in Africa, Asia, and Latin America display some distinctive qualities. Compared with their Western counterparts, these churches tend to be far more traditional, conservative, evangelical, dynamic, and apocalyptic. They also readily embrace mysticism, Puritanism, prophecy, faith-healing, exorcism, and dream-visions, all of which have been largely discarded by mainstream denominations in the West. They read the Bible very differently from the way Christians in the global North do. Non-Western Christianity is also characterized by elements of religious syncretism: ancestor worship, witchcraft, and shamanism, among others. It would be tempting for Western Christians to brush aside non-Western Christianity as superstitious and pagan in its core. But then, Jenkins observes, Western Christianity has its own share of Mediterranean paganism in it. Non-Christian religions were considered a preparatio evangelica, a preparation for the gospel (122). (Also, in support of Jenkins’s observation, one can make a case that Christianity practiced by many Americans is adulterated by such pagan ideas as commercialism, individualism, and pop psychology.) Historically, Christianity has been acculturated no matter where it was planted. The New Christendom emerging in formerly colonized countries is experiencing such an acculturation. The degree to which it will be different from the Old Christendom in belief and practice remains to be seen.
The only problem with The Next Christendom is an indiscriminate use of some key terms. Jenkins uses “the global South,” “the Southern Hemisphere,” and “the Third World” in reference to the non-Western world. Indeed, what he calls the South includes many non-Western countries; China, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Middle Eastern nations are all located in the Northern Hemisphere. The “Third World”—a term originating in the Cold War era—means the underdeveloped nations aligned with neither the United States nor the Soviet Union. Japan, the second largest economy in the world, is in Asia but is not a “ Third World” country. Thus, a more accurate term for “Southern Christianity” would be “non-Western Christianity.” Despite these discrepancies in designation, The Next Christendom is a must-read book for those who are interested in church history, international missions, and Christianity and culture.
John J. Han, Ph.D. <hanjn@mobap.edu>
Professor
of English
Missouri Baptist University
© 2005 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.
Russell Hittinger. The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003. 334 pages, $24.95
Nearly everyone educated in America has memorized, though many soon forget, those immortal words penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence invoking “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Most people today are satisfied to claim their inalienable rights and enjoy what the Supreme Court affords through its judicial expansion of the benefits of individual liberty. Few, however, pause to reflect upon what the origin of these rights is, what “the laws of Nature” are, or—even more crucially—how judicial “law-making” is subverting the legitimacy of the American constitutional form of government. Russell Hittinger, the William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa, provides a broad collection of his essays to engage the reader in just such reflection. By introducing the reader to the historical-philosophical foundations of natural law and a contemporary application of natural law theory to a substantial number of the contemporary issues in the American public policy debate, Hittinger both expounds on the essence of Thomistic thought on the natural law and engenders a vigorous dialogue on the relevance of these older and (he argues) wiser notions to our post-Christian world.
Although the author and his fellow regular contributors to First Things have occasionally been caricatured by their critics as among the “religious extremists” who are “somewhat nutty and out-of-touch” with the realities of modern democracy, the essays contained in his second work on the natural law demonstrate that Hittinger is neither “extreme” nor “out-of-touch.” Rather, he exhibits exemplary scholarship in his philosophical explications and cogent legal reasoning in his analyses of Supreme Court cases. Though consisting of eleven essays on various aspects of natural law theory and praxis, The First Grace is presented in two major parts. In the first, the author defines the natural law, examines its relationship to moral theology and the positive law, even venturing an approach to judicial decision-making guided by natural law considerations. In the second, he explores natural law perspectives on some of the most controversial issues that have occupied the attention of the Supreme Court over the past fifty years. His analysis supports not only a critique of modern American jurisprudence founded upon classical natural law theory but also upon contemporary articulations of natural law theory in the papal encyclicals of John Paul II.
