Religious Book Week Critics' Choices
Perkins, Pheme
Religious Book Week: CRITICS' CHOICES Pheme Perkins THE TASK and joy of the theological enterprise is to render faith articulate so that the believer finds speech that addresses the perplexities...
...Finally, Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol...
...Sanders, ed...
...provides an exegetical study of the origins of the doctrine of the Incarnation in the New Testament...
...For those willing to tackle tough questions and detailed arguments, 1980 has been a rich year...
...One may not always agree with Schillebeeckx's exegesis, but it is intelligent and responsible, which is more than one can say for most systematicians...
...He/she does not have to stand before the babble of conflicting tongues in perplexed silence...
...sinless" person, who can live in intimacy with God, and whose death as God finally unmasks the root of human evil and the even greater depth of a love which abolishes guilt...
...surveys the use New Testament scholars have been making of the social sciences in their study of New Testament Christianity...
...God" is back...
...The hermeneutical sophistication that Kung addresses to modern thinkers appears to vanish in the face of Biblical materials...
...presents a detailed account of the entanglement of the question of God and the thinkers who have shaped modern, Western thought...
...Dunn (Westminster, $24.50, paper, 443 pp...
...Religious Book Week: CRITICS' CHOICES Pheme Perkins THE TASK and joy of the theological enterprise is to render faith articulate so that the believer finds speech that addresses the perplexities and concerns of the world in which he/she lives...
...No responsible exegete would permit a characterization of the Old Testament God as legalistic, harsh, fearsome...
...Kung's concluding treatment of Biblical material is less satisfactory...
...Fortress, $15.95, 314 pp...
...Moore probes the psychological depth of our human involvement with God as "mysterious other" from whom we seek a response and yet turn away, fail with the result of that radical guilt which undermines the human person...
...The final section of his book seeks to present a picture of Christian salvation today that will answer to our concerns over liberation and the history of human suffering without losing the dimension of salvation as gracious gift from God so crucial to the New Testament experience...
...Believers are called to learn some hard lessons from the development of modern science and the likes of Hegel, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche...
...by Hans Kung...
...presents essays by leading scholars which explore how Christianity came to define itself both institutionally and doctrinally over against competing religious and philosophical trends in the second and third centuries - an earlier attempt to grapple with the problems which face present-day theologians...
...In that context, Schillebeeckx makes some telling points about the necessity of community, liturgy, and prayer as an active conver-sio...
...1, J.P...
...The Fire and the Rose Are One by Sebastian Moore (Seabury, $9.95, 158 pp...
...presents an avowed pagan suggesting a modern version of the cosmological argument for God's existence...
...Jesus shows us the...
...How to Think about God by Mortimer J. Adler (Macmillan, $9.95, 175 pp...
...Christ by Edward Schillebeeckx (Sea-bury, $29.50, 925 pp...
...Doubleday, $17.50, 839 pp...
...But unbelievers will find Kung's critique of their un-examined ideologies equally challenging...
...So, God, Christ, philosophy, psychology and sociology of religion, a look at the origins of some of our fundamental Christian beliefs and ecclesial structures-not a bad year for the theological reader!al reader...
...Does God Exist...
...Christology in the Making by James D.G...
...like Kung, he shows a human person persistently involved with God...
...Like Schillebeeckx, Moore is exploring the root experience of grace...
...more than compensates for the defects in Kung's treatment of the Old Testament with its treatment of grace in the Old Testament as a foundation for the theology of grace in New Testament writers...
...Christian Origins in Sociological Perspective by Howard C. Kee (Westminster, $8.95, paper, 204 pp...
...complements Schillebeeckx and Kung...
Vol. 108 • February 1981 • No. 4
