I have been rightly chastised by a good friend more than once, over many years, for daring to suggest that she read Kingsway paperbacks! Not that I or she has anything against publisher, pbk format or the popular theology usually packaged in said books! But she reads serious theology, and so now if either of us want to wind the other up about our intellectual exploits or lack thereof, the most effective term of affectionate ridicule usually includes the Kingsway pbk!
So! Just to avoid such a literary insult flying in this direction any time soon, I wish to announce the purchase of some serious theology. David Kelsey's two volume magnum opus, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox0 2010) [1496 pages!] is the culmination of a lifetime's wisdom, reflection, theological exploration and Christian thinking. A systematics from the perspective of Christian Anthropology is so overdue I suppose some of us wondered if it might ever appear - assuming any of us thought it a valid or viable theological proposal in the first place. But because the nature of the human being, and the relation of humanity to God, and the meaning of humanity created in the image of God, are deep questions that go to the vital centre of human thought, experience and existence, such a theology is now an essential and humanising task. Christian theology now, at this stage in human history, has critically important things to say about human existence, the human future and the future of the world.
A faith tradition that expresses an understanding of God as a Triune communion of self-giving creative love, and tells the story of that love as bringing all else into existence, and becoming incarnate in human form to enter the created and finite order of time and sin and death, and triumphs not through power but through redemptive passionate love, is a faith tradition which must inevitably hold, not only an exalted and holy view of God, but a high and sacred view of human dignity, worth and personality. In other words, a systematics that begins with the question "What are human beings that you care for them?", is one that will approach familiar questions from an unfamiliar angle, will take seriously the relationality of God and the human creature, and will bring the Love of God to bear upon the purpose of human existence within the entirety of the divine purpose for the created order. In a world hell bent on its own exhaustion, such a theological corrective is now a necessary and urgent note in the message of a Gospel whose ultimate purpose is the renewal of a creation which, more than he could ever have known, Paul describes as groaning, awaiting its redemption.
These two big books when they come will be the ever presents on my desk for the winter. To be read deeply and slowly, not uncritically but with a sense that now and again, we are gifted the chance to handle, admire, even to own, someone else's richly textured theological fabric, woven on a long practised loom by a weaver who knows the colours and patterns of theological reflection, faithful to Scripture, and lovingly modelled on a conception of God that is Trinitarian.
Kelsey, along with Frei and Lindbeck, are of course postliberal theologians of "the Yale School". I know that. And I recognise the challenge his theological approach represents to other theological schools and styles, including my own. But one of the golden rules of theological hospitality is the refusal to allow someone's label and reputation to dictate how we receive them. So I look forward to what good hospitality should also and always enable - shared conversation, intellectual friendship, and sufficient courtesy to listen at least twice as much as we speak. Now and again I'll report on the conversation.
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