Hittinger contends that a rediscovery of natural law is both compatible with a post-Christian world and, in fact, may provide the means to challenge and reform the American constitutional form of government at its current point of crisis. Supporting this renewed interest in the natural law, the author turns to H. L. A. Hart who has observed that “its appeal is independent of both divine and human authority, and it contains certain elementary truths of importance for the understanding of both morality and law” (xii). In his attempt to foster this appeal, Hittinger posits in these essays an investigation of problems that “arise once the natural law is understood as free-floating with regard to authority, whether human or divine” (xiv). This transformation of natural law began to occur in the seventeenth century when the concept of “Nature” came to connote not divine order, but human appetites, and natural rights were invoked by the individualism of that age as a reason why enlightened self-interest should be given free play. To broaden the natural law inquiry, Hittinger explores the ancient notions of the Greeks and early Christians who understood order in things (i.e. nature) and in the human mind not as laws at all, but as effects of a law that is not a positive law. He resorts fundamentally to Thomas Aquinas and presents, through the essays in the first part of his book, a helpful primer on key Thomistic concepts of the origins and applications of natural law.
In the second section of his work, Hittinger turns from professorial inquiry to prophetic call. He identifies the most controversial issues upon the agenda of public policy debates and then indicts judicial usurpation of absolute power. He issues warnings of impending crisis in the American constitutional form of government by invoking the natural law as a guide through the morass of legal inquiries. Ultimately, Hittinger calls for challenge and resistance as a means of reforming American law as it relates to the most foundational of human rights—life and liberty. Hittinger’s prophetic voice sounds most clearly, and some might suggest most stridently, in his essay entitled “Crisis of Legitimacy” (Chapter 8). The essay was first presented as a part of the “much-publicized and much-criticized” First Things “End of Democracy?” symposium in November, 1996 (xxxvii). His thesis in this essay is no less than that the Supreme Court has become illegitimate. He supports his argument with a thorough analysis of the Court’s opinion in its 1992 decision in the case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In Casey, the Supreme Court was called upon to overrule Roe v. Wade. Rejecting this remedy, the Court presented two explicit grounds: a constitutional ground, which reinforced the original ruling of Roe recognizing a substantive due-process right of privacy for a woman to procure an abortion, and a prudential ground designed “to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law” (200). Hittinger, though, perceives a third and more troubling bases for the Court’s ruling in what he describes as a “floating third principle—institutional integrity” (201). This third principle is expressed most saliently by the Court when it stated:
It is necessary to understand the source of this Court’s authority, the conditions necessary for its preservation, and its relationship to the country’s understanding of itself as a constitutional Republic…. The Court’s power lies in its legitimacy, a product of substance and perception that shows itself in the people’s acceptance of the Judiciary as fit to determine what the nation’s law means and to declare what it demands. (203)
Hittinger asserts that in Casey the Supreme Court develops a position articulating its own authority that is without precedent in our constitutional history: “It is a doctrine not merely of supremacy in law, but of what I shall call exemplarism” (203). This unprecedented position marks a change in regime and calls forth a response from all who would seek to uphold the foundational constitutional principles upon which the American government has, to this point in its history, existed—separation of powers and a system of checks and balances.
To undertake this task of upholding constitutional principles, Hittinger contends that at least three actions are required. First, the people through their elected officials must withdraw whatever tacit consent—such as legislative restrictions on the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary—has been given in the face of the Supreme Court’s rulings to this new constitutional order. Second, particular issues, like abortion, assisted suicide, and now gay marriage, need to be engaged not only as a means of social and cultural remediation but also for the purpose of prompting a constitutional crisis in the campaign against this “new regime.” Finally, the Court’s current “motivational analysis” must be addressed and exposed as a principal means that the Court has used in the promulgation of this new claim of “authority.” Hittinger demonstrates convincingly that the Court has limited the Congress, a state legislature, or any citizen, to have a “procedural common good” as the only appropriate motive or purpose for political activity (195).
Hittinger, however, is not calling for revolution or armed revolt against an illegitimate central government. Instead, he tempers his prophetic call to righteous resistance with the words of Justice Felix Frankfurter from his concurring opinion in Cooper v. Aaron: “Every act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law, as finally pronounced by this Court. Even this Court has the last say on for a time. Being composed of fallible men, it may err. But revisions of its errors must be by orderly process of law” (207). In the end, The First Grace stands as a profound clarion to all citizens of conscience who not only respect the American historical foundations upon the “laws of nature” but also see them as an integral part of the on-going process of renewal and reformation that is necessary for the preservation of the American constitutional system of government.
Cordell P. Schulten, J.D., M.A. <schulcp@mobap.edu>
Associate
Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies and Administration of Justice
Missouri Baptist
University
© 2005 Missouri Baptist University. All rights reserved.