John Atherton

Book Review: Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary IdeologiesPolitical Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, KoyzisDavid T. (Intervarsity Press2003), 281 pp, US

a “meaningless culture” is, in fact, a contradiction in terms. The promotion of this chimera is only the endorsement of a culture’s destruction. The question is whether society can survive the obliteration of culture, and, if it is the case that ultimately a society exists because its citizens find it worth defending, then the elimination of cultural sources of meaning destroys society. In the meantime, to hold as an absolute truth that there are no absolute truths, as Rorty does, is to uphold the limitless power of the state. Without a rich cultural life, government cannot be limited. —Philip Harold Catholic University of America

28.99 pbk

Globalization processes which link late capitalism and postmodernism, gender issues and political life, illustrate the dramatic changes affecting our generation. This important collection of essays brings together Herzog, Cobb, Gutierrez, Meeks, Moltmann, Thistlethwaite, Wilmore and Rieger. It refreshingly explores the future of liberation theology in such a radically alternative context. It recognizes the importance of economic processes in such change, including as mammon-worship, and underpinning various kinds of oppression. These processes require the recognition of the linkages between liberation in feminism, black culture, South and North America, and Europe. They suggest a common interest theology, without discounting particular experiences and traditions. Acknowledging the centrality of economy in marginalization processes, the editor recognizes the need to understand them, and therefore not just to promote justice by their regulation or by trying harder. Yet what is offered does not match these expectations. The analysis and solutions are focused in commitment to the poor, which dominates the emerging theology. They therefore ignore the growing recognition that analysis and practical response, as praxis, must seek to reflect the multifaceted multicausal nature of the emerging global context. It is about moving beyond simple dichotomies of black and white, first and third world, rich and poor. As this becomes more apparent, and the challenge of world poverty becomes more intractable, the narrowing down of liberation theology to portraying itself as the grand narrative of the twenty-first century becomes selfevident only to believers. Certain abiding insights do stand out from this creative polemic, from Moltmann on political and liberation theologies to Thistlethwaite on developing a liberation theology through the experience of battered women.

Book Review: Liberating the FutureLiberating the Future: God, Mammon and Theology, ed. RiegerJoerg (Fortress Press1998), 168 pp, £8.99 pbk: God, Mammon and Theology

This is a most unusual and interesting book. Cunningham is convinced that trinitarian faith should provide Christian living with a distinctively trinitarian ethos. Foolishly, we have allowed monarchic, pagan rationalizing to dominate our moral agenda. We must rescue trinitarian thinking from the liturgical footnotes of Christian living. With Wainwright, Cunningham believes all doctrine to be provisional. He analyses the traditional metaphors of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and finds new ones to deploy in parallel with them, settling upon Source, Wellspring and Living Water. By p. 300, these begin to win the most sceptical of readers. The task is to rediscover the rhetorical persuasiveness of Trinitarianism, reversing the deathly dominance of logic over rhetoric that is part of our Enlightenment heritage. Cunningham seeks to persuade, not prove. The intellectual climate is defined by reference to Nicholas Lash, Rowan Williams, John Milbank and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Cunninghams exposition of classical doctrine is both fascinating and scholarly. He emerges clutching his three trinitarian virtues (polyphony, participation and particularity). He translates these into the modern practices of peacemaking, pluralizing and persuading. He invites us to recognize that in Christian hands these can provide a distinctive trinitarian agenda. In Part III the style changes. No more sharp analysis of Murdoch and Dostoevsky. No more on the metaphysics of rhetoric. Nothing like the startling remark on the sheer eroticism of the life in Christ, or the eloquence of the section on the persuasiveness of Gods grace. Instead, we read about everything from children in church to ecology, via the theology of the nation state and homosexual love. The looseness of Part III confirms the difficulty of Cunninghams programme. He laments that he (and we) lack a theology of embodiment adequate to his purpose. He has done more than enough to persuade us that we need one.