Thinking Christ: Christology and Contemporary Critics/Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life: His Person, Work, and Relationships

Thinking Christ: Christology and Contemporary Critics. By Jane Barter Moulaison. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2012.183 pp. $25.00 (paper).andJesus Christ for Contemporary Life: His Person, Work, and Relationships. By Don Schweitzer. Eugene, Ore.: Cascade BooksAVipf and Stock, 2012. 307 pp. $35.00 (paper).Two recent books, both by Canadian theologians, not only advance contemporary Christologies by showing how a doctrine of Jesus Christ responds to current challenges and critiques, they also exemplify two different approaches to Christianity's traditional theologies in light of these challenges.Thinking Christ by Jane Barter Moulaison of the University of Winnipeg is an elegantly written book that faces a number of urgent contemporary moral and political questions with a Nicene theology of Jesus Christ. Doing so, she advocates a so-called postcritical theology, one that neither simply adopts the thinking produced by Christian tradition throughout the centuries, nor condemningly looks on from the outside. Yet, she insists, Postcritical is not uncritical; but the criticism arises from within the desires and principles of the communities themselves rather than from an extrinsic source (p. 143). The voices from the tradition on whom she most relies are Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, and Augustine. Self-consciously thinking and writing with the spirit rather than the letter of these theologians, Barter Moulaison artfully takes up contemporary questions like power, gender, and economy through ancient resources, thus uniting Christians of today with their forebears. To the objection that many of these ancient voices were narrowly committed to particulars that render them unusable-that is, they were male and, as Constantinian, inappropriately aligned with political power and empire- Barter Moulaison commends both greater care regarding the historical claims (noting, for example, that Athanasius's relationship to the empire was rather complicated) and greater receptivity toward everyone regardless of their worldview, parochial commitments, and privilege.Two topics stand out for being developed in especially profitable ways. First is Barter Moulaison s treatment of violence by considering widespread contemporary dissatisfaction with penal substitution theories of the atonement, sometimes dismissed as divine child abuse. She partly faults the standard, textbook approach to teaching theories of the atonement-adapted from the work of Gustav Aulen-for excluding the earliest and perhaps best description of atonement as recapitulation. Jesus Christ recapitulates the human story of Adam's disobedience, restoring humanity through his own obedience as the second Adam that Paul describes in Romans 5. Sacrifice is not perfected but exceeded and therefore abandoned in the work of Christ. Nicene (and earlier) theology supplies a much more satisfying response to penal substitution than the other presently available alternatives.Second, Barter Moulaison's treatment of religious pluralism is wonderfully clear and rewarding. She identifies a striking commonality in ways that religious pluralists (such as John Hick) and liberal progressives (citing the performance work of Eve Ensler) simplify and essentialize the particulars of specific religious traditions, especially Islam. The common thread is a tendency to view religion as private and therefore subservient to regulation by the state. Barter Moulaison argues that secularism disguises its own theology about the nature of humanity and human dignity, against which she holds up the work of Athanasius-To be human is to be Christ-like is Barter Moulaison's mellifluous phrase (p. 100). She at once affirms that Christian distinctives are not trivial just as they resist reduction to theory, while also showing that Christianity can approach interreligious dialogue because of (rather than in spite of) the particular claims it speaks about all of humanity.Don Schweitzer, of St. …

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