Religious Book Week Critics' Choices
Loewe, William P.
Religious Book Week: CRITICS' CHOICES William P. Loewe IF THE ATTENTIONS paid them by the Vatican a little over a year ago attached an aura of sensationalism to the works of Hans Kung and Edward...
...The past year saw the appearance of two of their major works in English...
...His book offers a thorough demonstration of the reasonableness of Christian faith quite free of the rationalism of older Catholic apologetics...
...Nietzsche's nihilism indicates a prior question, whether reality is trustworthy, and Kung finds a positive answer verified by the experience of meaningfulness that it engenders...
...Among the books appearing in the aftermath of Karl Rahner's seventy-fifth birthday the essays gathered by Leo O'Donovan in A World of Grace (Sea-bury, $7.95, 198 pp...
...The lively discussion clarifies some important differences between Kung and Schillebeeckx and provides an opportunity to overhear theologians at work...
...moves through an engaging, leisurely study of Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud to conclude that although the atheism of each remains an unsubstantiated postulate, they do succeed in demolishing any Cartesian-type "proof" for God's existence...
...Religious Book Week: CRITICS' CHOICES William P. Loewe IF THE ATTENTIONS paid them by the Vatican a little over a year ago attached an aura of sensationalism to the works of Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx, their scholarly efforts in the service of Christian faith continue to deserve notice on more serious grounds...
...Poetic sensibility and a personal appropriation of elements of depth psychology animate these powerful reflections on the concrete dynamics of sin and life in Christ.n Christ...
...Kung, in Does God Exist...
...A long exegetical tour of the books of that library sets out the theological expression which each author gives to the experience, with notably refreshing results for Paul and Hebrews...
...offer an uncommonly helpful initiation for a broad audience into the work of the master...
...In that case an option for God as the basis for trust in reality becomes a reasonable move, and Kung rounds his study off with an investigation of the dialectical and inclusive relationship between the revelation of God as Father through Jesus and other religious and philosophical conceptions...
...Double-day, $17.50, 839 pp...
...he seeks a contemporary statement, on the basis of present historical circumstances, of the meaning of Christian salvation as gift and task for the world today...
...Finally, in The Fire and the Rose Are One (Seabury, $9.95, 158 pp...
...With Christ: The Experience of Jesus As Lord (Seabury, $29.50, 925 pp...
...Kung's lead essay suggests that the similarities between Schillebeekx's work and his own proposal for a "theology of Christian origin'' in terms of contemporary experience marks an emerging consensus in the wake of the collapse of neo-scholasticism...
...This in turn allows Schillebeeckx to offer a descriptive summary of the constant structural elements embodied in the different New Testament theologies of grace, and on this basis he proceeds to attempt a continuation of what the biblical authors were doing...
...In this monumental work Schillebeeckx engages Christian faith at its center...
...Orchestrated to parallel the structure of Rahner's own Foundations of Christian Faith, their brevity and clear, direct prose ena-ble the reader to enter the world of Rahner's vision and begin thinking along with him, while the variety of the authors' personal styles introduces a charming counterpoint into the book...
...A second study demonstrates how the variety in the New Testament theologies of grace is rooted in the diverse historical circumstances in which each author wrote...
...Schillebeeckx shifts to an investigation of the experience of redemptive grace operative in the New Testament...
...A Dialogue between Hans Kung and Edward Schillebeeckx (Westminster, $4.95, 180 pp...
...On a less exalted scale Leonard Swid-ler has collected some enlightening commentary in Consensus in Theology...
...Sebastian Moore continues his unique contribution to the literature of spirituality...
...Fourteen respondents range from Avery Dulles to Paul van Buren among the Christians and include representatives of Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism as Well...
Vol. 108 • February 1981 • No. 4
